Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[Scheiss Meister 8373]

11 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Yeh there is a happy ending. People acting like Putin has a brief case with the codes 1234 on it to shoot off nukes. Apparently I’ve become a nihilist or something but people are way afraid of death. 

So the sight of Russians killings hundreds of Ukrainians has you ready to risk the probable deaths of millions of other innocents, in many other countries, including our own.  How does that math add up to you?

ETA - I'm 60 years old, and have had a better life than I deserve.  I don't want to die, but I don't fear it.  I just know that you and I have the same right to commit the world to nuclear risk that Putin has to murder civilians: none at all.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Scheiss Meister

[Nicole44 21987]

1 minute ago, Scheiss Meister said:

So the sight of Russians killings hundreds of Ukrainians has you ready to risk the probable deaths of millions of other innocents, in many other countries, including our own.  How does that math add up to you?

I was told there would be no math on this exam. You take out the leader. Extreme prejudice. End game. 

[MillerEP 30306]

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/03/europe/mariupol-maternity-hospital-attack/index.html

Anatomy of the Mariupol hospital attack
By Katie Polglase, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Livvy Doherty, CNN
Design by Sarah-Grace Mankarious, CNN
March 17, 2022

[Trey3216 15314]

20 hours ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

Can you imagine how long that table will be...

@RamjetFDOneeds to shop a table the length of the deck of an American aircraft carrier 

[MillerEP 30306]

 

[Trey3216 15314]

19 hours ago, Ag with kids said:

This is the most badass one they made.  You even had to think in Russian to fly it!!!!

Probably more FireBox than FireFox 

[MillerEP 30306]

 

[Blotto 23349]

15 hours ago, Zonahorn said:

Correction; He's the chief political officer of the black sea fleet. He is not the Vice-Admiral.

 

 

Goddamnit, we've lost the skipper? Watch your six, Gilligan. We can't lose you too, little buddy. 

[MillerEP 30306]

[MillerEP 30306]

Chernihiv region, the remains are ruined.

Destruction of racist equipment by the Azov TRO and the artillery of the 92nd Brigade.

Russian ACS "Msta-C" and Ukrainian tractors. This is a classic. 🚜

Russia, Chelyabinsk. "no sugar", why do they need sugar? Moonshine to do?

#Мощун , Kiev region - the Russians are just restless, they come here and go https://t.me/kyivoperativ/91868 #всрф #потерьнет

[Sawbonz 27112]

Quote

 

Ukraine aims to reach 70% of last year's harvest despite war.

Doesn’t seem likely with so many tractors tied up capturing tanks and APCs

[Neonmoon 38127]

What are everyone’s thoughts on a total trade embargo? 

[Hook1997 5256]

9 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

What are everyone’s thoughts on a total trade embargo? 

My thought is we aren’t there yet and why not?

[RDCanecutter 26157]

3 hours ago, dimyh said:

Reports that some tracks have been sabotaged in Belarus. Not sure if it's true or the extent of the damage but hopefully they have enough of a resistance force to start fucking up more of the Ruskies logistics.

 

 

The streets of Belarus were full of anti-Lukashenko demonstrations about a year ago, right? That and the sterling social skills of recent Russian Army guests have probably left a few ready to serve something cold.

Also, isn't most of that border forested anyway? Seems like it wouldn't be impossible for small teams of Ukrainian Daniel Booneskis to slip in and get creative, especially when the country is crawling with speakers of every possible accent of Russian from near Ukraine to Siberia or the Caucasus.

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3867]

"Sleep well. There are no tractors under the bed."

 

[RDCanecutter 26157]

This little boy already has a Spanish girlfriend, he just doesn't know it yet. Girl in white shirt hip-checks brown-shirt girl to the side so she can get the best first hug, then lingers around to hug again.

[Gatorubet 29915]

10 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It’s just pure hoarding of long-life staples in the expectation that prices and shortages will last a long time— not hurricane style brief outages.  Russians do a lot more home preserves, jams, pickles than we do and you need sugar for that but it’s not really the season.  They just expect times to get hard, prices to continually go up, and so they’re spending rubles now to have a pantry full.  Sugar is one of a few staples than will really never spoil if stored right. 

I ‘d also guess that sugar is mad cheap calories in small volume if you are starving

[InkaUtexas 25164]

The military infrastructure object "shell" was denazized by a precision strike in the Kharkiv region

[Parliament 14062]

19 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

What are everyone’s thoughts on a total trade embargo? 

 

9 minutes ago, Hook1997 said:

My thought is we aren’t there yet and why not?

Some food, ag and medical companies are still doing business there.  And some of them are "fencing" those businesses.  Any profits they're making in Russia they're turning over to charity.  I'm no board with that.  Starving Russians is a humanitarian issue in my mind.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Maybe. But they also don’t have to. A tank with no gas is just a shitty artillery piece likely in a pointless location. And if it can’t get ammo, it’s not even that - it’s an armored paperweight.
Ukraine doesn’t have to destroy every Russian tanks. It just has to take them out of the fight.

A Russian tank with no gas isn't even a shitty artillery piece, since the turret can't turn and the auto-loader won't work.  It's just target practice for Javelins or NLAWs at that point.

[InkaUtexas 25164]

2 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

This little boy already has a Spanish girlfriend, he just doesn't know it yet. Girl in white shirt hip-checks brown-shirt girl to the side so she can get the best first hug, then lingers around to hug again.

Damn allergies. 

[atomheartbevo 89285]

1 hour ago, Dbeasy said:

Here is a question. I know very few want the US directly involved with this war. However, if the killing of innocent people continues at high levels, and most of the rest of the free world committed troops and direct involvement in Ukraine, would you support action? In that scenario the force would be overwhelming to Russia. I’m getting pretty damn tired of Russia killing innocent people and lying to the world. 

Russia needs NATO to come in at this point, as that article mentioned.  It's the only thing that would justify Putin's actions.

I don't think we have reached the full economic isolation (minus China) that we are capable of.

Also, Russia is on a timer, similar to the Japanese military in 1941 when we cut their oil, or even in the fictional Red Storm Rising novel from Tom Clancy/Larry Bond when Russia was put on a timer in terms of their ability to wage war.

Many of their military vehicle production lines ended years ago.  Russia doesn't have the means to manufacture the basic electronic components that they need to keep building/replacing military hardware, and they lack the raw materials that they were importing that would be needed to restart those production lines.  I know the embargoes will be blamed for that, but Putin and the Russian oligarchs took a lot of money/resources that could have been used to build a more robust military-industrial complex. The fact that they are using shitty Chinese tires is extremely telling - either their military couldn't afford better tires, or the oligarchs took a contract for Russian-made tires and just subcontracted out to a Chinese supplier.

There is a real possibility that Ukraine will break Russia's military. Putin is not using his fancy cruise missiles to show off - something has the Russian Air Force spooked to the point where they'd rather let the West peak at their fancy missiles than risk bombers/fighters over Western Ukraine.

[RDCanecutter 26157]

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

How many of those tanks are missing parts ?

All these vehicles with dry-rotted tires (and probably dry-rotted hoses and belts and seals failing in whatever way seals are wont to fail?)

Those were the good ones.

And as for the other tanks, out in a depot somewhere, I'd say the local scrap metal man already has a sign out front saying how much he pays per part.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

 

[atomheartbevo 89285]

 

[atomheartbevo 89285]

Edited March 20, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3867]

21 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

All these vehicles with dry-rotted tires (and probably dry-rotted hoses and belts and seals failing in whatever way seals are wont to fail?)

Those were the good ones.

And as for the other tanks, out in a depot somewhere, I'd say the local scrap metal man already has a sign out front saying how much he pays per part.

I too am of the mind that those tank numbers are the equilevent of the USAF counting every plane in the desert boneyards as inventory.

[InkaUtexas 25164]

22 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

I ‘d also guess that sugar is mad cheap calories in small volume if you are starving

They drink a shit-ton of tea...Sugar, but never milk: they prefer lemon in hot tea.

[Parliament 14062]

40 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

Lotsa natural gas, I presume.

[Sbbruin 21651]

37 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Sadly, I don’t think Putin gives any fucks either.

[Rimbo 25541]

15 hours ago, Hook1997 said:

See two post below you..  Everything I’ve read from this thread and other places say Russia advances are being pushed back in most locations and digging in and not advancing.   

They're advancing, just very slowly. And they're laying waste to everything.

It's not that I think Russia will win. It's that I'm bothered by how much Ukraine will lose.

They've changed their strategy to one of terrorism and horror. They're violating Geneva conventions with impunity; they've got nukes, so whatchu gonna do bout it?

We can sanction them and support Ukraine as much as possible, but we're still counting on Ukrainians to do all the dirty work for the rest of the civilized world.

People are saying Russia is stuck in a Cold War mindset. Well, so are we.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

If anybody wants a running list of dead generals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_generals_killed_during_the_2022_invasion_of_Ukraine

 

[Zonahorn 8056]

Not the tractors, NOT THE TRACTORS

[Laxtonto 11883]

Am I the only one the thinks the hand held antitank and anti air weapons are making the Soviet strategy pointless? 
 

Without being able to be one step ahead tech wise for both jamming and detection, they are just feeding equipment and manpower into a grinder.

 

The Ukrainians are using, for the most part, American designed technology we developed to combat what we think would work or at least slowdown our tech. The assumption is Russian tech has been a generation or two behind ours and so we are flooding the theater with somewhat superior weapons that should then help balance the Russian force superiority.

 

Instead, we now realize that though the Russian tech might be close R&D wise, thier ability to go from small scale to deployment is nonexistent and now the Ukrainians have a major tech advantage to the point that Russian forces are not even thinking advance but more hold on or potentially fall back…

 

Large scale warfare with the Russian tech level is being shown to be slow painful and potentially obsolete if the opfor now has the latest hand held anti air and antitank weapons.

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89285]

2 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

They're advancing, just very slowly. And they're laying waste to everything.

 

[Macanudo 12910]

1 hour ago, RDCanecutter said:

The streets of Belarus were full of anti-Lukashenko demonstrations about a year ago, right? That and the sterling social skills of recent Russian Army guests have probably left a few ready to serve something cold.

Also, isn't most of that border forested anyway? Seems like it wouldn't be impossible for small teams of Ukrainian Daniel Booneskis to slip in and get creative, especially when the country is crawling with speakers of every possible accent of Russian from near Ukraine to Siberia or the Caucasus.

I've thought about this too but the moment Ukrainians start taking the war into Belarus or Russia, they lose leverage.  Putin WANTS them to do something outside their borders.

[Laxtonto 11883]

What keeps the Ukrainians from forming up squads of 3 anti air, 6 anti tank, and 3 drone/spotters and blanketing the countryside? 
 

I get that they don’t yet have the number of handheld antitank and antiair yet to do this with 50k troops, but even 1200 would give them 100 squads that in essence could cover 1-400 sq miles as an initial blanket…

My guess is they already are doing something similar, but as more weapons make it to the front, you are going to see a literal blanket of squad level hunter groups looking to pick off 1-2 aircraft at a time or 4-6 vehicles, blanketing the country side…

 

The inability to keep infantry on the battlefield close to their vehicles makes all of this possible. There is nothing on the ground and so these hunter groups can just fill in these wide open empty spaces in the Russian advance. And in truth, it is not like the Ukrainians would be terribly upset if they lost a dozen squads built this way. The risk and assets deployed by them vs the likelihood of them taking out vehicles or air assets plus what it would take from a coordinated effort by Russian high command to go after them is worth the price.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Laxtonto

[RDCanecutter 26157]

1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

I ‘d also guess that sugar is mad cheap calories in small volume if you are starving

You buy all you can carry, same with cigarettes, then this time next month you start using both for money.

[InkaUtexas 25164]

8 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

You buy all you can carry, same with cigarettes, then this time next month you start using both for money.

Bribe the babushkas. 

[atomheartbevo 89285]

2 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

Am I the only one the thinks the hand held antitank and anti air weapons are making the Soviet strategy pointless? 
..........

Instead, we now realize that though the Russian tech might be close R&D wise, thier ability to go from small scale to deployment is nonexistent and now the Ukrainians have a major tech advantage to the point that Russian forces are not even thinking advance but more hold on or potentially fall back…

The fact that the Russians started digging in, when their whole campaign was designed around mobility and moving fast/decisively is stunning.

Then again, every day sees the equivalent of a Russian platoon captured, and a Russian battalion wounded or killed.

2 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

Large scale warfare with the Russian tech level is being shown to be slow painful and potentially obsolete if the opfor now has the latest hand held anti air and antitank weapons.

And don't forget drones being operated 24/7.  And we are not even into the full-blown IED phase yet, even though many predicted that Ukraine would be at the insurrection phase within a week, instead of still maintaining some air superiority.

There's probably a lot of people/countries reevaluating armored strategies going forward.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

25 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

I've thought about this too but the moment Ukrainians start taking the war into Belarus or Russia, they lose leverage.  Putin WANTS them to do something outside their borders.

On the other hand, I wonder if the Ukrainians that the Russians are capturing and relocating to Russia are meant to be human shields, to keep the Ukrainians from attacking Russian cities on the border.

Edit: Counterpoint: If Ukraine were to invade Russia, that would make a whole shitload of Russians go "WTF HOW IS THAT LITTLE COUNTRY INVADING US AND WHY ARE THEY INVADING US?".  They would really question Putin's leadership.

Edited March 20, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89285]

16 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

What keeps the Ukrainians from forming up squads of 3 anti air, 6 anti tank, and 3 drone/spotters and blanketing the countryside? 

I get that they don’t yet have the number of handheld antitank and antiair yet to do this with 50k troops, but even 1200 would give them 100 squads that in essence could cover 1-400 sq miles as an initial blanket…

My guess is they already are doing something similar, but as more weapons make it to the front, you are going to see a literal blanket of squad level hunter groups looking to pick off 1-2 aircraft at a time or 4-6 vehicles, blanketing the country side…

This could be why the Russians aren't pushing many aircraft into the western part of Ukraine.  Because they are running low on precision stuff, they have to get lower to make the dumb bombs count, which opens them up to anti-air all the way to the target and all the way back. 

[Laxtonto 11883]

10 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The fact that the Russians started digging in, when their whole campaign was designed around mobility and moving fast/decisively is stunning.

Then again, every day sees the equivalent of a Russian platoon captured, and a Russian battalion wounded or killed.

And don't forget drones being operated 24/7.  And we are not even into the full-blown IED phase yet, even though many predicted that Ukraine would be at the insurrection phase within a week, instead of still maintaining some air superiority.

There's probably a lot of people/countries reevaluating armored strategies going forward.

 

The drones make this even more interesting because now you are "risking" the drones to scout and then can push your hunters from them at a local basis with no need for a centralized reporting structure.  3 dudes with 3 drones can provide a full 360 view of a localized battlefield without having to put the men at risk. Once target acquisition happens, then the men have to be within a mile of the target to knock it out...

 

Wait till we get to the "gopher" stage in which the Ukrainians realize that just keep the drones in the air and the rest of the hunters underground until they then rise up from the depths. City combat will be a disaster for the Russians if they keep this approach... Why stay above ground all of the time if artillery is going to be the easiest counter?

Edited March 20, 2022 by Laxtonto

[RDCanecutter 26157]

7 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Bribe the babushkas. 

The babushkas control the pickle jars.

[GringoSalado 1639]

13 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Going down the Wikipedia and twitter and other rabbit holes about why Russia sucks so bad, and a couple of things keep popping up.

First, a lot of us here and elsewhere that are everything from random internet posters to various military and European analysts are shocked, and it's because we are biased because we are in our 40s and older, and so the Soviet Union was a real bogeyman. Many of us remember the duck-and-cover bullshit.  

It was in our culture - we remember the stuff that Ronald Reagan talked about in his speeches, and particularly for those of us growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, we had Rocky IV, Rambo III, Red Dawn, Top Gun, The Day After Tomorrow, Falcon and the Snowman, Firefox, Invasion USA, and Spies Like Us, Hunt for Red October (technically filmed in 1989).  It's really hard to explain to younger people what it was like to have the biggest ass-kickingest movies being about us facing off against the Russians in various ways.

Two things kept jumping out.

1. Russia hasn't fought a real enemy since WWII.  Sure, they had advisors in the Korean War, Vietnam, all over the Middle East, Cuba/Angola, and they've been very active in Syria in recent years.  None of them prepared them for a stand-up fight against a well-organized and well-equipped army backed by a determined populace.

2. The Russian military being incompetent is by design, because the civilian leadership fears the military.  This is where it gets interesting - quite a few people believe the Russian military, at least the combat troops (Army, Naval Infantry, etc.), are, by design, meant to be shit, including the more elite units.  They are meant to be poorly led, and their structure is designed such that it's not necessarily the most competent and driven who wind up in the upper ranks, and the system basically allows for the kind of shit like officers stealing the men's rations and selling them on the black market, etc.. The whole conscript system also really hurts the military, due to a very high turnover every year, again completely by design.  There's even some speculation that the high number of Russian generals/senior leaders being killed is because they just weren't that good (OpSec, situational awareness, etc.) and they didn't have good officers below them to keep the fuckups from happening in the fist place, that caused them to have to go to the front.

It gets really interesting when you get into the upper ranks, who are not what you would think the military would be - feels like the old Soviet Union days when it was more about who was loyal to the state/party than who was the most competent.

Hell the top guy, Sergei Shoigu, Minster of Defense and General of the Army, was not a military man.  He was a construction worker/manager who made his way into some minor roles in the Communist Party in the USSR days, and then post-breakup, worked his way up through various political positions.

Why do they fear the military?  Plenty of empires/large countries have been undone by the military during times of revolution (after all, in those times, the military would be the most powerful entity) and Russia is no exception.  Lenin and Trotsky both discussed what would happen if you had military officers who were ambitious (think Napoleon) and the Red Army of the USSR was designed with political officers whose job was to make sure that soldiers were 100% loyal to the USSR and the Communist Party, and that their loyalty was first and foremost to the state and not their leaders/officers.  They would spy on soldiers, and they had power over those soldiers, and they were constantly giving soldiers lessons that indoctrinated them into Leninism, Marxism, etc.

Putin basically revived this concept

snip

 

Thread moves too fast but I was gonna point out the plot point in Red October where Ramius has to assassinate the political officer onboard as the first step in his defection plan. I was googling around for a surl-worthy gif and came up empty but I did learn that character's name was Putin (Ivan) because of course it was.

[Sbbruin 21651]

1 minute ago, RDCanecutter said:

The babushkas control the pickle jars.

Pickle jars are the chanclas of the Ukrainians.

[Macanudo 12910]

6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

On the other hand, I wonder if the Ukrainians that the Russians are capturing and relocating to Russia are meant to be human shields, to keep the Ukrainians from attacking Russian cities on the border.

Edit: Counterpoint: If Ukraine were to invade Russia, that would make a whole shitload of Russians go "WTF HOW IS THAT LITTLE COUNTRY INVADING US AND WHY ARE THEY INVADING US?".  They would really question Putin's leadership.

I understand the Counterpoint but with Putin controlling the narrative inside Russia, this creates the same problem as NATO getting involved.  Hell, if Russia were to attack a NATO country,  even in a small scale way and we all come in like screaming banshees, he'll still play the "they attacked us" card to his people.   

This is really a no-win situation for NATO right now.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

2 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

The drones make this even more interesting because now you are "risking" the drones to scout and then can push your hunters from them at a local basis with no need for a centralized reporting structure.  3 dudes with 3 drones can provide a full 360 view of a localized battlefield without having to put the men at risk. Once target acquisition happens, then the men have to be within a mile of the target to knock it out...

Wait till we get to the "gopher" stage in which the Ukrainians realize that just keep the drones in the air and the rest of the hunters underground until they then rise up from the depths. City combat will be a disaster for the Russians if they keep this approach...

Yeah, and it feels like we haven't even seen the full potential of drones yet.  The fact that the Ukrainians are dropping off-the-shelf anti-tank grenades on trucks from off-the-shelf drones, and knocking the trucks out at night before the Russians even realize what's happening is huge.  

And cheaply scouting out the Russians without exposing humans, and using off-the-shelf drones that are easily replaceable is a game changer.  And they are using infrared/nightvision gear with the drones as well, so they are able to track the Russians 24/7.  There won't be much, if any lag in tracking Russian forces.

We are coming up on the mud drying up and allowing the Russians to get away from the main roads, but with things like the drones, and the Russians not being able to do proper command & control even when they are on centralized routes/roads, I don't think it will matter much.  It may even benefit the Ukrainians, who won't have to operate near the major roads as much, and worry about being spotted.

[atomheartbevo 89285]

9 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

I understand the Counterpoint but with Putin controlling the narrative inside Russia, this creates the same problem as NATO getting involved.  Hell, if Russia were to attack a NATO country,  even in a small scale way and we all come in like screaming banshees, he'll still play the "they attacked us" card to his people.   

This is really a no-win situation for NATO right now.

Yeah.  At this point, Ukraine needs to just keep destroying Russians and their vehicles inside of Ukraine, and NATO needs to keep up the supplies.

If Belarus actually commits to trying to drive to Lviv, they'll get torn apart even faster than the Russians in Eastern Ukraine are now since they will be facing fresh troops that have been waiting around for Belarus to attack (and that will have been monitoring Belarus's troops every step of the way), and that will suck up vehicles and supplies from Belarus that the Russians could have used to backfill their losses in Eastern Ukraine.

I'm still iffy about whether Belarus will even commit or not.  He needs his military to stay in power, and Russia is gonna need those supplies/vehicles at some point.