Yet another "couldn't happen to a nicer guy". What doctor would want to treat him? Didn't he bury his last doctor alive?
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Yet another "couldn't happen to a nicer guy". What doctor would want to treat him? Didn't he bury his last doctor alive?
Anyone want to bet ATACMS officially announced next week when Zelenskyy visits Washington during the U.N. General Assembly?
After his doctor poisoned him, possibly the new physician was better trained.
Was it established that the doctor intentionally poisoned Kadyrov? Or was Kadyrov using his doctor as some sort of scapegoat for an incurable illness?
BitJam
Active Member
Life imitates art ...
Let's talk about Ukraine and Zapp Brannigan taking command....
TL;DW: Ukraine adopted a strategy espoused by a cartoon character. They used cheap drones to take down Russia's vaunted billion dollar S-400 missile system that had been protecting Crimea.
zap branningan explains his genius strategy for defeating killbots futurama
Let's talk about Ukraine and Zapp Brannigan taking command....
TL;DW: Ukraine adopted a strategy espoused by a cartoon character. They used cheap drones to take down Russia's vaunted billion dollar S-400 missile system that had been protecting Crimea.
zap branningan explains his genius strategy for defeating killbots futurama
Meeting again soon? Will be too warm for jackets at their next rendezvous.
I’m hoping Ukraine manages to capture one of these S-400’s…
Plant a nice stache of booze for the Russians to find, slightly “enhanced” with something to make them a little sleepy or something…
Lots of new jobs here in NE PA. Apparently all those shells are made in 2 factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.
Other than cannon fodder what can Lukaschenko provide to the war crime circus?
Abrams tanks are supposedly on their way to Ukraine. According to Denys they should arrive next week.
Russia’s Central Bank raises interest rates again, now 12->13% as it continues to try to stay under 100 rubles to the dollar and fight inflation. They are targeting 4% inflation and remain on track to miss (forecast 6-7% this year).
Labor markets should further deteriorate when Russia tries to mobilize more soldiers later this year, both as a result of the mobilized soldiers and additional persons fleeing the country to escape mobilization.
Russian central bank says rates will need to stay high as it hikes to 13%
Labor markets should further deteriorate when Russia tries to mobilize more soldiers later this year, both as a result of the mobilized soldiers and additional persons fleeing the country to escape mobilization.
Russian central bank says rates will need to stay high as it hikes to 13%
The estimates of the number of horses in the US varies all over the place. Most are used for recreation or entertainment (horse racing and rodeo), but this estimates about 1.75 million are used for "other", which includes rodeo unfortunately.
The Horse Industry by the Numbers
My sister has kept and bred horses for 40 years. She's used them for recreation, though I think her days of riding are over. She's had a frightfully large number of injuries from horses, the most recent being a broken hip. But she has known a fair number of ranchers and they use horses extensively. Mostly cattle ranchers, but also some sheep herders. Out in the back country in the west, there are many places an animal can go, but wheeled vehicles can't.
A lot of police departments have horses too. Some cities have mounted patrols for crowd control, but also to patrol some of the parks with rougher terrain. In Portland one park is sited around an extinct volcano, and another park it several thousand acres of mountainous terrain in the Coast Range. There are many places in both parks that are only accessible to hikers and animals.
As for trucks, the Russians are almost certainly wearing out trucks at a fantastic rate. Early in the war Trent Telenko wrote a thread talking about his experiences in Iraq. He was called in to rehab a bunch of US trucks that had gone into the front lines early in the war. After a year the trucks had the equivalent of 20 years wear on them.
The US Army pampers its vehicles compared to Russia. Maintenance is regular and extensive. Even with the regular maintenance schedules these trucks were worn out fast. In wartime trucks get overloaded, driven hard, subjected to roads that have been shelled, etc.
The US rebuilds vehicles when they wear out, but Russia just dumps them and gets another one. I'm sure that attrition for Russian trucks has been high. The Ukrainians have also been taking out a lot of them.
It is documented that Russia is using passenger cars to move cargo and there are a lot of complaints that Russian trucks are routinely running on bald tires. When roads start to get icy that's going to become a problem. The Russians are managing to keep the supplies moving, but from complaints at the front, they aren't able to move enough and they are really stressing the system to keep supply flowing.
I have seen some of the proposals the long range planners are looking at. Instead of an end to manned flight, they are looking at turning manned aircraft into drone command aircraft. A plane like a B-52 can carry pods full of drones close to the enemy, then release a swarm than can be controlled from the bomber. Shorter range fighters can be used to control swarms of drones that were launched locally or launched from a smaller pod. The manned aircraft can get into enemy airspace, but operate outside AD range and they can control the drones more tactically than someone can from the other side of the world.
New technologies in warfare have unpredictable effects on warfare. Back when I was in high school I saw a PBS program on three technologies that were hailed as the end of warfare when they were introduced. All became big components in WW I, but they didn't end warfare, they just changed it in ways nobody predicted. The three weapons were: the machine gun, the submarine, and the airplane.
I expect we'll see manned combat aircraft continue to be around for some time to come, but what they do may change. Protecting aircraft on the ground is going to become more difficult, and the ground support role will probably become a drone role. Though it's hard to say exactly how things are going to change.
I have seen speculation that drones could make basing F-35s anywhere near the front lines a lot more difficult. For the roles of manned aircraft in the future, flying F-16s or F-15s might be just as cost effective, or maybe more effective than F-35s. An F-15E would make a good drone control platform. The electronic warfare officer can control a bunch of drones from the back while the pilot does his job.
The USN didn't have any great foresight that the battleship was obsolete before the war. When the US began to rearm they laid down 6 fast battleships of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes. The North Carolinas were started in 1937 and the South Dakotas in 1939. The North Carolina and Washington were commissioned in April and May 1941. The 4 South Dakota class started being commissioned in March of 1942 through August.
The first of the Iowa class was laid down in 1940 with six planned and the Montana class was going to follow that.
The "gun club" in the Navy was still running the show, but they allowed carriers to be built too. It was thought that the carrier would back up the battleline. Under the naval treaties the US had some tonnage left after building the Yorktown and Enterprise, so the USS Wasp was built. The tonnage left over was not enough for another Yorktown, so the Wasp was built as a lighter carrier. There were plans to add armor to the Wasp when the treaty expired or in the event of war, but it was never added. When the treaty expired the USN ordered the Hornet as an expedient measure while the Essex class was being developed.
The Essex was laid down in April 1941 and was commissioned in December 1942.
After Pearl Harbor the Navy had a lot fewer battleships, but all the carriers were intact. For the first several months of the war the USN carriers conducted raids around the Pacific to get experience. The code breakers watched where the IJN carriers were to avoid a carrier confrontation before the USN was ready. It was obvious that the Japanese pre-war method of training pilots produced much better pilots than the US, but it was very slow and they had to abandon it when the war started. The quality of Japanese aircraft was also a wake up call for the USN. Japan had a better fighter in the Type Zero fighter and the Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bomber was vastly superior to the TBD Devastator on US carriers. The Aichi D3A Val dive bomber was not as good as the USN SBD, but the pilots were trained to hold their dives to almost suicidal altitudes to get a hit, which made them very dangerous.
With only carriers and a handful of remaining battleships, the USN learned how to fight with carriers and by mid-1942 it was obvious that the battleship was obsolete. The first 4 Iowas were completed because they were too far along to cancel. The last two Iowas had been laid down, but were not completed. The partially completed Illinois and Kentucky were launched incomplete and sat until scrapped after the war. The slips where they were being built were used for more Essex class carriers. The Montana class was axed as obsolete before they were started. Two battle cruisers were also completed: the Alaska and the Guam. They served in the last year of the war, but we more footnotes than anything else.
The fast battleships became carrier escorts and their flak batteries got far more use than their main guns. The Washington and South Dakota were the only two fast battleships to get into the kind of scrap they were designed for. During the Guadalcanal campaign the losses among the cruisers had become so bad that the two battleships were thrown into the fight with 4 destroyers that were scraped together at the last minute. They were tasked with taking on a much larger Japanese force that was intent on bombarding the Marine positions on Guadalcanal.
Admiral Lee in the Washington and overall commander of the force was the first USN gun admiral to embrace radar. He was the first USN admiral to go into battle in the guts of his ship instead of up on the bridge. The new ships had a command center in the guts of the ship where all the radar data and gun tracking data could be seen together. Lee had also drilled his gun crews to be able to reload and fire the 16 inch guns faster than any ship in the navy.
Early in the engagement the destroyers were all hit and set on fire. The South Dakota took a hit that didn't do much damage, but blew the main circuit breaker for the ship leaving her with no electricity. Japanese searchlights found her and pummeled her with shots that didn't penetrate the armor, but did significant damage to everything outside the armored areas.
The Washington snuck up on the Japanese undetected and hit the battleship Kirishima many times on the waterline with 16 inch shells. They Japanese thought it was a torpedo spread and went after the destroyers again.
For the rest of the war the fast battleships were mostly carrier escorts which were given the occasional chance to shoot at something on the surface more for practice than anything else. For example when the Japanese base at Truk was taken out in Operation Hailstone the surface ships were given a chance to shoot at some escaping Japanese ships, though the naval aviation could have taken care of them. I think it was the only time the Iowa ever shot at an enemy ship.
Aircraft technology was already advancing rapidly. The P-12 was the state of the art fighter in 1929, by 1939 the Spitfire and Bf-109 were in service and in full production.
Boeing P-12 - Wikipedia
Supermarine Spitfire - Wikipedia
Messerschmitt Bf 109 - Wikipedia
The transistor was developed by Bell Labs. It's initial applications were military though.
Lukashenko knows that if he sends the army into Ukraine, they would likely defect. Russia has been using Belorussian trainers to retrain new VDV recruits. But flank support is about the most Lukashenko can hope to provide.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
BitJam
Active Member
Timothy Snyder on genocide in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Timothy Snyder in Ukraine about Russian
Timothy Snyder in Ukraine about Russian
The best thing to do for Russia is to make sure they lose.
Excellent thread and interesting analysis
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@Tatarigami_UA: While global attention is primarily on the counter-offensive in the South, there has been noteworthy yet often unnoticed progress in the southernmost part of Bakhmut's defenses. In this thread, I wil...…
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petit_bateau
Active Member
The UK-Japan-Italy "Tempest" gen 6 combat aircraft / system appears to be intended to appear in both a manned and unmanned guise. It is not yet obvious whether it will be exactly the same airframe just sans the pink squishy blob life support systems. Or whether it will be a variety of airframes. Like most 6th generation programmes they appear to be going down the hybrid manned / unmanned system of systems route. Similar requirements tend to beget similar design solutions. I expect the Franco-German FCAS and the various US efforts to be in similar places in design terms.
The Tempest's engine design includes provision for an electrical starter-generator both combined in the turbine core (i.e. not an external bolt-on), and it is sized at approx 1MW. That gives the ability to both generate 1MW and to consume 1MW, and in principle the consumption does not need to be only during the turbine start phase. In turn that could lead to some interesting 'dash' speed results, e.g. when accelerating through the transonic region. There are two engines, so nominally 2MW. That in turn implies some electrical energy storage capability is somewhere in the systems mix - it will be interesting to see how much and whether that is lithium, ultracaps, or something else.
The discussion about generation and storage is relevant to the battlefield drone issue as the design(s) apparently include a laser. If so that would be nominally a 2MW laser. Depending on the storage capability it could of course be more than 2MW in bursts. A MW-class laser has a near-limitless magazine depth which is the real issue when considering defending against swarm or salvo tactics. A MW-class laser will make the eyes water, irrespective of whether mounted on an aviation asset, land asset, or naval asset. MW-cclass is BMD-capable ! (It also happens to be about the same size as the 1+MW powerpack on a typical MBT such as Abrams or Leopard etc).
Military eyes prototype megawatt-class laser weapon for ballistic missile defense in next seven years
FORT BELVOIR, Va. – U.S. missile-defense researchers will brief industry later this month on a project to build a prototype megawatt-class laser weapon within the next seven years...
www.militaryaerospace.com
British Dragonfire laser weapon test fired in the UK
MBDA say that they have successfully carried out the first static high-power laser firing of a sovereign UK laser weapon at a firing range in Porton Down.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
So ... expect all this to start appearing in the 2030s in the various guises on land, sea, and air. I suspect that final design freezes will likely be waiting in case Ukraine-Russia reveals any further considerations that need to be designed for.
(This is of course all also relevant when considering US-China nuclear arms control, and the various pariah state management aspects.)
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lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
There seems to be a reoccurring theme of a need for more electrical power in military platforms. Work is being done to dramatically increase the F35's engine electrical power output (and accompanying bleed air cooling) to support advanced systems. This sure smells like directed energy weapons are becoming ever more real and practical. The above is an interesting path.
More evidence Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel for troops and materials:
Norway's chief of defense said today that Russian forces stationed near their arctic border were now "20% or less" compared to the pre-February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Finland recently having become a NATO member and Russia has also reduced troops along that border. So much for Putin claims of the threat of NATO.
Russian forces near Norway at '20% or less' than before Ukraine war, Norway's armed-forces chief says
Norway's chief of defense said today that Russian forces stationed near their arctic border were now "20% or less" compared to the pre-February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Finland recently having become a NATO member and Russia has also reduced troops along that border. So much for Putin claims of the threat of NATO.
Russian forces near Norway at '20% or less' than before Ukraine war, Norway's armed-forces chief says
What’s the deal with the Czechs being so pro-Russian?
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www.reuters.com
Czech protesters rally against government's pro-Western policies
Thousands of supporters of a pro-Russian Czech opposition party gathered in Prague on Saturday to protest against the country's centre-right government, criticising its economic management and military support for Ukraine.
www.reuters.com
There are plenty of people (some) in the former Soviet satellites who, especially as time goes on, remember the security of living under that regime brought. Things were bad, but they were taken care of. And absence makes the heart grow fonder. Also, they have had to absorb a lot of refugees from Ukraine. I know one student from Czechia who had to compete with refugees for a slot in high school (a lot of schools closed recently, and now the population is up again). So there is probably a little resentment there. (Not from him, but you get the picture).What’s the deal with the Czechs being so pro-Russian?
Czech protesters rally against government's pro-Western policies
Thousands of supporters of a pro-Russian Czech opposition party gathered in Prague on Saturday to protest against the country's centre-right government, criticising its economic management and military support for Ukraine.
And Putin is hitting social media in these countries hard.
