Lawman
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Posts posted by Lawman
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Actually, I did. After I posted it. Then I edited it to not be redundant. I still don’t quite correlate Germany’s spending on their own military to being equal to us giving away billions. However, if you and I could agree that spending billions of US dollars on our own military equipment and deploying it to the US southern border, was also good for Ukraine, well then I think we are finally getting somewhere.
ilitary
No I don’t think spending billions on a military to deploy it to our border is a smart financial investment at all.
The cost to outfit and equip the soldiers we send down there far outstrips the cost effectiveness of a body on the border. Now expanding an agency like CBP/Coast Guard/port control absolutely. Using the Army to be CBP or those other functions when I now cost the drain to regular unit readiness, lower enlistment rates, all the kit we issue in RFI, etc etc…hell no.
There are far smarter ways to effectively work on the issue of the border and most of it involves law enforcement and thinks like going after employers, two things the military is wholly unsuited for. Unfortunately the Army (particularly the reserves/guard) have become a political easy button for it with no regard to long term cost.
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The good news for those of you worried about the (tiny fraction of the) debt imposed on your children due to Ukraine spending is that, if we just let the Russians roll over Ukraine and a few other countries, your kids won't need to worry about the debt, because they'll be too worried about dying in a conflict with Putin's successor when he invades the Baltics or Poland.
Deterrence is always much cheaper than the inevitable fight after appeasement.
Don’t worry, the debt resets to O after the EMPs go off. It’s a feature of the plan.
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I agree with you. However, maybe some of the people on the other side of the ocean could deal with it a little harder too. (Germany) or hell how about on our side of the ocean (Canada).
Look Bud, I love that you’re passionate about Ukraine. I like that you’re hanging out with Polish Generals. I’m certain your current job offers plenty of insight on the conflict that most don’t have. Having said that, maybe next time you’re home and your trip to Walmart costs 4 times what it did a few years ago, or bounce around to our once thriving metro areas and witness the epic nosedive into 3rd world cesspools, you might just gain a little understanding on why so many of us deplorables are slightly hesitant to donate our great grandchildren’s inheritance to Zelensky and pals.
Look at the post directly above this one.
Like I said treating this like we are throwing money and telling our people to eat shoe leather while the Euros enjoy vacations, wine, and siestas is disingenuous to the reality of what spending they’ve done. The US growth has outpaced the EU substantially since the last decade and the housing crises/recession passed. Without England in it we outpace the EU by double in GDP. They still produced tens of billions of dollars for Ukrainian funding/aid as well as investment in military infrastructure largely purchased directly from us which is good both economically and in terms of commonality in a future fight.
It’s easy to just pick on Germany as the punching bag example of how not to invest in a military for the last 30+ years. Even they went up a couple billion in the span of a year while their total government spending went down almost 8-10% (depends on source of exchange rates) because of the economic slowdown down in their own country, that’s a pretty massive change for them with the stated goal to continue cranking up.
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When Germany starts acting like they actually believe Russia might expand past UKR and fight NATO countries, and is willing to commit serious money to that problem, that's when you've got my interest. However the current situation is that we're rushing to rescue Western Europe who doesn't feel threatened or inclined to break the bank investing militarily due to ann imminent Russian invasion. At the same time we have ever more serious domestic issues. The reply always seems to be "it's not either or, we can secure our border and the borders of Ukraine" except we can't, or we already would have.
No love for Russia here, but I 100% believe our over-investment in Ukraine is strategically foolish. CH, I get your point on pre-WW2 isolationists, but I am unconvinced Russia is analogous to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It looks like a regional dispute to me. And instead of engaging in thoughtful discussion to convince me, the prevailing approach is to bully me by claiming I'm parroting Putin talking points like a stooge. If Covid has taught us anything, it's that people yelling thoughtless demands and name-calling must be ignored.
Europe has spent a combined 91 billion in monetary aid to Ukraine and while short of the 2% mark Germany pushed its military budget up a couple billion (largest increase in a half century) in a single year in the midst of 3 straight quarters of a recession. France cranked in its largest increase in decades, Poland is spending nearly 4% of its GDP and outfitting its self with our latest stuff (economic gain to us). These are just a few examples of what is and has been a wider immediate wake up call to reality for them. It’s disingenuous to imply we are going it alone here.
So what exactly is the threshold Europe has to meet for us to be allowed to get off the bench? Because the EU has roughly half the GDP combined we do and they aren’t simply letting us come to their rescue.
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I agree with everything you said. Except, I have never claimed to be an isolationist, nor have I ever stated any isolationist ideals here. I simply posted a marginally humorous gif and Lawman responded with his normal diatribe, and so I felt compelled to respond. I just figured he might need reminded why the half of the US, that he accused of “wanting to give the keys of Eastern Europe to Putin” of might not be as emotionally invested in Ukraine as he is. The simple fact that very many low income US citizens can’t find a place to rent, because Uncle Sam is currently paying out the ass to stuff illegal aliens in any imaginable rental property and continues incentivizing non-citizen, non-tax paying, people to come here and enjoy some more free shit! So yeah, many Americans find these policies downright treasonous, and the threat of Putin doesn’t seem that dire while a working family, of US citizens, lives in their car while their former home is rented to some Guatemalans. That and of course, the US lending money to anyone feels like paying the bum on the corner with your credit card, at this point.
Populist driven policy of “let the people on the other side of the ocean deal with it” has led us to the more expensive and consuming outcome of two world wars. It’s even easier to dehumanize and detach from it when some are freely buying Russian talking points.
Nobody is saying abandon the border for the sake of Ukraine in this argument. Nobody is saying send troops to Ukraine and fight directly, in fact that’s what we are all attempting to keep at arms length letting them play this out a phase line early.
What we are saying is that in this new Cold War/slow collapse of the global supply chain we sit diametrically apposed to a party made up primarily of Russia/China. One of those two major opponents to us coming out on top in this is happily feeding its military capacity into a wood chipper whole sale. We would be idiots to stop paying to put gas in it when comparing the costs of other COAs.
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Halve these numbers and it's still insane to say Russia is 'winning'. They shot their load for a war of attrition using every willing/un-willing 'soldier' at this point. They have nukes which may or may not work/exist at this point for defense. What did they gain for that?
Russia has lost a staggering 87 percent of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks, a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress told CNN.
A regiment of 4th Guards Division was recently seen training with T-62s.
Let that sink in for people that don’t understand, that is the Russian Army’s most prolific Armor formation. They are the guys that are based to protect Moscow that had the best equipment. They got chewed to hell fighting along the fight to Sumy. The loss situation is such that they can’t replace their losses and maintain the front.
That would be like us having a bunch of Eagle/Viper squadrons lose their aircraft and then get handed F4/5s to regen with because the modern airframes were needed elsewhere.
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you didn't answer my question. ukraine is losing. what next?
oh i know...."trust the experts" like yourself huh?
FID isn't gonna win this war my son.
Yeah lord knows the way to show you are about to lose a war is to successfully conduct a wet gap crossing.
You’re reading trash media claiming to have any idea what’s going on and saying we (the west) need to abandon Ukraine because of their “historic ties to Russia.” What point do you have to make other than to be a relief to all of the sane you aren’t in charge of anything?
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https://dnyuz.com/2023/12/12/ukraine-is-on-the-cusp-of-losing-this-war-were-screwed/
so whats the move playboy? you gonna put american troops in ukraine to stop them from losing?
honest question. now that you've hitched your wagon to a losing side what's next? gonna have to continue escalating and you're gonna stumble us into WW3
What did you get tired of reading RT?
Nobody in here has called for US troops in Ukraine. What we have done is call out your isolationist BS and parroting of Russian talking points to justify just leaving Ukraine in the wind like it will stop there.
The entire mission of Foreign Internal Defense was to build combat capability by partner nations so we could avoid needing larger troop deployments later. What we’ve been doing the past 2 years has accomplished that in Ukraine. Continue mission.
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can't wait for you to call for us to fund all those eastern bloc governments to "defend democracy"
ukraine and russia have historical ties that is undeniable. and not dumb. stop being a war hawk haven't you learned anything post wwii?
You are literally parroting what will be China’s excuse to invade Taiwan in a discussion about deterrence and wider foreign policy like it’s a good reason to reward annexation by force.
Ukraine has “historic ties,” yeah so do the Czech’s. Maybe read a book some time on what the conditions of those historic ties and why they came running into NATO to avoid going back to them. “Eastern Bloc Governments,” wow. Those are NATO partners.
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look at you name dropping DCG! you're so cool
like i said let me know when a nato country is invaded then i'm in.
ukraine ain't nato. and it's corrupt as . so enjoy your globalist war you soldier of the world!
Why so we can wait to hear you call to abandon all those next series countries because of their “historic ties to Russia.”
Seriously… the dumbest point you’ve tried to make on here.
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Wait, was your last response to me? I don’t even know what the a DCG is, solid NameDrop though. However, I do know that you and Bashi are never going to convert one another. I also know that very few Americans “want to give Putin Eastern Europe like it’s his” most notably because Eastern Europe is not America’s to give. I also know that many Americans are a lot less concerned about Ukraine’s borders than our own borders, which this administration clearly has no interest in defending. I also highly doubt Bashi or Gearhog are KGB, but you seem comfortable calling them Putin operatives quite frequently. So, could they start calling you a Maduro shill since you’re more interested in sending billions of $ to Ukraine instead of fighting a Venezuelan invasion right here in our own southern border? The point is, maybe a bunch of Americans feel that some of that fake gov cheese should be spent here instead of there. I know, I know, now I’m a Putin fanboy too. I best start shopping for this season’s ushanka hat.
Read my lips, if you’re on a Forum spouting off Russian talking points about how Ukraine belongs to them historically, or that NATO expansion justified them invading by force a sovereign nation, or insinuating the CIA ran a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s government (all points he’s tried to make) you’re a shill. Putin has expressed his interest in realigning the old Soviet satellites as vassal states. Pretending otherwise would ignore the last decade of action by him. So yeah Ukraine is as many have pointed out the stepping stone in a lone of stones already crossed leaving us with the next step having a 4/5 chance of being a NATO country.
I’ve got no interest in trying to convert Bashi, I’m pointing out to the rest of the room that may think he has a point how incredibly stupid it is. Why are you suddenly trying to defend him? If he stuck to points about budget he’s fine, but he is repeating known Russian talking points advanced and stimulated across social media.
And DCG would be deputy commanding general. We have one currently and he’s Polish.
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I didn’t have anything intelligent to add, so I went with immaturity instead.
Dude I can’t wait to tell the DCG tomorrow that the reason we can’t invoke article V to defend his home country is because of their “historic ties to Russia.”
He’s gonna be confused for a second and think it’s as stupid an idea as I just said. That deserves to be laughed at. But it goes to a wider conversation we had about why it seems like a good size chunk of Americans want to give Putin Eastern Europe like it’s his. After spending the pages of response to point out how clueless Bashi’s points are who give a crap at this point if we just agree he’s an idiot and state it openly.
Go read a history book on Russia’s “historic ties” to the Eastern European states some time. If you would describe that as some sort of equal relationship and not just outright soft/hard power conquest and subjugation you’re clueless. It’s also a repeated line of justification by the Russians to execute the annexation of Ukraine as legitimate but it wouldn’t be the first time he and others have peddled those talking points.
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yes. invading ukraine (a NON NATO) country with historical ties to Russia/USSR, is a much different calculus than invading other european countries.
nuance is a beautiful thing. and guess what....if putin decided to push farther then NATO kicks their ass. simple.
“Historical Ties to Russia/USSR.”
Well that’s an incredibly stupid point to stand on given the argument. Most of us are arguing the necessity of stopping Russia in this fight to avoid them invading the next 5 nations who are all in NATO and apparently have “historic ties to Russia.”
And yes NATO kicks in… against an opponent who is as you described justifiably fearful we will simply destroy them and likely to retaliate early and immediately with Nukes or Chem to immediately force us to stop short of a full exchange. That’ll only cost Stuttgart or Antwerp or something… no big deal right? Earlier in this thread you were screaming about the dangers of escalating with nukes because of our political support, now you’re telling us to pick the best COA likely to lead to their employment. God damn 4D-Clyde’ian-strategery right there gentlemen. Make that man a flag officer.
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Anyone recommend a good folding stock AR-15 upper for those of us that have fresh form-1s?
Plenty of people making MPX adapters to a standard lower config.
I don’t know anybody with an MPX or similar setup that is upset about the decision.
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They sure did, then got boat raced by Georgia. I’m not saying it’s right, because it’s not, but do you believe if FSU made it to the natty, they’d be competitive against any of the other three teams?
Then why rank them higher than Georgia if it’s a simple as they aren’t evaluated to be that competitive. More specifically why do it 2 weeks after you already put them at one place in the list with said world changing quarterback?
The default answer is a cop out of “the committee is an evolving evaluation based off ____.” Then it ignores its own precedents when inconvenient. And the default answer is “we aren’t wrong and weren’t wrong then, we’re just somehow more informed now.”
FSU got hosed for one simple reason, the money/views provided by the SEC participation in the final 4.
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You can blame TCU’s ass whipping in the Natty last year on why FSU was left out this year.
Yeah FSU… they “aren’t the same team without the QB”
But we can let them play Georgia because that makes sense. By rights FSU could be playing OSU with the history on bowl alignment. That would make sense if they aren’t good enough to be in right? After all the ACC isn’t a real conference or some weird crooked post BCS logic. Runner ups of B1G and SEC and have Georgia replay OSU for a rematch but nahh, that makes too much sense.
FSU should be in, and the SEC should have been exposed and left out having no clearly defined greatness as a Georgia without 2 key players couldn’t put away an Alabama that lost to Texas. But no way will dollars ever be left out of the discussion and if there is one thing that was not gonna happen is was leaving the SEC booster money out of big bowl games played in their back yard.
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Let me educate you with one of my favorite documentaries so you don’t keep embarrassing yourself.
No lie, one of my IPs in primary was in that movie.
Decades on and apparently he wasn’t allowed to introduce himself to his students without one of the other Instructors bringing it up.
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Yeah but you can say that about every platform in a contested environment.
Here's another attempt to post the link without trying to spam BO . net
The critique is now I think due to the proliferation of really good small GBAD systems (not just MANPADs) but the adaptation of new / novel technologies like FPV drone attacks on lower, slower moving platforms
This attack was unsuccessful but you can see where this is gonna go
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/09/06/a-ukrainian-racing-drone-nearly-kamikazed-a-russian-attack-helicopter/?sh=4893c4591af9
Let’s just go with this video is full of bad Wikipedia level research and these guys are making click bait not informed information.
For reference, anytime somebody tells you about Apaches with Stingers or doing Barrel Rolls, just know nothing they are talking about came from first hand research.
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I think Ward Carroll has some pretty good videos/podcasts. In his defense he has brought on some actual Army helo pilots for their expertise.
That doesn’t help him.
The number of Army pilots (particularly conventional) that have experience and understanding of denied area ops is abysmal after 2 decades of coin.
Helicopters aren’t limited because of the nature of their engineering, they’ll be limited because of the lack of fused planning or understanding and synchronization of enablers evident by the war fighter we just did. The people who don’t know what they are doing and never received training in how to do it are now leaders and they are as a population resistant to being told anything by anyone outside their experience model.
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Apologies for the crappy links but go to the YouTube and it’s Ward Carrol’s latest interview with Justin Bronk and the second video was from Task and Purpose asking provocatively if the Attack Helicopter dead based on Russia losing 80+ so far, kinda click bait as it started to turn into an Apache propaganda video towards the end (no shade thrown at the venerable Apache with that) but still recommend for the points made pro / con
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Ward Carrol is a 2 decade out of date Tomcat RIO who has as much understanding of helicopter aviation as would be expected by a Naval strike pilot who only ever saw them operate over blue water. I don’t hate the guy, but he’s waaaaay outside his wheelhouse.
If somebody doesn’t think Attack Rotary wing can function in LSCO and their examples are the Russian Hostemel “Leroy Jenkins” or the famous attack to destroy yourself by 11th Regiment in 03, they are cherry picking. Kurt Waldron and the Israeli Apache community would have a very different opinion on the survivability of helicopter aviation in a LSCO/RF arena.
Most of the Russian helicopters lost have been from…. Indirect fire. Surprise, helicopters are vulnerable when they are sitting on the ground same as fixed wing.
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Mods delete.
Something is corrupted off those YouTube links-
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You’re a helo pilot. Every input you’ve ever made is batshit and an affront to aerodynamics.
Not just that I’ve flown both methods of Helo.
Explaining tandem aerodynamics and control principles is truly dark voodoo.
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Yeah man, I think that’s obvious.
I’m saying it’s a complicated topic that people have been trying to figure out for thousands and thousands of years. I’m not able to add anything… We’re all about 60 lifetimes of reading behind as is.
For the purpose of this discussion, re: ‘will to fight’ it’s the folks who have the credible and enforceable authority to order forces to fight on behalf of a state.
Also for the purposes of this discussion, it obviously varies by how you bound things in time (among a billion other ways to frame). For example, in our system the ‘will of the state’ comes down to exactly one human at a singular point in the first few minutes of a full-scale nuclear exchange… but you can zoom out from there to all the factors that put the button in his hand, and farther to the system in which that button exists, ad infinitum.
I don’t necessarily find fault in this explanation.
To use a metaphor, effectively we (the population) are in the “pilots seat” but we merely make inputs into the CDU. The aircraft is completely coupled to the FCS, and we merely make inputs every 2-4-6 years to the parameters of that system based off our interpretation of what we should make the aircraft do, but in the end it’s the computer (government) that will make all the action functions in our behalf.
We just have to hope the input we made wasn’t completely batshit.
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If they can't achieve an objective without us giving them something new or different, then they are stuck. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but if they can't change it on their own....
Also the demographics of their fighting forces is getting rough. Very rough. The spring/summer offensive did not go as advertised.
But if they still have the will to fight...
It’s not just they have the will to fight. They are expressing competencies they didn’t start the war with largely because it takes months to build them.
People who used our optics of what ah offensive move looks like forget they are a military built around maneuver in order to conduct fires where we are the opposite. If they had tried to conduct the break through that US and NATO forces were advertising and using our tactics to their demographics would look a whole lot worse. They would not have had the core competency’s to conduct regimental actions of that kind. It’ll take years to rebuild them to that model. Same reason night action is so infrequent in this war, it consumes roughly 3 times the ammunition when we do it. They can’t afford to strain sustainment like that. At this point in the war it’s a convergence period, one where they have effectively been pushing back Russian counter attacks.
And the weaponeering required to effectively destroy the bridge just aren’t their with the tools they have in their arsenal and never really were at the outset of the war. That said with what they have had/received/and importantly invented themselves they’ve effectively put the Russian Navy out of the fight minus being a Kalibr platform. Even of that they have eroded that from surface task forces to individual ship ops from longer lines of sustainment because they Ukrainians are effectively threatening Sevastopol now.
If they have the will to keep fighting let them. And more importantly resource them when a lot of the billions of dollars of weapons we are sending are largely systems we own close to end of lot life like all those non unitary M26s. And you’re right about demographics as an expendable item to track. That’s why it was so critical to get them our sides tanks and IFVs. There is no question about crew survivability in comparison which keeps the most important military resource (the trained guy) in the fight to go again after reconsolidating. Russia isn’t getting the same option.
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Russian Ukraine shenanigans
in General Discussion
Posted
I mean there’s plenty to pick on with the Germans. Lord knows I’ve seen it since I was stationed there all of 4 years. Still they’ve become the easy button to sell people on the populism message of “we gotta take care of our own.”
It’s an old bias that I was happy to see Trump call out (callous as his normal method) but it’s not effectively true anymore. They are starting to fix their long overdue stupidity. The first step in that was getting rid of Merkle who for the whole of the Trump admin just adopted the contrarian position along with people like Trudeau rather than actually worked to strengthen NATO.
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