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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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Kind of a rosy assessment of Russian military power given they are bogged down in the poorest European country right now. This whole war can be seen as nothing but a failure by any objective observer. It is pathetic. They thought they could take Ukraine in a week and now we're watching years go by. It is just sad and I was much more worried about Russia before they revealed exactly how weak they are.

Bogged down in the poorest European country

1 ) Ukraine isn't the poorest. Moldova is, iirc.

  1. you are eliding that Ukraine gets all the surveillance and espionage data it needs to use the high tech weapons it got free of charge. Patriots, ATGMs, NASAMS, Himars, Storm Shadow, hundreds of quality artillery systems etc. Enough to equip a large EU/NATO army.

From less high tech weapons, it got ~1000 tanks, 1000s of IFVs, most of its artillery shells and so on.

Poorest country except it got military equipment on par with the French army, at least artillery wise.

Without that help and those supplies, it'd have been over for Ukraine by fall of '22 probably.

  1. you're also eliding that it gets specialist foreign troops operating air defense and elint equipment. (no, they didn't train Ukes to operate it. It takes years of training just to get basic familiarity. )

  2. but a failure by any objective observer. Yeah, the initial plan A (watch the bribed government scram) was a failure.

Plan B, grind down Ukrainian army to the point they can't go on is ongoing. Even Americans are now admitting it's unwinnable.

But it is also showing how faithless Americans are. Despite all their big words, they're unable to even provide Ukraine with something as basic as air defenses. Richest country in the world can't or won't give out thousands of radar guided missiles. Could it? (honestly don't know, but I suspect it has thousands of Aim-120 which should be adaptable for ground launch)

Wow. Imagine how bad Russia would fare against a foe that was already trained and equipped with that top-tier weaponry you described and proficient in combined arms and maneuver warfare?

Seems like that would go poorly for them.

Wow. Imagine thinking US could do combined arms warfare in absence of air superiority.

Note that you’re avoiding the main point that Russia demonstrably sucks against a weaker foe, let alone a peer or more.

But also, imagine thinking the US needs air superiority to be effective at combined arms on the ground.

It’s even funnier to think the US wouldn’t have air superiority against the joke of Russian capabilities we’ve seen.

It’s even funnier to think the US wouldn’t have air superiority against the joke of Russian capabilities we’ve seen.

I guess you haven't been paying attention to Russia destroying US 'smart' munitions, in flight, repeatedly.

My understanding is the Ukrainians have been able to penetrate Russian airspace pretty regularly and that a lack of munitions and the West desiring them to limit attacks on Russian soil are the limiting factors. Not the impressive performance of the Russian Air Force or air defense systems.

The US has a lot more aircraft and missiles that are far more capable than what the Ukrainians have.

It’s a bad sign that Russia has to source drones from Iran.

Yes, being able to occassionally hit targets inside of Russia with small plastic drones or sometimes even an ultralight plane means "Russia isn't controlling its airspace".

LLM tier understanding on display from you, so bye.

My guy you seriously tried to argue Russian forces didn’t have a numerical advantage in the opening phase of the war and now you think I have the LLM-tier understanding here?

Ahahaha https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/ukraines-strikes-deep-into-russia-have-a-new-tool-a-small-commercial-plane/?amp=1

You think that makes Russian air defense look better? During an ongoing war a little civ aircraft just makes it through?

That’s the literal definition of Russia not controlling its airspace!

Russia demonstrably sucks at war fighting and here you are trying to pretend that somehow things would go better against an adversary far more capable than Ukraine is.