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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

#771

Post by ironcurtain »

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…

Considering that there are millions of Russians there and 10-15 millions of Russian-Ukrainians, yes. South and East will not only accept but accept it gladly. West and center is a different story but then the area was always controlled by outside power - western provinces by Austria and Poland, Kiev and its surrounds - by Russian Empire. Give it 10-15 years and absence of rabid nationalistic media and things will change.

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

#772

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #566
rendall wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the States of the US suzerains of the Federal government?

>> Are the States of the US suzerains of the Federal government? This word was new to me, but looking it up I wanted to say "Yes" but have since changed to "no". Definition: Suzerainty (American accent: soo-zer-en-tee) happens when a country X has its own government but cannot act independently because of a more powerful country Y. This more powerful country Y is called the suzerain and can usually control the foreig…

[deleted]

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

#773

Post by rendall »

Bayart wrote: post #578
rendall wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the States of the US suzerains of the Federal government?

The other way around. In feudal terms (where "suzerain" belongs), the US States would be vassals to the US governement.

Ok, so. Yes? The Feds are suzerains of the States?

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

#774

Post by thereddaikon »

water8 wrote: post #635
thereddaikon wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. The Navy has spent more resources on perfecting SAMs than the Army or Air Force have. Standard Missile and Aegis are a very potent combination. So much so that they adapted it to ground based setups with "Aegis Ashore" which is literally the system taken straight off an Arleigh Burke class destroyer and installed as a ground based missile defense system.

I worked on the software for the Ageis and Iron Dome systems. The program got off to a rocky start but once we got things dialed in, it's accuracy became exceptional

I think Aegis and SM are some of the biggest success stories out of the defense sector over the last few decades. Not only is it mature and effective but its also scalable and from what I understand they managed to port the codebase to modern x86 servers and make the libraries more modular as well.

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

#775

Post by simonh »

littlestymaar wrote: post #497
simonh wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thing is only really useful against static, or near static high value targets. Against insurgents dispersed across the countryside with Javelins the weapon itself is effectively useless while the aircraft delivering it is still vulnerable.

> That thing is only really useful against static, or near static high value targets. Exactly, like the the capital of your country for instance. Noting that I'm not talking about defeating an insurgency with it, just overthrow the legitimate government and put a pro-russian dictatorship in charge. Exterminating the insurgents would then be the job of the local dictator. Obviously it's not guaranteed, but torture, ki…

Im was addressing it's usefulness in the situation suggested. Yes it is useful in other situations, as I pointed out.

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

#776

Post by chupy »

tuatoru wrote: post #652
jihadjihad wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to know what that would serve to accomplish, considering it contradicts Putin's entire ethos for invading in the first place: he fundamentally views Ukrainians as culturally Russian, and wants to bring them back "into the fold." His entire rhetoric is adamant about that--it's why he uses words like genocide when talking about eastern Ukraine. I can't see how (d), which in effect would be genocide, would do…

Rhetoric is rhetoric: it provides a smokescreen. Geostrategically, Putin wants what every ruler of Russia has wanted since it was the Principality of Muscovy: control of the North European Plain, in order to prevent invasion from the west.[1][2] An empty, derelict Ukraine would serve nearly as well as a puppet state for this purpose. 1. It's worth reading some geography and history. Russia has been invaded a lot , an…

He does not need to prevent invasion from the west, just having the nukes automatically prevents that and he knows it.

One of the first thing the Russians did was unblock that canal that Ukraine cemented. That plus them sending cannon fodder to the nord and what seems like better troops south + east starts to feel like this whole war is more about a resource grab than to "prevent invasion from the west". I could maybe understand one madman feeling like he wants to rebuild the past USSR glory but if it's all about the money that can be made from oil/gas then it's clear it's not just him driving this.

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

#777

Post by phkahler »

drran wrote: post #665
phkahler wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget, every media outlet that isn't Russian is going to show those incidents to the world to make that bad guys look bad. We're also not likely to see any wins against Ukrainian military targets for both political and practical reasons. So it's very hard to tell from these reports what the overall picture really is.

Why I can see losses of Ukrainian army, while you cannot? They are not hidden by Ukrainians, because it's impossible to hide them in time of TikTok and FB. They are recorded and posted by civilians to YT, FB, TikTok and reported by Ministry of Defense. If MoD lie in FB, then users will correct them in real time.

>> Why I can see losses of Ukrainian army, while you cannot?

Because we look in different places. TikTok and FB posts are isolated incidents and don't offer meaningful statistics. I'm sure if I want to see dead Ukrainians I can find that on Russian media sites. None of it is meaningful to the big picture. We really can't see the big picture numbers.

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

#778

Post by ashwagary »

raducu wrote: post #769
ashwagary wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the massive propaganda campaign may extend into the DOD's public narrative. It did with the Iraq and Syrian wars.

Yeah, the DOD lies, like they lied about Russia invading Ukraine. How could glorious Russia commit more than 0.5% of their forces if they haven't won yet?

>Yeah, the DOD lies, like they lied about Russia invading Ukraine.

We can't ignore the 50+ years of lies about various conflicts around the world and the coups/ assassinations where the public was purposely misled. This isn't new and ridiculing the observation is unproductive. Ignore history at your own peril.

I will say, Russia has probably increased their forces at this point but it may not be as much as claimed by the DOD.

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

#779

Post by nonrandomstring »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #744
nonrandomstring wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It won't be here. The community here is organized along principles of startup capitalism, not activism.

> It won't be here. The community here is organized along principles of startup capitalism, not activism.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528382

Is it possible this community you claim to speak for is not everything you think it is?

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

#780

Post by selimthegrim »

StillBored wrote: post #768
selimthegrim wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more an issue of what the students are retaining from calculus.

I don't think this is a new problem. Its largely a problem of the way its taught, particularly at the high-school level where professional teachers and politicians choose what is important in the curriculum (and yes, I know a lot of engineering programs require an "engineering calculus" taught at the college). Nothing has changed since Feynman's little rant, if anything looking at my kids schooling its worse than ~30…

Unfortunately we are told that we have to make engineering “not scary” and “fun” so we get more engineering majors and this is explicitly not to be a weedout class. I do try to work them hard in the recitations to compensate.
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