Foreign aid could have helped if it had been coming regularly but I now feel its too late. Russia will probably get their land and noone in the world will be better for it.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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I think you have no idea what Air Supremacy actually means.
Very rarely, in any war, has one side achieved air supremacy. The Allies achieved it, by the skin of its teeth, in 1945 and the Coalition achieved it in 1991. Beyond that, no real conflict high intensity conflict has achieved that ( unless you count NATO supremacy of Yugoslavia, bombing of Libya/ISIS, in which case it was not anywhere close to high intensity.)
Air Supremacy is when one side achieves complete, almost unhindered control of the sky, to a point where enemy anti-air defenses, enemy aerial assets have been degraded to such an extent that they are no longer considered in any planning of operational aerial missions.
Air supremacy is when the Allies can launch 500 Strategic bombers over Dresden without having to take into the account any superficial damage a few bands of remaining FW-190/Bf-109's which have fuel to take to the sky, or Flak 88's, can do to them. It is when the enemy aerial assets or aerial defense is no longer capable of any meaningful change in the operational, strategic and tactical landscape.
Are you trying to argue that this is the case in Ukraine?
Might I remind you that Tupolev's still have to launch from the Caspian sea because it cannot afford to go near Ukrainian airspace
Or that Frogfoots are still doing surface-hogging low altitude missions because high altitude means they get picked off by air defenses.
Or that rotorwing's are suffering from such attrition that Ka-52's have all but disappeared from the battlefield entirely.
Or that Russian squadrons are still not able to undergo Interdiction and Patrol missions over Ukraine itself due to heavy attrition and losses.
Russia is relying on very long range standoff munitions and low-altitude glide bombs right now.
It's arguable that Russia doesn't even have Air Superiority right now (though I believe at this point it does), but Air Supremacy? Jesus christ what a ridiculous claim.
Not exactly the ingredients for a rational debate.
Further, there's nothing new in what you've said that hasn't previously been mentioned ad nauseum by pro-Russia advocates in this thread and across the web.
The fact remains, Putin has already lost by way of having been rebuffed from taking all of Ukraine and is holding on to what he has for dear life, because if he loses or relinquishes any of it, he will be perceived as weak domestically and as such, will be vulnerable to internal moves against him.
Western money has already been successful in thwarting Putin's actions, so its disingenuous to suggest giving the Ukrainians more money and weapons wouldn't be effective given that we've already seen them make incredible use of what limited weapons they have whilst outgunned against a vastly better armed adversary.
Your half thought out concept of "peace" is also rather flimsy and disingenuous because its predicated on giving Putin what he wants while stealing large swaths of land from an established, democratically elected nation state. You are therefore privileging the interests of a dictator over those of a free society backed by a vast majority of other free societies in the world. What makes your position doubly farcical, is you are typing it up from the comfort and infrastructure of a free society.
You also continue to ignore the likelihood that Putin, who is a highly accomplished liar, would use Ukraine to push further west. Perhaps not immediately, but given that he has interfered in elections in over two dozen countries, he will eventually use Ukrainian territory as a staging point from which to foment war in Europe, resulting in actual NATO troops getting involved in fighting Russia and all the nuclear implications inclusive of a NATO-Russia confrontation.
So if you're frustrated that your posts are getting mocked by many, then maybe do a rethink of what you're suggesting and we may get somewhere more productive.
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Even if Russia get's a favorable outcome in Ukraine, is that even "winning?"
This is akin to the French "victory" at Borodino. Yes, but at what cost?
How many decades will it take to rebuild Russian military strength? How many years will it take to get back to a functional civilian economy once they move back down from their Wartime economy? What will the post-war reality be for Russia when they are even more of a resource export heavy nation, undoing most of the progress they've made in the past decades to diversity away from that?
This is akin to the French "victory" at Borodino. Yes, but at what cost?
How many decades will it take to rebuild Russian military strength? How many years will it take to get back to a functional civilian economy once they move back down from their Wartime economy? What will the post-war reality be for Russia when they are even more of a resource export heavy nation, undoing most of the progress they've made in the past decades to diversity away from that?
All the questions are fair and reasonable but the only question that matters is
Does Putin care about what you laid out?
Is not about Russia winning. Is about Putin winning
The idea that Russia is winning is also undercut by the fact that Putin hasn't taken and held any substantial land. The areas that he controls in the south in Kherson (the Oblast) and southern Zap are generally agrarian. The only somewhat meaningful city he's taken is Mariupol, which has created a land bridge to Crimea. Other than that, he has feck all to show for himself other than small gains in Donbas.
But he may be happy if he can keep Ukraine unstable and ensure it doesn't grow strong. Doesn't matter if his troops aren't parading around in Kyiv like he wished.
The current stalemate is still a big problem for Ukraine and the situation can still turn for the worse.
At the current rate it will take 10-15 years... to conquer Donbas. Never mind the rest of Ukraine.
You haven’t disputed any of my points; instead, you've engaged in a weird ramble, which I won't address.
The fact of the matter is that Russia is prevailing on the battlefield, and logic suggests that this trend will continue as the balance of power continues to shift further in its favor with the passage of time.
The US will not engage in direct military conflict in Ukraine, a non-NATO member, because that could escalate into a nuclear war. Biden, a hawk, has been pretty clear on not sending troops, and it's a sensible decision. No US president in their right mid would risk losing New York, Chicago, or LA to protect "freedom" and "democracy" in Ukraine—this isn’t a serious argument.
Furthermore, the collective West currently cannot match Russia's production and procurement of conventional weapons. Without providing either manpower or conventional weapons at a faster rate than Russia, I would argue that all the aid does is prolong the inevitable.
Finally, there is no indication that Russia will attack a NATO country because such an action would compel NATO to respond, and neither Russia nor the US desires a direct conflict that could escalate into a nuclear war. There is no evidence to suggest that Putin will push further east. He is likely to agree to retain Crimea and the conquered territories, and insist that Ukraine does not join NATO.
I'll let you chew on it and hopefully you can come up with a decent response.
Insulting another member
You, sir, are a towering genius, a remarkable example of someone who misses the point and veers off on a strange tangent. Military intelligence, eh?
I addressed them as I saw fit which is to expose their lack of legitimacy. Feel free to tell me where I’m going wrong on any of them.
How is it a tangent when you’re the one making that claim that Russia has air supremacy? If you don’t want to be challenged on technical meanings of words you don’t understand, don’t use them
Unfortunately it might not be the case. Will see this summer campaign. Hopefully part of the US package can help Ukraine
You're wasting your time with him. He's not worth the metal capacity to engage.
Why haven't the Ukrainians made a beeline to seize Kaliningrad yet. The Russians are more or less cut off from defending it with dwindling resources to do so.
The pro-independence movement over there might get the job done. Time will tell.
edit: Oh, boy! Can we say that we are entering Ghost in the Shell territory if those drones really exist and will be sent into battle?
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Yeah this sounds like a load of tosh.
a 50 cal mounted on a drone that already has no stabilization? good luck.
Also, Feloni Aero aren't even a registered DoD contractor so I'm not sure how US is "going to send them to Ukraine"
OK. Let's start with: what do you mean by "Russia will win in Ukraine". Serious question.
Second: from this expert analysis of Russia's recent ramp-up, written from before the US and the EU upped military aid:
"The Russian theory of victory is plausible if Ukraine's international partners fail to properly resource the AFU. However, if Ukraine's partners continue to provide sufficient ammunition and training support to the AFU to enable the blunting of Russian attacks in 2024, then Russia is unlikely to achieve significant gains in 2025..... If Russia lacks the prospect of gains in 2025, given its inability to improve force quality for offensive operations, then it follows that it will struggle to force Kyiv to capitulate by 2026."
The question is, how long can Russia sustain throwing its relatively limited resources against a wall (the cost of supporting Ukraine is a rounding error for the West - for Russia it is enormous - so who really has the advantage here in a war of attrition?). While it's amped up military production (and had to divert huge funds to support various civil industries), we've seen dams break, refineries set ablaze, problems with its aircraft - a slow degradation of civil society. Russia can't afford a stalemate either, and the West can certainly give Ukraine enough support to hold Russia in place, for as long as it wants to.
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I knew that was just too wacky to be true.
I'm sure one can mount some weapons on this kind of drone, but we are not that far yet.
This number is hard to believe. But I think it's fair to say that Russian casualties by and large have been crazy high.
Aye ridiculous, they don't need this shit, just give them 3 cheap fpv drones for every Russian troop in Ukraine.
Just to theorise though, would something like this work with single shot? Assuming one .50 cal round wouldn't crash the thing, would that one shot be accurate?
I agree with your post in general but can't help mentioning the Spanish civil war. Fascist air supremacy there seemed so decisive that for a few years it seemed like the ability to bomb civilians would win any conflict. The US over Vietnam was close too I'd have thought. No expert though, just musings.
The US didn't actually have air superiority over the north. People (not saying you do this) sometimes conflate the Vietcong (South Vietnamese communist guerilla) with the PAVN (North Vietnamese regular army), but the north actually had a quite modern military. Obviously they couldn't completely stop the US from bombing, but it wasn't done for free.
Yes, hence why I only said close. The US did an awful lot of bombing of the North too of course, but they were countered with migs and sams I agree.
Sure, that's fair.
I tend to disregard the interwar period of aerial combat as nothing more than experimentation. By the end of WWI Tactical bombing and Close Air support started to be plausible things. Then technology grew so fast in the interwar period that everything that to be built and rebuilt. For example, even dogfights in mid WWI were biplanes and monoplanes trying to get rid of each other so they could get proper reconaissance of the battlefield.
If people got "Air superiority" or "Air Supremacy" it was entirely by accident and it wasn't until 1937-38 that various air forces actually began to assemble coherent doctrines. Ju-87 performed admirably in the Spanish Civil War but honestly by 1940 it was wholly obsolete, despite modern propoganda telling you it was a fearsome weapon.
So yes, on paper, the Fascists got "Air Supremacy" by its actual definition, but it wasn't exactly by design and more of a case of nobody knew what they were doing, they started experimenting and one side ended up dominating the air.
The spanish civil war was the test for the the nazis and italian fascists that got them ready for WWII
Planes and aerial bombing specially.
Planes and aerial bombing specially.
Yeah air superiority up until the end of the cold war was pretty much in a constant state of flux. The Nazis had it early in the war down to their superior BF-109s, only really matched by the spitfire (but even that had it's issues with fuel efficiency, despite it's turning advantage in the air). From what I recall the allies finally cemented air superiority with the introduction of the P51s.
Since then though I'd say the chasm has increased with the Western made 4th and 5th gen fighters.
Though I appreciate I'm only talking about dog fighting scenarios and know full well that air superiority isn't decided by gentleman-like fair skirmishes.
Actually, I disagree.
The Nazi's learnt all the wrong lessons from the Spanish Civil war. This is where survivorship bias really kicks into place and the Germans took the wrong thing:
1) The Republican Spanish were armed mostly with I-15's. (See Diagram below)These feckers gifted to them by the Soviet Union. Let's be honest, These things weren't going to prove any useful against Bf-109's. Ultimately the Soviets sent these as a testing ground of how well their aircraft would perform against modern western European aircraft (Hint, not well at the time). So, the Germans basically thought that their designs were impeccable and didn't really iterate beyond the Bf-109's until midway through the war. Instead they tried to perfect the Bf-109 and lead to about 8 variants, some of which were very good but others were pretty poor by the mid-way point of the war. It wasnt until 1942 where the Fw-190 really began coming up in numbers.
Partly, the Germans were right in their assumption of dominance; The French practically had no functional air force and Britain hadn't begun full re-armament yet. But they did not stop to really push forward their advantage until just before the war began and it wasn't until halfway through the way later iterations started going into the mass production.
2) The obsession with Dive bombing.
It was actually the Americans who were the first to truly adopt dive bombing during the inter-war period, as the British didn't believe in the cost/benefit analysis of danger to life and tactical use. The Americans conceptualized it almost solely for naval warfare.
During the Spanish Civil war, the Stuka was very impressive, however the reasons they were impressive were not factored into Luftwaffe consideration.
-The Stuka was fighting against an opponent without a real air force.
-The Stuka was fighting against an opponent with practically no real anti air defenses
- Fighting was concentrated mostly with un-mechanized and motorized group units, at some points in very dense formations.
Why did the Americans use dive bombing against ships? Ship anti-air defense is concentrated, to a very small degree of the battlefield. It is very intense therefore survivability in these conditions actually improve when the surface area of the plane decreases. Second of all, fighter escort organization in carrier -> carrier warfare was very chaotic and messy. It's much easier for a squadron of Dauntless to drop from altitude onto a concentrated group of ships without having full interception attempted. Finally, Ships are relatively large targets even when moving. The increase in accuracy of dive bombers is worth it because you turn the calculus from "probably won't hit ship" to "probably will hit ship".
That calculus all changes in Land warfare. First of all, Interdiction and Interception is far easy to co-ordinate from airfields on the group with multi squadrons. Therefore dive bombers are more easily intercepted. Second of all, Flak fire is far more distributed and less concentrated, which makes the relatively survivability of a dive less important because the reduction of the surface area is negligible when the fire isn't concentrated in one place anyway. Third of all, increasing the accuracy with a dive changes tactical level bombing from, "very unlikely to hit a moving vehicle" to "still very unlikely to hit a moving vehicle." The trade offs just simply were not worth it.
The dive bombers Germany used in Spain had absolutely awful flight characteristics, but they never learnt that lesson because there were no capable Republican fighters to actually exasperate this problem. Even in the peak of the Luftwaffe, in 1940 during the battle of France, a squadron of 6 early 30's P36 Curtiss' intercepted a squadron of 12 Stuka's and destroyed them in 6 minutes.
Because of the success of the Stuka in Spain, Luftwaffe leadership made stupid requirements that impeded a lot of their designs. Being that all their tactical level bombers must be able to dive. Even the 2 engine medium bombers like a Heinkel 111 could dive. It meant sacrificing a lot of flight characteristics. Heck, even their Fw-190 primary late war fighter could dive bomb, a requirement that is wholly pointless. A lot of compromises in Luftwaffe airframe design occured because of the wrong lesson learnt from Spain - that dive bombing is king. The Americans took the right approach, and Fighter bombers like the Mustang didn't need the stupid flight characteristic skew to enable dive bombing, but instead had more linear bombing trajectories, which although meant they were less accurate, they could do their main job absolutely much better. The differences between dive bombing and linear trajectory bombing was also really small in terms of efficacy. They had dedicated dive bombers for that, like the A-36 and didn't try to attach dive bombing onto everything.
3) The lack of a dedicated heavy bomber
The Germans bombing of UK for example, was very inefficient because they lacked real heavy bombers like the Allies had. One of the biggest reasons for this is they saw the performance of their medium and dive bombers in the Spanish civil war and decided it was enough. Again, Spanish civil war was an aerial peashooting competition but they took the wrong lessons. It wasnt until the He177 until the Germans had a functional heavy bomber because medium bombers just couldnt do the trick when it came to strategic bombing.
For the “let Putin have his way with Ukraine in exchange for peace” contingent…..
Actually, I disagree.
The Nazi's learnt all the wrong lessons from the Spanish Civil war. This is where survivorship bias really kicks into place and the Germans took the wrong thing:
1) The Republican Spanish were armed mostly with I-15's. (See Diagram below)These feckers gifted to them by the Soviet Union. Let's be honest, These things weren't going to prove any useful against Bf-109's. Ultimately the Soviets sent these as a testing ground of how well their aircraft would perform against modern western European aircraft (Hint, not well at the time). So, the Germans basically thought that their designs were impeccable and didn't really iterate beyond the Bf-109's until midway through the war. Instead they tried to perfect the Bf-109 and lead to about 8 variants, some of which were very good but others were pretty poor by the mid-way point of the war. It wasnt until 1942 where the Fw-190 really began coming up in numbers.
Partly, the Germans were right in their assumption of dominance; The French practically had no functional air force and Britain hadn't begun full re-armament yet. But they did not stop to really push forward their advantage until just before the war began and it wasn't until halfway through the way later iterations started going into the mass production.
2) The obsession with Dive bombing.
It was actually the Americans who were the first to truly adopt dive bombing during the inter-war period, as the British didn't believe in the cost/benefit analysis of danger to life and tactical use. The Americans conceptualized it almost solely for naval warfare.
During the Spanish Civil war, the Stuka was very impressive, however the reasons they were impressive were not factored into Luftwaffe consideration.
-The Stuka was fighting against an opponent without a real air force.
-The Stuka was fighting against an opponent with practically no real anti air defenses
- Fighting was concentrated mostly with un-mechanized and motorized group units, at some points in very dense formations.
Why did the Americans use dive bombing against ships? Ship anti-air defense is concentrated, to a very small degree of the battlefield. It is very intense therefore survivability in these conditions actually improve when the surface area of the plane decreases. Second of all, fighter escort organization in carrier -> carrier warfare was very chaotic and messy. It's much easier for a squadron of Dauntless to drop from altitude onto a concentrated group of ships without having full interception attempted. Finally, Ships are relatively large targets even when moving. The increase in accuracy of dive bombers is worth it because you turn the calculus from "probably won't hit ship" to "probably will hit ship".
That calculus all changes in Land warfare. First of all, Interdiction and Interception is far easy to co-ordinate from airfields on the group with multi squadrons. Therefore dive bombers are more easily intercepted. Second of all, Flak fire is far more distributed and less concentrated, which makes the relatively survivability of a dive less important because the reduction of the surface area is negligible when the fire isn't concentrated in one place anyway. Third of all, increasing the accuracy with a dive changes tactical level bombing from, "very unlikely to hit a moving vehicle" to "still very unlikely to hit a moving vehicle." The trade offs just simply were not worth it.
The dive bombers Germany used in Spain had absolutely awful flight characteristics, but they never learnt that lesson because there were no capable Republican fighters to actually exasperate this problem. Even in the peak of the Luftwaffe, in 1940 during the battle of France, a squadron of 6 early 30's P36 Curtiss' intercepted a squadron of 12 Stuka's and destroyed them in 6 minutes.
Because of the success of the Stuka in Spain, Luftwaffe leadership made stupid requirements that impeded a lot of their designs. Being that all their tactical level bombers must be able to dive. Even the 2 engine medium bombers like a Heinkel 111 could dive. It meant sacrificing a lot of flight characteristics. Heck, even their Fw-190 primary late war fighter could dive bomb, a requirement that is wholly pointless. A lot of compromises in Luftwaffe airframe design occured because of the wrong lesson learnt from Spain - that dive bombing is king. The Americans took the right approach, and Fighter bombers like the Mustang didn't need the stupid flight characteristic skew to enable dive bombing, but instead had more linear bombing trajectories, which although meant they were less accurate, they could do their main job absolutely much better. The differences between dive bombing and linear trajectory bombing was also really small in terms of efficacy. They had dedicated dive bombers for that, like the A-36 and didn't try to attach dive bombing onto everything.
3) The lack of a dedicated heavy bomber
The Germans bombing of UK for example, was very inefficient because they lacked real heavy bombers like the Allies had. One of the biggest reasons for this is they saw the performance of their medium and dive bombers in the Spanish civil war and decided it was enough. Again, Spanish civil war was an aerial peashooting competition but they took the wrong lessons. It wasnt until the He177 until the Germans had a functional heavy bomber because medium bombers just couldnt do the trick when it came to strategic bombing.
I really enjoy reading this expertise explanation, really. As always. I knew 0, but completely 0 of what you explained so I much appreciated. I am sorry that I can only answer with some lazy half ass things as I am speaking about distant memory and obviously I don't have any technical expertise.
As I mentioned, the spanish civil war it was a test, successful or not, the germans and the italians went to test their military capabilities. As you well explained (me without knowing) the test didn't go well for the aircrafts
But There were other parts of the tests that were successful. Maybe the aircraft development no, because as you said, the USSR gave completely shit equipment to the republicans at a very expensive rate (good way to propagate communism, useless pricks), but definitely they started to develope air foctrines and some initial concepts of the Blitzkrieg started to be developed there also. They learnt coordination with land and air forces.
And lets not forget about Gernika. They tested how to destroy a town completely with subsequent types of bombs and air fire so they could cause as much destruction possible. Then they replicated it in WWII what was a staple of WWII, brutalizing civil population through bombing. Even Goring said in Nuremberg that Spain was a testing and training ground for thousands of germans that had battle experience for 2 years when they entered in WWII. That include pilots, tanks, soldiers and even incipient submarines. Some equipement went the wrong track but some no and it was improved accordingly
They had the opportunity to test logistics, transportation and supply
IMO historically is well accepted that the spanish civil war was a test for WWII. But as all tests, not all works the way it should
Ukraine's deputy head of military intelligence says there's no way for Ukraine to win on the battlefield. Which has been obvious for over 2 years, but I'm guessing not even the most committed of the #SlavaUkraini crowd can call this guy a Russian troll or invoke Neville Chamberlain for saying so.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/03/ukraine-peace-talks-alternative-inevitable-defeat/
While I'm here, a couple of weeks ago I pointed out that the supplemental bill included a provision that the Biden Administration must provide an actual, coherent Ukraine strategy within 45 days of the bill's passing. I predicted that they would ignore the provision because they very obviously don't have a strategy (which is in fact implied in the provision itself - why do they need another 45 days to present a strategy for a war that is 27 months old?)
Well here's Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee a few days ago being asked about this very thing, and all but confirming that there never is, was or will be a plan for Ukrainian 'victory'. They've led Ukraine down the garden path and are now completely out of ideas.
Finally, in each of Zelenskiy's last 3 nightly addresses to the Ukrainian people (posted on his twitter), it's notable that even he ("nobody believes in our victory like I do" - Zelenskiy. "He deludes himself" - Zelenskiy adviser speaking to Time Magazine) has stopped talking about victory. Now he talks about getting the "global community" (he means China and India) to "force Russia to make peace".
One last article, worth a read:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-fortifications-8a72981dfdb755de6f8011b13f4d062e
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/03/ukraine-peace-talks-alternative-inevitable-defeat/
While I'm here, a couple of weeks ago I pointed out that the supplemental bill included a provision that the Biden Administration must provide an actual, coherent Ukraine strategy within 45 days of the bill's passing. I predicted that they would ignore the provision because they very obviously don't have a strategy (which is in fact implied in the provision itself - why do they need another 45 days to present a strategy for a war that is 27 months old?)
Well here's Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee a few days ago being asked about this very thing, and all but confirming that there never is, was or will be a plan for Ukrainian 'victory'. They've led Ukraine down the garden path and are now completely out of ideas.
Finally, in each of Zelenskiy's last 3 nightly addresses to the Ukrainian people (posted on his twitter), it's notable that even he ("nobody believes in our victory like I do" - Zelenskiy. "He deludes himself" - Zelenskiy adviser speaking to Time Magazine) has stopped talking about victory. Now he talks about getting the "global community" (he means China and India) to "force Russia to make peace".
One last article, worth a read:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-fortifications-8a72981dfdb755de6f8011b13f4d062e
*Opens Redcafe*
*Posts Russian Propoganda*
*Refuses to elaborate*
*Closes Redcafe*
*Posts Russian Propoganda*
*Refuses to elaborate*
*Closes Redcafe*
He could at least try to pretend to be an everton fan and make a couple of posts in the footie forums, but I doubt he can name a single everton player.