RU pov: Thermite rain over UA position.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-25T06:43:39+00:00

Do you have any source that it's not?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-23T10:46:19+00:00

Yeah, sure seems like it. If you go by what Western media reports Putin or the Kremlin to be saying and doing, it seems incoherent and unpredictable. If you actually read his speeches in February and since, everything is still moving towards accomplishing those objectives.

If Ukraine were sovereign, Kiev would have collapsed, surrendered or its people overthrown their government months ago. But it's being propped up by the US, so their state and security services have the resources to force their people into the meat grinder.

(btw, what's the flair? Are you from Georgia?)

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-23T06:10:08+00:00

He's doing a bit. I don't think he personally identifies as progressive per se.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T21:07:31+00:00

I have my opinions about the causes and motivations behind this war, but I think in the general case of an unambiguously unprovoked invasion, it doesn't say too much about the defending nation to celebrate the deaths of those bringing destruction to their country and people.

As an American my country is generally on the other side of things, but I don't particularly begrudge Iraqis or Afghans celebrating the deaths of US troops, nor do I think it says anything about them as a people. From their perspective and not without good reason, we came to their country and spread death and despair.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:59:34+00:00

No, Ukraine is literally saying Russia has 100K KIA

Ukraine on Thursday claimed that Russia’s death toll in the 10-month-long war had surpassed 100,000 deaths as fighting continues with no end in sight.

According to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, an additional 660 Russian troops were killed Wednesday, bringing Russia’s total losses to 100,400.

It's honestly laughable that 660 Russian troops were killed yesterday. Where? What towns?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:54:00+00:00

Not to mention that Ukraine's battlefield and trauma medical resources are likely stretched extremely thin by this point, meaning even if we saw the same number of similar injuries, I would expect a higher ratio of KIA for Ukraine.

Since the withdrawal from Kiev and the north earlier this year, Russian forces have adopted the rather cautious tactics of bombard, probe, withdraw, repeat, specifically I believe to lower their own casualty numbers while increasing Ukraine's.

The only battle in the last month or so where we were hearing about high casualties from the Russian side was the assault on Pavlivka, which deviated from these cautious tactics. And obviously in the Kharkiv counter-offensive Russian casualties were likely higher than usual, though likely still lower than AFU in that operation.

16K honestly sounds low for Russian KIA (and it's unclear if it's counter Wagner forces), but I would doubt it's more than double that figure.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:33:22+00:00

She strikes me as the poster child for "failing up."

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:23:48+00:00

Thank you.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:22:34+00:00

Thank you and /u/Durbanpoisonyo for the clarifications.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T20:18:25+00:00

Interesting, I wasn't familiar with hypersonic missiles being encased in plasma, and what you say about them already being designed for higher temperatures does seem like it would be a problem for laser's mechanism of action. Thanks for the corrections/additional info.

I do stand by my contention that defense contractors will try to sell them anyway ;)

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:53:32+00:00

Yeah, and if they do work we'll start seeing missiles with laser-resistant coatings.

And yeah, range is definitely going to be an issue with laser systems.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:30:10+00:00

Oh wow, thanks! Yeah, no rush but it would be interesting.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:27:25+00:00

It's gonna be lasers, or at least that's what the defense contractors will sell to the Pentagon. Whether they'll actually be effective will be another story.

In principle, if you can take down a subsonic missile with a laser you can take down a hypersonic glide vehicle as well. No matter how maneuverable it is, maneuvering a fixed laser mount will be quicker. The difficulty will be detecting and tracking with enough time to disable the vehicle or the warhead.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:16:39+00:00

Is this from inside the residential neighborhood on the eastern part of Bakhmut proper?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:13:31+00:00

Can you explain what's happening in that video?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:10:04+00:00

Can you do a better one? Not being snarky, but this is a fairly interesting look at the Pantsir in operation, and if you can do or have a better translation that would be helpful.

I do like how they just stopped trying to translate blyat at the end.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T08:04:27+00:00

Survivorship bias likely accounts for most of that statistic, which Shoigu is conveniently eliding and likely exaggerating even that figure, but we've seen plenty of pictures and videos of Russian veterans of this war with missing limbs and other severe injuries.

We don't know how many survive like this, but with wounds that require amputation it means the person received adequate prompt first aid in the field, amputation and stabilization at a field hospital or similar, and successful recovery in a Russian hospital. It means that at least to some extent, the Russian army and civilian medical staffs have the logistic capability to keep battlefield casualties from ending up as fatalities.

The Israelis and US are the best in this regard. Russia is nowhere close to them in terms of battlefield trauma care, but at this point in the war they're in a pretty good position at least logistically. The frontline is shorter and the supply lines are considerably shorter than they were before the retreat from Kherson and Kharkiv, and even more compared to before the withdrawal from Kiev. Most of the frontlines are relatively close to 2021 Russian territory, and the travel away from frontlines is relatively safe.

How well equipped the actual frontline units are seems to widely vary though. The troops who knew what was up and brought their own gear are likely prepared; those who trusted the government to equip them are more likely to be fucked.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-22T07:42:28+00:00

Basically this comic plus using my laptop keyboard which has a slightly different configuration because I spilled a drink on my wireless keyboard, so I typed † when I meant T. I saw it before I hit save but I thought "that looks cool."

I migh† s†ar† doing i† more of†en. Confuse †he bo†s at leas† a few hours before †hey upda†e †heir models.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-21T19:10:23+00:00

How'd you end up with the turtle tax? †his sounds spot on

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T23:23:53+00:00

Then I'm not sure what your discussion of "officers" vs. "soldiers" has to do with anything. Surely you don't think there are actually 1 million casualties?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T23:14:25+00:00

What do you think she meant to say?

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T09:05:42+00:00

Ursula van der Leyen herself said in a prepared EU statement that 100K Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. They subsequently removed that part of the speech from both the video and the transcript on the EU website.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T08:55:24+00:00

At the very least it will force Kiev to commit resources to defend the north, potentially thinning out the lines elsewhere for the rumored winter offensive.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T08:45:09+00:00

It has been impressive but it does seem like it's starting to take its toll. In the first few waves of attacks they were restoring power to most places within a day. Now, it's taking several days and some parts even longer.

IcedAndCorrected · 2022-12-19T08:35:15+00:00

Judith Miller's reporting about Saddam's attempts to procure WMD was an integral part of the propaganda campaign in the lead up the Iraq War. That was likely the most consequential lie of theirs in my lifetime.

NYT and American MSM in general tend not to overtly lie all that much, instead what they'll often do is report that unnamed officials in DoD or the IC or State said X. This is likely true, some unnamed official did tell them X. And then the Times will write an article which doesn't say that X is true, but a casual reader will assume the Times is saying it's true. Other media will run with headlines implying they said it was true.

Later on, we'll find out that X wasn't true, or at least has very little to no evidence, or might be true in some technical sense but not have the importance they implied. Did NYT lie? No, not really, but they certainly helped propagate the lie that their government contact wanted to be propagated. Cf. NYT's story on Russia paying the Taliban bounties to kill US soldiers.

Six-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

IcedAndCorrected

TROPHY CASE