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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

#501

Post by brimble »

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

It's basic vocabulary in poli-sci or international relations studies or circles. Less obscure (in the context of those fields) than much of the engineering, math, and computer nerd jargon that gets thrown around on here regularly. Likely to be encountered in adjacent fields, notably history. It's about one small notch more obscure than the term "hegemony".

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

#502

Post by oh_sigh »

cycomanic wrote: post #401
oh_sigh wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but that is a completely different point than "The western world only cares about this conflict because the victims have blue eyes and blonde hair"

But if you compare the outrage about what was happening in Syria (or Iraq or Afghanistan) to the outrage now, we clearly are at a very different level. It can't be because the Russian are acting so much more ruthlessly now.

If you have a theory to explain a set of facts, pointing to the set of facts as an implicit justification for your theory does not logically follow.

Maybe Westerners care more about the Ukrainian situation because Ukraine was by and large a peaceful, lawful country until the war started. Do you think the western response would have been a little different if there was a pre-existing civil war in Ukraine, and Russia stepped in to try to turn the tide for one of the factions?

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

#503

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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

I hardly ever saw this word used in English, but in Russian it is fairly common in historical texts.

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

#504

Post by tguvot »

csee wrote: post #446
tguvot wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They overthrew their nazi juna and surrendered". The official propoganda states that ukranian army doesn't fight, only nazi batallions. also nazi's execute ukranian military personal that refuses to fight. there is an article about this on ria Also this was published on 26th and purged https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...

Do you think Putin wants to find a negotiated solution right now, or he's still all-in on the outcome?

i think all intelligence agencies trying to figure it out. yet.. on one side there been a bit softening with regards to what russia demands from Ukraine, according to russian media. For example that started to loudly demand today that Ukraine will declare to be non-nuclear country. They didn't demand it before so if Ukraine agrees to it (it never tried to do it anyway) it will be a win for internal consumption.

On the other side their economy is crumbling. They are in conflict with everybody. On 4th there is supposed to be joint session of parliament and there are assumption that will be announced either mobilization or martial law/state of war/something.

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

#505

Post by symlinkk »

scrubs wrote: post #490
tablespoon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I speculate that Russian airforce weaponry is not generally high-precision, and the order to avoid targeting civilians implies restraint on use of indiscriminate bombing. Again, we've seen counterexamples which could be explained by all of the above reasons, plus the possibility of friendly fire from failed Ukrainian air defences. That doesn't explain this, though: > Vastly outmatched by Russia's military, in terms…

Perhaps Russia knowing it's military strategy would be on full display for analysis decided to accept loss of men and/or slower gains for not giving away how its planes would perform?

This is my theory (disclaimer: I have no clue what I’m talking about). They don’t want to show all their cards to the West.

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

#506

Post by oblio »

brimble wrote: post #501
Cd00d wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's basic vocabulary in poli-sci or international relations studies or circles. Less obscure (in the context of those fields) than much of the engineering, math, and computer nerd jargon that gets thrown around on here regularly. Likely to be encountered in adjacent fields, notably history. It's about one small notch more obscure than the term "hegemony".

It could also be more common for non-native English speakers, for example native speakers of Romance languages.

I'm reasonably sure we were taught about suzerainty ("suzeranitate" in Romanian) during high school history lessons.

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

#507

Post by MikeHolman »

gamblor956 wrote: post #285
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…

It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. We must define "efforts" or "avoid" very differently. At the very start of the invasion, there was a video of Russian tanks deliberately trying to run over civilian cars.

The civilian casualties are obviously tragic, but they are not beyond the scale that we've seen in recent wars the US has fought.

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

#508

Post by oblio »

caycep wrote: post #474
danenania wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even see how (b) is going to work at this point--with the massive flow of weapons and money that is coming from the West, and NATO safe havens on the borders, Russia will be playing whack-a-mole against insurgency forever no matter how much force they use. Imagine if the Iraq or Afghanistan insurgencies had had access to an endless supply of top-of-the-line weapons, orders of magnitude more funding, and 'safe…

An additional worry is that these things never end well. I have to dig up this book on the downstream costs to all these countries that were allied w/ the west or USSR during the cold war...they all pay the price economically, socially etc for being part of the global great game. Central America, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa all took a huge hit, if you think about it. Say Ukraine survives or becomes an Afghani…

> Say Ukraine survives or becomes an Afghanistan-like insurgency power. But now they are rife with guns, warlords, and no national institution or government to organize everything....

Nature abhors vacuums. Especially if those vacuums are easy to fill.

What do you think will happen if Russia backs down?

Ukraine already borders 4 EU members (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland).

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

#509

Post by jopsen »

vintermann wrote: post #291
saiya-jin wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason was, we just waltz into Kyev, get greeted as saviors and liberators, maybe shoot Zelenskyy and his circle in the head by mistake, or just make them disappear, install another friendly ruler (collaborator would be more appropriate, like Kadyrov in Chechnya) and Ukraine will be part of Russia within next few years, or end up as slave without any real autonomy like Belarus. If that's the case, industr…

> Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately. Also, assuming any of the responsible thought about this beforehand at all (which IS an assumption), they probably expected further economic sanctions of SOME sort from invading. Rebuilding costs money. Rebuilding things like high-tech fighter aircraft costs truly ridiculous amounts of money. There were plenty of reasons…

> There were plenty of reasons they would have hoped to be able to do this all on a modest budget.

Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender.

Which is probably why they didn't get a no-fly-zone, strategic ambiguity, or other things like that from the US and friends.

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

#510

Post by glogla »

inglor_cz wrote: post #411
petre wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Russian Buks also seem to be having a bad time against the Bayraktars. Why? Small radar signature?

Small signature and they fly low. Buks are ideal for taking down a big jet aircraft flying at 10000+ ft.

Yes, especially random civilian jetliners.
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