Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Looks like a successful night for the Israeli F35s ....

Bet nobody saw that coming 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Well that's the main idea of the F-35. ;-)

The whole fighter thing is so weird. Every single time they make a fighter, a huge effort is put into extending their range. The F-16 was alovely looking jet, now it's a fugly abomination.

All fighters are just basically small bombers these days and as soon as they come off a production line, someones trying to turn them into an F-111 or B-2

They should go back to the YF-23 design, add range and make it into a stealth F-111 which is what most really want in the first place.

Who could it be?

Tonight's episode of Warship BBC2 9pm looks interesting & involves our Russian friends.

On its way to the far Pacific, HMS Queen Elizabeth ventures into the eastern Mediterranean. Britain's biggest warship is exercising its rights of navigation in international waters, but almost immediately Russian warships are diverted from the Black Sea to intercept it, while. Russian fighter bombers are also scrambled from their base in Syria to buzz the British task force and a tense stand-off unfolds

Good articles on the race in the Ukraine and in Russia where Defense industries are ramping up.

While Ukraine need speed to take advantage of Russia's current low point, The Russians are throwing mass numbers in to wear down Ukrainian forces and buy time to train and replace more and dig in deep.

All a bit WW1, years of fighting for small movement, mass casualties and 2 broken States after it all. The worst outcome for all.

It also talks about the need for Western arms industries to ramp up as western stocks are getting low.

In contrast to the Ukr side

If they were even just badly organized they would have a lot more conquered.

We're not going to find out what the terrorist state did in Mariupol until the city is liberated. The suspicion must be though that many tens of thousands of civilians must have been killed when they were flattening the place.

The Russian army is still present in Ukraine, is learning from it's mistakes, is adapting and retains personnel and equipment superiority over the Ukrainians. If that sounds like might is right, very often it is, whether we like it or not. War is incredibly wasteful of resources and peoples lives and while you might look on Russians tactics as stupid, brutal and excessively wasteful (they are, war tends to like that), it does seem the government retains significant support across the population of the Russian federation for the time being and will not withdraw.

There is a lot of focus in this thread on the latest wonder weapon from NATO countries, being the solution, there is much less discussion about the current moral and damage to the Ukrainian army over the last 12 months. In the last 2 months, there have been an increased frequency of dead Ukrainian heros showing up in my feed, I'm using that as a proxy to indicate are taking significant casualties.

I doubt the Ukrainian army has enough manpower or resources to drive the Russians back across the border, after this year they will reach a point where they need manpower from NATO countries to finish the job. Right now, no one is interested in playing for stalemate. Wars of this scale take about 5 years to come to an end. I expect boots on the ground in 2024 and an overall conclusion by 2027. That also means that the countries within the EU (not just NATO) after this current phoney war will be forced to align and it won't be so easy for "Irish neutrality" to circumvent this.

What the conclusion to the war will be, I have no idea, I am working on the premise, that for the next 5 years we will be living with a war economy in Europe, as more resources are sent in that direction. Even though we don't do the direct fighting in Ireland, the key features of that economy are shortages and rationing and more of a move to command and control economy. You can see this is the shortages of energy and accommodation, and the political response will align if nothing else for expediency and needing a diversion.

Note, thats just 50 days in. Apply the principle of not wanting to scare the children and I think there are good reasons no one want's a realistic number for civillian deaths. As they say, the numbers can't be established until an area is recaptured and then there's the problem of the filtration camps and the 2 million that made it out of those and were kidnapped to Orcistan.

I think it will be found that filtration camps were death camps and a lot never left on two legs, or that there were two streams shipped to Russia, with one ending in graves or crematoria there where the attrocity could be effectively covered up. I wonder if US intelligence has been monitoring the heat output from known crematoria for any significant increase?

It's not a nice topic to think on. I said days into this conflict that a Ukrainian Orc expert at a university in Paris said that they had a comprehensive data set (names, addresses, phone numbers, social media ac's) of at least 2 million people in Ukraine who comprised the core of civil society, that they would be looking for and eliminating. And she was right. We had stories of Orcs knocking on doors in captured areas clutching lists and looking for specific people. It's what the filtration camps are partially for.

Scholz just can't help himself

An SUV with a z-swastika burned down on Altufiyevo Highway in Moscow. Ukrainian DRGs work while Muscovites sleep.

Nice.

You mean at a fraction of the cost of Afghanistan don't you.

I don't mean from the conflict itself, but due to the fallout after the conflict, in the medium to long term owing to the realignment of the world.

All those countries that no longer feel they have to toe the US line because internationally the US has become relatively weaker in relation to up-and-coming countries like the BRICS with China at the head of the list. I believe that this war will speed up the process of 3rd countries moving away from the US sphere of influence.

Let's imagine a wonderful world of china, iran , Belarus, India as some kind of utopia that's going to rule the world,

It's not going to happen

No, you might want to do a bit more research...

These Think Tanks like Rand, are a means to try and pressure politicians and sell the policy viewpoints of filthy rich people who want government to do their bidding, thus circumventing democratic principles and processes. Most filthy rich people in the US would tend to be right leaning, and that's certainly the case with Charles Koch. What you are touting as some sort of 'independent' and intelligent view is actually just a very wealthy Republican businessman trying to influence a Democrat president, and any Republican Congressmen/Senators who don't agree with him and support Ukraine and the current US direction.

You have been suckered, basically.

If you look at the bottom of the article you originally linked to, you will see that the article was sponsored:

Dig a little further and you will find.

Which means you are batting for the Orcs, because Koch certainly is and your precious 'independent' Rand corp piece is nothing less than pro Putin shilling.

The Iranian defence ministry says it has foiled a drone attack on a military facility in the city of Isfahan.

The ministry said three drones were involved but there were no casualties.

One drone was destroyed by air defence systems and two were caught by "defence traps", causing minor damage to a building, the ministry added.

The extent of damage to the site has not been confirmed by the BBC, and there has been no immediate claim of responsibility.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64445306

Are you saying Ukrainian morale is low ,

Germany lost the war in 1942. They did not wave a white flag and go home and they fought and had support right to the bitter end. It took many years of re-education to convince them not to start another war. You can now imagine the ructions today when they are being asked to support a war, they left quite a lot of dead last time around in Ukraine, they are not inclined to repeat this. Even though though the Germans had lost, they continued to do damage for another 2 years afterwards.

It took the entry of the United States in Europe to insist on taking the shortest route to Germany to bring the war to to an end sooner, the Brits on their own could not take the fight to the continent, they could only fight in the North African desert with the aid of troops from the colonies.

Likewise, even if forced back to the pre-2014 borders, that's not the end. Russians may spend a few years squabbling among themselves, or other powers may make a bid for territory. Finland may see its chance to grab Karelia, China will see it's change to grab Manchuria and all the resources east of the Urals. That won't suit Europe or the United States so they will make a play for the area west of the Urals spearheaded by Poland and Turkey would like to secure the south to Kazakhstan. You think they would not do that? or would they let the place dissolve into multiple 'stans? with nukes lying around until they were no longer viable.

Another scenario is Russia takes much of the territory east of the Dniper and Ukrainian army fronts collapse and retreat to Kiev. European countries wreaked by combination of material shortages and high unemployment, no longer have the willingness to fight and a stalemate is reached. by the river being the diving line. Neither side Russia or EU will survive such an outcome and will face the economic crisis of debt collapse. Historically all sides that get involved in European land war end up broke. The only winner from this would be China, simply by not having to expect resources in the war.

At the moment the objective for Moscow is hold what they have and advance to the river and subjugate Kiev. Kiev wants to drive Russia back to the 2014 borders and have Russia pay compensation. How are they going to get there?

‘That’s called World War III’: Biden defends decision not to send jets to Ukraine

Well now . . .

Ukraine expects 24 fighter jets from allies as part of first package – media

Wars never pan out the way their planners intended.

Pure whataboutry ....

They invaded Iraq twice and beat the Iraqi twice and then came back to fight isis .

Remind us what did Russia do in all the time occupied a small part of Georgia and part of Ukraine,

And lost over 100,000 men , thousands of tanks,Apcs , aircraft in a little over 9 months this year

Compare the losses from Iraq and enjoy the laugher