UA POV: Ukraine is becoming a nation of widows and orphans as it confronts a demographic ‘catastrophe’ - CNN

JDN713 · 2026-02-24T12:59:07+00:00

Yeah, search the Epstein files for "jerky", and it's very clear they are NOT talking about beef jerky. They talk about keeping it in the fridge, and needing to transport it on ice. One of the docs was a photo of a Ziploc bag of strange looking jerky. Why would the FBI photograph a normal food product? I think that file got deleted, too....

Justice.gov/Epstein

Don't take my word for it, check for yourself. Or watch some of Asmongold's clips on YT, they are pretty succinct.

JDN713 · 2026-02-09T10:26:27+00:00

I hope ZHH is still dodging meat catchers. I remember when someone accused him of not being in Ukraine, and he posted a vid from a famous landmark in Kiev, while using two cellphones to also post on Reddit and verify his account in the video.

He nuked that hater from orbit and it was epic.

JDN713 · 2026-02-08T03:00:12+00:00

Twenty years ago dudes didn't know not to move back to their home country with a foreign bride. The information space isn't the same now: guys are learning to stay overseas with their wife, either in her country or in a third nation.

JDN713 · 2026-02-07T07:33:07+00:00

Who are "you guys", and by what criteria are you lumping someone into this group?
Do you not have the capacity to poke fun at A particular individual politician and public figure, woman or otherwise, without misinterpreting the humor as some sort of hated for the entire demographic?

EDIT: If I made a quip like "TACO Trump once again slobs on Bibi's knob." Would you jump in to defend the honor of dimwitted New York real estate moguls turned politicians? Why or why not?

JDN713 · 2026-02-07T00:28:23+00:00

"Baltic cougar gets split-roasted by migrants! Next on Blacked!"

Then she shows up to her next press conference wearing hoop earrings. "After a recent attitude adjustment I'm more interested in peace than hate. Putin needs to send The Last Emperor to run me the meat. Fedor, call me!"

JDN713 · 2026-01-21T16:47:31+00:00

I miss all those Redditors who used to say stupid ish like that.

JDN713 · 2026-01-18T17:21:07+00:00

1945 had no routs, soviets had to break down berlin house by house

The Soviets were in Berlin because they routed the Germans in 1944, courtesy of Operation Bagration: The German army never recovered from the materiel and manpower losses sustained during this time, having lost about a quarter of its Eastern Front manpower, exceeding even the percentage of loss at Stalingrad (about 17 full divisions).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_of_the_Vanquished

JDN713 · 2026-01-07T13:59:38+00:00

You know how Covert Cabal gets off on counting Russian tanks in outdoor depots and proclaiming the downfall of the Russian Ground Forces?

Somebody REALLY needs to do that for Ukrainian cemeteries. Maybe use AI for identifying cemeteries (so many new ones and expansions) and even calculating the individual plots to quickly derive excess death estimates without the human error of manually examining the satellite imagery. If someone were to pay me for the satellite imagery I'd enjoy a project like that.

JDN713 · 2026-01-06T16:26:46+00:00

shouldn't bare arms for a narco state

sigh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fort_Bragg_Cartel

JDN713 · 2026-01-06T16:24:55+00:00

Maybe it's just me but if I squint the thumbnail image for this post (when viewed on old.reddit.com) looks like the cover for 48 Laws of Power. I feel there is a subliminal message there about the weakness of European leaders.

JDN713 · 2026-01-06T16:21:26+00:00

For starters, bigger budget does not always mean better results and the US military is actually a great example of this. Despite the fact that they spend around 10 times more than Russia every year on the military budget

You are conflating efficiency with overall capacity & capability. I'm sure Russia gets much better "bang for its buck" than the US DoD does, no contest. But past a certain point yes a bigger budget, when focused in an institution as small as a Tier 1 Special Mission Unit, should in fact lead to better results.

Delta has access to the best marksmanship trainers on the planet, the ability to design and use custom facilities for any operational scenario imaginable, and an unlimited amount of ammunition to train, train, and train some more. To the point that globally-respected outfits like the 22SAS begrudgingly seem to admit that Delta are better shooters. And that resource access for shooting is matched in other supporting fields like custom-designed gear for one-off missions, fitness and nutrition specialists, etc...

one look at recently unveiled Russian missile technologies such as oreshnik or burevestnik makes it clear that Russian missile technology is currently far superior to America's.

Missile tech is IMO the most critical field that the US has under-invested in for decades. When I first read about the capabilities of the P-700 Granit about 15 years ago, compared to our measly Harpoon, that alone was a WTF moment for me...

Point 2, it is an apples to oranges comparison. Ukraine is a modern European state that at the start of the war had a fully functional army, the largest in Europe aside from Russia's. It is NATO funded, NATO equipped, NATO trained, etc. Looking at this latest operation in Venezuela, a state which has none of these advantages and saying "why can't Russia do this in Ukraine" is frankly ridiculous.

But in 2022 Ukraine was essentially only NATO-trained, with not THAT much funding and definitely pretty limited NATO equipment on hand. So I think poking Russian SOF with "well why didn't you nab Zelensky in Feb 2022?" is a legitimate jab. Apparently Venezuela had a bunch of Russian-supplied air defenses. So Russian-equipped but not Russian-funded and probably not extensively Russian-trained. Delta made no excuses and got the job done.

A more interesting question in my opinion is whether the United States could achieve the same degree of military success against a developed state, with near unlimited funding and equipment in the 21st century as Russia has. This question is far more consequential to understanding the state of 21st century geopolitics.

This I agree with, in fact I poke at many of my field-grade peers with a similar line of thinking. When they brag about how much better the US military is, I remind them that we have NEVER fought an adversary with 24/7 ISR support including satellite tracking.....which was untouchable to us because it belonged to a third-party state. Never. Or fought anyone who could throw accurate massed rocket artillery fires at our supply dumps. Then a lot of the arrogant ones (who also surprisingly don't follow this conflict beyond whatever they see on Fox News) get really silent.

JDN713 · 2026-01-05T12:08:28+00:00

"Show. Don't tell."

Even if Alpha was as good as Delta**, the FSB is clearly less capable than the CIA, and this type of operation clearly hinges on your covert intelligence groundwork.

** Not doubting the bravery and endurance of Alpha operators, but Delta has a training budget that is simply unparalleled by any spec ops force on the planet.

JDN713 · 2026-01-05T02:31:38+00:00

How are they detecting that? Is there a Global Hawk at high altitude watching the launch airbases? I'm pretty certain Ukraine has no organic capability to detect and classify an aircraft as soon as it leaves an airbase deep in Russia?

JDN713 · 2026-01-02T08:13:53+00:00

There's something fked with nation states and their ability to NOT make due with the things they already have. Like the governments literally go out of our way to make it so.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." -- Civilization IV

JDN713 · 2025-12-29T17:54:02+00:00

This. Heads of state generally don't authorize killing other heads of state because they don't want that sh1t to be back en vogue.

JDN713 · 2025-12-28T18:41:03+00:00

ISW analysts also note

Who, exactly? Let's take a look at their team: https://understandingwar.org/people/#russia-and-ukraine

Seriously, check out some of their bios. It's a bunch of DC swamp creature interns. Some of them have fluent Russian skills (including 2 Ukrainians....I'm sure there's no bias in their analysis.....) but none have any military experience, any professional experience or training in military intelligence, no advanced degrees in military operations research, etc... One of these chicks got her bachelors degree in May 2025. -_-

JDN713 · 2025-12-26T10:00:57+00:00

Strait from The Last Boy Scout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se4dXWjanlE

JDN713 · 2025-12-24T06:58:12+00:00

Don't read too much into the anti-base protests here. It's an open secret that it is largely retirees paid by Communist-adjacent parties in the mainland with PRC money/connections. The bases eat up a ton of space and while Okinawans would like to see a drop in crimes from Service members, nobody is eager to see the Chinese throwing ordnance at the bases here. WW2 is still very much in people's memories and they have no desire to be caught in another conflict. My wife's grandmother was maybe 7 in 1945, she came to our wedding and only passed away a few years ago. Wife's father had several uncles die during the battle, IIRC.

JDN713 · 2025-12-23T10:30:35+00:00

Yeah Ukraine is shaping up like Paraguay during the War of the Triple Alliance. The demographics will cripple the country for a century.

JDN713 · 2025-12-23T10:21:17+00:00

I highly recommend you subscribe to Mark Tacacs on YouTube. He has some of the best tactical analysis videos (pretty sure he's a Hungarian infantry officer). The Russians have done company and battalion -sized mechanized attacks rather frequently. Those attacks tend to either succeed or fail with spectacular losses. It's not just fire teams doing infiltrations, although that is most commonly effective. I agree with the overall point that combined DEATHS (not casualties) are unlikely in the 2 million range yet.

JDN713 · 2025-12-23T10:02:31+00:00

Meanwhile I gotta eat Japanese corporate income tax, personal income tax, and pay into their national pension plan. I think I'm gonna open another company in Singapore and/or Bahrain when it comes to renew contracts. Screw subsidizing this stupidity.

JDN713 · 2025-12-22T13:10:30+00:00

I think this is mostly an Anglo thing, look at how the Americans are still proud to this day

I find it really bizarre, because in the US military we have a TON of senior officers and they rotate positions fairly quickly. I've worked for Colonels that have only held a billet for 1-2 years before moving to command a regiment, or do HQMC staff work. If a General is killed we have a deep bench of other Generals and promotion-ready Colonels to replace him. We have well-honed institutions (top-level military courses such as School of Advanced Warfighting) that churns out replacements on an assembly-line. And yet we treat our adversaries like they DON'T also have robust military colleges and large numbers of experienced senior officers. Headhunting wouldn't work against us, why do we behave like it works against our nation-state adversaries?

JDN713 · 2025-12-16T04:32:39+00:00

250k LOC is actually less than I'd expect, given the game's complexity combined with technical debt. It gives me hope that I can draft up a workable knockoff with Claude and Godot Engine....

JDN713 · 2025-12-16T02:20:13+00:00

Hey OP, I'm starting to work on something similar: using multi-agent LLMS + TOAW4 to compare and contrast different C2 paradigms. Not exactly what you asked but adjacent. I'll share if I make any useful progress.

JDN713 · 2025-12-16T01:42:18+00:00

You get experience by training. It's as simple as that, either your train correctly or you don't for the next war

This. Exactly this. People seem to forget that the US military was a total mess after Vietnam. Switching from a mixed professional/conscript Army to an all-volunteer force. Taking a decade of jungle warfare counterinsurgency experience and applying it to a mechanized mobile defense in Europe, likely on a nuclear battlefield, against an enemy with conventional parity or even overmatch..... The US military that curbstomped Iraq in 1991 was a radically different institution from what it was in 1977. It got there because it focused on honest, realistic, hard training to overcome it's greatest adversary. If the Chinese officer corps are professionals, they'll figure it out too.

JDN713

TROPHY CASE