2D3D
28d ago
Frankly this is one reason I actually prefer Reddit to this forum regarding certain hot topics (Ukraine, Holocaust, probably a few more). Either the specific subject matter experts demurr, or the topic has a pendantically obstinate position advanced eternally by emotionally invested posters. No slight against emotionally invested defenses of untenable positions, the consequence free wasteland of an anonymous forum means I will unironically simp for the XiMa TenAliAI Godhead, but it does mean that this tick isnt coming unburrowed.
2D3D
28d ago
Russia has much more to lose than Ukraine. Sure, Ukraine loses more as a percentage of its original reputation/territory/resources/material, but by absolute quantity Russian pyrrhic victory has lost more, and nothing can rebuild the Russian arms export market.
2D3D
28d ago
You hit the nail on the head regarding the noncredible source. Often the usage of noncredible sources with demonstrated conspiracism and creative interpretations of reality (moonofalabama, wsws, consortiumnews, ritter mcgregor armchairw etc... and you all haven't even scraped Islamic twitter) is itself proof of scraping the bottom of the barrel to (ironically) write a 5000 word soup of 'logic' and 'facts' to justify an end point already concluded in the headline. Cogency and sourcing wither in the face of ironclad certitude, for evidence and theory are already one and the same to those pissing in the pool they drink from.
2D3D
28d ago
Slavs are sluts and while Muslims are chaste (zero value judgment to those appellations) seems somewhat reductive but I do wonder if the axis is 'purity vs starvation' as opposed to innate sexual proclivities in the differing cultures. This is an idle thought not worth expending too many brain cells on; at least within the confined of this topics original bearing which I have risked derailing by thoughtlessly discussing perversions.
2D3D
21d ago
Thankfully humans aren't frogs, and people can literally move away when things get too bad. Once excess wealth is no longer free for the taking, market forces force a rationalization either by failure or by reform. Plenty of housing projects and suburban neighbourhoods became failures once black people moved in and the property values collapsed due to the rise in crime, with no amount of cajoling or 'rejuvenation' actually moving the needle on the prices. Barring mandatory state-facilitated wealth transfers, which also presumes both full state capture and maintenance of state capability, I don't see these trends sustaining long term to reach a denouement for either the Equity or the Libertarian viewpoints.
2D3D
27d ago
Honestly as much as Russia waving the nuclear saber is a visible prospect in light of current stated and anticipated hostilities, we all seem to forget the most likely course of nuclear apocalypse: nuclear armed retards. India and Pakistan could have absolutely nuked the shit out of each other back in 2022 when India accidentally launched a Brahmos at Pakistan and the Pakistanis were too asleep at the wheel to respond. If the Pakistanis were more on the ball, we really would have seen the first nuclear incident since Hiroshima/Nagasaki, all thanks to fucktards inheriting toys from their forebears
2D3D
28d ago
Restraint can be a function of inability as much as unwillingness, and as much as renting a boat and finding some surplus explosives is relatively conceivable to us, the net frictional effort may be less efficient than remaining in the wests good books in exchange for artillery and A2AD. Specifics on why a mass special force terrorism campaign has not been seen yet is for armchair generals on NCD, since discussing operational or tactical or technical military matters here is generally lacking as actual subject matter experts are circumspect and blowhards are unrestrained.
More germane to the topic of discussion, the broadly philosophical 'why' of these wars, seem to be tinged with aspects of the culture war. I am suspicious of claims that one party is slave to the whims of another, especially if that 'other' is a stated proximate enemy. The real enemy after all are the cowardly democrats forcing Ukraine to fight innocent Russia who champions true hero of the anti-woke (Trump), or the real enemy are the LGBTQIA+ Harvard DEI consultants encouraging the ummah to strike back against the bastion of Western Colonialism. The vague stink of culture war obviously permeates anything, but Ukraine in particular seems to attract a specific strain of aggrieved 'peacenik' who cannot fathom at all why someone would fight back against an aggressor.
When these discussions do not pass the smell test, it certainly invites suspicion that the discussions are not going to be held in good faith. No amount of discussion, good faith or otherwise, will dissuade a party set in their opinion, and the discussions bog down into mutual whining. Its certainly can be fun and even enlightening by accident, but the core arguers are unlikely to budge.
2D3D
1d ago
Good point re undertale. That game had a pretty decent core gameplay loop to underpin the experience, but the dialogue was actually decent and emotionally investible. My specific complaint about 'choice' is that Mass Effect, Fallouts and to a lesser extent Skyrim had really poor consequences for choices, they were just different coloured lights and minimal FMV cutscenes. Perhaps the challenge of working in a Universe means you can't have wild ranging consequences, any sequel requires certain base states to persist: I can't nuke the universe in ME3 or kill Preston Garvey in FO4, and that cheapens the 'freedom of choice' in the game.
2D3D
21d ago
Look at WW2. Past winners prepared for a trench war. Especially in wars, looking at what used to win is just weird
I don't mean what people used to win, I mean look at what past winners are doing now. I would trust the Iranians over the Iraqis over what sort of capability is the right trend to go for winning in the region, just as I would trust the Taliban over the ANA. Similarly, I would trust NATO over Warsaw Pact, or Israel over Egypt, on who is likely to have a clearer head on what is more likely to work. I would also point out that this calculus changes rapidly, and we do see that with NATO suddenly trying - and failing - to rediscover the love of 155mm artillery.
There's been no good environment to establish what actually works and what doesn't.
With regards to aerial operations, this statement simply is not true. Since Vietnam, we have not seen a single instance of air supremacy being countered by GBAD, with Mole Cricket 19 and Gulf War 1 showing how a full spectrum multi layer GBAD network can be curbstomped by the threat they are supposed to be the hard counter towards, and thats against Phantoms and F15s that have the RCS of a bus. Meritorious arguments about whether those were 'anomalies', such as what Kenneth Pollack does in 'Armies of sand' when he cites specific cultural into organizational into C&C failures of Arabs as specific reasons why those systems failed have been made, so it is up to us to decide whether 'near peers' like the Chinese or Russians are necessarily up to scratch - current Ukraine would point to that not being the case, with most casualties for the UAF being the caused by the excellent Mig-31 mounted R37 air launched missile. I would also point out that many countries in the NATO sphere have their own Air Defense Artillery - specifically Patriot and their own ADA testing, even in adverse conditions, has lead them to conclude that buying into the F35 is still a good decision. I would like to imagine comically large sacks of money changing hands as a smug lockmart exec combs his hair to the WSB dicaprio slickback, but that still means their internal papers have concluded it is better to purchase F35 even though other companies are knocking at the door with their own comically large kickbacks - the last major western aerial purchase scandal was Dassault in the 90s to my recollection, but there has been plenty of investigations launched with no firm conclusion since then.
Russia is not firing them at Israeli war planes. Don't know what the etiquette is at locking targeting radars on IAF, but I imagine it's also not done there for obvious reasons (in a war zone, the logical thing is for someone to fire an anti-radiation missile the other way) so Israelis in F-35s wouldn't know if they're being acquired.
So your thesis is both 'S400 is so good that it can detect the Israelis without them noticing' and 'Russia is polite so they won't try to acquire the S400 because otherwise its a shooting match'. This literally is the opposite of how routine flight operations are conducted - terrestrial radar - even normal airport tower - stations ALWAYS paint aircraft in neighbouring countries without issue so long as the airspace integrity isn't violated (see Turkey shooting down Russian jets the moment they crossed the border back in 2015 - the Russians were tracked long before they actually physically crossed). My point is that the Russians own presence in Syria allow the capabilities of the S400 in establishing a track on the F35 can be done without needing Turkey to act as the backdoor to upend the Secrets Of Stealth. There are plenty of other reasons for the S400 vs F35 spat that don't hinge on LockMart being nervous that F35 will be exposed for the failure it is.
Ultimately, I feel it is instructive to see the direction of where countries are focusing their efforts on in countering a modern aerial threat environment. More SHORAD solutions against drones, more natively integrated AESA inside stealthy aerial platforms, less dedicated ADA ground stations. Even India has demurred against exercising the option for purchasing the last remaining S400 units, and the Indians are the only major air force with a positive operational history that have not bet big on stealth as their air dominance capability. S400 certainly has its advantages, but it has not been assessed to be the stealth killer by the people actually making the decision to buy the damn things.
2D3D
22d ago
You want me to give you the kind of data that'd get you into ADX Florence or whatever its Chinese equivalent is
Of course not. This is a nerd forum, not warthunder. If you have secret info so damning to stealth, then so be it, rest easy that when the balloon floats you'll be vindicated, unlike literally every nation scrambling over themselves to buy F35s or develop the Su57 or J31 or Qahar. I prefer to err on the side of the wisdom of crowds and see 'past winners' continuing to buy 'winning' tech. Lazy and reductive, but its not like the history disfavors it. There is one exception to this historical trend though, and its super fun!
I think people are just full of shit. And when there's billions at stake, the incentive to deny and lie and hope it somehow works out gets irresistible.
Of course this cuts both ways: S400 and Pantsir sellers also have every incentive to tout their stealth killing capability, which kind of is odd if stealth is so useless that 'multilateral' stations and a ring of IRST can easily counter this non-threat. Do note that the multirole/air superiority sales sector does not advertise their offerings as 'better than F35' but instead 'we can fulfill your order books faster and meanie LockMart doesn't want to sell F35 to you' for expensive multiroles (F15EX, Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale) or 'you are poor and we are cheap' (TA-50, Tejas, JF17). Whether this thesis is rooted in smart purchasing decisions avoiding a politically loaded white elephant or a reflection of limited political/financial bargaining power is an exercise in relative value assignment.
Finally, re Turkey... I respect your hypothesis that S400 tested against F35 would show the folly of stealth against superior GBAD and the USA is being spiteful bitches for Turkey going behind NATOs back, but do consider that Turkey has always been an ally of last resort in the geopolitical chessboard which is the Near East. Erdogan has made no secret of his disdain for the West, and with that comes an adjusted calculus on whether that asset owner will respect the interests of the manufacturer - a very different and significantly more interesting discussion could be had on whether F35 unified maintenance system and capabilities are the REAL octopus of the US DoD ensnaring lesser states in its wake, but again that may require a seperate effortpost.
In any case S400 has been directly used by Russia in Syria already, which is right next to Israel which has had F35s in the air since 201?, so the live data aspect should already be known to them (and, for our sake as internet shitposters, not us).
2D3D
24d ago
Point to how good multilateration is vs stealth please. At that sensitivity you're making your radar pick up every passing sparrow. Good luck differentiating one gain, much less three. IRST still has a very wide performance band, always better for confirmation than for acquisition. IR has an issue where it is rear-facing optimized against jets since the heat of an engine comes from the rear (engine motors on helos are all hot which is why SHORAD will never go out of style) and is constant, unlike forward facing thermal profiles which continually deform based on angle and scatter. Stealth is also not just radar signature reduction, it is also thermal emissivity absorbing, which is why all stealth planes have that darker shade - absorbs more thermal energy and thus reflects less thermal energy. Also, thermal has notably stupid performance when things like cloud reflected scatter (same as radar), so a web (can't be a ring, you can just punch a hole) of IR sensors must still be complemented by multiple stations to increase gain probability. Nevertheless, once a decision is made to launch GBAD in a not so vague direction where a hostile aircraft is incoming, IR does render stealth null. Modern IRH is stupid hard to soft counter inside the kill envelope, so if the adversary is ok with just wasting dozens of missiles in the vague air then yeah stealth totally is a meme - but so is basically any type of air mission if the enemy just throws dozens of missiles at every passing (literal) bird.
I would like to highlight that one reason the Ukrainians thought the Russians were not actually going to invade was that reports of the Russian "forward" buildup especially in Belarus indicated extremely poor readiness and logistical buildup, past the point of sustainment for a narrow-deep or wide-shallow push, much less the wide-deep required for the Kyiv assault. Any presumption that the LMD has a high force readiness is... well I think the 4 GTD and 2 MRD around Moscow are the only ones actually cited as a fully kitted and prepared units, with everyone else basically being your conscript cadre fillout. I really don't see the balloon rising in your specific scenario without it being telegraphed. Wagners thunder run to Moscow (Prigozhin my beloved) was not telegraphed at all and thats what caught Rostov totally unaware.
edited to rephrase a term
2D3D
27d ago
My bad, I saw 3.5m and mentally added 3 0s to reach 3.5b and went 'hmm every woman in the world. ok I respect that but damn'
2D3D
28d ago
Doesn't reflect the consensus now, following the backlash to her Quincy Institute orchestrated/backed/supported/cheerlead letter demanding Biden negotiate with Russia and force Ukrainian concessions.
Following the backlash the CPC fell in line, but never really backed away from its 'US foreign policy bad everyone else just wants to be peaceful' stance. I point to how Pocan (not Pogan, sorry) now has to put his name front and center for the CPC letter demanding Israel cease actions, which Biden is edging towards. That Biden is leaning to the view of the Jayapal-minimized CPC on Israel and not on Ukraine might be due to a fairer assessment of CPC on Ukraine making it more anti-Russia or any of the other permutations I'm too lazy to elucidate. I specifically stated that the CPC is not the dominating force it once was, but I am happy to consider other facts (such as the above clarification that the CPC always supported Ukraine) to reevaluate my assessment of the CPCs present and past influence.
2D3D
28d ago
My assessment stems from Jayapal getting smacked down for her October 2022 call for Ukraine to surrender, and how the new Israel ceasefire statement is made by Pogan instead of her. The CPC is the largest caucus, sure, but Biden seems to occasionally coincide with their priorities rather than wait on them. My main indicator is how neutered Jayapal specifically is despite her stated ambitions, and I will be happy to reevaluate my conclusions based on evidence of either Jayapals nonrelevance to the CPC or Jayapals wing being specifically catered to.
2D3D
28d ago
Yes, most want some other countryman to fight. Conscription always has this tension of 'are we getting the right bodies in the fight' and right now, especially since mid 2023 we can posit that war enthusiasm has died down with the calculus shifting on where Ukraines maximal capability is following Ukrainian failures even with the much vaunted European armour. Mobilization in any country has never been popular, with responses ranging 'bitching about it' to 'fragging the Lt'. On this front I will give Russians a measure of credit, the sheer number of buryats and tajiks enthusiastically clambering into shitboxes to catch a mine is quite amazing.
2D3D
28d ago
Be well yourself, said hopefully without sarcasm. I find intermittent discussions of history or policy to be of invigorating intellectual merit, but not all discussions are necessarily enjoyable, and Ukraine often leads to misery on multiple sides. Perhaps a less heated topic, like the impending AI apocalypse looking like the actual Butlerian Jihad, might warrant an effortpost since it will inspire less intransigent discussions.
2D3D
28d ago
Exactly! I am an unashamed punter, so I can claim to have direct observable experience with the working girls in various countries, and so I am legit curious if the slavs (highest point on the price to quality curve) have increased in quantity. Cheaper slavs is generally a good thing for punters looking for a good time.
Can't comment on the hypergamy, I think thats a function of economics - the Dubai scene seems to indicate Slavs are actually more circumspect than other participants, surprisingly.
Drunk indians go 'baseline personality x10 (i.e. more gregarious or more anxious)' and then just pass out. There is no clearing the clouds.
Re the misgendering, you can blame it on a long history of being aunty killer, and that translates into being part of the Trusted Circle once time went on. Fun as it is to drink with the uncles and reminisce about rambunctious youthful escapades, I can at least learn something about how to make deep fried cheese samosas from the aunties in the kitchen. And as a man I can still drink shitloads of whisky even in there, so its the best of both worlds.
2D3D
1mo ago
I'm honestly surprised I don't see Ardbegs or Bowmores in the list of mottedrinks. The Ardbeg Uiegadil, Corryvrecken and Alligator are all on the same smokiness/mouthfeel/finish curve, with the marginal improvement in quality from Uiegadil to Corryvreckan being just about justified and the Alligator being unreasonably expensive for my thinning wallet. Very light peat flourishes overall, excellent drinkability and flavour, varying smoothness on the finish depending on the variant.
The bowmores used to be my standby, but since the disconitnuation of the Black Rock I've only had the 15 as my economical standby of choice. Like a less smoky Lag 16 with a speyside sweetness.
The last drink I'm partial to is the Kavalan Solist. Prices have come down since they won the awards almost a decade ago so they are now reasonable options.
If simply getting buzzed is the objective though, I drink Chinese or Korean shochus/alcopops. Surprisingly strong and taste really good.
2D3D
1mo ago
The minimal obligation expected of an aid recipient is 'don't waste it'. International aid, such little as it may be, has consistently been:
- reappropriated (martyrs fund, water pipes being reused as rocket)
- actively destroyed for no benefit (gaza greenhouses)
- corruptly siphoned (personal wealth of Arafat and Haniyeh)
No reconstruction plan can exist if the recipients actively reject such efforts, and prior events (Jordanian Black September, Kuwaiti ) shows that accommodations provided even by erstwhile allies is not appreciated, and limiting charity takes a backseat to expelling hostiles.
With the Palestinian population consistently displaying underappreciation, if not active hostility, towards aid providing entities, what recourse is there for Israel? Israel offered to return Gaza to Egypt and West Bank to Jordan, and both declined. Why must Israel bear the burden of enduring the incessant attacks of a hostile population, much less actively support said population.
2D3D
2d ago
3 foot soldiers dead on national TV was enough to end BLM; how much worse for turbo-BLM in a free-fire zone?
BLM ended because the godzilla threshold for sending in the troops to quash rioters was breached. The riots could definitely have descended into haiti-level extortion rackets if the police never came in.
I don't doubt that cowardly looters would scatter at the first few dead, and reprisal raids conducted by amateurs are easily defended as you state. However defense of territory is never easy with multiple entry vectors, and territory can never be held in anarchic situations. A regression to defensible strongpoints with the rest being grey zones is the likely path for any conflict state with insufficient bodies and weapons to wage permanent war.
2D3D
2d ago
Presuming the actions of Russia are deliberate gives them too much credit. Incompetent management of criminals that happen to be Tuvan or Chechen is hardly different from incompetent management of Ukrainian or Muscovite gangs. The consequences are not borne by the stare, so what incentive is there to really crack down on criminal elements even if there is a racialized component.
2D3D
20d ago
I wish, but alas it doesn't seem to be true. Criminalizing debtors and vagrants and prostitutes to make up numbers for the mines is a reversal of what my posited state is. I think the early settlers were extremely happy to exile or execute criminals, so that really helped keep order. In our scenario of the middle ground the large body of criminals are actively violent types, not unfortunates rounded up.
'We are hated and (((they))) are destroying things we like'.
That is the basic aggrievement of the polack. Many modern culture war aspects map fairly neatly into the antipolack position, and polacks are largely losers who lack escape mechanisms from the assaults on their favourite escapes. A redneck in his cabin can still go out and drive his coal roller, an Indian can turn to the pro-India internet to get his ego reinflated, a Chinese can continue ignoring the incomprehensible west, but the polack can only suffer within the communication environment he is wholly nestled within and which he has little alternatives to enjoy.
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