Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do people in the US genuinely believe that? Yes, we fairly reasonably believe that Russia's struggle to make progress against a smaller neighbor using NATO hand-me-downs is heavily indicative of how they'd do against all of NATO using B-2s, F-22s and F-35s.
Vietnam was a failure, Iraq was a failure, Afghanistan was a failure. I concede that NATO would put in more effort against Russia, but how about better not finding out in the first place? Russia would also put in more effort. This is hubris at its finest.
Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
101–110 of 136 posts
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we could have avoided it. Maybe not. It's wishful thinking to say "All we had to do was give them what they wanted." I'll skip the tired historical comparison, but just point out that we can't know the counterfactual. I certainly do not deny American entitlement and exceptionalism, and I think it's a massive mistake on our part. But nobody in the US (or Europe) has any designs on Russian territory. Our mistake…
[flagged]
"Mr. President, we must not allow a̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶e̶-̶s̶h̶a̶f̶t̶ an oxygen gap!"
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Article claims that ATACMS have been highly effective, but all 5 missiles launched at Crimea recently were shot down. Which is not at all in contradiction. The ATACMS could have been highly successful but not any longer. In fact, this would be exactly what you would expect if the claims in the article are true. > As usual, everything is completely unclear in this stalemate war where both sides regularly claim overw…
People bashing Russia military but asking why Russia is attacking Ukraine are not figuring out that is exactly the reason for the war. Ukraine border is too close to Moscow, it is easy to go from Ukraine to Moscow and Russia know they would fail to defend themselves from a NATO land invasion from there. Thus why they are willing to pay a very high price to ensure this won't happen.
The idea that it would have even the slightest interest in doing so is just absolutely fucking absurd.
It's just pure scare imagery that the Russian deep state puts out -- to feed its internal narratives ("The West out to encircle us, only the Russian state can protect you"), and to confuse and mollify external opposition to its blatantly aggressive actions against neighboring states.
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably the side that is expanding conscription and routinely kidnapping men off the street and throwing them onto the front lines with weeks or less of training. Thats something that either happens routinely if youre desperate and short of men or doesnt - because it's deeply unpopular and you wouldnt do it if you didnt have to. There are many signals which lack meaning (e.g. land taken) or can be fudged (e.g. casua…
> Probably the side that is expanding conscription and routinely kidnapping men off the street and throwing them onto the front lines with weeks or less of training. That'll be "both of them". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mobilization https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/16/russia-mobil... https://www.newsweek.com/russia-troops-complain-lack-trainin...
If you follow the unfiltered war reports there are thousands of videos of Ukrainian kidnappings and zero Russian.
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Probably the side that is expanding conscription and routinely kidnapping men off the street and throwing them onto the front lines with weeks or less of training. That'll be "both of them". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mobilization https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/16/russia-mobil... https://www.newsweek.com/russia-troops-complain-lack-trainin...
One Washington post article from 2022 that relies heavily on implication is about equivalent in evidence to one RT article from 2022 that does the same. If you follow the unfiltered war reports there are thousands of videos of Ukrainian kidnappings and zero Russian.
The WaPo article has direct video evidence of at least some. I follow a wide variety of unfiltered news sources about the war, and "zero" is a bald lie.
(Side note: callling conscription "kidnapping" is a little silly, too.)
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#106Obviously they disclose this so we don't waste any more ATACMS. How nice of them.
Plus the ATACMS still work with inertial guidance. that creates ever-increasing errors as the travel time increases but is often good enough for hitting strategic targets.
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not going to say "lost", myself, but Russia looks oddly weak. It's the country that planned the fight in advance and could stock up, yet is buying from Iran and North Korea and AFAICT its own latest tank model still hasn't even been used once. It's the country that has a large air force and is using waves of untrained infantry attacks instead of air power. It's the country with the larger population yet recruiting me…
[flagged]
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#108This far along into the war, their personnel have already figured out how to engage ATACMS with the S-300 and S-400 (although recent losses of S-400 units to ATACMS show they aren't doing really well at it [0] ). We already know they're jamming GPS and ATACMS is still getting through with inertial guidance. Maybe some of this newfound knowledge will benefit their engineers somehow when designing new weapons, but it's…
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1czed3k/stri...
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably because you can't GPS jam a dumb artillery shell. otoh: US-made weapons augmented by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites for position updates in Ukraine are now susceptible to Russian electronic warfare (EW) jamming ... The weapons affected may include the 155mm Excalibur artillery projectiles, Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and weapons rounds used wit…
> Being able to test GPS jamming techniques against intact munitions isn't some hypothetical academic problem. The US military-industrial complex is probably extremely grateful for the chance to do the same, here. Very useful if there's ever a direct conflict. Excalibur, GLSDB, JDAM, and ATACMS all have GPS-aided inertial guidance and can be set to fall back to just inertial; the US has long been aware of the likelih…
Or when Russians appears to have lost a jamming pod above Ukraine [1] Again bleeding edge EW tech which Russia just lost.
[0] https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russians-use-bombs-equipped-with-e...
[1] https://www.twz.com/ukraine-just-captured-one-of-russias-mos...
Re: Russia Claims Breakthrough With ATACMS
#110This sounds like propaganda positioning mainly for their internal consumption. ”Look how we quickly deciphered this tricky American technology, it’s just another 3 days and Kiev is ours. And it has a quadruple safety system, how silly of those Americans! Let’s laugh at them together!” This a mid-80s technology and if they really just discovered something important and valuable about the technology, they would keep th…
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-found-dart-like-myst...