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Russian Ukraine shenanigans


08Dawg

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4 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

 

Does the logic work both ways?  Would you also say Russia has the will to fight despite their forced conscription?  Because I hear a lot about Russian forced conscription being symptomatic of imminent defeat, which seems like selective bias.

Yes. Yes. The people who say that are  conflating a state’s intent to fight with the consequences of the policies it uses to do so. Those are related concepts but not the same, regardless of form of government.

 

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6 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Because I hear a lot about Russian forced conscription being symptomatic of imminent defeat, which seems like selective bias

You've never heard me say that.

 

A country is not just whatever portion of the population works for your particular political position. A country is represented by its government, and its government exists at the discretion, or at the very least inaction, of the population.

 

When the opposition to the Vietnam war became great enough that the congressional and presidential elections were decided on it, the US shifted course. That's just how governments work. The government *is* the country.

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9 minutes ago, raimius said:

Very much disagree.

The government represents the country, more or less. (More when democratically elected, less when a dictatorship/oligarchy.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)
 

I’m sure we’ll settle this over the next few days by blaming team D or team R, but “what is a state” is a worthwhile recurring rabbit hole.

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2 hours ago, jice said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)
 

I’m sure we’ll settle this over the next few days by blaming team D or team R, but “what is a state” is a worthwhile recurring rabbit hole.

If someone says "United States" do you think "POTUS, SCOTUS, and Congress" IS the United States of America?  I hope we can define it a little bit larger than just that, otherwise "we the people" have literally become irrelevant.

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58 minutes ago, raimius said:

If someone says "United States" do you think "POTUS, SCOTUS, and Congress" IS the United States of America?  I hope we can define it a little bit larger than just that, otherwise "we the people" have literally become irrelevant.

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. 

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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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9 hours ago, Lawman said:


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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You’re a helo pilot. Every input you’ve ever made is batshit and an affront to aerodynamics.

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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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On 11/25/2023 at 7:04 AM, Danger41 said:

You’re a helo pilot. Every input you’ve ever made is batshit and an affront to aerodynamics.

This! 

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Mods delete.

Something is corrupted off those YouTube links

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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Could any of you imagine the US being in a war these days and the US government straight up lying/not telling the American people/the press on how many American troops have been killed?  Yet we see that happening from both Russia and Ukraine.  Putin is complete crap and Ukraine is definitely not some type of democracy we should be bragging about.  If the goal of the US government is to pay Ukraine (since they were the one attacked), in order to fight/kill Russians and severely weaken Russia’s military, then the US government should just come out and say it…there’s a legitimate national security argument to be made in doing so.  But to say we actually care about Ukraine because of who they are, their “democracy”, that’s just bs.

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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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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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Carroll’s video is not about attack helicopters but a discussion on the current state of the Ukrainian air war

Task and Purpose video is


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On 11/28/2023 at 4:23 AM, HeloDude said:

Could any of you imagine the US being in a war these days and the US government straight up lying/not telling the American people/the press on how many American troops have been killed?  Yet we see that happening from both Russia and Ukraine.  Putin is complete crap and Ukraine is definitely not some type of democracy we should be bragging about.  If the goal of the US government is to pay Ukraine (since they were the one attacked), in order to fight/kill Russians and severely weaken Russia’s military, then the US government should just come out and say it…there’s a legitimate national security argument to be made in doing so.  But to say we actually care about Ukraine because of who they are, their “democracy”, that’s just bs.

One man's lying is another man's information warfare. Ukraine is in an existential war and using all the methods of warfare at its disposal. A more interesting discussion topic is this article.  

Putin won't make peace in Ukraine before 2024 US election -US official | Reuters

For all the talk (led by the old football coach) about how weak the US military is these days, why would Putin have to wait until the US goes in a different direction politically?  

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3 hours ago, VigilanteNav said:

One man's lying is another man's information warfare. Ukraine is in an existential war and using all the methods of warfare at its disposal.

Lying to your own people…so much freedom and democracy.  I remember when progressives weren’t too happy when they said Bush was lying.

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On 11/27/2023 at 11:08 PM, Lawman said:


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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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.

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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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On 11/27/2023 at 10:23 PM, HeloDude said:

Could any of you imagine the US being in a war these days and the US government straight up lying/not telling the American people/the press on how many American troops have been killed?  Yet we see that happening from both Russia and Ukraine.  Putin is complete crap and Ukraine is definitely not some type of democracy we should be bragging about.  If the goal of the US government is to pay Ukraine (since they were the one attacked), in order to fight/kill Russians and severely weaken Russia’s military, then the US government should just come out and say it…there’s a legitimate national security argument to be made in doing so.  But to say we actually care about Ukraine because of who they are, their “democracy”, that’s just bs.

The non-stop drumbeat of propaganda crowing Russia's (exaggerated) losses while never speaking of Ukraine's has gotten very tiresome.  UAF are space marines that inflict casualties 30:1, yet they're chronically short of manpower and their average serving age is 45.  Like, who actually falls for this?  Can they at least be less annoying about it?

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