Downed Russian Fighters Said to Be Found With Basic GPS 'Taped To the Dashboards' (businessinsider.com) 406
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
Wrecked Russian fighter jets are being found with rudimentary GPS receivers "taped to the dashboards" in Ukraine because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad, the UK's defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said.... "[W]hilst Russia has large amounts of artillery and armor that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms maneuver and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages," he added....
Last month, Ukrainian troops paraded what they said was a Russian drone that had been covered in duct tape and fitted with a generic plastic bottle top for a fuel cap. In March, Ukrainian troops found what appeared to be Russian army bandages dating to 1978 discarded on a battlefield. In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles "are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them" and that soldiers were using "pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks" and attaching "overhead 'cope cages' to their tanks."
Last month, Ukrainian troops paraded what they said was a Russian drone that had been covered in duct tape and fitted with a generic plastic bottle top for a fuel cap. In March, Ukrainian troops found what appeared to be Russian army bandages dating to 1978 discarded on a battlefield. In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles "are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them" and that soldiers were using "pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks" and attaching "overhead 'cope cages' to their tanks."
Russia is so technologically backward (Score:5, Funny)
they haven't advanced from tape to Velcro.
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This is a personal unit, so the pilot can play Pokemon Go! while flying. Gotta catch 'em all!
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Informative)
The fact they haven't won is already despite their ovwheliing numbers advantage in every sense is already seeming like a victory. Wars generally are not won in days or weeks. It's anyones war but pretty clear Russia is on the backfoot.
Also the "west" while being a major supplier to Ukraine is not directly fighting. One thing from this conflict has become pretty clear though, if the US/EU forces were in fact directly involved this would be a pretty short conflict. The fact that Ukraine still has planes and is still flying sorties is a testament of some degree of military failure.
Eastern Ukraine has been disputed territory for 8 years, where have you been? The war proper has only turned there the last couple weeks, lots to come.
Learn how GPS works maybe? It's not a two way protocol, you can't "deny usage" to anyone, the satellites are just blasting out coordinate numbers to everyone. It's up to the receiver to decode positions from it.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Funny)
The fact they haven't won is already despite their ovwheliing numbers advantage in every sense is already seeming like a victory.
More western propaganda! Russia won the war in under two weeks! They have arrested all the Nazi's, rebuilt the country, and brought peace to Ukraine. It's western propaganda that says otherwise!
Re: Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:3)
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
despite their ovwheliing numbers advantage
They don't have numbers advantage let alone overwhelming. Ukraine has mobilized half a million. Russian troops in Ukraine are 2 or 3 times less
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Interesting)
That all adds to the mystery of how Russia has acted this entire time though. "On paper" Russia has close to 1 million active personnel and 2 million in reserve with huge numbers advantage in every aircraft, ground support system, artillery, tanks, helicopters, missile systems, almost everything.
If they really have "2 to 3 times less" troops being the offensive attacker in this conflict are you actually trying to win? Let's not act like in February if you asked just about anyone who would win in a conflict between Ukraine and Russia most everyone would have easily said Russia, it would just be a disagreement of how and when. That Russia has failed and/or Ukraine succeeded this far will be studied in miltary academies for decades to come.
Re: Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Interesting)
What i think had happened is everyone includong russian leadership has been gaslighted by the oligarchs who updated a few pieces to prove to inspectors and then left everything else rust. But then still counted. Combine with generals who paid their way onto their places. The whole army is a fraxtion of what it is on paper.
Just not taking control of airspace is a massive failure on russia's part.
I dont know how this will shake out. The fact that russia is losing territory they already gained is tough to belive.
The ukrianins are fighting intrenched gorilla tactics. If they can keep it up theyight just pull a hat trick.
Killing russian military leadership is a great start.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4)
This is something that's pretty typical in modern wars. Modern armies can move fast so the aggressor mobilizes as many troops as they think are necessary and makes an attempt to quickly seize critical infrastructure and people. If you get bogged down then defender gets a chance to mobilize and they've got the huge advantage of being desperate.
The Germans did it to France and the Japanese partially succeeded in doing it to the US in WWII.
Russia may or may not be able to call up their reserves without sparking a revolution but it's pretty unlikely they can implement widespread conscription. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have more volunteers than they can train because everybody knows what happens if they lose.
Russia *should* have made a push towards Kiev then, when it failed to meet its timeline, backed off, consolidated their gains in the Donbas, and said "jokes, that Kiev thing was just a diversion so we could rescue good Russians from evil Ukrainian nazis!"
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Russia can't call up reserves without declaring a war, which Putin has studiously avoided, so far.
This also means that Russian soldiers can refuse to fight with little consequences.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
That all adds to the mystery of how Russia has acted this entire time though. "On paper" Russia has close to 1 million active personnel and 2 million in reserve with huge numbers advantage in every aircraft, ground support system, artillery, tanks, helicopters, missile systems, almost everything.
There's no mystery there. Russia is not at work with the Ukraine. Officially anyway. They are conducting a "special military operation" and chose this definition carefully. This leads to all sorts of strange situations, such as the military telling their soldiers they need to deploy and the soldiers turning around and saying, "nah, don't think I will". https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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> Russian troops in Ukraine are 2 or 3 times less
Wouldn't "1 times less" be... 0?
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Learn how GPS works maybe? It's not a two way protocol, you can't "deny usage" to anyone [...]
No, but you can put enough noise in the spectrum that GPS uses so that the signal can't get through.
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Learn how GPS works maybe? It's not a two way protocol, you can't "deny usage" to anyone, the satellites are just blasting out coordinate numbers to everyone. It's up to the receiver to decode positions from it.
Actually, to some degree, you can, by using Selective availability [wikipedia.org] to introduce a considerable degree of error that makes GPS much less useful for precision navigation. It was deactivated in 2000, but if it were turned back on, consumer-grade GPS receivers such as that in your smartphone would be unable to calculate a position to within less than about 100 meters.
In any case, I'm actually more surprised that Russian equipment isn't using GLONASS, since they themselves designed it as an alternative to GPS.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, I'm actually more surprised that Russian equipment isn't using GLONASS, since they themselves designed it as an alternative to GPS.
Its entirely possible that they are. I don't think people who write these articles actually know the difference between GPS and GLONASS, and just generically use "GPS" to describe all such systems. A lot of receivers can handle multiple such systems.
(Of course its also possible that GLONASS isn't working so well, which is why they're trying GPS as a backup. But even if that's true, I'd still bet that people writing these articles don't know the difference.)
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Eastern Ukraine has been disputed territory for 8 years, where have you been?
Northern Ireland has been disputed territory for a century. The conflict has certainly involved some bloody terrorist acts, but not actually bombing whole cities into piles of rubble. From what I have read of the rather complicated politics of modern Belgium, the whole country is disputed territory.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can never know which side that plane was.
Because when the jet has a red star on its tail and numbers which don't match anything Ukraine has, it's obviously not a Russian jet.
Do you Russian morons and apologists even think before writing?
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What? Just look up just about any photo of an Su-34, they have a red star on the tail and wings.
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The KGB deserves kudos for tricking the West into spending trillions to counter a mostly non-existent threat.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
You can never know which side that plane was. Because both use Russian fighter jets.
Sure you can, if the wreckage was intact enough to find a GPD receiver you can probably find a couple serial numbers, nation specific markings, Ukraine likely has some idea of which planes it has and which have gone missing in the area or even in the photo of the article (which is likely not the plane in question) you can clearly see the Russia red star emblem on the tail.
Even easier in this case the reported plane is an Su-34 which has not been exported to Ukraine or much in general.
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I agree it doesn't make sense from what we supposedly know about the Russian military but there have been quite a few puzzling decisions and lack of coordination and tactics on Russia's part this entire conflict. I am not fully buying into this story without some more verification but if it was true from everything else we do know it would not be all that surprising today.
If someone had said that 6 months ago it would be incredulous, less so right now.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Interesting)
It makes sense when you realize they're using off-the-shelf walkie talkies instead of encrypted radio in many areas and other older, less useful equipment everywhere. The funding for upgrading and maintaining their forces was diverted to the oligarchy, and they're making do with whatever they can find. The drones made with off-the-shelf components are a good example as well. I mean, does it make sense for the Russian military to all be using open radio bands to discuss battle plans when the Ukrainians can listen in?!?!? Heck no. Of course they have encrypted radio - but not enough, and the ones they have are of different, incompatible types. So for the units of one type in one area to talk to units of a different type that's incoming, they use the open air radio b/c it's the only thing they can do to communicate. Better equipment exists, but they don't have it. Same is likely with this GPS. It was cheap and it worked, so they used it.
Troops are leaving behind expired rations, expired med kits, paper maps from the 90s, and other archaic things. We're not talking expired by a few months, either - expired by decades. Much of the heavy equipment is decades old - some dating back to WWII.
But, their biggest problem is that their supply lines are heavily debilitated. That coupled with the fact that their equipment was designed for nuclear warfare tactics and their generals have no experience with this type of warfare is crippling. They first thought Ukraine would fold under intimidation, then thought the fight would be similar to Syria. It's just been mistake after mistake & they're now lobbing cluster bombs and lots of older, terribly imprecise missiles at the region.
Ukraine has pushed Russia back to the disputed areas, but the war will go on until Russia has had enough. The borderlands are much easier for Russia to resupply and control what land they hold. Barring a nuclear launch, I don't see Russia taking an inch of Ukraine, and quite possibly losing Crimea as well. The Ukrainians are in no mood to negotiate after what Russia has done to their people.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
Russian army has trained to fight in places like Syria, where they're an assist mainly with air power. It's failing when going up against a stronger country that's united against them from from east to west.
Putin screwed up but good. He was overconfident that the fight would be easy, he thought they west would stay away and let Russia do it's thing, like the west did many many times before. He also seems to have believed his own propaganda that Ukraine was weak and full of nazis and all the native Russian speakers there were being persecuted and waiting for a savior (never mind that the president of Ukraine was a native Russian speaker). But once committed, Putin really doesn't have a good means of backing down.
As for the Nazis, Russia has a very different definition of Nazi and what makes them bad. Stalin didn't hate Nazis for being brutish thugs, because he was one too. He hated them because they attacked Russia after having agreed to split up what he considered the slave states of central europe. And Putin admires Stalin and has said so publically. So he likely has a belief that Nazis are anyone who doesn't trust Russia. Given that the president of Ukraine is also Jewish, and obviously no fan of Nazis in any form, the idiot Lavrov was well convinced that this didn't matter and that there was no incompatibility between being Jewish and Nazi at the same time. So ridiculous that even Putin had to correct his number one stooge.
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Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Funny)
The funding for upgrading and maintaining their forces was diverted to the oligarchy, and they're making do with whatever they can find.
The whole Russian economy is screwed up for the same reason. This means that the infrastructure to support a war is depleted. Maybe the oligarchs could send a fleet of super-yachts to the Black Sea, and terrify the Ukrainians with a display of opulence.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Insightful)
He was thus sincerely convinced, he could pull the same stunt, infiltrate the Ukrainian society and foster some cells, which then on his signal oust the current government and make the unwashed masses to join the movement and demand re-unification with Mother Russia. At the begin of the conflict, there was even the public announcement from the Russian side to the Ukrainian Army and to civil officials to abandon the current Nazi-regime and join the rightful cause of Pan-Slavic brotherhood.
Apparently, this totally failed. Basically none of the Armed forces defected to Russia, and except for a short period in the South Ukrainian town of Melitopol, where a pro-Russian politician tried to become the new mayor, also the civil uprising didn't materialize. So either the estimated 100 million dollars set aside for this project were lost in a large corruption scheme, or Russia experienced some kind of "Our Man in Havana", where the FSB believed they had large cells of agents working for them, but all they had was some guy, who accidentally got himself hired, had no idea how to proceed and just sent in fabricated reports to be left in peace. No wonder there purportedly was a purge of 150 FSB officers shortly after the invasion, because the expected cheering for the liberators did not happen.
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More affordable? Russian soldiers are literally stealing toilet seats to take back home.
Re: Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:2)
In general your smartphone gps isn't going to function at the altitudes or speeds a jet aircraft requires. Maybe they used shitty gps's because that's what they had that didn't comply with export/import restrictions in various countries on civilian GPS restrictions.
Smartphones also have terrible GPS reception when they are out of range of cell towers.
Re: Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Informative)
I guess you have never tried to use GPS in an airplane. It works just fine close to a window.
Re: Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Informative)
A-GNSS works by providing the necessary data to the device via a radio network instead of the slow satellite link, essentially "warming up" the receiver for a fix.
instead of the slow satellite link
So. Yes. Your phone GPS will work just fine at getting you a location fix without a data connection, and the "terrible GPS reception" experienced with an off-base cellphone as cited by viperidaenz is actually just how GNSS receivers operate when you are using a dedicated unit that is not being fed data by a secondary source. Slowly.
I could regale you with personal anecdotes of motocrossing around the Australian outback where ISP/mobile coverage and function is about as useful as a 180 grit facial scrub but somehow making it back here to shipost on slashdot, but I will instead politely suggest you read and fully comprehend the evidence you post before you bring it.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
This article reeks of propaganda. There's probably a grain of truth to the stories, but there's likely a lot of sophisticated stuff that they aren't telling us about in the story as well.
The taped GPS is probably an outlier, but it sees to be the story of the Russian army.
There's some proper modern weapon systems (not to mention the previous generations of modern weapons), but there's not many of them and they're not as good as the latest NATO weapons.
But the last time they really built good weapons in bulk was in the Soviet era, and that seems to be a lot of what they're relying on.
I mean, if Russia was really so backwards, why hasn't the west won the war already? Why is Russia essentially in control over the entire eastern half of the Ukraine?
Part of it is that Ukraine had very few modern weapon systems at the start of the war, they're a lot better equipped than they were back then. And the other part is they overestimated the Russian army.
Russia still has a ridiculous backlog of manpower and heavy weapon systems at its disposal. A 40 year old artillery shell can still do a lot of damage.
Russia screwing up and wasting a bunch of weapons and manpower means they just need to wait for the new recruits to show up, if Ukraine loses a bunch of soldiers it's a lot harder to replace them.
And we're SO advanced, why is Russia even bothering to use our GPS -- we should have been able to shut off their access to our GPS, or even better, use it to direct their fighters into traps or something.
GPS receivers are passive. The US military (assuming it was using the US system) can downgrade/shut off all civilian receivers in an area, but that would also mess with the Ukrainians. And considering that the Ukrainians have been making better use of battlefield tactics I'd give them the extra intel.
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Russia never built good weapons in bulk. They built cheap, crappy weapons in bulk
I think a lot of armed forces throughout the world would dispute that, based on the success of the AK-47 rifle. If you want to get nerdy about weapons, Kalashnikov's design is not just cheap crap. It is effective, works in adverse climates, and can be repaired by a village blacksmith.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
if Russia was really so backwards, why hasn't the west won the war already?
"The West" isn't fighting against Russia. (not yet, any way).
Russia has always been a backwards, barely functional country, hobbled by decades of corrupt, incompetent communist government and Russian-made products have always been a joke.
But they have lots and lots of nuclear weapons. And so, for that one reason, the retarded neighborhood bully has to be treated nicely, because you can never be entirely sure that he won't just decide to blow you up one day.
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I should imagine it's "GPS" just like you "Xerox" a copy of a document or blow your nose with "Kleenex". Most people don't know or care that GLONASS or Galileo exist. After all, GPS is in quotes in the article.
Re:Uhh huh, sure they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
The west hasn't won because the west hasn't entered the battle yet! All the west (ie NATO I assume you mean) is doing is supplying arms.
Meanwhile Russia was so overconfident that it felt it could use substandard arms and win quickly, because they're stupid enough to have believed that Ukrainians would have welcomed them with open arms. Maybe a handful of thugs in Donbas would, but the rest of Donbas fled west to escape Hitler 2.0.
Re:Russia is so technologically backward (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the Su-34 is the best fighter-bomber that Russia has. It's their newest and best, and they only had 129 of them at the start of the war. You don't put substandard equipment in your best gear.
Russia has sent their best weapons into the conflict. Su-35s, Ka-52s, T-90Ms, etc. The only things we haven't seen yet are their wunderwaffe prototypes like the Su-57 and T-14 (because they only have like 10 of each and they're still working out the bugs).
Re:Russia is so technologically backward (Score:4, Informative)
they are, by *definition*, second world.
"third world" doesn't mean poor or backwards, but not aligned with either first or second world (which in practice, were pretty much all dirt poor and backwards).
Although I'm not sure what the significance of 70s bandages is, If they're unused. Or have there been advances in cloth wrappings? (or other advances?)
I'm not sure it matters (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, Ukraine needs to hold up for that long. Which could easily be another 2 or 3 months. With the constant influx of weapons though they can do it.
Meanwhile Russia is no longer a major player in the international scene. They'll be licking their wounds for 20 years.
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Have you followed the progress of the war?
Why would Ukraine want to "hold up for that long"? In 2 to 3 months from they will have taken back all the territory Russia occupied a few years ago.
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Putin seems to be dying of liver cancer. Doesn't matter how rich you are, that'll kill you. And when he goes they'll have an excuse to pull out.
That said, Ukraine needs to hold up for that long. Which could easily be another 2 or 3 months...
Why do you say 2 or 3 months? Do we know when Putin started treatment? Do we know at what stage he was diagnosed?
Here are the stats for stage B (but knowing which stage he's at is anybody's guess):
Without treatment, the median survival for stage B liver cancer is 16 months. With treatment, the median survival for stage B liver cancer is 20 months. To treat stage B liver cancer, you might have chemotherapy directly into the blood vessel feeding the tumour in the liver and blocking off the blood supply.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.o... [cancerresearchuk.org]
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Having treatment also means you're going to be in a very bad way from all the chemo, not enough energy to keep running things personally. Also it won't be state of the art chemo and treatment from the west either, it'll be home grown Russian chemo or Chinese.
Re:I'm not sure it matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote: "They'll be licking their wounds for 20 years."
20 years is not enough punishment for their acts of terrorism, war crimes, rapes, torture, executions, thieving (agricultura machines, wheat...), et cetera committed against the Ukrainian people.
Re:I'm not sure it matters (Score:5, Insightful)
20 years is not enough punishment
Be very careful about punitive war reparations against an entire nation. That is one of the factors that caused the German people to support the Nazis, following the response to the first world war.
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there's not enough prisons in Russia to hold its population...
You only need prisons for people you keep alive.
Ukraine might even win (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, Ukraine needs to hold up for that long. Which could easily be another 2 or 3 months.
Been following the Ukraine war closely since the beginning. The top 2 websites for accurate information are Critical Threats [criticalthreats.org], and Ukrinform [ukrinform.net].
The Ukrinform site is the official Ukrainian state feed for the war, so it's completely one-sided, but also completely accurate. I think Ukraine realized that while being the underdog, propaganda would be derided while accurate information would gain sympathy, so as a result everything posted there is strictly vetted for accuracy.
For the first month or so, Ukrinform posted the number of "invaders killed" as maybe 5 to 20, each day depending on circumstance.
Recently this has changed, and Ukrinform is now posting hundreds killed each day, sometimes upwards of 300. A recent posting [ukrinform.net] talks about 80 invaders destroyed in a single incident, and there's usually 3 or 4 such incidents each day.
Basically, after a month's time the promised weapons have been filtering into Ukraine, their army has been making good use of them, and now they are on the offensive.
The Russian army hasn't been much of a threat, either. The Critical Threats site noted this gem yesterday:
The Ukrainian destruction of significant elements of a Russian motorized rifle brigade that tried to cross a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River on May 11 has shocked prominent Russian milbloggers. Those bloggers have begun commenting on the incompetence of the Russian military to their hundreds of thousands of followers. The attempted river crossing showed a stunning lack of tactical sense as satellite images show (destroyed) Russian vehicles tightly bunched up at both ends of the (destroyed) bridge, clearly allowing Ukrainian artillerymen to kill hundreds and destroy scores of vehicles with concentrated strikes.
Ukraine has been destroying Russian military hardware right-and-left, especially very expensive Russian military hardware such as jet fighters and helicopters. They have upped their game and pushed the Russians back, out of Karkiv and almost up to the original Ukraine/Russian border.
It's looking a lot like Ukraine is going to win this war.
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Also see these news sites:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/
https://kyivindependent.com/
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To be honest, I think there'd a whole lot more rhetoric from NATO and the west but not much of anything would happen.
No Western power wants an all-out nuclear confrontation with Russia (it's a no-win game) so they'd probably continue to draw lines in the sand and say "cross this and see what happens" -- only to retreat a few steps and draw another line when Russia does.
I doubt that any of Putin's generals would allow him to push the big button now, in light of Russia's proven poor performance in the militar
Re: Ukraine might even win (Score:4, Interesting)
If Russia ups the ante & becomes an official pariah state by using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an appropriate punishment would be to "encourage" northwest Russia (St. Petersburg, Leningrad Oblast, and every Oblast adjacent to Russia's western border) to secede and form a new country with about 20 million people & the approximate land area of Norway, on a fast track to EU membership.
In one stroke, Siberian Russia would lose all of its most strategic (against Europe) military assets, including its Baltic submarine bases, and most of its Europe-adjacent missile silos. The new "Petrussia" (Petersburg-Russia) would be rich enough to not care about world domination, and small enough population-wise to be incapable of raising a huge army anyway.
With a little propaganda spin & nudging, "Petrussians" would blame "Sibrussians" for dragging them into the war with Ukraine (even if they support it today), mentally write them off as corrupt barbarians, and feel like they collectively dodged a bullet courtesy of their new friends in the US & EU.
Ideally, we'd encourage all of Russia's Black Sea-adjacent Oblasts (and Crimea, since it really doesn't want to be part of Ukraine) to secede & form a second new country, though I can't even begin to guess where its lines should be drawn, since we also don't want to end up encouraging the creation of yet another new Islamic republic... though a vehemently-secular one might be a good future pal to nudge Turkey back towards its own Kemalist roots by giving it a friendly equal peer.
Siberian Russia (with Moscow) wouldn't be landlocked... but the Pacific coast would be all it had left. It would still be a vast, resource-rich country for Moscow to anchor and administer... and with its own population carved down to 80-100 million by secessions, would itself be "right-sized" as a future EU member state if it chose to go that way.
With a little luck, "Petrussia", "Black(sea) Russia", and "Sib(erian)russia" could all go on to achieve what today's EvilRussia never could: peace, happy affluence, and lasting liberal democracy.
Re: Ukraine might even win (Score:3)
Hey, Russia has been relentlessly stirring up shit & fomenting discontent in states like California & Texas. It's only fair that we return the favor.
The big thing Russians don't grasp about the US is that when some group of loonies here talks about it, they're double-deluded into not only thinking they'd be allowed to leave, but get to take the "US" brand name with them & act like they're kicking the other 49 states out.
In contrast, Russia's domestic empire has always been slightly... fragile...
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Russia did not send in their best in the first wave. They sent in a lot of conscripts, and a lot of soldiers coming from ethnic minorities, and they're back-filling now with mercenaries from Chechnya and Syria. The reason so much looting is going on by soldiers is because most are coming from the very poorest regions of the "empire".
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I suspect their best is already in the war. The Russia's airborne forces are supposed to be some of the best they have. And they are already in Ukraine. And getting their butts kicked.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
From the link above :
--
The men in the 331st regarded themselves as the pick of Russia's army. In a video posted online last May, a general tells soldiers of the 331st Parachute Regiment that they are "the best of the best". The unit served in the Balkans, Chechnya, and the 2014 Russian interve
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Of course. Once Putin and the other key figure responsible for the war are removed from power, sanctions will be lifted, and the West will go back to trading with Russia.
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Is the war wit Russia, or with Putin? Just like with Trump or Bush Jr we shouldn't confuse a leader with it's people.
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Right now, there's such a total control over media in Russia that essentially there is only Putin. What he says is what the people hear. It will take some time after Putin leaves the mortal coil before the citizens there start to realize how many lies he had been telling.
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That's very true but if Putin dies there will be a civil war of sorts. Putin got his power because he made those oligarchs what they are in exchange for ceding political power to him. When guy up top is gone they will all scramble for the throne.
Putin for all his faults though was a KGB guy, he know show leverage power and being able to maintaine his grip on the country for so long takes a certain machivellian mindset. Putin gets his hands dirty. Everything I hear about the oligarchs though makes them s
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Putin, like many dictators, doesn't really have a clear line of succession. The defense minister is the obvious choice, but has been embarrassed publicly by this war, and apparently has had a heart attack. Putin has embarrassed his spy chief in public, so he's likely out. Medvedev is clearly too much of a toady and unlikely to become number two again. It's unclear what happens.
It also depends upon how the war "ends". Is it bad with the west chasing the fleeing armies, which gives the west more control
Careful (Score:2)
These guys have nuclear weapons. Those are very basic tech, and probably work.
Please don't take the piss out of them, I live closer than you do.
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I'm giving up the opportunity to use my mod points.
These guys have nuclear weapons.
So what? So do Great Britain and France, not to mention the U.S.
Those are very basic tech, and probably work.
Gotta love that clarification, 'probably'. Based on what the world is seeing of Russia's performance, or lack thereof, in Ukraine, there should be serious doubts as to the ability of Russia's nuclear weapons to work.
Please don't take the piss out of them, I live closer than you do.
In other words, just lay back and let
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Giving up my points: you should be more worried about the failsafes controlling those nuclear weapons failing rather than the weapons themselves. After all, the latter can tolerate a 50% failure rate, but the former cannot tolerate a 0.000000001% failure rate.
What if an early warning system erroneously tracks a Western aircraft near Ukraine as an inbound nuclear missile strike? What if they have the nuclear equivalent of GPSes duct-taped together in their nuclear missile silos?
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"What if an early warning system erroneously tracks a Western aircraft near Ukraine as an inbound nuclear missile strike?"
You probably didn't get the memo but long-range nuclear bombers went out of fashion back in the 1960s. ICBMs sort of made them redundant.
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty much no to all of that.
>So what? So do Great Britain and France, not to mention the U.S.
So what? The so what is, "let's be careful with diplomacy on this, and not wipe out life on the planet".
>Gotta love that clarification, 'probably'
I'm an engineer, not a politician. I live in the real world.
>In other words, just lay back and let it happen
That's your view, not mine. I'm just asking that immature comments are not spread that might cause an irrational nutjob to do something stupid in my neigh
Re: (Score:2)
that might cause an irrational nutjob to do something stupid in my neighbourhood.
Such as invading another country just because?
Re:Careful (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know if you're just ignorant or if you've got ideological blinders on but the US did quite a lot to engage with Russia diplomatically prior to the war beginning. The problem was that Russia's demands were completely over the top and they wouldnt back down on them.
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I would bet money that some of those missiles will blow up while still in the launch tubes.
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Pfft! Just ignore all the saber rattling. Now they're threatening Finland and Sweden for trying to join NATO. What next are they going to shake their fist at?
Re:Careful (Score:5, Insightful)
The threshold success rate for an effective counter-value nuclear strike is exceedingly low. Leaving aside Russia's nuclear weapon stockpile, it has about 1600 nuclear warheads deployed. It's safe to say that at least half of them are aimed at the US; let's say 99% of them are lost or are duds. That'd be 8 warheads delivered. If those warheads were over US cities, they would probably cause the collapse of the US economy.
It seems fairly likely that a lot of Russian stuff *would* fail. Putin's desire to annex Ukraine isn't just nostalgia, when the Soviet Union broke up it turns out that a lot of important Soviet stuff was in the Ukraine, like the tactical missile design bureaus in Kyiv and the strategic missile industry in Dnipro, which designed and built the R-36, the backbone of Russia's nuclear deterrent. Russia can't build any more R-36's, and it probably can't maintain it's existing arsenal. Before 2014 their R-36's were maintained by Ukraine. Who knows what state they are in now. The press has portrayed Russia's development of the RS-28 as nuclear sabre rattling, but it's really something Russia has no choice about. Given the level of corruption in Russia during the design of the RS-28, I wouldn't count on it working as well as advertised.
Still, only a handful have to work to deliver a crippling blow.
Re: (Score:2)
I live about 15 miles from a prime nuclear weapons target (major US weapons research lab). I'm sure a significant number of those Russian warheads are aimed in my general direction. I hope that they have fallen into disrepair, so that I only have to worry about the Chinese now /s
Re: (Score:2)
If it is any consolation, R&D places are on like the 3rd or 4th wave of attack. First two will be military and control targets - bases, known missile silos, politicians, etc.
Re: Careful (Score:2)
The point of which being what? The Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) can detect a SCUD launch anywhere on Earth, and that is a *lot* less energetic than an RS-28.
The US (And British, and French) response would be in flight and beyond recall before any of those missiles or warheads fell.
The end result would be the annihilation of every city in Russia.
The only way to win Nuclear war is not to play.
Re: Careful (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, the beloved leader of the DPRK has the best weapons. He can strike the world with his growing arsenal of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, we know it's true because he told us so.
And let's not forget the new 'hypersonic' missiles that Russia and China have developed... they will completely defeat the West's crude trebuchetts and catapults as they hurl balls of flaming cow dung at the great (former Soviet) Russia!
(/sarc)
Re: (Score:2)
So how close? If you were surrounded by Russian tanks, and they're indiscriminately shelling every building that seems to be housing civilians, then what? Part of the problem here is that for a very long time the west has looked away at Putin's brutality and aggression, not wanting to get involved. They had a ceasefire in Georgia that lasted one whole day until Putin threw it out, they waved a finger at him sternly after atrocities in Grozny, wrung their hands in despair as he bombed civilians in Syria,
Re: Careful (Score:2)
China exports â500 billion in goods to the EU per year. Another $350 billion in goods to North America. Russia's trade is worth about $168 billion USD.
There's a pretty solid reason to not upset $850 billion in trade for the sake of $168 billion. Or even better, just try to keep the status quo.
"Painted rustc (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a line uttered by a disaffected defector from the Soviet Union in a movie or tv show set in the period that I saw at some point over the last 20 years.
And it resonated with me at the time because I lived through a short period of it in the late 80s as a small child.
It seems the situation hasn't changed. But at least the Soviets were better about hiding their weaknesses than the Russian government is. All states and militaries seek to obfuscate their weaknesses and direct attention away from them, of course (it's just suicidal to broadcast them), and therein lies the problem.
The Soviet Union could hide behind its propaganda wall and May Day parades without ever having to fire a single shot. And while it was quite sub-par on the inside (compared to the west) at least there was some degree of peace behind that propaganda army.
Now Putin went and unzipped his pants to show how big a man he was and there was at best half a left nut in there. Yes it's "funny" to the extent that tens of thousands dead for no reason can be funny, but it's also more dangerous than the Cold War.
During the Cold War, both sides were afraid of each other, and it kept the peace. Now, fewer people are afraid of Russia than there were 4 months ago. They got their feet wet and ended up putting their own blood in the water.
I don't expect the West to start taking pot shots at them, but their other neighbors with axes to grind...now they're tempted in a way they weren't before.
Military defeats abroad stress a regime. Democracies can weather those stresses much better than dictatorships. America is batting something like .150 in its military adventures since WW2 but we're mostly stable and our parochial tendencies and petty domestic rivalries tend to blunt the effect of failure abroad. A dictatorship that invests its entire identity in a military action that becomes a stunning embarrassment and invited more military threats...that's something that doesn't tend to survive very often.
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The nuclear deterrence isn't really working. When Soviets were there, the pushes back and forth were in distant third world countries. After the fall of USSR, parts of NATO were still nervous about really doing much in Yugoslavia lest it provoke Russia because of nukes. Now it seems, Putin is actively doing the provoking, without worrying about "omg, NATO has nukes!"
Part of this reasons seems to be that Putin HAS been doing a lot of poking for the last 20 years and there has been very push back in respon
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Ukraine and Russia have not really been the same country. By that same logic, Poland belongs to Russia for centuries too... Yes, it was part of the Russian empire, but not Russia itself. Russia has ALWAYS engaged in Russification; sending ethnic Russians to administer or live in subjugated territories, push the dominance of Russian language culture above that of the locals, etc. This happened under the Czars and it continued under the Soviet regime. Sure, other nations do the same thing, such as China.
You issue the oldest supplies for training... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You issue the oldest supplies for training... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe the Russians should have told their soldiers to prepare better.
It's a bit difficult to prepare when you aren't told [theintercept.com] what you're supposed to do [newsweek.com].
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Maybe the Russians should have told their soldiers to prepare better.
Or prepared them for a fight longer than a few weeks. While we do not know the actual battle plans, everything suggests that at the highest level they did not plan for the fighting would last as long as it has. Stories of abandoned tanks due to no gas and soldiers issued only a few days of rations seems to me that this invasion was poorly planned and executed.
It's because their oligarchs (Score:2)
As usual you don't get rich spending your own money. If you want that kind of money you got to find a way to steal it
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The more things change (Score:3)
Some years back I remember watching a documentary about the Russian Czars, and I forget which Czar it was, but it was around the time of Napoleon IIRC. Anyway, a European power came storming in and was using the latest military tactics for the age, while Russia was still stuck in the previous century because the Russian nobility didn't see any particular need to modernize the military. So, they basically got stomped by the European forces, and if memory serves, really only "won" by throwing bodies into the meat grinder.
Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same with Russia. Peter the Great tried dragging the country into modernity kicking and screaming, then so did Stalin and some of the other Soviet leaders, only for Russia to once again get left behind and being trounced by a smaller country because Russia is still using WWII era tactics.
With any luck, Putin will kick it very soon, and then maybe the next person to take power will end the decades long nightmare for the Russian people. Or the Russian people will finally have had enough and take matters into their own hands as they've done multiple times in the past with leaders who went insane. Seems like if a bunch of people stormed the Kremlin tomorrow, there wouldn't be much in the way of opposition.
Okay, I'm as anti-Russia on this as anyone (Score:5, Funny)
But let's not take this Russia mockery to extremes.
Let him who is without duct tape cast the first stone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Okay, I'm as anti-Russia on this as anyone (Score:2)
Maybe this is what turned into ERA https://tass.com/russia/755571 [tass.com]
"Impossible to jam"
Story could be BS (Score:2)
Take all news of this sort with a grain of salt. There has been extensive misinformation/disinformation about this conflict. This is normal in times of war.
Next up... (Score:2)
What's next? Cheap, commercial GoPro cameras duct-taped to the inside of fighter-jets for some sweet YouTube upvotes?
Bandages from 1978, so what? (Score:2)
If the bandages didn't degrade too much, then it's actually a waste of money to replace them with newer ones.
Sensitive, dual use technology (Score:3)
Who's letting the Russians get hold of duct tape?
The logs actually have a purpose... (Score:3)
They're for getting tracked vehicles (particularly tanks) unstuck from the mud. Usually when they're ready to push forward with tracked armor, they'll load them onto one of the lighter tracked vehicles like a BMP. Then if a T-72 gets stuck, they'll grab the logs and stick them under the tracks to give the tank purchase to pull itself out of the mud.
Roosh (Score:3)
They also had to resort to stealing farm tractors and eating stray dogs.
The Russian "army" is a total fucking mess, and all Putin is doing is throwing every rock he can get his hands on at the Ukraine and he does not even care what happens to his own soldiers.
Russia was a basket case in the 1990s when Russian soldiers were selling or trading their weapons to anyone willing to buy in order to get something to eat. Imagine the same situation but 10 times worse.
This will be extremely dangerous for the world as Russia will start selling nukes to North Korea (or maybe the underlings will) and other dangerous things to try to stay afloat as long as possible.
Re:The big bad Russia. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ukraine has a piece of shit army..
... Which is reliably repelling the Russian Armed Forces, making RFA worse than a piece of shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Different meaning of threat. Russia isn't a threat to conquer NATO (they can't even beat Ukraine), but they are a threat to cause a lot of damage.
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Nonsense. The US has been choosing both for decades. The only superpower, no credible threats, must continue spending almost or as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, because it's a dangerous world out there.