JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Since you once again post no summary and considering your track record I won't be watching that video.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
adiggs
Well-Known Member
Just using these three particular comments to make a larger observation:
When have we ever seen Putin (Putler - I like that) back down, or make a decision that wasn't first and foremost in his own best interest? And not the way your or I would define best interest - his own best interest which includes making decision(s) that make him look bad. Russia's interest is not his interest and is not relevant to his decision making. Talk about the evil villain from a Bond movie.
This is why I am most worried about Russia using tactical nuke(s). It would be consistent with winning the special operation in Ukraine, consistent with the rationales given (de-nazify the country, where apparently everybody is in on it) and doing so in the most efficient and expedient fashion possible.
In my view of the world, the only meaningful check on Putin's thinking is a belief that (a) NATO knows well enough where he is physically located and (b) will nuke him personally in response to Russian use of tactical nukes. He doesn't care if Moscow gets nuked - he'll just use the civilian casualties as a call to defend against NATO invaders.
He isn't going to back down because his army is getting battered, unless he becomes convinced that he needs that army at home to enforce his rule. Which also means that he will need to believe the army will actually do his bidding and enforce home rule, rather than turning on him.
The way I see it, he will without remorse feed the entire country of Russia into this furnace he has lit and stoked without any thought to the human consequences to anybody else - Ukrainian or Russian. Feeding the oligarchs into the furnace might provide some additional thought on his part, but even that can be gotten around.
MontyFloyd
Member
Kamil Galeev
@kamilkazani
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani
Kamil has a twitter thread that explains the Russian attitude to Ukraine (and other regions) that matches other articles by knowledgeable people on this.
In brief: the war is less about NATO and money than it is more about Ukraine and the people.
A good percentage of Russians considers the "so called Ukraine" a blight, vermin, a PEST to Russia, and should be exterminated like rats.
This goes with the "de-nazify" terms used because it is a introduced idea from the west, not an ideology or political movement.
Effectively Putin is making , with general Russian support, the Ukrainian population as a race, and carrying out a "cleansing of Russia" of the "plague", anything is permissible (wanton rape and murder the least of it). In short this is genocide in every term except being genetically different. And this is not the first time the Russians have tried to "exterminate" the Ukrainians. Look up the Holodomor.
Even in the 21's century, mass genocide is alive an well.
There is some nuance, but that is overall explanation I have read from a few historians (read so many, don't remember them all).
@kamilkazani
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani
Kamil has a twitter thread that explains the Russian attitude to Ukraine (and other regions) that matches other articles by knowledgeable people on this.
In brief: the war is less about NATO and money than it is more about Ukraine and the people.
A good percentage of Russians considers the "so called Ukraine" a blight, vermin, a PEST to Russia, and should be exterminated like rats.
This goes with the "de-nazify" terms used because it is a introduced idea from the west, not an ideology or political movement.
Effectively Putin is making , with general Russian support, the Ukrainian population as a race, and carrying out a "cleansing of Russia" of the "plague", anything is permissible (wanton rape and murder the least of it). In short this is genocide in every term except being genetically different. And this is not the first time the Russians have tried to "exterminate" the Ukrainians. Look up the Holodomor.
Even in the 21's century, mass genocide is alive an well.
There is some nuance, but that is overall explanation I have read from a few historians (read so many, don't remember them all).
The KGB educated Putin may have some serious issues with the new anti-propaganda digitally weaponized Ukraine. This article is remarkable in that it will provide indisputable evidence for the ICC of war crimes that even identifies the individuals committing these crimes. It also will provide the Russian citizens proof of what is really happening. They then can either continue drinking vodka and pretend they are OK or take some positive actions to preserve what is left of Russia. President Biden has made some great moves here.
The best weapons used to be ink on paper; now its bits in cyberspace. I only see positive results here thanks to the Ukrainians and all the countries that are supporting them.
How Ukraine Is Crowdsourcing Digital Evidence of War Crimes
It's a systematic effort unlike any in the history of modern warfaretime.com
Looks like it is happening now. Criminals exposed. The video goes into the details. This is very big news.
Russia massively damaged itself with its lies on Moskva, hopefully starting a revolt against Putler.
Russian Military officially states the Moskva sinking was an accident, and all the crew are safe.
Already on national TV popular talk show basically said the ship was sunk by Ukraine and there must be retaliation.
Now the families of the crew are demanding to know where their relatives are, with many pleading for any info, a very few receiving word they are dead, and other saying the surviving crewmen speaking of mass casualties.
I am sure most Russians already do not trust the Putler regime, but now they are seeing they could conscripted at a moments notice and sent away to die with no one knowing what happened.
As families seek truth, Kremlin refuses to discuss Moskva sinking
Spokesman says Kremlin ‘not authorised’ to release information about fate of warship’s crew after its sinking last week.www.aljazeera.com
‘We need answers’: relatives seek Moskva warship’s missing crew
As Russia suppresses information about its sinking, some share details of what they have found outwww.theguardian.com
There are many stories about high casualties from the Moskva. I have read from several places (though it might be cross contamination) that there were only something like 58 survivors. The supposed video of the survivors had a number of hints that it was an old video. Also none of the "survivors" in the video had any injuries. A warship sinks and nobody has as much as a band aid (plaster)?
But in the pictures, all the boats are gone. Somebody used those boats. There are also stories the Moskva was operating alone with no frigates or other Russian ships nearby. Any sane navy only operates their largest ships with escorts, though there have been exceptions, which is how the Indianapolis got sunk in 1945.
Western naval officers who had toured the Moskva had observed some oddities such as water bibs on deck for firefighting equipment was heavily painted to prevent corrosion to a point where it would be difficult to hook up a hose or open the valves. There are also stories that all life jackets were locked away to keep them pristine for inspections and only a few officers had the keys. In the confusion after the ship was hit the crew probably couldn't get to the life jackets.
We also know the Russians are poor at maintenance. I wonder if the ship's boats were so poorly maintained they immediately started leaking upon hitting the water and a lot of the boats sank? That's the only explanation I can think of that would square the boats being deployed and so few crew surviving. Without life jackets in water that was 40 F, they would have died of hypothermia pretty quickly.
I don't want to find out, but considering how bad Russians are at maintenance, their nuclear stock pile may not be usable. The smaller the warhead, the faster it degrades to a point where it won't go off. If their tactical nukes haven't been maintained in a while, they might just be dirty bombs at this point.
The Russians have been doing probing attacks on the Ukrainians in the Donbas to find weak points. So far they haven't found any. Their doctrine is to find a weak point, then pummel it with artillery to soften it up, and finally launch an armored attack into the breach to create an opening and following infantry secures it. Similar to WW II breakthrough warfare with a bit more artillery. The problem is they don't train to do that and would likely bollocks up the operation.
I have read that if they can't find a good weak point they might create one with a tactical nuke. It would probably be launched from an Iskander. That's the most plausible scenario for using a tactical nuke.
Putin's disregard for human life is not unusual. The Russian military has historically been very insensitive to large loss of life to their own troops in war. The difference is the country has never been in a large scale conflict since the birthrate dropped through the floor and people with any skills have emigrated. When the birthrate is high, such tactics are horrific, but survivable, but with a low replacement rate, this is probably Russia's last military hurrah.
I have read that even before this war Russia was faced with the probability that they would not be able to mount a large military operation within a few decades because of the declining birthrate. This war is probably accelerating that.
I've been reading Kamil Galeev for insight into Russian culture and thinking. He's Russian born (he mentioned the Russian intelligence services tried to hire him), but he now works for an American think tank.
I find the thread reader to be best for reading long Twitter threads
Latest Twitter Threads by @kamilkazani on Thread Reader App
I don't know if the threadreader automatically harvests long threads or if people sign up to it and manually add them, but I've been able to find a thread reader page for every long thread I've wanted to read. Just replace the username after /user/ with the Twitter name for who you want to read.
I'm less concerned now about Ukraine getting the weapons it needs to win in time.
The Russian offensive doesn't seem to be moving fast enough to prevent weapons supplies making a real difference.
Putin seems to think Russia is winning, or can win a conventional war.
A possible explanation is he is getting inflated reports of Ukrainian losses and optimistic reports of how many resources Ukraine has.
I've seen reports of pictures of captured / destroyed Ukrainian vehicles posted from many angles and a single loss being claimed as multiple losses.
Whether Russians are just doing that for propaganda purposes or to avoid Putin's wrath, is hard to tell.
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I think we can safely operate under the assumption that the Russian nukes work. If it wasn't for SpaceX, the US government would currently be launching the majority of it's space assets with Russian built RD-180 rocket engines. Many of those engines had been in mothballs for many years and still operated flawlessly.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
I have no doubt they can deliver what was once a nuclear warhead. But there's a good chance it would be just as effective as the Moskva's air defense was at shooting down a pair of cruise missiles.
The Russian offensive is probably bogged down in logistics issues. They have had quite a few BTGs mauled in combat and getting them re-equipped and with replacement personnel is difficult. There are stories the Russians are using 2 man tank crews. Their standard 3 man crew is over worked under normal conditions (most western tanks have three man crews). Because of personnel shortages they are making the tank commander act as gunner too which is a nightmare in combat (two man crews were eliminated early in WW II because even with small caliber guns they were too much work for the commander/gunner/loader).
The Ukrainians have recovered ID documented from killed vehicle crews showing all officer crews made up of people whose specialties would normally not be combat.
On top of that the Russians have lost a staggeringly large number of trucks and they didn't have enough at the start of the war. Getting supply to their assault units is slowed down because they don't have enough trucks to go around. Most of the trucks I have seen in the Donbas region have the Z with a box around them which is the code put on vehicles that started the war in Crimea. It looks like they shifted a lot of their trucks from Crimea to the east, thus starving their units in the south.
The Russians are moving slowly because they can't move quickly. Logistics won't allow it.
Logistics is the piper every army needs to pay when on the move. Fail to pay the price and your army is going to get bogged down.
The engines are a different thing from the warhead. The engine used to deliver the tactical nukes is the same Iskander rocket they have been using throughout the war.
As far as the RD-180, all I can find is it was first used in 2000. The RD-170 is older.
Yes, rocket engines and nuclear warheads are obviously very different things. The point I was trying to make is that underestimating Soviet/Russian engineering could be a tremendously fatal mistake. Whether or not they've been doing the prescribed oil changes (haha) on the warheads and their delivery systems. Let's just hope we never find out exactly how functional those warheads are.
Their engineering isn't bad. They have come up with many creative solutions to get around limitations. Militarily they have been obsessed with rocketry since WW II. The Katyusha was the ancestor of the modern Grad. They got into space before the Americans because they had been developing many types of rockets. Because their warheads were heavier they had developed larger missiles than the US, which gave them a head start when the target was orbit instead of returning to Earth.
As I've said, I don't want to find out if their nukes work and I definitely hope they don't trot out the nukes, but their tactical nuke stockpile may not be viable. Considering all the other corners being cut everywhere else, I would not be surprised if they had few or no viable nukes.
The radiation of a warhead is very tough on everything in the assembly, even hardened electonics can go bad and the structures can be damaged by radiation over time. Plus the smaller the warhead, the shorter the shelf life before the radioactive material degrades to a point where you can't get critical mass anymore. It will still be highly radioactive, but it won't go boom when you want it to.
With hydrogen bombs the deuterium and tritium (heavy hydrogen) leaks away over time (hydrogen can make its way through any container). Those are only the hydrogen bombs which are not tactical, but the hydrogen isotopes need to be topped up on a regular basis to keep the bomb viable.
I think a lot of people and politicians underestimate the number of “ordinary” EU citizens who are willing to bite the bullet regarding cutting ties with Russian gas etc. My wife is learning German atm (loves languages), so she has joined an online group in Germany. Although only a small sample (a few thousand) the vast majority of Germans in that group are very much for giving Russian energy a middle finger and taking the consequences. Their stock answer is “if it get’s cold I can put on some warmer clothing”.
I think the main countries against cutting ties are mainly further south and landlocked such as Austria (with a pro Putin leader) or those that get 100% of their gas from Russia (In which case I can understand their reluctance)
We're all armchair analysts here. Here's what a bonafide nuclear weapons expert has to say on the subject:
Putin has threatened nuclear action. Here's what Russia is actually capable of
NPR's Sarah McCammon asks Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, what we know about Russia's nuclear stockpile and capabilities.
www.npr.org
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We're all armchair analysts here. Here's what a bonafide nuclear weapons expert has to say on the subject:
Putin has threatened nuclear action. Here's what Russia is actually capable of
NPR's Sarah McCammon asks Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, what we know about Russia's nuclear stockpile and capabilities.
Still nobody knows if they have done the necessary maintenance. On the one hand somebody could say these are very important weapons and they should get maintenance even when other things are being ignored. But on the other hand the corruption is in the chain of command, not all at the top, and people without a strategic vision might think that if anyone ever finds out the weapons don't work, it would be too late to worry about it anyway.
Trent Telenko has written a number of essays on Twitter about how western intelligence screwed up on the questions of the level of Russian training, Russian logistics, and Russian maintenance. The experts were wildly optimistic about all three.
Maybe the Russian nuclear arsenal works, maybe it doesn't. In February I would say it probably would, now? Who knows?
ZachF
Active Member
The NK-33 is the Russian engine that was sitting in storage, it’s not used by our rockets anymore.
The ones used are one (RD-181)and two(RD-180) chamber variations of the four chamber RD-170 engine used on the Zenit and Energiya (Russian space shuttle). They are new builds. Atlas V uses the RD-180 but is at the end of its production and all the engines for the remaining launches have already been built. The RD-181 is used by the Antares rocket, but that only launches 1-2 times per year. The lower stage of the Antares is also built in Ukraine.
ZachF
Active Member
The biggest problem with tritium is it’s ~12 year half life.
Also would be easy to think that these weapons will never be used, so no need to maintain them.
Yes, I was thinking of the "forest" of NK-33 engines built in the 1960s that was in mothballs. I believe Antares used them at one time. There was a mishap with one of those NK-33 powered Antares? - not sure if they were able to pinpoint the engine as the cause. The Russians did some pretty amazing rocket engine design with the resources available. The RD-180 operates with the highest chamber pressure of any engine currently in use. The Raptor will soon take that crown, though.
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