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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

#431

Post by nomel »

eitland wrote: post #295
nomel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why an official would publicly broadcast active wartime capabilities and tactics that might not be known. And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. There's an active war. If history has taught us anything, psyops is as sure as death, in war.

> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. Given their unencrypted radio communication they have done a fair effort to support that idea themselves.

I don't see how that's a sign of incompetence, rather than a sign of aging military equipment. Incompetence would be relaying important, uncoded, information over an unencrypted signal, in a way that would result in some disadvantage.

For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption.

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

#433

Post by petre »

astrange wrote: post #324
BitwiseFool wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think Putin's guise of "denazifying Ukraine" was a poorly understood attempt to gain some favor with those in Western societies that see themselves as fighting fascism and right-wing extremism. As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in…

Russians don't know what Nazis are. They just know some people called Nazis attacked them in WW2, so denazifying = stopping enemies of Russia. It isn't talking about the Azov battalion or anything; that's an uncalled-for steelmanning because everyone is free associating things they read about in the news.

Fighting nazis/nazism is a 80 year old commie propaganda meme. They used it to brainwash us before 1990 in my country as well. I think it strikes a chord with most of the former residents of the USSR.

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

#434

Post by spacemark »

vintermann wrote: post #306
saiya-jin wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption. On all levels, including the very top and going all the way to the lowest soldier. Heck, they were selling gas to Belarus civilians from their own machines while waiting just across the border during February. And then they ran out of it in Ukraine. Can you imagine US or western Europe soldiers doing something similar en masse? And its not just that - heavy drinking,…

> Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption. Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that? I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF. US corrupt…

I think you underestimate the extent of corruption in Russia. The US doesn't even come remotely close. You can look up corruption indexes, Russia is near most corrupt, US somewhere in the bottom quartile iirc. A quick example from my industry - roughly 1/3 of the ~USD $3 billion spent on the new Russian spaceport is unaccounted for (stolen). I assure you that's many orders of magnitude worse than the contracts in play at Cape Canaveral.

A good (extremely depressing) film to watch is "Leviathan" (2014).

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

#435

Post by ashwagary »

tguvot wrote: post #409
akho wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific building is the regional administration, and recruitment there was advertised in Ukrainian telegram channels. All that excuses nothing.

there is recruitment to regional defense everywhere right now.

This might be why they are starting to bomb everywhere now.

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

#436

Post by oneoff786 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #426
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, however, nothing close to the levels of support Ukraine is getting. And those insurgencies faced a vastly superior US armed forces.

Those American forces also had vastly longer supply lines to sustain. What the Russians lack in financing and capability, the make up a lot with proximate borders, time zones, etc.

American supply lines were vastly superior to what Russia’s doing with its clown convoy however

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

#437

Post by mensetmanusman »

Cd00d wrote: post #353
jl6 wrote: post #261

I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not? Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way... It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local…

suzerainty You can't just lob a hundred dollar word out like that! I spent several moments trying to figure out what your typo was before allowing the possibility that you didn't have one. a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy

suzerain (n.)

"sovereign, ruler," 1807, from French suzerain (14c., Old French suserain), noun use of adjective meaning "sovereign but not supreme,"

Sovereign but not supreme is a good way to remember it, it’s like a baby name of ‘supreme’ :)

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

#438

Post by jacquesm »

atlantas wrote: post #229
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…

Right, I'd love to hear a good explanation for why they're not attacking a 40-mile long convoy on a road. At least bomb the front of the convoy, wtf. That Russia sent in such a rich sitting duck target and it's not being attacked suggests they have air superiority and we're getting bad information.

'why don't they' ... really is the assumption that Ukrainian defense is clueless? I would say they are doing a pretty good job so far.

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

#439

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mardifoufs wrote: post #286
ratg13 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the article argues. That it is possible that they used up most of their precision guided bombs in Syria and are mostly left with unguided munitions.

I'm not sure I'd agree because they haven't even used their ballistic or cruise missiles in any significant number either. And we know they have a lot, lot more of those even if we just count Soviet stock. To me that indicates that there is something more to it than just lacking the munition itself.

> they haven't even used their ballistic or cruise missiles in any significant number either

Those need targeting. And the article mentions a lack of targeting pods. (UkrAF is largely functional because the initial volley missed many air fields, planes and radar systems.)

This increasingly looks like the Russian military procured shiny, expensive kit from cronies and then neglected to equip them.

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

#440

Post by kspacewalk2 »

maratc wrote: post #385
vkou wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that Russian demands about NATO are in good faith. It's hard to believe that the goal of this invasion was to prevent encirclement, given how Finland and Sweeden's reactions were completely predictable. I think the goal was annexation. The demands put out right now are intentionally unreasonable, but even if they were met, it would not stop the fighting.

OTOH we don’t have any evidence of Russia having any beef with either Georgia or Ukraine, up to 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, where NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would be accepted as members. Georgia was wrecked in half a year after that, and Ukraine since 2014, since the Orange Revolution. The annexation argument came after the fact.

The Orange Revolution was in 2004. The one in 2013-2014 started with Russia pushing their semi-friendly semi-puppet Ukrainian president to abandon an association agreement with the EU. He pursued that agreement quite vigorously until mid 2013, when derailing it could have been quite easy (stop a few laws from passing, or don't sign them, or put poison pills into them that won't be acceptable to the EU and wrangle over wording for years, etc). Maybe he also believed Russia only cares about NATO, but EU is fine. Anyway, eventually Putin told him in no uncertain terms to do a 180, which he did. The protests that followed eventually escalated into him trying and failing to assume dictatorial powers, ordering a slaughter of ~100 protesters, and promptly fucking off into the dustbin of history.

So it's not really about NATO, per se.

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