Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[NOMAAA 1696]

14 minutes ago, pops said:

Rapeseed is used to make canola oil. I guess rape oil didn't sell

nope.

Edited February 24, 2022 by NOMAAA

[SquishMitten 10403]

 

For anybody not reading the comments, the author of this tweet had a follow up saying that fleet has been in that area for a couple weeks now. It didn’t just show up today

[SL Xpress 7513]

35 minutes ago, Snacks said:

But see... there is this human characteristic we think we have that allows us to recognize our shortcomings, truly acknowledge them, and then try to become better.  That is what makes us human.  

"Ah, fuck it. I can't help it, because I'm human," is not human.

I don't disagree with your premise, but most humans no longer want to kill all the humans that aren't exactly like them, except when incited by the assholes who do.

I'm sure I could incite a race riot. I don't want to. I want to live a good life and see my children live a good life.  I have no desire to take anything from you or anyone else. Most humans are like this. Very few want to kill everyone that isn't like them for the sake of power.

I appreciate that. I’m of a similar bent. The vast majority of people are. 
 

But here’s the thing to keep in mind. The direction of human interaction in every mass endeavor is never set by the most moderate. It is always set by the ones on the outer edges.
 

I’ll give you a harmless example. Message boards. Have you ever seen a relatively polite discourse on a controversial subject being discussed among people genuinely trying to understand one another’s point of view? Toss in one agitator who expresses extreme views, and very quickly the conversation devolves into reacting to that single person’s agenda. 
 

Or let’s take market behavior. The price of a good - say oil, or bonds - is not determined by the first person to buy that good. It’s determined by the last one. Prices rise and fall based on the extreme, not the aggregate. 
 

Same with tribal conflicts. People can live generations side by side of one another, but if they don’t interbreed to the point of being indistinguishable - like say what happened with the Mongols ruling China - eventually someone is going to take advantage of our need to identify an other as a bonding mechanism for the tribe. 
 

We have a robust range of genetic characteristics we’re born with. It’s the same with every species. They can study rats and identify clearly distinguishable character traits. One may be more timid, while one is more adventurous. One may be more socially interactive, while another is more withdrawn. The thing is, each species needs these robust character profiles at birth to survive. 
 

There are a relatively small percentage of humans born with psychopathy. While we have negative associations with it, the fact is some of the greatest leaders in human history and prehistory - possibly a ridiculously large percentage of them - have very clear indications of this trait. They represent a whopping percentage of current CEOs. I wouldn’t want one as my lover, but if my tribe’s existence hangs in the balance, having one around as the tribal leader would probably be pretty handy. 
 

I saw a documentary last year from a director who went around interviewing members of German society during the Holocaust, and asked them questions about what they knew and why they behaved the way they did. These were normal people, just like you and me in many ways. They weren’t fundamentally evil, or wanting to incite a race riot, or exterminate a competing tribe. But listening to them talk about their experiences was even more horrifying for all of that. 
 

We talk about the Holocaust like it can never happen again if we simply keep it in our memory. But that’s a fiction. It will happen again. It happens on a smaller scale right now. The only prevention is to battle demagoguery and extremism with a conscientious robustness from all sides. Instead in this country we lean into it more and more, with each side viewing the other as a greater and greater existential threat. That’s a pattern that’s been repeated literally millions of times throughout human history, and the end is never pretty. 
 

Anyway, to get back to Ukraine, Putin represents that psychopathy. But instead of viewing him as an aberration, we should instead view him as a pretty normal manifestation of the quest for power. He’s simply more adept than many. 

[staboner 4969]

morning crew here in APAC checking. thanks to all you guys posting the various twats and videos. Some of those videos were certainly hard to watch. 

Like others have said I think Russia tossed their "undesirables" at Ukraine to see what sticks in round 1. I have a bad feeling for what is going to go down in.....1 hour and 15 minutes or so, assuming that is the correct intel. 

[atomheartbevo 89652]

5 hours ago, troph said:

it's really interesting how quick the ground war started. The US would wait a week and just pound from the air, Russia bombs for a morning then sends in tanks to only see actual resistance.  Looks like Russia is clearly winning, but not with the zero tolerance for losses like the US has.

This is a TLDR, but I get to play semi-expert for a few minutes.  I was in the Army in the early 90s (after the first Gulf War), in field artillery and attached to infantry as an artillery scout (not a fucking cav scout, those guys are weird - @RDCanecutter will understand).  We scouted for everything up to and including MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems).  We scouted targets for units in the field and fed the info back to the artillery batteries who assigned targets and priorities to various systems.  I was out well before 2000, but what they have now, including drones, is amazing and damned near point-and-click in some cases (and would have reduced the need for guys like me), and I'm assuming the Russians got their hands on the same stuff.

The quick start of the ground war in Ukraine - this aspect is bugging me a lot.

My instructors and junior-level commanders had all been in during the 1980s (some late 1970s), and a large number were vets of the first Gulf War.  Some of the tactics/training were still reflecting 1980s European/Cold War battlefields - lots of mobility, either moving forward or falling back, but never able to linger in one place for very long - "shoot and scoot". But we also did a lot of combined-arms training based on lessons from the (first) Gulf War where we had time to plan targets, backup targets, and even more backup targets, and where our batteries had actual time to work their way through to backup targets and were working in conjunction with air superiority, and where we were using everything at our disposal, and where we could deploy well-coordinated artillery en masse.  Artillery is King of Battle after all.

In 1991 we had a million troops in the theater around Iraq, with 700,000 of them being American, and in 2003 we had around 250,000 coalition troops.  Putin is doing this with a much smaller force against a larger country with more people, and with much less preparation (attacking of targets), and his run-up to the ground invasion was short, but he still did a combined arms/full-on throw everything at them attack, just on a much smaller scale than Iraq in 1991 or 2003.

This is bugging me, because I can't figure out why there was so little run-up, and I've looked at the maps and units a bit and they are spread out fairly thin.  These are what I'm coming up with off the top of my head:

1. The Russians simply don't have the supplies of rockets/missiles/bombs/arty/etc. that we did, as well as the logistics to back it up - it's like they have far less than 24 hours worth of such munitions.   The fact that they are invading with a fifth of the forces that we had in Iraq in 1991, and almost half of what we invaded Iraq in 2003 is interesting.  It feels like they've decided to sacrifice boots on the ground to make up the difference, but there's no way they are fielding more than say 50,000-60,000 or so actual infantry (not basically infantry, but actual infantry).  They did go through some very expensive upgrades after 2014 that could have sapped their budgets but I don't understand why they didn't wait another year for NS2 to be fully online for strategic reasons, and to have a full supply of everything they need armaments wise - maybe the Russian military is actually at the point where this is what they capable of fielding, which again, makes no sense, but could be scary for Putin.
2. They are trying some kind of blitzkrieg-style invasion in the hopes of destroying a lot of major Ukrainian hardware, and then they are going to fall back and build up a large buffer zone around the territories they are claiming and force negotiations.  If they can hurt the Ukrainians enough, the Ukrainians won't have enough time to mount a concentrated effort to push them back out of the buffer zone while they secure/reinforce those zones. They get to claim those territories and they have a buffer zone around those territories that is fully linked.

I am just having a hard time seeing what's happening as capable of a full-on occupation of Ukraine, because if even a few areas of the ground assault get bogged down in the opening phase, what reserves can Putin have rushed in their to save their asses?  And the reserves/conscripts are nothing to write home about - many are doing their year and then they normally get out, and such young and inexperienced soldiers can quickly fuck around and find out.

TLDR: Putin's comments make me think he wants all of Ukraine, but the lack of sustained preparation (aerial/arty assault) and what he's put on the ground is just not capable of it.

[pronghorn 44]

Dumb question but why can’t the US just institute no-fly zone over the country. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, pronghorn said:

Dumb question but why can’t the US just institute no-fly zone over the country. 

Or call a time-out?

[BrazilHorn 6586]

3 minutes ago, staboner said:

morning crew here in APAC checking. thanks to all you guys posting the various twats and videos. Some of those videos were certainly hard to watch. 

Like others have said I think Russia tossed their "undesirables" at Ukraine to see what sticks in round 1. I have a bad feeling for what is going to go down in.....1 hour and 15 minutes or so, assuming that is the correct intel. 

The “twats” are in PIIHB under the “adopt a Ukrainian” thread. 

[SL Xpress 7513]

41 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

I'm shocked by this. How does a military like Russia's not wipe them out in day one?

Ineffectiveness is the only answer. They have had air superiority, and these are grounded air craft. There’s no tactical reason to allow them to stay sitting on the ground. I don’t know what Ukraine’s ground to air defensive capabilities are. I know some of the strikes have gone after radar installations. Still, this screams operational deficiencies. 

[Harrison Stafford 3335]

Aside from following this absolutely incredible thread, if you’re looking to learn more about the current crisis, watch ‘Winter on Fire:  Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom’ a 90 minute documentary on Netflix about the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014.  

[troph 24783]

4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is a TLDR, but I get to play semi-expert for a few minutes.  I was in the Army in the early 90s (after the first Gulf War), in field artillery and attached to infantry as an artillery scout (not a fucking cav scout, those guys are weird - @RDCanecutter will understand).  We scouted for everything up to and including MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems).  We scouted targets for units in the field and fed the info back to the artillery batteries who assigned targets and priorities to various systems.  I was out well before 2000, but what they have now, including drones, is amazing and damned near point-and-click in some cases (and would have reduced the need for guys like me), and I'm assuming the Russians got their hands on the same stuff.

The quick start of the ground war in Ukraine - this aspect is bugging me a lot.

My instructors and junior-level commanders had all been in during the 1980s (some late 1970s), and a large number were vets of the first Gulf War.  Some of the tactics/training were still reflecting 1980s European/Cold War battlefields - lots of mobility, either moving forward or falling back, but never able to linger in one place for very long - "shoot and scoot". But we also did a lot of combined-arms training based on lessons from the (first) Gulf War where we had time to plan targets, backup targets, and even more backup targets, and where our batteries had actual time to work their way through to backup targets and were working in conjunction with air superiority, and where we were using everything at our disposal, and where we could deploy well-coordinated artillery en masse.  Artillery is King of Battle after all.

In 1991 we had a million troops in the theater around Iraq, with 700,000 of them being American, and in 2003 we had around 250,000 coalition troops.  Putin is doing this with a much smaller force against a larger country with more people, and with much less preparation (attacking of targets), and his run-up to the ground invasion was short, but he still did a combined arms/full-on throw everything at them attack, just on a much smaller scale than Iraq in 1991 or 2003.

This is bugging me, because I can't figure out why there was so little run-up, and I've looked at the maps and units a bit and they are spread out fairly thin.  These are what I'm coming up with off the top of my head:

1. The Russians simply don't have the supplies of rockets/missiles/bombs/arty/etc. that we did, as well as the logistics to back it up - it's like they have far less than 24 hours worth of such munitions.   The fact that they are invading with a fifth of the forces that we had in Iraq in 1991, and almost half of what we invaded Iraq in 2003 is interesting.  It feels like they've decided to sacrifice boots on the ground to make up the difference, but there's no way they are fielding more than say 50,000-60,000 or so actual infantry (not basically infantry, but actual infantry).  They did go through some very expensive upgrades after 2014 that could have sapped their budgets but I don't understand why they didn't wait another year for NS2 to be fully online for strategic reasons, and to have a full supply of everything they need armaments wise - maybe the Russian military is actually at the point where this is what they capable of fielding, which again, makes no sense, but could be scary for Putin.
2. They are trying some kind of blitzkrieg-style invasion in the hopes of destroying a lot of major Ukrainian hardware, and then they are going to fall back and build up a large buffer zone around the territories they are claiming and force negotiations.  If they can hurt the Ukrainians enough, the Ukrainians won't have enough time to mount a concentrated effort to push them back out of the buffer zone while they secure/reinforce those zones. They get to claim those territories and they have a buffer zone around those territories that is fully linked.

I am just having a hard time seeing what's happening as capable of a full-on occupation of Ukraine, because if even a few areas of the ground assault get bogged down in the opening phase, what reserves can Putin have rushed in their to save their asses?  And the reserves/conscripts are nothing to write home about - many are doing their year and then they normally get out, and such young and inexperienced soldiers can quickly fuck around and find out.

TLDR: Putin's comments make me think he wants all of Ukraine, but the lack of sustained preparation (aerial/arty assault) and what he's put on the ground is just not capable of it.

There seems to be a real disconnect doesn’t there? I will say the amount of artillery and tanks the CNN on the ground reporter saw flowing in today from Belgorod sounded impressive but to move that quickly after a lackluster bombing campaign seems odd. Granted they control that area and supposedly a “major” offensive tonight - I guess we will know more after tonight - what we know as major and what Russian does as major may be two different things. I know I’m praying for Russian ineptitude. 

[Deej 76759]

38 minutes ago, pops said:

I guess rape oil didn't sell

Not once they put Sandusky away. 

Edited February 25, 2022 by Deej

[troph 24783]

8 minutes ago, pronghorn said:

Dumb question but why can’t the US just institute no-fly zone over the country. 

That’s a military engagement. You have to shoot planes down to enforce it. You might get shot down by Russian surface to air missiles, in short you have to win air superiority by force and then enforce it. That’s war with Russia. 

[SquishMitten 10403]

See what the transfer portal brings...

Do we have to worry about numbers or nah?

[52-80 19150]

14 minutes ago, staboner said:

1. I have a bad feeling for what is going to go down in.....1 hour and 15 minutes or so, assuming that is the correct intel. 

Well, its either then, or next Tuesday

[Eastwood 4394]

6 minutes ago, Harrison Stafford said:

Aside from following this absolutely incredible thread, if you’re looking to learn more about the current crisis, watch ‘Winter on Fire:  Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom’ a 90 minute documentary on Netflix about the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014.  

Also, this video documenting a night of protesting the Russian backed government.

 

[SL Xpress 7513]

3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is a TLDR, but I get to play semi-expert for a few minutes.  I was in the Army in the early 90s (after the first Gulf War), in field artillery and attached to infantry as an artillery scout (not a fucking cav scout, those guys are weird - @RDCanecutter will understand).  We scouted for everything up to and including MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems).  We scouted targets for units in the field and fed the info back to the artillery batteries who assigned targets and priorities to various systems.  I was out well before 2000, but what they have now, including drones, is amazing and damned near point-and-click in some cases (and would have reduced the need for guys like me), and I'm assuming the Russians got their hands on the same stuff.

The quick start of the ground war in Ukraine - this aspect is bugging me a lot.

My instructors and junior-level commanders had all been in during the 1980s (some late 1970s), and a large number were vets of the first Gulf War.  Some of the tactics/training were still reflecting 1980s European/Cold War battlefields - lots of mobility, either moving forward or falling back, but never able to linger in one place for very long - "shoot and scoot". But we also did a lot of combined-arms training based on lessons from the (first) Gulf War where we had time to plan targets, backup targets, and even more backup targets, and where our batteries had actual time to work their way through to backup targets and were working in conjunction with air superiority, and where we were using everything at our disposal, and where we could deploy well-coordinated artillery en masse.  Artillery is King of Battle after all.

In 1991 we had a million troops in the theater around Iraq, with 700,000 of them being American, and in 2003 we had around 250,000 coalition troops.  Putin is doing this with a much smaller force against a larger country with more people, and with much less preparation (attacking of targets), and his run-up to the ground invasion was short, but he still did a combined arms/full-on throw everything at them attack, just on a much smaller scale than Iraq in 1991 or 2003.

This is bugging me, because I can't figure out why there was so little run-up, and I've looked at the maps and units a bit and they are spread out fairly thin.  These are what I'm coming up with off the top of my head:

1. The Russians simply don't have the supplies of rockets/missiles/bombs/arty/etc. that we did, as well as the logistics to back it up - it's like they have far less than 24 hours worth of such munitions.   The fact that they are invading with a fifth of the forces that we had in Iraq in 1991, and almost half of what we invaded Iraq in 2003 is interesting.  It feels like they've decided to sacrifice boots on the ground to make up the difference, but there's no way they are fielding more than say 50,000-60,000 or so actual infantry (not basically infantry, but actual infantry).  They did go through some very expensive upgrades after 2014 that could have sapped their budgets but I don't understand why they didn't wait another year for NS2 to be fully online for strategic reasons, and to have a full supply of everything they need armaments wise - maybe the Russian military is actually at the point where this is what they capable of fielding, which again, makes no sense, but could be scary for Putin.
2. They are trying some kind of blitzkrieg-style invasion in the hopes of destroying a lot of major Ukrainian hardware, and then they are going to fall back and build up a large buffer zone around the territories they are claiming and force negotiations.  If they can hurt the Ukrainians enough, the Ukrainians won't have enough time to mount a concentrated effort to push them back out of the buffer zone while they secure/reinforce those zones. They get to claim those territories and they have a buffer zone around those territories that is fully linked.

I am just having a hard time seeing what's happening as capable of a full-on occupation of Ukraine, because if even a few areas of the ground assault get bogged down in the opening phase, what reserves can Putin have rushed in their to save their asses?  And the reserves/conscripts are nothing to write home about - many are doing their year and then they normally get out, and such young and inexperienced soldiers can quickly fuck around and find out.

TLDR: Putin's comments make me think he wants all of Ukraine, but the lack of sustained preparation (aerial/arty assault) and what he's put on the ground is just not capable of it.

That’s such a great post. 
 

Yeah, he had 190,000 troops deployed around Ukraine, including allegedly 60% of his total combined arms units in his entire force. 
 

You look at the numbers regarding the US military compared to Russia, and it can be a little mind boggling at how stark the difference is. Not just in terms of budget - although that especially - but sheer numbers of manpower and equipment available. Not to mention the greater sophistication. 
 

To think that the US was prosecuting two wars simultaneously in far off lands while still maintaining other global responsibilities and even side operations, while Russia is invading a neighboring country on their border that they can field robust operational capabilities from three sides, is a stark reminder of the difference in the two forces. 
 

And at the fear of seeming to be a cheerleader for American military might, I’m not advocating for the choice to prosecute two wars. The Iraq invasion was stupid on nearly every level. 
 

I have to admit I’m feeling like this operation isn’t going as smoothly as Putin expected. Don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but it is a thing. 
 

Again, thanks for the post. 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

 

[52-80 19150]

3 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

You can tell its doctored because there wasnt one Syka Blyattt

[USNALonghorn 5078]

We would beat Russia on neutral ground in a conventional conflict (not this cat and mouse bullshit). However it would be a tougher and costlier conflict for us than most expect.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

2 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

You can tell its doctored because there wasnt one Syka Blyattt

 

[Scheiss Meister 8407]

1 hour ago, MillerEP said:

Spies are fair game under the Geneva Convention:

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1496958588685856774

 

Kill him slowly.

[Homercles 10205]

22 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

TLAM-N is a seabased cruise missile that is nuclear tipped.  That's considered tactical.  We definitely have those.

There is an air craft launched cruise missile.  I think it's like the AGM-20 or something.  I may be missing a number.  But they definitely exist.  Kind of crazy incident with those things I would say 20 years ago maybe?  They were flying a mission from Barksdale to Minot on a B-52.  They ended up loading 6 nuclear tipped missiles and had no idea.  They checked the next day and thought they lost the missiles.  Come to find out it was sitting in a hanger still attached to a B-52.

 

But yeah.  Tactical nukes exist.  They are in the inventory but probably never to be used again because they are needed for any sort of mission profile anymore.  They save it in case something new comes up.

Also my understanding is that the line between ‘tactical’ and strategic is more defined on how you use them and not their yield.  Besides, even detonating one nuke on a battlefield has serious possibility of unintended consequences that quickly escalate to a full exchange. 
 

I’ve wondered how a tactical nuke can be used within the National Command Authority?  I would assume by now they all have PAL devices installed…at least C if not F categories.  I’d assume that Major Buttfuck would have the codes already when he leaves Barksdale to fly to Europe to use them in the most dire of situations…but in a more tactical situation with changing targets of opportunity, is there even time to get approval to free the warhead?  
 

Just seems ‘tactical’ is misplaced.  There aren’t any Davey Crocketts or SADMs anymore.  Any usage of a nuke would have to be deliberate, planned ahead of time and arguably strategic in nature.  

[Doc Reeves 6434]

 

 

Dammit….

 

[FartingMonk 3606]

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

[Dahobbs 17534]

Just now, Doc Reeves said:

 

 

Dammit….

 

You ordered for some Russian special forces? 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

Raise your hand if you had this on your bingo card

[Quagmire 2147]

Expect a destroyed in transit notification soon

[Dahobbs 17534]

1 minute ago, FartingMonk said:

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

Well, they didn't say by who, did they? 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

Field reporters are crazy mother fuckers. Wow

[dimyh 1874]

1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

russian ingenuity. there's no fucking way we lose a war to these assholes.

 

Then Dimitri, Boris and I wait until nightfall then we leap out of the KamAz taking them completely by surprise!

Ummm...who leaps out?

We could build a large wooden BM30 Smerch...

[staboner 4969]

Just now, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Field reporters are crazy mother fuckers. Wow

 

2 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

somewhere upstream someone said there was a video of this? 

[Dahobbs 17534]

2 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

 

 

Raise your hand if you had this on your bingo card

 

Because of how that tweet is cut off, it looks like Anonymous is engaging in cyber with the Russian government. Frankly, that sounds about right. Someone is probably putting on a robe and wizard hat as we speak.  

Edited February 25, 2022 by Dahobbs

[troph 24783]

2 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

He looked like a dumbfuck last night. But he gets mad props from me today that was crazy.  CNN had had decent coverage of these they do loop it too often instead of getting new information but what they do share is solid. 

[conVINCEd 21469]

3 minutes ago, Doc Reeves said:

 

 

Dammit….

 

Just order a new sugar baby from some other Eastern European country.

[FartingMonk 3606]

6 minutes ago, Homercles said:

Also my understanding is that the line between ‘tactical’ and strategic is more defined on how you use them and not their yield.  Besides, even detonating one nuke on a battlefield has serious possibility of unintended consequences that quickly escalate to a full exchange. 
 

I’ve wondered how a tactical nuke can be used within the National Command Authority?  I would assume by now they all have PAL devices installed…at least C if not F categories.  I’d assume that Major Buttfuck would have the codes already when he leaves Barksdale to fly to Europe to use them in the most dire of situations…but in a more tactical situation with changing targets of opportunity, is there even time to get approval to free the warhead?  
 

Just seems ‘tactical’ is misplaced.  There aren’t any Davey Crocketts or SADMs anymore.  Any usage of a nuke would have to be deliberate, planned ahead of time and arguably strategic in nature.  

Yeah, we were taught tactical wipes out an army.  Strategic wipes out a city.

[Celery Man 20934]

4 minutes ago, Doc Reeves said:

 

 

Dammit….

 

Chelsea still thinks we’re getting whatever I just spent $250 on from Ukraine.

[Doc Reeves 6434]

2 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

Just order a new sugar baby from some other Eastern European country.

 

Me and Oxanna have something special

[RDCanecutter 26411]

16 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is a TLDR, but I get to play semi-expert for a few minutes.  I was in the Army in the early 90s (after the first Gulf War), in field artillery and attached to infantry as an artillery scout (not a fucking cav scout, those guys are weird - @RDCanecutter will understand).  We scouted for everything up to and including MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems).  We scouted targets for units in the field and fed the info back to the artillery batteries who assigned targets and priorities to various systems.  I was out well before 2000, but what they have now, including drones, is amazing and damned near point-and-click in some cases (and would have reduced the need for guys like me), and I'm assuming the Russians got their hands on the same stuff.

The quick start of the ground war in Ukraine - this aspect is bugging me a lot.

My instructors and junior-level commanders had all been in during the 1980s (some late 1970s), and a large number were vets of the first Gulf War.  Some of the tactics/training were still reflecting 1980s European/Cold War battlefields - lots of mobility, either moving forward or falling back, but never able to linger in one place for very long - "shoot and scoot". But we also did a lot of combined-arms training based on lessons from the (first) Gulf War where we had time to plan targets, backup targets, and even more backup targets, and where our batteries had actual time to work their way through to backup targets and were working in conjunction with air superiority, and where we were using everything at our disposal, and where we could deploy well-coordinated artillery en masse.  Artillery is King of Battle after all.

In 1991 we had a million troops in the theater around Iraq, with 700,000 of them being American, and in 2003 we had around 250,000 coalition troops.  Putin is doing this with a much smaller force against a larger country with more people, and with much less preparation (attacking of targets), and his run-up to the ground invasion was short, but he still did a combined arms/full-on throw everything at them attack, just on a much smaller scale than Iraq in 1991 or 2003.

This is bugging me, because I can't figure out why there was so little run-up, and I've looked at the maps and units a bit and they are spread out fairly thin.  These are what I'm coming up with off the top of my head:

1. The Russians simply don't have the supplies of rockets/missiles/bombs/arty/etc. that we did, as well as the logistics to back it up - it's like they have far less than 24 hours worth of such munitions.   The fact that they are invading with a fifth of the forces that we had in Iraq in 1991, and almost half of what we invaded Iraq in 2003 is interesting.  It feels like they've decided to sacrifice boots on the ground to make up the difference, but there's no way they are fielding more than say 50,000-60,000 or so actual infantry (not basically infantry, but actual infantry).  They did go through some very expensive upgrades after 2014 that could have sapped their budgets but I don't understand why they didn't wait another year for NS2 to be fully online for strategic reasons, and to have a full supply of everything they need armaments wise - maybe the Russian military is actually at the point where this is what they capable of fielding, which again, makes no sense, but could be scary for Putin.
2. They are trying some kind of blitzkrieg-style invasion in the hopes of destroying a lot of major Ukrainian hardware, and then they are going to fall back and build up a large buffer zone around the territories they are claiming and force negotiations.  If they can hurt the Ukrainians enough, the Ukrainians won't have enough time to mount a concentrated effort to push them back out of the buffer zone while they secure/reinforce those zones. They get to claim those territories and they have a buffer zone around those territories that is fully linked.

I am just having a hard time seeing what's happening as capable of a full-on occupation of Ukraine, because if even a few areas of the ground assault get bogged down in the opening phase, what reserves can Putin have rushed in their to save their asses?  And the reserves/conscripts are nothing to write home about - many are doing their year and then they normally get out, and such young and inexperienced soldiers can quickly fuck around and find out.

TLDR: Putin's comments make me think he wants all of Ukraine, but the lack of sustained preparation (aerial/arty assault) and what he's put on the ground is just not capable of it.

First of all, Cav Scouts prefer to be addressed as MR. Weird, if you don't mind, you lice-ridden Red Leg concussed to the point of addled perversion.

That said, I like reading your views and those of the other actual prior service, finding bits of insight amidst all the ravings of the bunny-hopping video gamers.

I agree that 190,000 is a tiny amount compared to earlier wars. I believe the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries with millions of men, on a comparatively tiny front. Putin's tanks and paratroops can probably pull off a smash-and-grab, but no way do the gopniks in the motor rifles have the numbers to pull off an occupation. I bet their units are way understrength in personnel. They'll be busy trying to protect the running tanks, the broken-down tanks, and the clunky supply tail following all the combat units. If this stretches out I foresee lots of unsupplied hungry Russians getting ready to leave the band due to creative differences.

[AeroHorn 749]

4 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Putin likes to deploy them early, as mentioned, because of the psychological impact of having Chechens in the field. This whole plot, by the way, could have been written by Lermontov. 

 

4 hours ago, TXSG8R said:

I’m sure it’s effective.  I’d probably only put the Gurkhas ahead of them as just absolute pound for pound bad asses. 

My ex-manager was an Armenian soldier and spent time in a Russian jail. He said that nobody messed with the Chechens in the jail, even the Russian guards. Tough people who fought to keep their independence for centuries and lost 60% of their population under WW2 Soviet purge.

[MoJames 8244]

6 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

 

 

Raise your hand if you had this on your bingo card

 

[FartingMonk 3606]

5 minutes ago, staboner said:

 

somewhere upstream someone said there was a video of this? 

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/24/firefight-airport-kyiv-chance-sot-lead-vpx.cnn

[Knoxtnhorn 5974]

20 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

Also, this video documenting a night of protesting the Russian backed government.

 

I remember watching all of this live.  It was fascinating.  

[52-80 19150]

8 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

 

 

Raise your hand if you had this on your bingo card

 

Thats exactly what a Russian-based hacking group would broadcast to the world….

[Hook1997 5354]

Well Sean Penn just got to the Ukraine to film a documentary on the invasion….   

[52-80 19150]

12 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Man.  I have it on CNN and it has their correspondent Matthew Chance telling his story of what happened at the airport battle in Kiev today.  It is an absolutely insane story.  He was told by the Ukrainians that the airport was secured.  So they go walking around and they run into another group.  This group has no markings so he's just like hmm, we will record here.  They tell him go away it's very dangerous.  He asked why do you think the Russians are coming soon?  The guy says we are the Russians and then a huge fire fight breaks out.  Like what the fuck.

Nobody expects the Slavic inquisition. 

[FartingMonk 3606]

3 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

First of all, Cav Scouts prefer to be addressed as MR. Weird, if you don't mind, you lice-ridden Red Leg concussed to the point of addled perversion.

That said, I like reading your views and those of the other actual prior service, finding bits of insight amidst all the ravings of the bunny-hopping video gamers.

I agree that 190,000 is a tiny amount compared to earlier wars. I believe the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries with millions of men, on a comparatively tiny front. Putin's tanks and paratroops can probably pull off a smash-and-grab, but no way do the gopniks in the motor rifles have the numbers to pull off an occupation. I bet their units are way understrength in personnel. They'll be busy trying to protect the running tanks, the broken-down tanks, and the clunky supply tail following all the combat units. If this stretches out I foresee lots of unsupplied hungry Russians getting ready to leave the band due to creative differences.

I was watching some videos earlier and it just had pictures of abandoned Russian vehicles, tanks, trucks, various armor and I thought is that vehicles that just couldn't make the trek anymore?  Those things take a lot of maintenance and if maintenance hasn't been maintained. A bunch of those vehicles won't make it to their objective.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

 

[Constant 6731]

If that intelligence regarding bombing of Kyiv was correct, we’re about 30 minutes away. 

[maninblack 7974]

13 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

 

 

Raise your hand if you had this on your bingo card

 

Breaking: Anonymous has been shut down by hacker farms who have taken over all of Anonymous’ computers and make them play baby shark over and over.