Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[ClearedHot]

5 hours ago, busdriver said:

-If you grant me those two points for the sake of discussion, does that increase or decrease the threat of a nuclear weapon(s) being used on the European continent?

The loss numbers for Russia are staggering.  In my humble opinion as a knuckle dragging ham-fisted pilot we need to do the following:

1.  Continue to enable Ukraine to punish Russia.

2.  Provide Putin an off ramp.

3.  Think about a post-conflict Ukraine and what happens to all these weapons we have provided.

 

 

[Prozac]

4 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

The loss numbers for Russia are staggering.  In my humble opinion as a knuckle dragging ham-fisted pilot we need to do the following:

1.  Continue to enable Ukraine to punish Russia.

2.  Provide Putin an off ramp.

3.  Think about a post-conflict Ukraine and what happens to all these weapons we have provided.

 

 

If Ukraine can emerge from this thing intact or relatively so, and maintain their western friendly government, a heavily armed, non NATO ally on Russia’s border could be rather useful. For instance, Russia knows it can execute a cyber attack on a country like Latvia effectively with impunity. Latvia is not going to start lobbing retaliatory missiles and shells into Russia for fear of dragging NATO into WWIII. The Ukrainians on the other hand? Well they just might do something crazy with all their new toys. Sometimes it’s a good tactic to have that one guy with the crazy eyes and the brass knuckles in your group that makes a potential adversary pause and think: do I really want to fuck with these guys? Of course, the “what-ifs” I posited at the beginning of this paragraph are far from givens and if the Ukrainian state fails, all that weaponry will create some issues. Is there a remote self destruct function on those HIMARS systems? /s

[ClearedHot]

 

[waveshaper]

20 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

The loss numbers for Russia are staggering. 

Something to think about, both Russia and the Ukraine can take some serious casualties. The top three countries with the most casualties during WW2 = China, Russia, and Ukraine. Note - broken down by country not USSR, etc/keep in mind all these countries had a much smaller population during WW2.

List of casualties from top 8 countries during WW2:

Country	Tot. Deaths	Military Deaths	Civ. Deaths via Military	Civ. Deaths via Famine/Disease
China	20,000,000	3,750,000	8,191,000	10,000,000
Russia	13,950,000	6,750,000	4,100,000	3,100,000
Ukraine	6,850,000	1,650,000	3,700,000	1,500,000
Poland	6,000,000	240,000	5,820,000
Germany	5,700,000	4,456,000	2,135,000
Japan	3,100,000	2,300,000	800,000
India	3,087,000	87,000		3,000,000
Belarus	2,290,000	620,000	1,360,000	310,000

Complete list: World War II Casualties by Country 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)

 

[fire4effect]

51 minutes ago, Prozac said:

If Ukraine can emerge from this thing intact or relatively so, and maintain their western friendly government, a heavily armed, non NATO ally on Russia’s border could be rather useful. For instance, Russia knows it can execute a cyber attack on a country like Latvia effectively with impunity. Latvia is not going to start lobbing retaliatory missiles and shells into Russia for fear of dragging NATO into WWIII. The Ukrainians on the other hand? Well they just might do something crazy with all their new toys. Sometimes it’s a good tactic to have that one guy with the crazy eyes and the brass knuckles in your group that makes a potential adversary pause and think: do I really want to fuck with these guys? Of course, the “what-ifs” I posited at the beginning of this paragraph are far from givens and if the Ukrainian state fails, all that weaponry will create some issues. Is there a remote self destruct function on those HIMARS systems? /s

That's kind of how I viewed Trump. No one really knew what to expect.

[Lawman]

That's kind of how I viewed Trump. No one really knew what to expect.

That was probably the biggest shortcoming with Obama as far as foreign policy. Putin tested him, validated where and how quickly he would back off any demand, and the rest of the world knew it too.

He was essentially sitting at the poker table with his cards backwards and everybody else knew dead to rights what he had to play.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Danger41]

2 hours ago, waveshaper said:

Something to think about, both Russia and the Ukraine can take some serious casualties. The top three countries with the most casualties during WW2 = China, Russia, and Ukraine. Note - broken down by country not USSR, etc/keep in mind all these countries had a much smaller population during WW2.

List of casualties from top 8 countries during WW2:

Country	Tot. Deaths	Military Deaths	Civ. Deaths via Military	Civ. Deaths via Famine/Disease
China	20,000,000	3,750,000	8,191,000	10,000,000
Russia	13,950,000	6,750,000	4,100,000	3,100,000
Ukraine	6,850,000	1,650,000	3,700,000	1,500,000
Poland	6,000,000	240,000	5,820,000
Germany	5,700,000	4,456,000	2,135,000
Japan	3,100,000	2,300,000	800,000
India	3,087,000	87,000		3,000,000
Belarus	2,290,000	620,000	1,360,000	310,000

Complete list: World War II Casualties by Country 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)

 

The interesting thing with Russian casualties in modern day is how janky their population distribution is and losing more young people further exacerbates their inevitable fall. 

[ClearedHot]

1 hour ago, Lawman said:

That was probably the biggest shortcoming with Obama as far as foreign policy. Putin tested him, validated where and how quickly he would back off any demand, and the rest of the world knew it too.

He was essentially sitting at the poker table with his cards backwards and everybody else knew dead to rights what he had to play.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It was worse than that but the liberals will never admit just how F'd up their messiah was.

"I will transmit this to Vladimir"

 

[uhhello]

4 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

The loss numbers for Russia are staggering.  In my humble opinion as a knuckle dragging ham-fisted pilot we need to do the following:

1.  Continue to enable Ukraine to punish Russia.

2.  Provide Putin an off ramp.

3.  Think about a post-conflict Ukraine and what happens to all these weapons we have provided.

 

 

Agreed.  There are a fuck ton of manpads floating around out there.....

[ClearedHot]

Ukraine was not exactly a corruption free bastion of sunshine and roses before this thing started, but they are certainly the lesser of two evils.  Much has been made of the fighting spirit of their people, this video provides a glimpse of life after the Russians leave and some reflections of the Russians from the occupation.  At the end of the day the people in this this video were just rural people trying to live their lives likely without any concern for the world politics that surrounded them. 

 

[Blue]

On 8/9/2022 at 1:13 PM, BashiChuni said:

How many more BILLIONS are we gonna send our Ukrainian heroes?

However many billions it takes to get the end result we want.  Which, I'm not sure what that end result looks like, but I'm sure the people in charge know what they're doing, right?

Also, don't worry, we've got the printing presses running overtime, so no worry about running out of cash.

 

[pawnman]

7 hours ago, waveshaper said:

Something to think about, both Russia and the Ukraine can take some serious casualties. The top three countries with the most casualties during WW2 = China, Russia, and Ukraine. Note - broken down by country not USSR, etc/keep in mind all these countries had a much smaller population during WW2.

List of casualties from top 8 countries during WW2:

Country	Tot. Deaths	Military Deaths	Civ. Deaths via Military	Civ. Deaths via Famine/Disease
China	20,000,000	3,750,000	8,191,000	10,000,000
Russia	13,950,000	6,750,000	4,100,000	3,100,000
Ukraine	6,850,000	1,650,000	3,700,000	1,500,000
Poland	6,000,000	240,000	5,820,000
Germany	5,700,000	4,456,000	2,135,000
Japan	3,100,000	2,300,000	800,000
India	3,087,000	87,000		3,000,000
Belarus	2,290,000	620,000	1,360,000	310,000

Complete list: World War II Casualties by Country 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)

 

Russia's demographic makeup in 2022 is very different than their demographic makeup in 1942. I think it's going to take a very long time for them to recover from the loss of this many people in prime working age. 

[busdriver]

11 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

1.  Continue to enable Ukraine to punish Russia.

2.  Provide Putin an off ramp.

3.  Think about a post-conflict Ukraine and what happens to all these weapons we have provided.

Agree.

If the Russian military is sufficiently beat down, they will then lack the ability to start another invasion.  The more beat they are, the longer it will take to re-constitute.  Hopefully Putin will be dead by then and they can have another chance to join the rest of the world.

Preventing Putin from starting an invasion in a NATO country is the important part.  They would lose badly.  Which makes for a risky proposition given the nuke thing.

[arg]

On 8/9/2022 at 12:13 PM, BashiChuni said:

How many more BILLIONS are we gonna send our Ukrainian heroes?

I'd like to know how much is coming back here.

[ClearedHot]

In a recent "incident" in Russian occupied Crimea, 9 Russian combat aircraft (SU-24's and SU-30's), were  destroyed on the ground at an airbase.  Pravda claims it was a "Violation of Fire Safety Requirements."   Yeah a bunch of well placed explosives will violate your fire safety requirements.

Before

 

After

[busdriver]

14 hours ago, busdriver said:

If the Russian military is sufficiently beat down,

And now I'm quoting myself.  Just to add, I don't think Ukraine winning is a pre-requisite of what I think needs to happen.  A pyrrhic victory for Russia would work.  At least for the rest of the world.

[nsplayr]

Damn it’s such a shame when you illegally park combat aircraft in another country and your “hosts” can’t even keep up with the fire code standards! I bet Vlad wants to speak to a manager about a refund.

[Majestik Møøse]

Giving $5B to Ukraine has been the most cost-effective use of military money in recent history. Our military uses $800B/yr to essentially LARP.

[Lawman]

Giving $5B to Ukraine has been the most cost-effective use of military money in recent history. Our military uses $800B/yr to essentially LARP.

Considering the last 8 years of assistance and training, this whole thing should go down as the most effective FID mission ever.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[ClearedHot]

Can you imagine the outcry if we lost 24 F-15EXs in six months of combat operations.

Russia has lost two squadrons of the latest Su-35 in Ukraine General Staff

$450M worth of Russian airpower destroyed in one attack.

Crimea explosions: Forbes calculates cost of destroyed Russian aircraft

[BashiChuni]

On 8/10/2022 at 8:21 AM, busdriver said:

Something to consider: 

-Would Russia stop with Ukraine?  There are geographic reasons to suspect they would not. 

This same logic got us involved in the Korean, Vietnam, and War on Terror (Iraq specifically). 

“IF WE DONT STOP THE COMMIES IN KOREA/VIETNAM….”

it’s flawed logic. Time to stop “what if-ing” our foreign policy decisions. Play the hand you’re dealt. 
 

and yes Russia would stop at Ukraine. 

Edited August 12, 2022 by BashiChuni

[Biff_T]

12 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Can you imagine the outcry if we lost 24 F-15EXs in six months of combat operations.

Russia has lost two squadrons of the latest Su-35 in Ukraine General Staff

$450M worth of Russian airpower destroyed in one attack.

Crimea explosions: Forbes calculates cost of destroyed 

This is the type of war I wouldn’t want to fight.  Knowing that your luck/skill would eventually not be enough to survive is not good way to live. One day we'll be involved in a near peer war and it is going to suck for a lot of people.  

[ThreeHoler]

Giving $5B to Ukraine has been the most cost-effective use of military money in recent history. Our military uses $800B/yr to essentially LARP.

“Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!”

[nsplayr]

2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:
 

and yes Russia would stop at Ukraine. 

“Just like they stopped with South Ossetia / Georgia and Crimea, amirite? After having secured that territory surely Putin wouldn’t attack other parts of Ukraine, especially not Kiev!”

-Bashi, a very smart man, circa anytime between summer 2008 and February 2022

Man, this has to be one of the clearest “who is bad & the aggressor vs who is good and defending their homeland” situations in my lifetime. If for some reason this war’s waters are muddled at all, you are in a much different place than I am.

Fuck Putin, fuck a new Russian Empire, slava Ukraini, and welcome to NATO Sweden and Finland.

Mil aid to Ukraine has been the most efficient DoD money spent in forever in terms of units of “US security objectives achieved” per dollar.

Ukraine, when you need a reload on HIMARS rounds, holla, we gotcha.

[busdriver]

2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

This same logic got us involved in the Korean, Vietnam, and War on Terror (Iraq specifically). 

“IF WE DONT STOP THE COMMIES IN KOREA/VIETNAM….”

This isn't domino theory, or some half baked idea about the spread of an ideology.  It is partly a realist (ie. Mearsheimer) perspective on great power competition.  Basically, states will seek to ensure their security, through border control and eventually regional hegemony.  Russia doesn't have naturally defendable borders (deserts, mountains, oceans).  So expansion to control terrain that allows a defendable border is needed.  And it has already done this recently (South Ossetia & Crimea).

That perspective is weird to Americans.  Our country has zero natural threats, an ocean on two of our four borders, and complete hegemony.  Hence Ron Paul's theory that all we need as a military is some boats/subs on each coast.

 

2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

Time to stop “what if-ing” our foreign policy decisions. Play the hand you’re dealt. 

This part is not without merit, but if we're going to step back with a mindset of "we suck at predicting what will happen" then we have to accept that there are trade offs and just because historical second/third order effects stunk, doesn't mean that there weren't worse potential outcomes.  Both war/death outcomes and economic outcomes.