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How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

TV and credit cards said:
Back in nineteen hundred and eighty nine, while in Shanghai, I walked a Chinese navy ship with tape over rust holes and paint over the tape. I've every confidence Russian navy ships are still this bad.
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How? I can certainly imagine them doing something like that (the whole culture is one of cutting corners if they think they can get away with it) but letting an outsider see it back then, wow!
 
Loren Pechtel said:
TV and credit cards said:
Back in nineteen hundred and eighty nine, while in Shanghai, I walked a Chinese navy ship with tape over rust holes and paint over the tape. I've every confidence Russian navy ships are still this bad.
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How? I can certainly imagine them doing something like that (the whole culture is one of cutting corners if they think they can get away with it) but letting an outsider see it back then, wow!
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I suppose back then in ‘89 it was the best they had to display. I recall seeing it while walking topside on a tour of one of their ships.

Back then it wasn’t uncommon even in the US Navy to put a fresh coat of paint over everything when an admiral was coming to visit or any important event that might take place on board. The US Navy put a stop to such practices sometime back in the nineties. But before that rust and particularly running rust down the sides of the ship was a big no no.
It was all about appearance. Whether the ship could perform or not was another matter. And an expensive one particularly for older ships. Whatever it took to get to Reagan's 600 ship navy.

So much of Russia's fleet is old, built in the eighties that they've had a difficult time maintaining. Going forward it will only get worse. Deferred maintenance will pile up. Ships will sit pierside due to a lack of maintenance in their engine rooms that require depot level repair. Only so much can be done with the ship's crew (organizational level repair).
 
News Flash: Russian gets a clue.
Well there goes the Noshitnonometer. After only thirteen months, Prigozhin starts, I think, starts to suss out just what the fuck is actually happening.
ISW said:
Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims. Prigozhin stated that Russia is fighting “exclusively with Ukrainians” who are equipped with NATO-provided equipment and some “russophobic” mercenaries who voluntarily support Ukraine - but not NATO itself.[3] Prigozhin also noted that Russian officials most likely knew that NATO would offer Ukraine military aid, because “it is ridiculous to think that when [Russia] decided to conduct this special military operation it did not account for NATO’s help to Ukraine.” Prigozhin noted that he is unsure about the “denazification” objectives in Ukraine, because he does not know if there are “Nazis” in Ukraine. Prigozhin also noted that Russia will ”demilitarize” Ukraine only when all of the Ukrainian military is destroyed, claiming that this effort is ongoing, but that it is unclear if it will be successful. Prigozhin stated that Russia can avoid an exhausting protracted war by deciding now which borders it wants to capture. Prigozhin also called on the Russian military and media to stop underestimating Ukrainian forces and engaging in internal conflicts. Prigozhin effectively rejected the Kremlin’s pre-war and post-war claims that Russia needed to defend itself against a NATO threat in Ukraine and undermined the necessity and probability of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated maximalist objectives for this invasion.
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TV and credit cards said:
News Flash: Russian gets a clue.
Well there goes the Noshitnonometer. After only thirteen months, Prigozhin starts, I think, starts to suss out just what the fuck is actually happening.
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Prigozhin is in my opinion one of the smarter guys. A ruthless criminal, for sure, but he probably knows what's up better than Shoigu, Gerasimov and their ilk... which is why he's so dangerous to the old guard.

What's new is that he is openly calling out the bullshit for what it was. This is to gain the credibility among the "milbloggers" and warhawks, and maybe to set the stage for his personal political aspirations down the line.
 
Hungry for a win, it looks like the Russians are switching from Bakhmut to Avdiivka. No matter. The Leopards, Bradleys, Strykers and somewhat longer range missiles (GLSDB) should all be coming into the theater soon. We'll see if Ukraine has enough trained personnel to push back and hold whatever they may gain.
 
Jayjay said:
Russian patriotism at work...
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This isn't particularly Russian.

You don't see many American soldiers drawn from the ranks of the elite. There's a reason Trump is referred to as "President bonespurs".
Remember George W Bush's service in Vietnam? Nobody else does either.
Tom
 
TomC said:
Jayjay said:
Russian patriotism at work...
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This isn't particularly Russian.

You don't see many American soldiers drawn from the ranks of the elite. There's a reason Trump is referred to as "President bonespurs".
Remember George W Bush's service in Vietnam? Nobody else does either.
Tom
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How dare you criticize GW Bush's military service! His daddy made sure that he got as a combat pilot for the Texas Air National Guard, and the Vietnamese did not dare attempt to run missions in Texas during his watch.

Dan Quayle, HW Bush's VP, had somehow gotten into a special unit of the Indiana National Guard that he knew would keep him out of Vietnam, even though some Guard units were sent to Vietnam. During those years, I was a draft counselor in the neighboring state of Ohio. Guard units tended to be filled up with those who sought to avoid service in Vietnam. They were extremely difficult to get into for people without connections of some kind, but Quayle's family was well-off and well-connected in Indiana. (The troops called out to quell campus riots in Ohio were largely composed of people who were sympathetic to the antiwar effort.)
 
TomC said:
Jayjay said:
Russian patriotism at work...
Click to expand...

This isn't particularly Russian.

You don't see many American soldiers drawn from the ranks of the elite. There's a reason Trump is referred to as "President bonespurs".
Remember George W Bush's service in Vietnam? Nobody else does either.
Tom
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Al Gore, John Kerry, Tammy Duckworth . . . But they don’t count because they’re Democrats.
 
TV and credit cards said:
Hungry for a win, it looks like the Russians are switching from Bakhmut to Avdiivka. No matter. The Leopards, Bradleys, Strykers and somewhat longer range missiles (GLSDB) should all be coming into the theater soon. We'll see if Ukraine has enough trained personnel to push back and hold whatever they may gain.
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Those glide bombs are a good idea. No powerplant so they're a lot cheaper and no powerplant makes a big problem for heat seekers.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
TV and credit cards said:
Hungry for a win, it looks like the Russians are switching from Bakhmut to Avdiivka. No matter. The Leopards, Bradleys, Strykers and somewhat longer range missiles (GLSDB) should all be coming into the theater soon. We'll see if Ukraine has enough trained personnel to push back and hold whatever they may gain.
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Those glide bombs are a good idea. No powerplant so they're a lot cheaper and no powerplant makes a big problem for heat seekers.
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Untested technology often doesn't pan out exactly the way we hope. First, the deployment could take a long time, despite it being supposedly launchable from HIMARS. Second, glide bombs are necessarily slower than ballistic rockets, so even if they don't have a heat signature, regular radar could spot them and SAMs have more time to react to take them out. We'll see what if anything happens.

Remember the Switchblade drones from a year ago? Nobody's heard from them for a while, and Ukraine's preferred kamikaze drones now seem to be commercial FPV drones fitted with explosives. A fancy weapon that looks good on paper doesn't necessarily work in the battlefield for myriad reasons.
 
Australia is now sending cheap drones to Ukraine. Made of cardboard. Cheap and reusable, but expendable. Can be used to drop small bombs. 40 km range.
 
SLD said:
TomC said:
Jayjay said:
Russian patriotism at work...
Click to expand...

This isn't particularly Russian.

You don't see many American soldiers drawn from the ranks of the elite. There's a reason Trump is referred to as "President bonespurs".
Remember George W Bush's service in Vietnam? Nobody else does either.
Tom
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Al Gore, John Kerry, Tammy Duckworth . . . But they don’t count because they’re Democrats.
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You forgot John piece of shit McCain. His father was an admiral
Jayjay said:
Remember the Switchblade drones from a year ago? Nobody's heard from them for a while,
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Well, russian version of "Switchblade" seems to be quite a hit. It's bigger and can destroy a tank.
 
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