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What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

reuters.com

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Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#111

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Banana699 wrote: post #86
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars. Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes. Don't see why it would be any different this time around.

>Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes Huh? when have that ever been true? European religious wars have been huge bloodsheds, communist regimes routinely genocided their own (often quite homogenous) populations, Lebanon's civil war saw neighbors shooting at each other. The truth of the matter is : when people want to fight, they will find someth…

It's been true literally since written records of conflict have been kept. Look at the Punic Wars vs. the Peloponnesian War for example. Look at the Japanese in the Warring States vs. Japanese in China in the 1930s. Even in European history it is true. Compare the attitudes of the English towards the Germans in WWI vs in WWII. (Edit: or as a sibling comment notes, the behavior of the Germans on the different fronts).

There's always going to be dehumanization in war, but how much depends on things like race, culture, and existing attitudes towards the enemy.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#113

Post by consp »

HideousKojima wrote: post #67
micromacrofoot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine really doesn't want war, the odds are stacked against them and without significant outside ground troops they'll be devastated even if Russia is as incompetent as they currently appear. Killing aggressors is often used as an excuse for the aggressors to be more aggressive and Russia's army is large enough to replace that convoy a few times over without much of a sweat. Violence also helps back the idea that R…

>Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated). It definitely isn't "completely fabricated": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely i…

> It definitely isn't "completely fabricated":

It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. There is no foundation in fact all American's are but there are small groups he as the President supported who were Nazi's. This is a plain lie to serve their propaganda.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#114

Post by whatshisface »

lumost wrote: post #74
brimble wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern militaries that don't like taking tons of unnecessary losses on the ground are in love with controlling the air. It's not like there's a wide variety of proven strategies and countries just pick one that they're "in love" with—there's a fairly narrow set, in these circumstances, which all look pretty similar. It's definitely curious that Russia hasn't committed to establishing and leveraging air superiority, d…

A combination of 1 & 3 seems highly likely in my uninformed opinion. Economically, losing aircraft will make a war very expensive very quickly. Losing large numbers of top of the line aircraft will severely harm Russian military aircraft exports. With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft.…

>With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine

Europe only contacts the western border. Russian aircraft can approach from the north (Russia and Belarus), south (Black Sea) and east (Russia).

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#115

Post by Arrath »

platinumrad wrote: post #77
AlwaysRock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been bombing cities. I don't think they are trying to limit casualties.

Without minimizing the awfulness of this invasion and the fact that it must be condemned, it is not nearly as brutal as Russian operations in Chechnya and Syria or the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq, likely because Ukranians are not nearly as much of a racial or cultural other to Russians as Chechens or Syrians. The greater ability of Ukrainians to gain coverage in both traditional and social media may also be a f…

Yet. It's not as brutal, yet. As this supposed encircling attack of Kyiv begins and progresses, who knows what we might see.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#116

Post by _moof »

mstipetic wrote: post #78
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…

I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.

I'm guessing all the engineers you know are web software pukes. There are loads of people who could build these today.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#117

Post by nonrandomstring »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #38
spacemanmatt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 80% conscription rate, the RF army is seriously vulnerable to mass-realization of international views. Many young Russians were deceived into this war and would rather be with their families.

Is this something we, hackers/information technology specialists, could try to achieve?

Yes, I'd love to see more chatter on here about creative info/psyops. The fact that Russian troops are using smartphones and Google leaves them wide open. We have starlink sats above them and control DNS. Hell, we could probably convince them they'd already won and been ordered home.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#118

Post by nickkell »

boc wrote: post #33
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Just because the US is in love with 'Shock and Awe' doesn't mean everyone else sees it as the appropriate methodology in all circumstances.

The US is "in love with Shock and Awe" because it worked extremely well. Russia doesn't have the air power to pull it off, which is why they are running a version of Deep War, but without a second echelon to prevent their supply lines from getting picked off. In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the in…

Worked well to what end exactly? They decimated the North Korean population and made an eternal enemy out of them. They fought insurgents for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I assume that Russia doesn't want the same result in a neighbouring country.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#119

Post by amelius »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…

Don't forget about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#120

Post by [deleted] »

slavoingilizov wrote: post #13

Many conflicting viewpoints here. Sure, there's been less of a push from Russia than everyone expected, but it's not like Ukraine controls the sky either. Are Ukranians really still flying? If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Russians driving vehicles bumper to bumper shows VERY strong confidence that they own the sky, so things might not be as rosy for U…

[deleted]
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