Russia invades Ukraine

[blankall]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

The West have been training the Ukrainian Military for years. Clearly they can communicate. I didn't speak Spanish/Polish/Nepalese or well I'm not sure specifically what langue Jordians speak, but we all worked affectively.

All you need is some liaison officers to work with this units and you are away. You don't need to worry about training these individuals on simple soldiering skills. You can point them in the direction and let them go.

I certainly wouldn't leave well training and highly motivated troops guarding stuff in the rear. Those boys are there to kills Russians. The Ukrainians need to facilitate that.

By the end of WWII, the USA was sending soldiers into combat with 2 weeks of basic training (it started out as 8 weeks). I'm sure any soldier with actual training is welcome in Ukraine right now.

[blender]

Originally Posted by blankall

Russia has nukes everywhere. There's no way to take out their counter attack capabilities first.

They also have independently powered submarines armed with nuclear ICBMs. They have underground missile silos all over the country. It'd be difficult to take a single one of these out, let alone all before Russia has the time to act. Russia has 2-3000 actively deployed nuclear warheads ready to fire at any given time. Russia is, unfortunately, way ahead of the West on this one.

Not so sure anyone is ahead of the US when it comes to dominating the globe. What makes you sure they are not equally or more prepared than Russia?

Not that I am in any way advocating the suggestion above about some kind of tactical nuclear strike. In my opinion that would be ill-advised. Nevertheless, I do not believe for a second that there is any nation in the globe in a superior military position to the US, nuclear or otherwise.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by _Q_

I think if the West does take action against Russia, it will be swift, extremely severe (possibly using tactical nukes) and happen without much warning.

The last thing you want is to give Putin and his regime the chance to counter any attack.

Putin might be crazy but he isn't dumb. There's a reason why he put out a nuclear alert and increased the readiness of his tactical and strategic forces across the board.

a disarming first strike depends on missiles needing prep time before they launch, knowing the location of all of the missiles and having a firm fix on the Russian Missile submarines.

Usually in a lower state of alert or no alert, missiles aren't fueled, and target packs on silo's are always loaded as are submarines. But mobile missiles (and the Russians have a lot of mobile launchers. need to be targeted and that takes time as does fueling liquid fueled missiles.

As soon as the alerts went out. The missiles were fueled and ready to launch and target packs were confirmed. Missile boats were probably ordered to dive deep and evade any American surveillance and mobile missiles were moved to new locations and oriented.

in gun terminology, when the Russian's are not at a heightened state of alert, its the equivalent of getting a gun out of your locker, putting a magazine in it, taking off the safety, chambering a round and aiming it. Now it sounds like a lot but rotating missiles to a firing position from a non alert status probably takes about 30 minutes to an hour.

Right now, the gun is loaded and the safety is off, and the finger is literally putting pressure on the trigger of an aimed gun.

Also Russian surveillance satellites are zoomed in on American missile silo's looking for a indication of prefiring or ignition.

For an American disarming strike to work, they have to know the location of about 5500 warheads deployed in silos, submarines and mobile platforms. This is where the overkill works in MAD. The Russian's don't need 5500 warheads to devastate the United States and Europe. They need at most less then 10% of that number to launch and reach their target. It goes to the theory that its impossible to thin out the Russian nuclear arsenal enough for it not to destroy you before you destroy them.

Its also more then likely because of the heightened state of the Russian nuclear arsenal that American bombs and missiles are hitting empty silo's and spent mobile launchers because the missiles left in mere minutes after the detection of an American launch, or even detonation of a missile off of a stealthy platform.

Trust me when I say this, even if we imagine that a large percentage or majority of the Soviet Missiles are non functional due to bad maintenance, and American missiles somehow carry out a fairly successful disarming strike and this knocks out 75% or 80% of the missiles (unlikely). We're still talking a calculation not of what's killed, but how many times over we've been killed or how fair the debris flies.


Just as an addon, Its likely that the Russian targeting package would look like this with the largest cities


150 warheads aimed at washington, 150 warheads aimed at new york, 100 warheads for LA 100 war heads at Chicago, 100 war heads at London. Etc etc etc.


Small correction out of the 6000 nuclear weapons possessed by the Russians, 1600 are on their land based ballistic missiles and sea based SLBM. These 1600 missiles are strategic weapons which are city busters. The rest are mounted on things like cruise missiles, bombs, torpedeos, mines etc.



But you get my drift.

[Fuzz]

This attitude of Russia just unilaterally deciding to take stuff should be pretty fair warning they may do the same thing in the arctic. Once they grab it, we probably won't get it back, ever. I'm not sure what we need to do to prevent that, but it's fairly obvious it is a lot more than we are currently doing.

[Minnie]

Upfront, I don't know who this Christo guy is, so I don't know if there's anything to this - maybe someone can speak to this?

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by curves2000

Truly tragic for all involved and I know this isn't popular, but tragic for the soldiers on both sides. Lot's of conscripts and young, inconsequential men being lied and led to death for no reason other than their President is a madman with delusions of grander.

It's sad for the ones that abandoned their equipment or risked their lives to desert or surrender, and are now stuck in a hostile country and probably not safe to go home either. The Russian soldiers that chose that path were brave.

The ones who are planning to use the "just following orders" defense, I feel a little less sorry for them. I suppose it is sad still, but I can only have so many ####s to give when it comes to Russia's military aggression in Ukraine.

[Fuzz]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1499879297334530050


Well this would be terrifying.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by blender

Not so sure anyone is ahead of the US when it comes to dominating the globe. What makes you sure they are not equally or more prepared than Russia?

Not that I am in any way advocating the suggestion above about some kind of tactical nuclear strike. In my opinion that would be ill-advised. Nevertheless, I do not believe for a second that there is any nation in the globe in a superior military position to the US, nuclear or otherwise.

They call it "Mutually Assured Destruction" for a reason. Both the USA and Russia (formerly the USSR) spent decades building and positioning nukes in a way that made a disabling first strike, on either nation, impossible. As soon as the first nuke is fired, everyone is F-ed.

[FlameOn]

Good news apparently Belarussian forces will not be participating in the invasion now based on Lukashenko's most recent announcement. Looks like even Putin's best ally doesn't want anything to do with the level of sanctions Russia is getting hit with. Now if only he'd close his borders to Russian troops.

MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday that the Belarusian armed forces were not taking part and would not take part in Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

A close Russian ally, Lukashenko said he spoke to President Vladimir Putin at length by telephone on Friday. Russia has used Belarusian territory to carry out a multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/world/belaru...ys-2022-03-04/

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Do we really need to revisit the hard facts underlying MAD? A nuclear (or even serious conventional) attack on either the U.S. or Russia will result in enough missile launches to effectively destroy human civilization. Sucks, but that’s the deal.

I think this really hi-lites the difference in boomers vs subsequent generations.

If you didn't live through a good chunk of the cold war, then you would never have an understanding of how MAD really works nor its effectiveness in preventing nuclear war....as ridiculous as the concept would seem at face value.

I cant believe there will be nukes used by either the US nor Russia nor any other state in a traditional conflict. The results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked everyone including the hardest US war hawks. That was two warheads...there are now thousands in play and when one flies, they all fly and everyone on earth dies. That's the way it is.

The fear with nukes has always been if they fall into the hands of a bad actor/rogue state, who cant be identified immediately for retribution and use that anonymity to blow up a particular city/area.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Good news apparently Belarussian forces will not be participating in the invasion now based on Lukashenko's most recent announcement. Looks like even Putin's best ally doesn't want anything to do with the level of sanctions Russia is getting hit with. Now if only he'd close his borders to Russian troops.


https://www.reuters.com/world/belaru...ys-2022-03-04/

I believe Lukashenko's words about as much as I believe Putin's. Will wait and see on that.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Good news apparently Belarussian forces will not be participating in the invasion now based on Lukashenko's most recent announcement. Looks like even Putin's best ally doesn't want anything to do with the level of sanctions Russia is getting hit with. Now if only he'd close his borders to Russian troops.


https://www.reuters.com/world/belaru...ys-2022-03-04/

It would be a case of poorly trained, equipped, and motivated Belarusian soldiers entering a neighbouring country and attacking, what would otherwise be perceived as friendly or even related, civilians. The morale of that army would be awful, and would most certainly strain Lukashenko's tenuous hold on the country.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by transplant99

I think this really hi-lites the difference in boomers vs subsequent generations.

If you didn't live through a good chunk of the cold war, then you would never have an understanding of how MAD really works nor its effectiveness in preventing nuclear war....as ridiculous as the concept would seem at face value.

I cant believe there will be nukes used by either the US nor Russia nor any other state in a traditional conflict. The results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked everyone including the hardest US war hawks. That was two warheads...there are now thousands in play and when one flies, they all fly and everyone on earth dies. That's the way it is.

The fear with nukes has always been if they fall into the hands of a bad actor/rogue state, who cant be identified immediately for retribution and use that anonymity to blow up a particular city/area.

That's not true. We spent a good bit of time learning about it in Social Studies, I did a video project on it. Still have it on VCR somewhere...maybe they aren't teaching about it anymore?

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Good news apparently Belarussian forces will not be participating in the invasion now based on Lukashenko's most recent announcement. Looks like even Putin's best ally doesn't want anything to do with the level of sanctions Russia is getting hit with. Now if only he'd close his borders to Russian troops.


https://www.reuters.com/world/belaru...ys-2022-03-04/

nothing to do with sanctions, Lukashenko is, like all of us seeing the writing on the wall for this, Russia is losing the war, who wants to throw in with the losing side?

It's a shame Turkey is in such a mess as if they werent they would be moving on Syria as we speak, as it is if I'm Assad I'm cacking myself right now and getting my bags packed, this has ramifications for the whole of the middle east

[Firebot]

https://news.sky.com/story/sky-news-...-week-12557585

Sky news team narrowly dodges a russian death squad targeting civilians / journalists. It's been known for a while that these death squads have been targeting civilians on purpose, this is the first time they directly targeted journalists who identified themselves.

Video is intense (couple got show in their body armour).

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

That's not true. We spent a good bit of time learning about it in Social Studies, I did a video project on it. Still have it on VCR somewhere...maybe they aren't teaching about it anymore?

You learned about MAD or the cold war...or both?

And yeah maybe they still teach it and maybe they dont, admittedly have zero knowledge about it.

Im just suggesting the millions still around who lived that situation would have a different thought when the words are uttered such as "nuclear attack" or similar.

After the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, even brinksmanship came to a halt when it was apparent no one was really going to use nukes. Didnt stop the industrial war machine from building bigger/better/further reaching ones of course, but as long as both sides were able to anihilate the other, niether side was gonna use them.

Unfortunately that also works in Putins favor as much as his threats of using them allows him to stay in the bird seat.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

nothing to do with sanctions, Lukashenko is, like all of us seeing the writing on the wall for this, Russia is losing the war, who wants to throw in with the losing side?

It's a shame Turkey is in such a mess as if they werent they would be moving on Syria as we speak, as it is if I'm Assad I'm cacking myself right now and getting my bags packed, this has ramifications for the whole of the middle east

Belarussian troops refused to cross the border despite threats of imprisonment. Lukashenko is trying to save face publically, but in reality he has lost control of the military.

And we all know what happens when the military no longer obeys the government historically.

[Byrns]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

We’re the Russians this poorly organized in Barbarossa?

They weren't any better in WWI either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tannenberg

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

This attitude of Russia just unilaterally deciding to take stuff should be pretty fair warning they may do the same thing in the arctic. Once they grab it, we probably won't get it back, ever. I'm not sure what we need to do to prevent that, but it's fairly obvious it is a lot more than we are currently doing.

I think that is less likely to happen because it would be a direct attack on NATO, but if it ever got to the point that it looked like Russia was staging an Arctic take over, the US would probably take it first. They would never let it fall into Russia’s hands. Either way, Canada could do nothing.

[transplant99]

The right call.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp said on Friday it had temporarily suspended its reporting from the ground in Russia, citing a new law that could mean jail for those found to be intentionally spreading "fake" news.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...?ocid=msedgntp