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OT: World Politics

MindzEye said:
Seriously, if the firehose of American aid gets turned back on, the Russians are in deep fucking trouble.

The ukies are back to where they were before the US aid started rolling in heavy, trading Russian blood for a few sqkm of territory here and there while trying to preserve man and materials as much as possible. But the lack of counter battery action has let the Russians get back to their playbook of stacking artillery and focus firing small patches, then meat waving with infantry.

In the interim though, the Ukies are developing more and better weapons that allow them to strike into Russian territory in absence of the ability to use western missiles to do that.
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admittedly with the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza I have paid a lot less attention to Ukraine, so your updates are very much appreciated!
 
Wayward DP said:
admittedly with the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza I have paid a lot less attention to Ukraine, so your updates are very much appreciated!
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There hasn't been a whole lot to talk about other than the random news event (Avdiivka, rando Ukie raids exploding expensive shit that floats or makes oil, the ongoing inability of Russia to dislodge a few hundred ukies from the bank of the dnipro, etc) so yeah I haven't wanted to repeat the same shit over and over again with updates here.

The politics right now are the most "interesting" part. German is still fucking about but pretending in public to help (their most recent Taurus announcement is probably about crafting an excuse to not give any to Ukraine fwiw). Their political class has been deeply compromised by Russian money imo. I'm not entirely sure what game Macron is playing, but I'm assuming his recent belligerence is about shitty domestic politics though regardless it's welcome. It would be real nice if the UK was still a member of the EU right now (It's almost like UKIP/Brexit was a russian funded psyop or something, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum ) to allow for more pressure to be put in Germany to put the full weight of the EU behind aid to Ukraine.
 
EU has sent more money to Ukraine than the US has, but money doesn't explode. The EU doesn't have the mounds of surplus equipment the US has, nor does it have the quality of equipment to spare. The Bradley is an armored personnel carrier on steroids and it's the best "tank" in the theatre. The US has something in the range of 500 that are stored for no reason other than to be scrapped eventually, in addition to the other 500 they're currently updating as part of one of their future weapons programs.

Fwiw, the EU has delivered 75B Euros in aid to the Ukies as of last month (About half in financial & refugee aid, the other half military), almost double the 44 billion the US has delivered so far. The EU has stepped up pretty bigly. But nobody blows shit up like Uncle Sam.
 
Volcanologist said:
yeah, the military is one of the more obvious AI applications
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One of my bigger concerns about the future is what happens when there are fewer and fewer human casualties? That seems like a good thing at first glance, but the ramifications imo are a far, far more passive populace regarding aggression "over there". Most anti war protesting is born from seeing body bags come home, or civilian bloodshed on the news.
 
MindzEye said:
Video is semi NSFL but very important


View: https://twitter.com/azov_media/status/1767644462614761618


One day in the not so distant future, that type of drone is going to be autonomous.
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This is just sad. A dictator sending people's kids to a useless needless war so they can be wiped out like this. What's even more sad? Probably half of these men's parents support the guy who sent their kids to die.


Ps how cheap are these drones that they are worth destroying to kill one soldier?
 
CTheBigPicture said:
This is just sad. A dictator sending people's kids to a useless needless war so they can be wiped out like this. What's even more sad? Probably half of these men's parents support the guy who sent their kids to die.


Ps how cheap are these drones that they are worth destroying to kill one soldier?
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1000-1500 off the shelf. A fraction of that if you're building your own.
 
MindzEye said:
One of my bigger concerns about the future is what happens when there are fewer and fewer human casualties? That seems like a good thing at first glance, but the ramifications imo are a far, far more passive populace regarding aggression "over there". Most anti war protesting is born from seeing body bags come home, or civilian bloodshed on the news.
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There will always be plenty of human casualties. That's why war exists. Yes, there are larger goals of conquest, etc. but mostly war is about killing people you don't particularly like.

The concern about the future is the fact that there is no longer anything resembling conscription. During Vietnam, the anti-war movement gained traction in large part because people who were of an age to be conscripted, and because the draft was a thing, wanted very much not to be dragooned into carrying an M-16 and dying in the jungle. Once the US ended the draft, the anti-war movement dried up. And ever since then, every war in which the US has participated has been populated with volunteers and/or mercenary contractors. No one who doesn't want to fight has to fight so people stop caring because it doesn't affect them personally. And because of this, we see more, not less war, and more pointless wars like in the Persian Gulf over control of oil rather than for any humanitarian reason or ideal. People now volunteer to die for Exxon-Mobil rather than to fight fascism.

Eventually, though, you find yourself in a conflict where the stakes literally are fighting for democracy over fascism. That's where we are with Ukraine. And we may one day need to use conscription to fight fascism again.
 
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