Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

starver, I don't know. There have been declassified spy satellite photos where you can read license plates from orbit. Drones have crystal clear images that are used to identify faces in a crowd. If that were true, why wouldn't the US release such a photo? It's not like they've been all kissy-face with Russia. All we get is assurances that such photos exist, but never the actual photos.

Not that I think that you're going to shift from your dogmatic (contrarian?) stance, but try this for starters, if you're still here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60981238

And, as you say, Occam's Razor. Perhaps you should try it!

[hector13]

Doctored by MSM stooges!

[Starver]

Doctored by MSM stooges!

Don't get on the bad side of the Manhattan School of Music, is what I say.

[King Zultan]

Dang I go to sleep and come back to find all kinds of craziness in here.

[Loud Whispers]

Why the distinction between "vassal state" and being a part of the empire? Is the difference important?

This is a cool historical point but yeah; it basically denotes a polity which is subservient to another state in foreign relations, but otherwise is essentially independent in all other respects, having its own courts, laws, rulers, administrators e.t.c. and often their own language, coinage and army. Some vassal states were essentially obligate allies who had to contribute forces from their own army to aid their overlord, whilst others were more akin to protectorates who relied upon their overlord for protection. Or in a more feudal structure, a vassal state is being controlled by powerful local elites rather than by the sovereign themself. A good example is the arab polities who were vassals of the Roman Empire or Persian Empire, but they were ruled by local Kings and no Roman or Persian administrator ever set foot to dictate to them laws. Or an early modern example being the areas of British India that were ruled directly by the EIC/Indian Civil Service versus the areas that were ruled by local Princes.

[scriver]

It is an incredibly important difference to understand because it's all that prevents Sweden from ever having belonged to Denmark

[Loud Whispers]

It is an incredibly important difference to understand because it's all that prevents Sweden from ever having belonged to Denmark

My understanding of the Kalmar Union is that whilst on paper Sweden was under a union with Denmark, in practice it was in a century long state of jihad against the crown of Denmark

[Duuvian]

Are you seriously treating the Twitter Files as anything but blatant nonsense? They're nothing more than regurgitated conspiracy theories that just happen to buttress far right narratives, pushed by somebody that just happens to be replatforming extreme-right bigots and just happening to silence people disagreeing with them.

The twitter files are real dude. I don't know what sensationalized version of them you were shown, but all they reveal is that: twitter has a left-wing bias, twitter had private communication channels with both political parties, twitter had private communication channels with the federal government, and that the Hunter biden laptop story was suppressed.

All of this was either public knowledge or a reasonable assumption. The twitter files just confirmed what everyone already knew.

I think that what the Twitter files revealed was that Twitter had moderation practices, the government could make reports regarding posts, but the company itself chose whether to remove them or not. The most significant revelation imo was the utilization of accounts for foreign influence operations that were flagged as un bannable or whatnot.

As to the left-wing bias thing, that seems to me to be complete hogwash. What bias there was appeared to be shielding important twitter accounts from moderation of the sort deployed on less important accounts. For example, an account that mirrored Trump's tweets was repeatedly banned for them.

Essentially, this is one avenue of attack to get rid of Section 230. One side wants to get rid of it's facilitation of moderation by private companies (this) and the other approach is to advocate it's removal in order to sue hosts for not preventing harmful content.

[Strongpoint]

Meanwhile, It looks like Ukraine will get Leopard 2s in a few months and some Abramses in late 2023.

I don't envy Ukrainian logistics guys... this kind of tank zoo*. I don't know how they manage. 

*it will be beyond hilarious if France will also send Leclercs.

[Madman198237]

It's likely that Ukraine will end up mainlining Leopards because the Abrams, as previously discussed, is a bit of a pain on the infrastructure; both in terms of providing fuel and also in terms of crossing bridges, tearing up roads, and weighing more than any tank transporter/train car/anything else in Ukraine can carry.

Also Leos are more common across NATO so they're better for standardization.


So long as the different tanks are completely separated into different units (the larger the homogeneous units, the better) the logistics aren't that bad. If 1st Division needs Leopard parts and 5th Division is using Soviet-era vehicles, well, you know where to send everything and you're not likely to mess it up. Providing those parts is not an issue because foreign nations are handling all that for you.

[Devastator]

Abrams will be a lot quicker than that, barring political shenanigans.

As for maintenance, yeah, they'll stick together and shouldn't be too bad.  Sweet that they're getting them, and impressive to watch how scared Russia is at several dozen tanks.

And Challenger IIs.  Not -many-, but they'll have a fear factor, and I wonder if they're tough enough to no sell a lot of AT fire.

[Madman198237]

It does depend on what they're hit with but to my knowledge Russia does not have an equivalent to Javelin. And, uh, good flipping luck to Private Conscriptivich when he gets handed any of the RPGs, even the most modern tandem-charge versions, and told to go take out that Abrams over there. For starters, any of the Western MBTs is going to survive that round to the front. So Private Conscriptivich needs to flank that tank. And his weapon is unguided, so he needs to get close. And meanwhile, that tank's commander is running his camera systems around in circles scanning with his thermal vision systems to find any of the Privates Conscriptivich that might be sneaking up on his tank. And if good old Private Conscriptivich ever gets spotted, he automatically dies.


Yeah. I'd rather be in the tank.

[King Zultan]

Yeah. I'd rather be in the tank.

Being inside a tank is probably the best place to be during a war, unless it hits an anti-tank mine then it's terrible.

[Strongpoint]

It does depend on what they're hit with but to my knowledge Russia does not have an equivalent to Javelin. And, uh, good flipping luck to Private Conscriptivich when he gets handed any of the RPGs, even the most modern tandem-charge versions, and told to go take out that Abrams over there. For starters, any of the Western MBTs is going to survive that round to the front. So Private Conscriptivich needs to flank that tank. And his weapon is unguided, so he needs to get close. And meanwhile, that tank's commander is running his camera systems around in circles scanning with his thermal vision systems to find any of the Privates Conscriptivich that might be sneaking up on his tank. And if good old Private Conscriptivich ever gets spotted, he automatically dies.


Yeah. I'd rather be in the tank.

Russia has no stuff of the Javelin or NLAWs level but they do have enough anti-tank missiles and produce them in 3 shifts now. Western tanks are far from immune from those.

Also, most tanks are lost to enemy tanks, artillery or loitering munitions.

I know that Russian army looks funny sometimes, but they have shitload of weapons and the situation you describe may happen only against some reserve units somewhere.

I see this trend among the Western public as if Russia is kinda done and will soon fight with shovels. It is not and it will not. They have resources for many years of war and major offensives.

[jipehog]

Sweet that they're getting them, and impressive to watch how scared Russia is at several dozen tanks.

Ostensibly, but perhaps what really scares them is what these tanks represent, the increasing growth in military commitment which highlights erosion of Russian deterrence and failure of the effort to splinter western unity in the hope of turning the conflict on the back burner as they did before giving a much needed reprieve.

Though it possible that few dozen tanks would be game changer like HIMARS were (on paper few dozen HIMARS system shouldn't have changed anything in the face of overwhelming numbers of Russia's artillery, however, used asymmetricaly they have been game changing in grinding Russian effort into a stall) but if they do I have no idea how.