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Eastwood

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Eastwood

  1. To add to this, the United States tinkered with similar battlefield nukes that could be launched with artillery or even launched off of a stand with the Davy Crockett system. Both were shown to be too dangerous to friendly ground troops and our missile systems quickly became accurate enough to be much more effective. That also is the reason for our yields going down. The large yield weapons were to make sure they had affect on target, even with a fairly bad miss. Now that we can land it within a meter of anything we aim at from thousands of miles away, we could reduce the yields.
  2. The moment any deliverable capable of carrying a nuclear warhead is airborn or a satellite picks up the double flash, the whole world shuts down and we're in about a 30 minute window of knowing whether or not we have entered a full on nuclear war.
  3. WW2 draft was 18-45 and the last article I read talked about how the US military estimates that around only 1/3 of the American populace that isn't already in the military would qualify and make it through a boot camp. So, if you're below the age of 45 and can pass a PFT with 6-9 weeks of training, you're in. Congrats!
  4. If only there was a way to foresee that their energy infrastructure was at the whim of one singular man who can act alone with impunity...
  5. IIRC, he said it would hit 1 million deaths and the "it's just the flu" crowd laughed at the idea.
  6. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1496717859107618820?s=20&t=0_7ss_RUqn5jF-C2rw5Whw
  7. Air raid sirens just fired up. Eerie to hear.
  8. God I wish the old site was still up so I could drag my old thread into here and start pulling the greatest hits of naysayers when I was saying this about Crimea.
  9. The more they drive west, the more likely we have an accident involving NATO citizens and military. So, the more West Russia pushes, the more close quarters the combat will get. It might be worth Ukraine's while to essentially runaway scrape until they get within range of NATO territory and dare Russia to be accurate.
  10. Seed has been fed his talking points and he's here to regurgitate them until you logic him into a corner.
  11. We've been retreating from NATO ever since W looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. W's words, not mine. We've had a failed policy towards Russia for 4 presidents now.
  12. I think he was trying to draw Ukraine and any potential allies offsides. He doesn't want to throw the first punch and was hoping someone else would before the clock ran out. He had some false flags in his back pocket, but the US and others exposed those and kept him from using them. He's moving on to the next tactic of declaring those regions as sovereign nations in need of his aide. Ukraine must then either fire on Russia first or abandon the regions.
  13. I've gladly taken a back seat in this thread because Shady, 956, and others have posted some of the most inciteful and quality posts the Daily Texan has ever seen. Since the old site is borked and I can't reference the old thread, I'll just quickly state that a large chunk of my undergrad degree was studying the military, diplomatic, and geopolitical history of the Cold War. One of my final papers was on the myth of democracy in Russia and the rise of Putin as the first major power dictator since Hitler. He beat out Xi by about a decade. Putin has said, openly, that his main goal is to restore Russia to its previous greatness and that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy the world had seen. He didn't stop with South Ossetia, he didn't stop with Crimea, and he will not stop after this. The only way he stops is when he finally loses. He will never be peacefully removed from office because he uses a constitutional loop hole that allows him to perpetually swap places with a puppet between PM and president and never hit a term limit. He is good at keeping the right oligarchs happy and is patient enough to methodically lower the quality of life of Russians over decades to just enough where they won't miss the western goods when the next round of sanctions hit. Given an infinite time frame, he would rebuild the Berlin Wall and only be half way done. But he only has a decade or two left in him and his patience will be wearing thin soon. If he pulls this off without any real push back from the West, I expect him to move much more quickly on his next endeavor.
  14. Putin will recognize the separatist regions and move in while saying "I'm not invading Ukraine, I'm liberating two sovereign nations who will vote to annex themselves to Russia." Ah, well, nevertheless...
  15. Believe me, I remember. I started the Crimea thread on TOS and was comparing it to the annexation of the Sudetenland and was an advocate for any kind of response with real teeth. The push back was "do we really want to go to war with Russia over Crimea" and my retort then, as it is now, is that we wouldn't be going to war over a chunk of land, but showing strength to deter Putin from continuing such actions in the future. Putin openly desires the reformation of the Soviet Union. We should take him seriously. We wouldn't back him down over Crimea, so he is emboldened to take all of Ukraine. We will ask ourselves "do we really want to go to war over Ukraine?" The next line of questions would be about Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Romania, or Poland. If Putin starts pushing West, the answer should always be to push back. The world cannot afford an emboldened Vladimir Putin, as Putin in his current form is beholden only to a collective of Oligarchs. As long has he keeps the right people within Russia happy, he has carte blanche with the rest of the world.
  16. I absolutely remember this much hand wringing about Crimea. We didn't get what we needed out of the executive branch, last time. I think this current executive branch remembers that and some of that hindsight is driving the policy of today.
  17. God damned inflation...
  18. Sure, let's just get the whole gang involved. Russia goes into Ukraine, China goes after Taiwan and whatever it can get its hands on in Russa, India says, "no shit?" and takes Kashmir, Iran goes after Iraq, and Egypt, UAE, KSA, and the various remaining factions left in Syria go after Israel. Kidding. Kind of. Because once the US has to dedicate the majority of its forces to one theater, every piece of contested land out there starts looking pretty tempting.
  19. Yeah, only a matter of time now. My deepest hope is that the hot part of this war stays between Russia and Ukraine and Ukraine can weather the storm long enough for Russia to get a Pyrrhic victory, at best.
  20. CRSR might be looking like a good value flip for the long term. Going to start digging into it over the weekend.
  21. That and Ukraine wouldn't like it because they thought they already had that with the Budapest Memorandum. They gave up their nukes under the promise that their sovereignty would be respected.
  22. Those of you who think this will all move along without Republicans throwing an absolute, obstructionist shit-fit... I wish I shared your optimism. But partisan politics over the last 6 years has me absolutely politically exhausted. This process will take 4 times as long than it needs to and we'll be hearing bad takes from all sides for months.
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