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Nowhere is safe

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Re: Nowhere is safe

#141

Post by krisoft »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93
krisoft wrote: post #83

> what if the Army could cut and cover 100 meters of precast tunnel segments in a day If you have the precast tunnel segments to do that why wouldn’t you just plop them down on the ground? What benefit does cutting and covering provide? Also how would you protect your construction crew and construction supply chain as they are slowly plodding along 100m a day? Once built, could this cut and cover tunnel be disabled b…

> If you have the precast tunnel segments to do that why wouldn’t you just plop them down on the ground? What benefit does cutting and covering provide? I have no opinion on this, but TFA makes it pretty clear: visibility and susceptibility to attack. TFA also makes it clear that cutting and covering is weak sauce compared with actual tunnels "30-40 feet below the surface".

> I have no opinion on this

Use your mind and develop an opinion. I read the article too, i’m just disagreeing with it.

> visibility

There are two kinds of visibility to be had. Not knowing where the tunnel is, and not knowing who and when passes in it.

Cut and cover doesn’t help with the first kind of visibility. Disturbed vegetation and soil will reveal your tunnel’s path to even a senile adversary. One who somehow missed your whole construction. If you just want to hide your movements and somehow you have the budget for hundreds of miles of prefab concrete tunnel you can hide inside it without it being burried.

> susceptibility to attack

Undoubtedly burrying the precast concrete segments under dirt makes it harder to attack, but it won’t make it impenetrable. And once the enemy cracked it the whole tunnel becomes useless for transportation. On the surface you can just buldozer a way around the damage and keep on trucking. Underground you need to excavate, re-line with precast concrete and cover again, under enemy fire.

> TFA also makes it clear that cutting and covering is weak sauce

I think they could have just left the mention of cut and cover out and the article would have been stronger for it.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#142

Post by xdennis »

cyberax wrote: post #77
YZF wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor? Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked? https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embass... Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ? I would love for nobody to bomb or kill anyone. Did Ukraine bomb Russia? Is Taiwan bombing China that declares it is going to take Tai…

> Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Korea, Vietnam, Laos...

Bombing Korea led to bin Laden attacking on 9/11?

You did not read that GP was saying. He's saying that many conflicts are not started because US bombed a place.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#143

Post by xdennis »

throw310822 wrote: post #49
stavros wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Iraq, during the Gulf War. > Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor? Japan, though the US didn't bomb them, it instituted an oil embargo and asset freeze. > Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked Iraq, during the Gulf War. > Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ? Tripoli and Benghazi, Iran Air Flight 655. I don't…

The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks. > Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".

[flagged]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#144

Post by decimalenough »

The ridiculous AI slop image of troops posing around a TBM that's apparently just dug a tunnel several multiples its own diameter is a good illustration of how clueless the author is about tunneling. TBMs are hugely complicated and expensive machines, need vast amounts of materials and the associated logistics network to operate, and drill 200 to 700 meters per week depending on the terrain. Deploying and operating one in battlefield conditions is absurd, all the enemy needs to do is fly a suicide drone into the open end of the tunnel and now you have a multi-hundred-million-dollar paperweight.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#145

Post by krisoft »

jonnybgood wrote: post #99
krisoft wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Idk what to tell you, but any target that seems to get marked in Iran blows the fuck up. I’m sure that is true. And yet, the oil is not flowing. We keep “winning” like this for a few more weeks/months and we lose. Not because we sudenly stop “blowing targets the fuck up”, but because we cripple our economies.

The flowing of oil is not of primary importance to the US in this conflict. The oil was already flowing. So I think we can reasonably rule that out as an objective.

> The flowing of oil is not of primary importance to the US in this conflict.

You think so? Then why did the US make it the condition of cease fire? Why did the US even agree to a cease fire? It is not like Iran is hurting the US mainland kinetically.

> The oil was already flowing. So I think we can reasonably rule that out as an objective.

Sometimes you have a thing and you don’t appreciate how important it is for you until you don’t have it anymore.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#146

Post by pixl97 »

brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

>Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios?

Because nature is filled with examples.

Look at the plants around you. They are nice and peaceful, right? No wars with other plants, no battles for life and death and resources... Well if you don't know anything about plants that's exactly what you'd think.

And I'm not really talking about animals and insects that are trying to consume them, plants themselves, rooted into the ground are in a constant war. Some breed very quickly to compete, making millions of seeds or growing at insane speeds. Some plants poison the soil around them with horrifically toxic substances so only they can grow. Some plants grow broad leaves flat against the ground strangling anything that tries to grow. Other plants make vast canopies creating a world of darkness below them to snuff competitors. Some plants have symbiotic relationships with bacteria to fix nitrogen so they grow faster than other plants. Some plants have relationships with ants and the ants keep competition away.

War and peace are simply game theories in real life. Take your statement

>Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios?

Anything that doesn't involve you smashing someone's head in and instead doing anything that is even slightly cooperative is a peaceful scenario. Pretty much everything you do every day is just that.

Furthermore you need to dream up every possible conflict idea that you possibly can if you want to defend against it. The difficult part there is not using it against others. This is why you see people worry about things like advance AI. Because while it could come up with all kinds of peaceful ideas, even just a few good conflict ideas could make mankind go extinct.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#147

Post by some_random »

throw310822 wrote: post #111
some_random wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he also justified it by citing the US's acceptance of homosexuality so maybe it's more complicated than that.

No, he didn't. His "letter to America" starts with the question: "As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: Because you attacked us and continue to attack us." And proceeds to list all the ways the US are militarily attacking and oppressing Muslims in the Middle East. It's a long list. Homosexuality is mentioned only once in the letter, in the next section, where he c…

[flagged]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#148

Post by cogman10 »

coldtea wrote: post #136
ctippett wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except America went to war with Saddam Hussein a full decade before the move to the Euro and was largely a reaction to the invasion of Kuwait.

Saddam was their man for a full decade prior to that war, to go against Iran. Even the Kuwait invasion was given the go ahead by the us with false assurances, until they sucker punched him for it. It's not as if they us gave a shit or two about Kuwait's freedom or not (which was partitioned from traditional iraq teritorry in the past anyway, and a monarchy itself). Then they'd let him mostly be after 1991 until we ma…

To add, the primary reason the US supported Iraq was because it didn't want Iran to send oil to the USSR.

This was because the US didn't want a communist nation to have a good economy.

That's the story of a bunch of the CIAs operations.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#149

Post by paulryanrogers »

xdennis wrote: post #143
throw310822 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks. > Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".

[flagged]

So are the Palestinians?

Re: Nowhere is safe

#150

Post by towledev »

krisoft wrote: post #66
ACCount37 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time. There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it. Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.

[flagged]
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