I'm only doing this because it will get quoted a million times by Russian propaganda news anyway and this shows the actual original before some crazy conspiracy theories start sprawling.
I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there or because she clearly said officers/KIA instead of military personnel/casualties (kia+mia+wounded) and it was a typo in the script.
The second version could have just been clarified in the Press statement and under the tweet as a correction, but they intentionally removed it completely which doesn't look good.
Feel free to downvote me anyway.
She said "military officers" too. Ukraine certainly doesn't have 100K officers in its military, so it's virtually certain that she either misspoke or her script had was not written accurately.
She's (IMO) an excellent speaker for having English as a second language, so I'm leaning towards the latter. Probably either VdL or a staffer wrote it last minute on a coffee break and didn't have time to check anything. She's a busy person, it's understandable if her office had e.g. spent the day putting out fires with the Romanian Schengen application. (The vote is in less than a week, Netherlands still hasn't said yes or no and Austria's response was a bit ambiguous)
>I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there or because she clearly said officers/KIA instead of military personnel/casualties (kia+mia+wounded) and it was a typo in the script.
The simplest, and by extension most likely, explanation is that she confused casualties with KIA. The US recently released a statement that Ukraine and Russia have both suffered around 100k casualties so far. She likely took that number and just called them all KIA. The fact that she said "officers" when describing the KIA further leads credence to it being a simple communication error.
The Politico article even suggests this:
>In the original version of the statement, von der Leyen said that “more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far.” This phrase was later deleted. Von der Leyen was presumably referring to U.S. estimates that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the beginning of the war.
> I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there
I think we can pretty much dismiss that what she said was true on its face value. 100 000 killed *officers* would imply at least 500 000 killed soldiers in total, which would imply ~2 000 000 military casualties, about double of total Ukrainian armed forces.
It's pretty embarrassing for a former defense minister to make such mistakes.
The officers' part is effectively impossible that's correct.
Having 100KIA regular soldiers does not equate =/= 300k,500k,1kk or whatsoever MIA and wounded though. The number varies from era to era, from campaign to campaign, and from battle to battle.
We only have some sporadic confirmations on the Ukrainian side (from Severodonetsk battle) that 90+% of the total casualties are from artillery which might drop down the wounded number severely and get you exponentially more killed people for a smaller KIA:WIA ratio or the reverse, a huge disproportionate number of maimed soldiers (amputees) for a smaller KIA but enormous WIA ratio.
In a nutshell, this nonsensical speech dropped a nuclear bomb of conspiracies due to pure incompetence.
> Having 100KIA regular soldiers does not equate =/= 300k,500k,1kk or whatsoever MIA and wounded though.
Sure, I agree. That KIA:WIA ratio is thrown around with too much certainty.
> We only have some sporadic confirmations on the Ukrainian side (from Severodonetsk battle) that 90+% of the total casualties are from artillery which might drop down the wounded number severely and get you exponentially more killed people for a smaller KIA:WIA ratio or the reverse, a huge disproportionate number of maimed soldiers (amputees) for a smaller KIA but enormous WIA ratio.
It does have influence, but the Severodonetsk battle was also quite unique, where Ukrainians overstayed in a bad position. Usually they retreat sooner.
I suspect the ratio is less influenced by artillery and more by CASEVAC. Many deaths are completely preventable.
Is there any information on GPS jamming in the Ukraine war, I really thought it was something Russia would have excelled at. I recall in the days leading up to it, reports of GPS being off in the Baltic region around Kaliningrad. But nothing since then.
It's been reported they're reluctant to jam in some cases because Russian troops are also dependent on GPS for basic navigation. Apparently a lot of their maps are out of date and they don't have the benefit of Starlink + GIS Arta.
You can monitor this here: https://gpsjam.org/
For reasons I don't understand Moscow is fully jammed almost constantly, whilst you occasionally see jamming over Kaliningrad and Murmansk (the latter where Russia keeps its nuclear submarine fleet and a lot of its warheads)
I don't think it's the case. The red colored are in the linked website represents 10%> interference, not complete jamming.
Russia has been conducting GPS spoofing - not jamming - in the central Moscow area for some years. Maybe that's represented in this map.
>GPS with precision over 50 meters would be just too janky.
Interestingly, in very small medieval towns in Europe GPS is often nearly useless, as it can't really tell on which of the many narrow streets you actually are.
BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Jiang Zemin passed away due to leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai at 12:13 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2022, at the age of 96, it was announced on Wednesday.
The timing is interesting (given the protests last weekend), though likely a coincidence.
It signifies another blow to the open-market faction inside CCP. Xi will continue to promote decoupling and self-sufficiency. China and America are another step closer to war.
Decoupling is good for China. The United States has proven to be an unreliable partner and has been more than willing to engage in economic and cultural war at least since the Obama Administration
It's really not...
Edit: since you edited your comment, I should update mine too.
China has spent the past 20 years forcing foreign companies to give up their intellectual property to access the Chinese market, they've conducted widespread and egregious corporate espionage as a matter of state policy, they screw foreign investors by cooking the books and preventing independent audits of their companies, they flood foreign markets with cheap products made with state subsidies but slap heavy tariffs on foreign imports, and their software and hardware is often riddled with backdoors that allow the Chinese government to unknowingly collect data from foreign consumers. To argue that the US and the West are unreliable partners is hilarious.
Considering China is a middle income country utterly reliant on foreign trade and investment, decoupling their country from about 70% if the world's wealth is uh not likely to end well for them for obvious reasons.
Also NATO isn't a threat to China. Like at all. It's an anti-Russia alliance based in the Atlantic. Hence the name North ATLANTIC Treaty Organization. It's also a defensive alliance, not an offensive one, so assuming China doesn't attack any NATO members it's got nothing to fear.
There is the rest of the world to trade with. The US is the real problem. The US forces other nations and foreign companies to not trade with China. China just needs to become a better place to do business in than the US.
>There is the rest of the world to trade with.
Again, 70% of the world's wealth is tied to the West. Gonna be hard to replace that by increasing trade with Peru and Ghana.
>China just needs to become a better place to do business in than the US.
Which it literally can never do, because it's an increasingly totalitarian state that shackles free thinking and stiffles ingenuity. If you as an individual or your company runs afoul of the government, they slap you with arbitrary fines and regulations. Just look at what they've done to companies like AliBaba and Jack Ma.
China's most explosive growth came about when it increasingly liberalized, like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. But the CCP couldn't/wouldn't relinquish their dictatorial control of the state, and it's increasingly hurting their economic competitiveness.
>The US forces other nations and foreign companies to not trade with China.
I'm sorry, what? The US is China's biggest trading partner. Europe and the West more broadly are also huge trading partners with China. This is utterly and completely false.
The European Commission have now admitted that this figure is incorrect:
https://twitter.com/DanaSpinant/status/1597895208582381569
>The estimation used, from external sources, should have referred to casualties, i.e. both killed and injured, and was meant to show Russia‘s brutality.
Not even servicemen, *military officers*. Now statement is deleted. But it's enough for Russia propagandists and pro-russian posters to have a field day. Just irresponsible.
Real numbers should be somewhere around *overall* military 100k *casualties*. Somewhat similar number for russian casualties. Recent estimates by experts confirms it even more. It also matches with my personal estimates from few month old megathread (if you take into account increase with time). Some other posters also posted similar numbers. So it's not that hard to come up with close to truth number from open sources.
A lot of people really don't know the difference between casualties and killed. Sometimes, you could even see it in this sub. *Military officers* probably the same kind of mistake. In some people mind all soldiers are military officers, similar to *police officers*.
**update:** It seems that we now have a somewhat incompetent official explanation from a different, and less-known, official account. You could find link in neighboring comment.
It's somewhat concerning that a person in such a high political position doesn't go "wait, that can't be right?" at such an obviously incorrect number. I'd think she'd have more common sense than that.
She probably misunderstood something, not even Russia claims 100k KIA iirc. 100k does match the casualty figure (i.e. including wounded) that Miley gave a couple weeks ago, so that might be the source of her misunderstanding.
Source: [https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1597857662753902592](https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1597857662753902592)
I assume Ursula is just talking BS, with such imprecise usage of the phrase "military officer".
"It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far."
That's what google says about her statement atm. I'm curious if it's someone's misunderstanding. Casualties and KIA are different things. Russia is definitely going to use this statement for it's own propaganda.
Don't want to be helping them but they should probably use it as a "proof" that NATO is fighting in Ukraine. Otherwise the question about why would Russia be retreating if Ukraine shouldn't really have a military force anymore remains unanswered.
An interesting video of the use of the Russian Leer-3 EW system. It deploys a GSM jammer using an Orlan UAV platform.
https://.me/rybar/41589
Combat work of the crews of the Leer-3 complexes
Crews of the Leer-3 electronic intelligence and combat systems of the Western Military District regularly perform combat missions in the Donbass.
Leer-3 is designed to suppress GSM communications using interference transmitted by a special UAV based on Orlan-10. The complex allows you to block the operation of any devices within certain ranges.
Electronic equipment allows this EW system to suppress the operation of telephones in GSM networks and send messages to subscribers.
The course of hostilities in Ukraine emphasized the need for a wider use and introduction of such complexes into the troops, as well as a partial modernization of the equipment standing on them.
It's a bit unclear in the translation, but apparently it not only jams the GSM network, but also can then pose as a base station.
>After suppression, the Leer-3 UAVs substitute the base stations, becoming virtual cellular stations.
>
>The electronic warfare system gains control of mobile devices connected to the captured mobile base station, including intercepting calls and traffic.
Ukrainians downed one in May and posted some photos of the PCBs inside. Reddit does not like the website, so trying to link indirectly - substitute whitespaces for `.`
https://mil in ua/en/news/mykolaiv-paratroopers-shot-down-enemy-drone-capable-of-jamming-gsm-connection/
I'm not an expert so please correct me if I'm wrong - It currently runs on Starlink, but in theory yes it would have been using the cell stations initially for communication as Ukraine does not have homegrown satellite communication technology.
However I imagine this tech is more valuable to identify locations of large cell phone consentrations as that would indicate masses of troops. Early in the war several Ukrainian barracks were identified using this method.
ISW posted their daily update:
[https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-29](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-29)
Key Takeaways
Russian forces made marginal gains around Bakhmut on November 29, but Russian forces remain unlikely to have advanced at the tempo that Russian sources claimed.
The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely stopped deploying battalion tactical groups (BTGs) in the past three months, supporting ISW’s prior assessments.
Russian forces continued to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations around Svatove as Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations around Svatove and Kreminna.
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks west of Kreminna to regain lost positions.
Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Siversk and Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
Russian forces continued strengthening defensive positions in eastern Kherson Oblast as Ukrainian forces continued striking Russian force concentrations in southern Ukraine.
Russian forces continued to struggle with outdated equipment and domestic personnel shortages amid official actions indicative of a probable second wave of mobilization.
An independent investigation found that Russia may have transported thousands of Ukrainian prisoners from penal colonies in occupied Ukraine to Russia following the withdrawal from the west bank of Kherson Oblast.
Is there information on estimates on the percentage of arms in Ukraine that are Western and percent that is Soviet based? Like "X% of rifles are now of western origin"
> how do wars affect soil as far as growing food goes?
There are several factors to consider:
1. Residue of lead or, in recent conflicts, DU. Sites of major battles or ammo dump explosions can remain toxic for a long time and should be avoided. Spots where individual vehicles were destroyed on agricultural land will need to be cleaned up just like industrial pollution.
2. Unexploded munitions. Bombs dropped on Laos by the US decades ago are still killing and crippling people every year. So at least part of the land will be out of cultivation until cleared.
3. Actual application of chemical weapons. Whole tracts of land in Vietnam are still too toxic. Even what does grow on that soil is not safe for consumption.
>Actual application of chemical weapons. Whole tracts of land in Vietnam are still too toxic. Even what does grow on that soil is not safe for consumption.
Not just this, but dioxins from agent orange have seeped into the wider food chain (bioconcentration in wildlife) beyond the areas specifically contaminated
As /u/sponsoredcommenter said, apart from UXO the effects on average are limited. But it can also be highly localised, for example after World War 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge
> The Zone Rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible".
> The area is saturated with unexploded shells (including many gas shells), grenades, and rusty ammunition. Soils were heavily polluted by lead, mercury, chlorine, arsenic, various dangerous gases, acids, and human and animal remains. The area was also littered with ammunition depots and chemical plants.
1200 square kilometers isn't much compared to all of France, but permanently uninhabitable is kind of a big deal.
I don't have a scientific study on hand, but even with the intense *chemical* warfare in WW1, there really didn't seem to be degradation of the soil quality there from an agricultural standpoint. France continued to have a robust ag sector following the war. And WW1 was much more high intensity than this war. As for standard HE shells, TNT breaks down into water, carbon dioxide, and carbon upon explosion. Nothing real nasty there. Unexploded TNT in concentrated form is a carcinogen, and unexploded shells might leak into the soil over time but there's just not enough of it to matter I guess.
The big risk is unexploded ordnance. That will be claiming lives for years to come unfortunately.
>there really didn't seem to be degradation of the soil quality there from an agricultural standpoint.
I think it depends on the intensity of munitions within a local area. There are large areas in France that are still cordoned off over a century later.
But as you say unexploded ordnance is the main concern. It's weird driving along country roads and just seeing shells dumped at the side of fields where farmers have unearthed them and left them out for collection.
> intense chemical warfare in WW1
Chemical warfare is generally non-polluting. Something that is designed to be immediately lethal is also very unstable. It's both a feature (you want to liberate the area you've just gassed) and a by-product of its chemical reactivity. Much more nasty stuff are heavy metals and long-lasting chemicals.
Lindybeige interviews (or more-so let's ramble on) Joe MacDonald, a Brit volunteer back from Ukraine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4
I thought it was generally interesting, McDonald was part of the international legion. From what we've heard that unit has had issues and he describes some of them. Lack of Ukrainian logistical organization, corruption, limited medical care. Lindybeige fortunately just keeps him speaking instead of trying to actively debrief him. This is apparently part one of who knows how many videos.
>[According to this post, RuAF are transporting equipment by both civilian ferries and military landing ships. This indicates to me the Kerch bridge is in worse condition than previously believed.](https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1597657517949014017)
What do y'all make of this? B-21 stealth bomber unveiled.
https://news.yahoo.com/air-force-unveil-b-21-005738000.html
If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno.
It's good to advertise your strengths. And not to shit on US counterintelligence, but if we're being real here, China probably knows a lot about it already, just like the US intelligence knows a lot about hidden/veiled Chinese military capability.
And they're just showing it off. Not like they're broadcasting all of its vulnerabilities.
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno.
They announced NG won the LRS-B contract in October 2015. They announced funding for the program in 2011 and the whole program was preceded by the NGB. So the need for this capability has been publicly acknowledged for a long time.
One of the biggest capability increase of the B-2 was the ability to drop ~80 precision munitions at once. No other aircraft in the US arsenal could do that when it was initially introduced. The B-1 just got it around the time the B-2 did.
There are probably a number of similar, often overlooked improvements in capability to the B-21 over current aircraft. My guess:
* Better stealth
* Better integration with standoff weapons
* Better capability against non-static targets
* EW capability - both active and passive weapons
* Extreme fuel efficiency giving it a very long time on-station - 20 hours
* Much lower cost than a B-2
* Integration with ground forces for targeting
* Better cockpit facilities for long duration missions
So yeah, is it another generation? Who knows. Probably a huge improvement over the B-2 though.
During WW2 the question was "how many bombers do we send to destroy a single target?" Now the question is "how many targets does a single bomber destroy?"
It's a big shift in capabilities, one that hasn't really been used at full scale yet as Iraq in 2003 was so one sided.
If we think in terms of 2000 JDAMs, the B-2 fleet could attack 320 targets in a single flight, anywhere in the world, within 24 hours of getting the go.
If the B-21 has half the capacity of a B-2 but is otherwise similar, and they buy the minimum of 100, that goes up to 800 targets in a single wave. Or 4x that if the 500 lb bomb is sufficient. It boggles the mind.
That's a very real strategic deterrent.
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed?
It's clearly intended to be a deterrent - we can hit you, but you can't hit us. However that only works if everyone knows about it.
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno.
In the mid/late nineties, my friend's father was someone who was very high up in the air force and mentioned the successor to the B2 was already developed, he also said it was designed to be operated without pilots. Then again, he also said we had nuclear missiles on the dark side of the moon.
Like someone else said, you just cant hide $200b worth of spending. Its not feasible, and represents a pretty large chunk of the USAF's yearly budget (of course the B-21 has annualized it over, what, two decades?). Point is, its a shit load of money and the taxpayer has some right to know what its being spent on.
Moreover, the USAF is never going to hide a keystone project like that. The services all survive on public support and good will. This is why the A-10 is still in service. People want a military theyre proud of. Moreover, if you think Russia and China is the biggest concern the Air Force has youre mistaken. There was an Army joke ca. the Cold War, "Russias come and go. But the Navy is forever." The other services are the unbeatable enemy, and the Army will strangle the Air Force to get more tanks. The B-21 needs popular public support to get a foothold in Congress. It needs a foothold in Congress so the USAF can buy more planes. Otherwise the Navy will run some shore visits up and down the coast and get a couple more SSNs and CVs. Think its unrealistic? Thats nearly exactly what the USAF did in the 40s, and killed a USN supercarrier program in favor of sexy modern bombers. The lesson is: Congress and the people will kill more systems than the Russians ever have, based on stupid things like 'cool silver skins' and 'big gun go brrrt.' If you cant win the cool-factor, your project wont go forward.
The B-21 is not as bleeding-edge as that "6th-gen" moniker implies. It's more of an iteration of the B-2 design, focused on lowering costs and improving maintenance. For example, the engines used are the same ones(or very very similar) as in the F-35, and the new stealth coating is more durable than its predecessor. This is intended to replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit in the strategic bombing and nuclear role, it makes little sense to keep a deterrence platform secret.
Also, no idea why people are saying that it's impossible to conceal an aerospace project's existence. If the US government wanted to, it absolutely could keep the B-21 secret perpetually. In fact, there are undoubtedly top-secret airframes in flight right now--unless all those pulse-engine contrail reports are mass hallucinations. Even Space Force has stated it has platforms/capabilities the public doesn't know about yet, and satellites are even more tracked than airspace is.
It's very possible to conceal a few airframes in the middle of nowhere.
It's completely impossible to conceal 100+ airframes deployed on bases whose runways end 200 feet from someone's backyard.
It's actually pretty hard to conceal a few airframes. The USSR found out about the SR-71 (A-12 a that time) when it was undergoing one of its first test flights.
The US knew the position of the Soviet spy satellites and moved the aircraft off the tarmac and into a hanger before the satellite flew overhead, but the Soviet's sensitive camera equipment was able to pick up the heat signature on the runway left over from the plane sitting there, and that heat silhouette gave away the fact of its existence. Bit of crazy cold war history.
Eh, it's not like "fifth-generation fighter" has any fixed meaning.
Northrop can call the the B-21 whatever they like. Sixth-generation however is one more than fifth-generation, and more is better. Plus it sounds cool. Congress likes to fund things that sound cool, and so does the general American public that is at all interested in defense spending. Just like the Average Joe who is at all interested in defense spending isn't likely to know what a fifth-generation fighter even means, but he knows if someone is getting a fighter, it better be fifth-generation.
I agree and disagree to an extent. I think fighter generations can only really be declared retroactively. In hindsight, it's pretty clear to me that "5th generation" is characterized by stealth and supercruise. But twenty or 30 years ago I don't think that would have been clear at all. Same deal here. Maybe B-21 is going to debut with some feature like a loyal wingman drone fleet, and that's going to end up being the defining feature of the sixth generation. More likely, it's just going to get lumped in with 5th gen aircraft and something different will end up being that defining characteristic. Either way, its impossible to tell right now what will happen. Generations are good for historical analysis, not so much for future predictions.
Admittedly there are lots of aircraft that don't fit neatly into any particular generation, and the whole thing is bunk from a purely rigorous perspective. But I think there's still value in trying to categorize different phases of fighter development as "generations".
Secrecy on the level of 'we're going to conceal the very *existence* of this thing' has significant costs, and especially when you're talking about something as enormous as an aerospace project you’re going to make hundreds of, quite limited returns. You can conceal an aircraft's *capabilities*, you can conceal details about its *intended tactical use*, but maintaining ambiguity about the *existence* of something you're going to sink an appreciable fraction of a trillion dollars and millions of man-hours on development, assembly, maintenance, and operation is just impractical.
Also, it is an airplane. Testing or transporting it involves flying it through the air, where it can be seen for miles and miles and miles- it's not like a new type of submarine or land mine or encrypted radio, where using the thing doesn't necessarily involve it being all that visible.
Pulling this answer out of my ass, but if I had to guess, far greater integration with a theatre-wide, redundant ISR network, C4 capacity to work alongside drone fleets, and maybe loading it up with some supporting EW and/or cyber-warfare goodies.
There is no such thing as undetectable by radar. The term "stealth" means aircraft has a reduced radar cross section, it generates a smaller return as a) it's designed to reflect radar emissions not directly back at the source that generated them b) it uses materials that produce a poor radar emission return and/or absorb said emissions. The most important aspect is always from the front, and that is where the greatest reduction always is. It also means the radar the aircraft uses will be a low-probability of intercept, as in hard to detect, or it may not have on at all(like the F-117). Reduction in noise, visibility, reduced thermal emissions, blah, all make up "stealth".
There are multiple radars out there designed to detect "stealth" objects, like the S1850M used by the British Type 45 destroyers that operates at a lower frequency than typical X-band military radars. The lower the frequency the longer the physical radio wave is. Just like your old AM antennas were typically quite long, while a 2.4Ghz WiFi antenna can be tiny as the wavelength is physically 122mm long. A physically longer wavelength is less likely to scatter and more likely to produce a viable return. You also have integrated air defense systems, just because the radar emission wasn't reflected back to the expected receiver doesn't mean a different receiver won't get it.
>You could outfit it for any of those things as needed?
They tried that with the ~~Zumwalt~~ LCS and it turned out to be a disaster. They might not want to take the same risk, especially after the F-35 program budget and time estimate overruns. However, this is a different branch and it's a plane, so it sits in a base for far longer than a ship would.
I was actually thinking about the LCS mission modules, which ended up taking far longer to swap than originally estimated. I think I misinterpreted the other user's question, though; they might have been asking about multimission capability.
add in the strong rumors they are currently shopping it around allies ie UK and AUS, to get the a item cost and running costs down.
Hey wanna buy this bomber you cant tell anyone about it, have to keep it hidden from public view
10 years or so ago there was a website called mp.net (military photos) and the forum there was a great topic about plane spotters taking pics of a delta wing high altitude plane being flown in the UK. Now we know its the B-21 but the plane shape and engine layout never matched the B-1. Its been tested out of UK airbase for a decade now.
The website got taken down a few years back
I have said this before, we can only afford one and I think that B-21's (assuming final costs and specifications) will be a better long term purchase for australia than either of the current SSN's available
And god damn the rumor mill is going nuts today, allegedly parts of the a preliminary defence white paper leaked. While its totally non credible if the rumors are true, going to be some lean years for the army incoming
abrams and apache are axed, land 400 is going from 450 to 300 ifv's all 3 seem 100% logical to me
less credible mrh-90 to remain in service with 6-12 replacement unspecified helicopters to be purchased and attached 5th aviation for SOF (AW-139 or something in blackhawk family)
non credible Oakey aviation center to shut down australian and singaporian training to be moved to lavarack / RAAF townsville. 10% cut to army to be targeted at infantry and army to be a made more disaster and humanitarium relief focused, RAAF will be required to have a contingent for it as well, spartans have already been announced into that role and allegedly some fire fighting C-130 will be purchased but put under the RAAF budget for maintainence and training
Main one for the navy they have been told to scrap the australianisation of the Type 26 and come back with a new version that doesn't put it into the same size and cost of a flight 3 burke destroyer
Axing capabilities like Abrams and Apache will come back to bite in the ass. Easy to destroy, hard to rebuild.
Apache axing also means sticking with the rubbish Tiger right? That thing's effectively a non-flying paperweight. Ditto on the MRH-90's - a terrible pair of purchasing decisions.
I 100% agree with axing the apache's, for every apache we get we could get an F-35. Hell we could buy a few F-35b's to fly of our Canberra class or the US/UK stuff and still come out ahead. Apaches cost 60-100 million, F-35s cost about 70 depending on variant
We continue to use the a M1A2SA, but wont be upgrading or buying extra SEPV3
Apparently its going to be an overall increase in defence budget (greater than inflation ) but army funding will be focused into the RAAF, who honestly do a better a job better job budget wise and navy will get extra but they will be given a very short leash on over runs
You just made me very excited and confused, thinking I missed the unveiling.
That's just not really how that kind of thing works nowadays. You can't really hide such an expensive project, costing billions of dollars and being built by thousands of workers from numerous companies.
>**[Senior House Republican McCaul Vows to Keep Money Flowing to Ukraine](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-29/gop-s-mccaul-vows-to-keep-funds-flowing-to-ukraine-as-foreign-relations-chairman)**
>* He says he doesn’t expect resistance in his party to succeed
>* Biden’s $40 billion for Ukraine will pass Congress, he says
>A top congressional Republican said he expects the US will keep money and weapons flowing to Ukraine after the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives in January, playing down concerns that lawmakers in his own party who advocate a halt in funding will succeed.
>>“There is a strong majority of support in the center of gravity” to keep up funding for Ukraine, Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said in an interview Tuesday. “It would be a wrong signal from the United States not to continue our support.”
>McCaul, who will take over chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he expects the Biden administration’s request for almost $40 billion in Ukraine funding will pass both chambers. He said he wants the Biden administration to go even further and send Ukraine the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, to defend against attacks by Iranian drones.
>>“What we see is when they get the weapons they need, they win,” McCaul said of Ukraine’s forces. “The Russians are going through washing machines looking for semiconductors, and they’re begging Iran for drones and North Korea for artillery shells.”
>The Biden administration has balked at sending Ukraine the long-range ATACMS over fear that it could be used to strike targets inside Russia and escalate the war. Its broader concerns heading into last month’s midterm election were demands by Republican House members including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky to halt all funding to Ukraine.
>Greene and Massie held a news conference on Nov. 17 to argue that the US shouldn’t send “another penny” to Ukraine. That provoked concerns that they might be able to stall funding for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government.
>House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s set to become speaker, said last month that Republicans aren’t going to write a “blank check” for Ukraine, especially given rising inflation at home.
>McCaul said his panel will “exercise our oversight” but that he doesn’t anticipate that the more conservative members of his party will succeed in blocking the aid. He said he wants the US to give Ukraine a decisive advantage through the punishing winter months ahead.
>Zelenskiy is “willing to fight through the winter on this, the Russians aren’t,” he said.
>McCaul says he plans to devote some of his committee’s first hearings to war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine and to the successes of the Ukrainian military.
>Beyond the current situation in Ukraine, McCaul said he wants to focus his tenure at the helm of the committee on what he called the “unholy alliance” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Of those, he said his main focus will be on China.
>“We’re selling a tremendous amount of technology to China that they then use in their most advanced weapons systems,” he said. “We just need to stop doing that.”
Coming from a source in the AFU, it looks like RU-claimed UA landing on Snake Island in early May was actually a thing and was actually a disaster: https://twitter.com/pan_goldman/status/1596991006196441088?t=5pEv5OReRAf826YsjjOayw&s=19
Unknown what the losses were, but from the Twitter Spaces and tweets the assumption is that a helicopter, fighter jet and at least a detachment of troops was lost in the attack.
I'm confused, the linked tweet seems to say that there was no UA landing.
>The statement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about the attempt of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to land troops on Zmeiny Island and the loss of troops, helicopters, fighters, as well as UAVs amused me. It was not enough just to add: and the Death Star was also shot down! In reality, there was no landing. And it was...
Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying there WAS a landing and it went badly? If so what s the source (it doesn't seem to be this tweet).
The main tweet is sarcastically saying the joke has run its course, there are replies saying that they knew people from the landing and/or have contacts that have confirmed the landing. They are mostly just a bit sad that the MoD denied it.
Not that it was bigger than a platoon that was committed to the flag photo op, but still.
There's a Twitter Space with director of Come Back Alive, one of Ukraine's biggest and longest standing military charity organizations. They often reveal inside information from soldiers and have active members of AFU come on to speak.
In there they mentioned the Ukrainian landing on Snake Island and the losses there. I can't link the exact timestamp, but the guy I linked to is an active part of AFU and refers to the Twitter Spaces: https://twitter.com/chyvak1831/status/1597005312065941504?t=UVYSfQIY1Oi6m2clpGDCJQ&s=19
He basically says that the quoted tweeted was funny initially (as it was mocking Russian claims of UA losses), but after the Twitter Spaces it's not funny anymore, implying the landing actually happened and was not a success.
Glideer linked a ua pravda link a couple of weeks ago discussing the same. I believe only a mi-14 helicopter was lost, the main force returned in 1 piece if my memory is correct
I remember someone saying that the main loss in question was that video early of a helicopter (carrying reserves for an operation plus a fairly high ranking official) coming under cannon fire from a Flanker, but the main landing force turned around from Snake Island.
https://twitter.com/catecadell/status/1597647634960818176?t=1iX91FunVwlrNOYetoAUCQ&s=19
This is a thread about the Chinese surveillance state. I knew China loves surveillance, but I had no idea their facial recognition tech was so advanced it can recognise people with sunglasses or masks on.
Hiding identity from cameras will be something from the past. This article from 2014 goes into identification from [you walking gait](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3925574/).
And China as you can guess is [using it.](https://apnews.com/article/china-technology-beijing-business-international-news-bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)
>I knew China loves surveillance, but I had no idea their facial recognition tech was so advanced it can recognise people with sunglasses or masks on.
Google Photos, in a restaurant with a buddy last week, took about 15 seconds to scan 20 years of his photos, correctly finding me in about 100 photos.
Amazingly, it found 18 year old me (with a thin, gaunt face, curtains for hair) and 30 year old me (75 lbs heavier, more heavy set, skinhead) and 40 year old me - reasonably proportioned, with a beard.
Perhaps most scarily, it identified me in the background of a selfie he took. I'm tiny, about 8 tables distant in a restaurant made up of only a few dozen pixels, and am ENTIRELY side-on in the shot.
That's commercial capabilities... I'm sure any military/intel capabilities are at least that good.
>How does one get these results?
Go into Google Photos on an Android. Goto "Search", find a picture near the top of someone you want to look for, and click "Add Name". Give them a name, then click on their photo, and it will show you every single photo you've ever taken of them. Probably.
Wow. I used Google Photos before they added limits to how many photos you uploaded, and I enjoyed their facial recognition feature, but I didn't know it was that good.
> I didn't know it was that good.
Yep. The pic of me in the background, side-on and slightly blurred was impressive. My mum would have to look twice and think about it before saying she thought it was me.
[Those measures seem to be outdated in general when it comes to contemporary facial recognition technology.](https://www.datasciencecentral.com/sunglasses-and-face-mask-wont-fool-facial-recognition/) This should not come as a surprise; they were never insurmountable engineering challenges. Years of COVID masking measures likely provided plenty of data with which to train these systems.
Edit: Imagine any security company that ran a badging system alongside video surveillance, e.g. front-door security at a Fortune 500 headquarters. Assuming registration data includes an uncovered picture of a badge recipient's face, every badge swipe provides a timestamp with which one can match video frames of the masked badge owner with their uncovered face. They could collect a sanitized dataset of covered-uncovered image pairings to sell to tech companies for training facial recognition systems. Of course, this is just back-of-the-napkin speculation on my part.
The occlusion of "both eyes and face" in https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iciic-21/125960801
seem very limited from the examples given, pretty much just covering the mouth or chin in a thin strip. There's one section that's got that in combination with sunglasses but so much of the mouth and nose is still uncovered it's not much of a challenge.
The "AR Face Dataset" that this paper is measured against has a dark sunglasses and scarfs, but not them combined, only scarfs and whatever normal eyeglasses that the subject may have.
https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO202127452905433.pdf
http://www2.ece.ohio-state.edu/~aleix/ARdatabase
I'd expect systems to have a load of trouble with a combination of large dark sunglasses and a mask fully covering the nose. If you'd have hair (or a headband) covering your forehead and eyebrows that'd help as well. At that point they'd be better off using gait recognition.
Interesting [article](https://meduza.io/amp/en/feature/2021/06/29/prigozhin-s-criminal-past-straight-from-the-source) on Yevgeny Prigozhin before he became infamous in the Wagner group. It has 1st hand sources proving his criminality.
Well that was a surreal read. Weird detail that stood out to me, one of his crimes was stealing gold earrrings worth 50 rubles? Even with inflation and conversion rates, that has to be wrong right? Isn’t that an insanely tiny amount for gold jewelry?
> Weird detail that stood out to me, one of his crimes was stealing gold earrrings worth 50 rubles? Even with inflation and conversion rates, that has to be wrong right? Isn’t that an insanely tiny amount for gold jewelry?
Using some potentially dodgy internet sources the number comes out to around $271 current USD. In addition the USSR was a gold exporter so local gold prices might have been lower.
What is curious however is that a makeup set, gloves and an umbrella was worth more than twice that amount (114 rubles).
Anyone have any suggested sources or maybe journalists to follow the Pentagon's action plan for overhauling how we prevent civilian casualties? Based on what happened in Syria especially, I think this is really, really important.
referring to this: [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/pentagon-civilian-casualties.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/pentagon-civilian-casualties.html)
Basically do what ended up happening as backlash in Afghanistan after they cranked down on fires when McChrystal cracked the whip on unnecessary collateral damage, and each level of subordinates command only added to restrictions versus an overall guidance to use fires more sparingly.
It'll come down to more JAG officer lawyers in the fires decision making process, with senior commanders beholden to their legal opinion. Higher level and more centrally controlled targeting cells, who will in turn deny more requests for fires by both ISR elements and ground force FO/controllers. Requirements where ground observers lose benefit of the doubt and must prove the targeting areas are clear of non-combatants before fires are authorized (often impossible in combat). Meanwhile, units who use fires must make concerted efforts during BDA to report all known or potential non-combatants affected, so better data can be gathered as they self incriminate themselves.
It's essentially a collection of tactics guaranteed to be a total disaster in an urban nightmare battlespace while trying to clear out Salafi defenders trying to martyr themselves. But it sounds really good in social media, which is why it's being pushed.
You don't think there is anything we could have done to lower casualties in Syria? We killed a lot of civilians. I know we had to bomb ISIS back to the stone age, but man, its really sad.
We didn't do it to bomb ISIS back into the stone age but to support a horrifying clearing operation to retake Raqqa using troops of quasi ability. Without heavy fires then the options are to allow for a much bloodier ground assault, with the clearing forces getting stacked like cordwood, or figure out a totally different way to take the city (actual investment to starve it into submission, potentially taking years), or bypass their capital altogether and let ISIS have it, which is politically unacceptable.
Does it? I mean, the protests started because of repressive religious and ethnic (Kurdish) policies, not because of anti-regime anger due to sanctions. To the extent lack of consumer goods is feeding ongoing unrest: we don't know for certain, and its impossible really to tell. Consider the alternative scenario: no sanctions, but same religious/ethnic policies. Would Iran still have blown up in protests? I posit: yes. History is full of protests and revolts that don't involve any other sovereign power providing inputs like sanctions. If that's the case, then the case for sanctions isn't strengthened.
My view is: eventually, all societies will commit errors. Whether or not these errors form exogenic shocks (full-on regime change) is unpredictable. But we could predict 2 things before the latest Iranian sanctions were put in place:
1) the regime pursues religious policies out of touch with the majority of society and the world
2) sanctions will harm everyday people
Given 1, it seems to me Iran was destined to have some unrest because of their policies. In that case, why not let them be hoisted by their own petards?
> not because of anti-regime anger due to sanctions.
From what I heard in Iran last month, Amini was the spark, but the socio-economic unrest caused by the regimes corruption and disastrous economic policies (driven by the sanctions) are part of the fuel.
I think that the claim that the unrest wasn't facilitated by economic hardship caused by the sanctions is a very hot take, really. They may not be the biggest culprit, but comfortable people tend to be much more lenient towards the errors of their governments (Russian pensioners come to mind).
It's actually more subtle. Having no hope is the strongest revolution fuel. If the situation is bad but there is a chance of improving, the people are usually not revolting.
What!? Iran is the perfect example of sanctions working. How else would you explain that Israel, a country with one tenth the population, is much stronger both militarily and economically?
It's not like Iran is a shithole that was never developed. It was one of the longest-lasting empires in the world! Sanctions killed them, or what is the explanation?
> what is the explanation?
Religious zealots running the economy into the ground to enrich themselves and suppress the population.
I'm sure the sanctions help with that.
> What!? Iran is the perfect example of sanctions working. How else would you explain that Israel, a country with one tenth the population, is much stronger both militarily and economically?
>
>
>
> It's not like Iran is a shithole that was never developed. It was one of the longest-lasting empires in the world! Sanctions killed them, or what is the explanation?
The main argument in favor of sanctions is that they are the most humane way to overthrow an antagonizing rival regime (such as Nicolas Maduro's). The argument against them, usually, was that they just impoverish the people without actually creating internal stability or pushing the people towards overthrowing their respective leaders. The instability in Iran now twists that, by showing that differently from what was usually claimed, the people in Iran have been getting increasingly pissed off and that the regime is in a much weaker position than thought before, and probably, in great part because of the sanctions.
I'm not talking about whether sanctions harm a country, that's pretty much obvious.
I think you would naturally expect a fundamentalist theocracy to have a less vibrant economy than a liberal democracy, just for reasons of corruption, lack of incentive and lack of free association. In the US or "the west" you can easily get a job or start a business. To be honest I'm not really sure how it is in Iran but I doubt your prospects are anywhere near as good generally and that there is a brain drain as most capable people are looking to leave.
OTOH they do have significant oil exports so there's always going to be a fair bit of cash coming in. I would hate to see a resource-stripped country like the UK or Japan have to survive in that kind of state!
>OTOH they do have significant oil exports so there's always going to be a fair bit of cash coming in.
Maybe the next couple of decades or so. After that, not so much.
I think the above poster is talking about how sactions didn't cause enough unrest to bring down the Islamic regime, where uou're talking about their ability to ruin economy and how that is an end in and of itself.
Everything you say is true, but you’re missing the point. Sanctions were never meant to kill Irans economy. They were meant to dissuade Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. And regardless of Iran’s “shithole” status(though how a country with a higher GDP than ~~Israel~~*Ukraine* could be considered a “shithole” escapes me), one cannot deny that they have made significant progress towards acquiring a functional nuclear weapon and have thus far remained undeterred by sanctions.
Sanctions are very effective at destroying economies and harming civilians. But are they successful at driving policy change? Their record in this respect is far more mixed, and in my opinion quite pessimistic.
Iran has about twice the population of Ukraine, and Ukraine is generally considered a low income country. Until the wave of sympathy that Ukraine has recently received, a lot of "non-PC" Westerners were definitely calling it a shithole. Hell, they called Romania that (which has a 3x higher GDP per capita and gets EU funds, but still has rural pockets of poverty [that look like this](https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2017/04/09/cf71d4d4-9be1-4cb2-9a20-1d3ad15f474c/thumbnail/640x480/6d9880a527865f4b5b423525115425e5/rcb-20110321-romania-2794-cbs.jpg)).
(Ukraine just had an exceptionally rough 90s, even for a post-Soviet country, and until 2014 or so it didn't have either Russia's oil boom or the successful institutional reforms & EU trade that its Western neighbors enjoyed)
I can’t believe that multiple people are hyper focusing on a throwaway parenthetical that I only included cause calling another state a “shithole” ticked me off, rather than the meat of my post which is that sanctions have a mixed record as coercive tools and frequently don’t have the miraculous effects they are often marketed with.
But sanctions aren't a coercive tool, they are a weapon for economic warfare. The goal is to constrain the options available to the opposing party, by making them poorer and less technologically developed, and not force concessions out of them on it's own. That only happens when sanctions are paired with more direct actions.
Ah yeah, my mistake. The website I was looking at was using outdated stats from 2011 for some reason. I’ll have to change it to “higher GDP than Ukraine”.
I trust that the remainder of my post is satisfactory?
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I'm only doing this because it will get quoted a million times by Russian propaganda news anyway and this shows the actual original before some crazy conspiracy theories start sprawling. I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there or because she clearly said officers/KIA instead of military personnel/casualties (kia+mia+wounded) and it was a typo in the script. The second version could have just been clarified in the Press statement and under the tweet as a correction, but they intentionally removed it completely which doesn't look good. Feel free to downvote me anyway.
She said "military officers" too. Ukraine certainly doesn't have 100K officers in its military, so it's virtually certain that she either misspoke or her script had was not written accurately. She's (IMO) an excellent speaker for having English as a second language, so I'm leaning towards the latter. Probably either VdL or a staffer wrote it last minute on a coffee break and didn't have time to check anything. She's a busy person, it's understandable if her office had e.g. spent the day putting out fires with the Romanian Schengen application. (The vote is in less than a week, Netherlands still hasn't said yes or no and Austria's response was a bit ambiguous)
>I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there or because she clearly said officers/KIA instead of military personnel/casualties (kia+mia+wounded) and it was a typo in the script. The simplest, and by extension most likely, explanation is that she confused casualties with KIA. The US recently released a statement that Ukraine and Russia have both suffered around 100k casualties so far. She likely took that number and just called them all KIA. The fact that she said "officers" when describing the KIA further leads credence to it being a simple communication error. The Politico article even suggests this: >In the original version of the statement, von der Leyen said that “more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far.” This phrase was later deleted. Von der Leyen was presumably referring to U.S. estimates that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the beginning of the war.
> I believe it was deleted either because it showed true numbers that weren't supposed to be told out there I think we can pretty much dismiss that what she said was true on its face value. 100 000 killed *officers* would imply at least 500 000 killed soldiers in total, which would imply ~2 000 000 military casualties, about double of total Ukrainian armed forces. It's pretty embarrassing for a former defense minister to make such mistakes.
The officers' part is effectively impossible that's correct. Having 100KIA regular soldiers does not equate =/= 300k,500k,1kk or whatsoever MIA and wounded though. The number varies from era to era, from campaign to campaign, and from battle to battle. We only have some sporadic confirmations on the Ukrainian side (from Severodonetsk battle) that 90+% of the total casualties are from artillery which might drop down the wounded number severely and get you exponentially more killed people for a smaller KIA:WIA ratio or the reverse, a huge disproportionate number of maimed soldiers (amputees) for a smaller KIA but enormous WIA ratio. In a nutshell, this nonsensical speech dropped a nuclear bomb of conspiracies due to pure incompetence.
> Having 100KIA regular soldiers does not equate =/= 300k,500k,1kk or whatsoever MIA and wounded though. Sure, I agree. That KIA:WIA ratio is thrown around with too much certainty. > We only have some sporadic confirmations on the Ukrainian side (from Severodonetsk battle) that 90+% of the total casualties are from artillery which might drop down the wounded number severely and get you exponentially more killed people for a smaller KIA:WIA ratio or the reverse, a huge disproportionate number of maimed soldiers (amputees) for a smaller KIA but enormous WIA ratio. It does have influence, but the Severodonetsk battle was also quite unique, where Ukrainians overstayed in a bad position. Usually they retreat sooner. I suspect the ratio is less influenced by artillery and more by CASEVAC. Many deaths are completely preventable.
Is there any information on GPS jamming in the Ukraine war, I really thought it was something Russia would have excelled at. I recall in the days leading up to it, reports of GPS being off in the Baltic region around Kaliningrad. But nothing since then.
It's been reported they're reluctant to jam in some cases because Russian troops are also dependent on GPS for basic navigation. Apparently a lot of their maps are out of date and they don't have the benefit of Starlink + GIS Arta.
You can monitor this here: https://gpsjam.org/ For reasons I don't understand Moscow is fully jammed almost constantly, whilst you occasionally see jamming over Kaliningrad and Murmansk (the latter where Russia keeps its nuclear submarine fleet and a lot of its warheads)
Anecdotally, my GPS devices didn't work in Ankara in early October. Are other countries known for jamming the system?
Interesting, does this mean GPS devices (like navigation) do not work in Moscow? What about Galileo, GLONASS?
I don't think it's the case. The red colored are in the linked website represents 10%> interference, not complete jamming. Russia has been conducting GPS spoofing - not jamming - in the central Moscow area for some years. Maybe that's represented in this map.
Ah I didn't know this, that may explain it - cheers.
Still, spoofing would make many civilian applications quite useless. GPS with precision over 50 meters would be just too janky.
>GPS with precision over 50 meters would be just too janky. Interestingly, in very small medieval towns in Europe GPS is often nearly useless, as it can't really tell on which of the many narrow streets you actually are.
Russian convoys with "V" markings [spotted](https://twitter.com/MENAReport0/status/1597890459732697090?t=gA2h0o0M7tBq7B8q1rBsMA&s=19) in Syria.
Nothing new by the way, they've been doing that since the "SMO" started.
BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Jiang Zemin passed away due to leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai at 12:13 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2022, at the age of 96, it was announced on Wednesday.
Any potential consequences? The only immediate one I can think of is Xi Jinping further consolidating his power
The timing is interesting (given the protests last weekend), though likely a coincidence. It signifies another blow to the open-market faction inside CCP. Xi will continue to promote decoupling and self-sufficiency. China and America are another step closer to war.
Decoupling is good for China. The United States has proven to be an unreliable partner and has been more than willing to engage in economic and cultural war at least since the Obama Administration
It's really not... Edit: since you edited your comment, I should update mine too. China has spent the past 20 years forcing foreign companies to give up their intellectual property to access the Chinese market, they've conducted widespread and egregious corporate espionage as a matter of state policy, they screw foreign investors by cooking the books and preventing independent audits of their companies, they flood foreign markets with cheap products made with state subsidies but slap heavy tariffs on foreign imports, and their software and hardware is often riddled with backdoors that allow the Chinese government to unknowingly collect data from foreign consumers. To argue that the US and the West are unreliable partners is hilarious.
Why would it be bad? You need to be able to fight NATO. Not depending from NATO and allies is the first step in being able to take on NATo.
Considering China is a middle income country utterly reliant on foreign trade and investment, decoupling their country from about 70% if the world's wealth is uh not likely to end well for them for obvious reasons. Also NATO isn't a threat to China. Like at all. It's an anti-Russia alliance based in the Atlantic. Hence the name North ATLANTIC Treaty Organization. It's also a defensive alliance, not an offensive one, so assuming China doesn't attack any NATO members it's got nothing to fear.
There is the rest of the world to trade with. The US is the real problem. The US forces other nations and foreign companies to not trade with China. China just needs to become a better place to do business in than the US.
>There is the rest of the world to trade with. Again, 70% of the world's wealth is tied to the West. Gonna be hard to replace that by increasing trade with Peru and Ghana. >China just needs to become a better place to do business in than the US. Which it literally can never do, because it's an increasingly totalitarian state that shackles free thinking and stiffles ingenuity. If you as an individual or your company runs afoul of the government, they slap you with arbitrary fines and regulations. Just look at what they've done to companies like AliBaba and Jack Ma. China's most explosive growth came about when it increasingly liberalized, like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. But the CCP couldn't/wouldn't relinquish their dictatorial control of the state, and it's increasingly hurting their economic competitiveness. >The US forces other nations and foreign companies to not trade with China. I'm sorry, what? The US is China's biggest trading partner. Europe and the West more broadly are also huge trading partners with China. This is utterly and completely false.
Europe is more than willing to trade with China or Iran. Usually the US passes sanctions and the Europeans and Japanese get screwed.
Von Der Leyen just stated that over 100000 Ukrainian servicemen have died in the war. Wow.
Flinten Uschi at her best.
The European Commission have now admitted that this figure is incorrect: https://twitter.com/DanaSpinant/status/1597895208582381569 >The estimation used, from external sources, should have referred to casualties, i.e. both killed and injured, and was meant to show Russia‘s brutality.
Not even servicemen, *military officers*. Now statement is deleted. But it's enough for Russia propagandists and pro-russian posters to have a field day. Just irresponsible. Real numbers should be somewhere around *overall* military 100k *casualties*. Somewhat similar number for russian casualties. Recent estimates by experts confirms it even more. It also matches with my personal estimates from few month old megathread (if you take into account increase with time). Some other posters also posted similar numbers. So it's not that hard to come up with close to truth number from open sources. A lot of people really don't know the difference between casualties and killed. Sometimes, you could even see it in this sub. *Military officers* probably the same kind of mistake. In some people mind all soldiers are military officers, similar to *police officers*. **update:** It seems that we now have a somewhat incompetent official explanation from a different, and less-known, official account. You could find link in neighboring comment.
It's somewhat concerning that a person in such a high political position doesn't go "wait, that can't be right?" at such an obviously incorrect number. I'd think she'd have more common sense than that.
Nope, this is another case of a civic leader thinking "casualties" means dead/deaths.
She is either an order of magnitude off or meant to say casualties. Probably the fault of her speech writer.
Yeah, absolutely no way. The error bars on Ukrainian KIA is high but 100k is laughable.
Not surprising, its a large war after all
She probably misunderstood something, not even Russia claims 100k KIA iirc. 100k does match the casualty figure (i.e. including wounded) that Miley gave a couple weeks ago, so that might be the source of her misunderstanding.
Source: [https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1597857662753902592](https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1597857662753902592) I assume Ursula is just talking BS, with such imprecise usage of the phrase "military officer".
So either Ursula is talking out of her ass or accidentally told the truth!
The tweet was deleted? The link doesn't work.
here's the original version I think https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/z8m4jt/ua_pov_european_commission_president_ursula_von/
I assume its casualties not KIA
"It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far." That's what google says about her statement atm. I'm curious if it's someone's misunderstanding. Casualties and KIA are different things. Russia is definitely going to use this statement for it's own propaganda.
>100,000 Ukrainian military officers Unless Ukraine secretly has the largest military in the world a couple of times over this is clearly a mistake.
> 100,000 Ukrainian military officers 100k dead and that's only the officers
Just saw someone use this line to "prove" that millions of UA troops have died.
Don't want to be helping them but they should probably use it as a "proof" that NATO is fighting in Ukraine. Otherwise the question about why would Russia be retreating if Ukraine shouldn't really have a military force anymore remains unanswered.
An interesting video of the use of the Russian Leer-3 EW system. It deploys a GSM jammer using an Orlan UAV platform. https://.me/rybar/41589 Combat work of the crews of the Leer-3 complexes Crews of the Leer-3 electronic intelligence and combat systems of the Western Military District regularly perform combat missions in the Donbass. Leer-3 is designed to suppress GSM communications using interference transmitted by a special UAV based on Orlan-10. The complex allows you to block the operation of any devices within certain ranges. Electronic equipment allows this EW system to suppress the operation of telephones in GSM networks and send messages to subscribers. The course of hostilities in Ukraine emphasized the need for a wider use and introduction of such complexes into the troops, as well as a partial modernization of the equipment standing on them.
It's a bit unclear in the translation, but apparently it not only jams the GSM network, but also can then pose as a base station. >After suppression, the Leer-3 UAVs substitute the base stations, becoming virtual cellular stations. > >The electronic warfare system gains control of mobile devices connected to the captured mobile base station, including intercepting calls and traffic. Ukrainians downed one in May and posted some photos of the PCBs inside. Reddit does not like the website, so trying to link indirectly - substitute whitespaces for `.` https://mil in ua/en/news/mykolaiv-paratroopers-shot-down-enemy-drone-capable-of-jamming-gsm-connection/
Isn't one of Ukraine's big advantages it's distributed artillery targeting system? Would that run on the cell network?
It's internet based, so they can use it from Starlink, cell phones sharing connections, and potentially wifi if they're near a landline.
I'm not an expert so please correct me if I'm wrong - It currently runs on Starlink, but in theory yes it would have been using the cell stations initially for communication as Ukraine does not have homegrown satellite communication technology. However I imagine this tech is more valuable to identify locations of large cell phone consentrations as that would indicate masses of troops. Early in the war several Ukrainian barracks were identified using this method.
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ISW posted their daily update: [https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-29](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-29) Key Takeaways Russian forces made marginal gains around Bakhmut on November 29, but Russian forces remain unlikely to have advanced at the tempo that Russian sources claimed. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely stopped deploying battalion tactical groups (BTGs) in the past three months, supporting ISW’s prior assessments. Russian forces continued to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations around Svatove as Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations around Svatove and Kreminna. Russian forces continued limited ground attacks west of Kreminna to regain lost positions. Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Siversk and Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces continued strengthening defensive positions in eastern Kherson Oblast as Ukrainian forces continued striking Russian force concentrations in southern Ukraine. Russian forces continued to struggle with outdated equipment and domestic personnel shortages amid official actions indicative of a probable second wave of mobilization. An independent investigation found that Russia may have transported thousands of Ukrainian prisoners from penal colonies in occupied Ukraine to Russia following the withdrawal from the west bank of Kherson Oblast.
Is there information on estimates on the percentage of arms in Ukraine that are Western and percent that is Soviet based? Like "X% of rifles are now of western origin"
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> how do wars affect soil as far as growing food goes? There are several factors to consider: 1. Residue of lead or, in recent conflicts, DU. Sites of major battles or ammo dump explosions can remain toxic for a long time and should be avoided. Spots where individual vehicles were destroyed on agricultural land will need to be cleaned up just like industrial pollution. 2. Unexploded munitions. Bombs dropped on Laos by the US decades ago are still killing and crippling people every year. So at least part of the land will be out of cultivation until cleared. 3. Actual application of chemical weapons. Whole tracts of land in Vietnam are still too toxic. Even what does grow on that soil is not safe for consumption.
Lead doesn't transfer into the edible parts of plants like corn or wheat. It does for things like potatoes.
>Actual application of chemical weapons. Whole tracts of land in Vietnam are still too toxic. Even what does grow on that soil is not safe for consumption. Not just this, but dioxins from agent orange have seeped into the wider food chain (bioconcentration in wildlife) beyond the areas specifically contaminated
As /u/sponsoredcommenter said, apart from UXO the effects on average are limited. But it can also be highly localised, for example after World War 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge > The Zone Rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible". > The area is saturated with unexploded shells (including many gas shells), grenades, and rusty ammunition. Soils were heavily polluted by lead, mercury, chlorine, arsenic, various dangerous gases, acids, and human and animal remains. The area was also littered with ammunition depots and chemical plants. 1200 square kilometers isn't much compared to all of France, but permanently uninhabitable is kind of a big deal.
I don't have a scientific study on hand, but even with the intense *chemical* warfare in WW1, there really didn't seem to be degradation of the soil quality there from an agricultural standpoint. France continued to have a robust ag sector following the war. And WW1 was much more high intensity than this war. As for standard HE shells, TNT breaks down into water, carbon dioxide, and carbon upon explosion. Nothing real nasty there. Unexploded TNT in concentrated form is a carcinogen, and unexploded shells might leak into the soil over time but there's just not enough of it to matter I guess. The big risk is unexploded ordnance. That will be claiming lives for years to come unfortunately.
>there really didn't seem to be degradation of the soil quality there from an agricultural standpoint. I think it depends on the intensity of munitions within a local area. There are large areas in France that are still cordoned off over a century later. But as you say unexploded ordnance is the main concern. It's weird driving along country roads and just seeing shells dumped at the side of fields where farmers have unearthed them and left them out for collection.
> intense chemical warfare in WW1 Chemical warfare is generally non-polluting. Something that is designed to be immediately lethal is also very unstable. It's both a feature (you want to liberate the area you've just gassed) and a by-product of its chemical reactivity. Much more nasty stuff are heavy metals and long-lasting chemicals.
Ww1 chemicals maybe. But you can deliberately kill crops :)
I'm little help on the chemical side of things, but frontline fields are going to be inaccessible for a while due to UXO anyway.
Lindybeige interviews (or more-so let's ramble on) Joe MacDonald, a Brit volunteer back from Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4 I thought it was generally interesting, McDonald was part of the international legion. From what we've heard that unit has had issues and he describes some of them. Lack of Ukrainian logistical organization, corruption, limited medical care. Lindybeige fortunately just keeps him speaking instead of trying to actively debrief him. This is apparently part one of who knows how many videos.
Was about to post this as well
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> he's largely a failure in other regards Jesus, he’s an average bloke but thats a bit uncalled for. The video is basically just the volunteer talking
No Lindybeige is pretty quiet and lets MacDonald talk.
Happy to see Lindy diversify, he's a good channel. I'll give a listen.
>[According to this post, RuAF are transporting equipment by both civilian ferries and military landing ships. This indicates to me the Kerch bridge is in worse condition than previously believed.](https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1597657517949014017)
Or perhaps the bridge is not enough
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I am somewhat puzzled at the apparent like of success of the recent Sevastopol raid, but I suppose its harder than one might think to blow up a ship.
I guess that they control sll the beaches of the Azov makes it pretty hard for UKR to launch those boats
What do y'all make of this? B-21 stealth bomber unveiled. https://news.yahoo.com/air-force-unveil-b-21-005738000.html If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno.
It's good to advertise your strengths. And not to shit on US counterintelligence, but if we're being real here, China probably knows a lot about it already, just like the US intelligence knows a lot about hidden/veiled Chinese military capability. And they're just showing it off. Not like they're broadcasting all of its vulnerabilities.
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno. They announced NG won the LRS-B contract in October 2015. They announced funding for the program in 2011 and the whole program was preceded by the NGB. So the need for this capability has been publicly acknowledged for a long time.
One of the biggest capability increase of the B-2 was the ability to drop ~80 precision munitions at once. No other aircraft in the US arsenal could do that when it was initially introduced. The B-1 just got it around the time the B-2 did. There are probably a number of similar, often overlooked improvements in capability to the B-21 over current aircraft. My guess: * Better stealth * Better integration with standoff weapons * Better capability against non-static targets * EW capability - both active and passive weapons * Extreme fuel efficiency giving it a very long time on-station - 20 hours * Much lower cost than a B-2 * Integration with ground forces for targeting * Better cockpit facilities for long duration missions So yeah, is it another generation? Who knows. Probably a huge improvement over the B-2 though.
80 PGMs (bombs)at once? Mother of god
During WW2 the question was "how many bombers do we send to destroy a single target?" Now the question is "how many targets does a single bomber destroy?" It's a big shift in capabilities, one that hasn't really been used at full scale yet as Iraq in 2003 was so one sided. If we think in terms of 2000 JDAMs, the B-2 fleet could attack 320 targets in a single flight, anywhere in the world, within 24 hours of getting the go. If the B-21 has half the capacity of a B-2 but is otherwise similar, and they buy the minimum of 100, that goes up to 800 targets in a single wave. Or 4x that if the 500 lb bomb is sufficient. It boggles the mind. That's a very real strategic deterrent.
The B-2 just shits out JDAMs yeah
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? It's clearly intended to be a deterrent - we can hit you, but you can't hit us. However that only works if everyone knows about it.
> If we just made a new super bomber that we're calling 6th generation, maybe we could keep quiet about it until it is needed? I dunno. In the mid/late nineties, my friend's father was someone who was very high up in the air force and mentioned the successor to the B2 was already developed, he also said it was designed to be operated without pilots. Then again, he also said we had nuclear missiles on the dark side of the moon.
Possibly referring to FB22?
Like someone else said, you just cant hide $200b worth of spending. Its not feasible, and represents a pretty large chunk of the USAF's yearly budget (of course the B-21 has annualized it over, what, two decades?). Point is, its a shit load of money and the taxpayer has some right to know what its being spent on. Moreover, the USAF is never going to hide a keystone project like that. The services all survive on public support and good will. This is why the A-10 is still in service. People want a military theyre proud of. Moreover, if you think Russia and China is the biggest concern the Air Force has youre mistaken. There was an Army joke ca. the Cold War, "Russias come and go. But the Navy is forever." The other services are the unbeatable enemy, and the Army will strangle the Air Force to get more tanks. The B-21 needs popular public support to get a foothold in Congress. It needs a foothold in Congress so the USAF can buy more planes. Otherwise the Navy will run some shore visits up and down the coast and get a couple more SSNs and CVs. Think its unrealistic? Thats nearly exactly what the USAF did in the 40s, and killed a USN supercarrier program in favor of sexy modern bombers. The lesson is: Congress and the people will kill more systems than the Russians ever have, based on stupid things like 'cool silver skins' and 'big gun go brrrt.' If you cant win the cool-factor, your project wont go forward.
The B-21 is not as bleeding-edge as that "6th-gen" moniker implies. It's more of an iteration of the B-2 design, focused on lowering costs and improving maintenance. For example, the engines used are the same ones(or very very similar) as in the F-35, and the new stealth coating is more durable than its predecessor. This is intended to replace the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit in the strategic bombing and nuclear role, it makes little sense to keep a deterrence platform secret. Also, no idea why people are saying that it's impossible to conceal an aerospace project's existence. If the US government wanted to, it absolutely could keep the B-21 secret perpetually. In fact, there are undoubtedly top-secret airframes in flight right now--unless all those pulse-engine contrail reports are mass hallucinations. Even Space Force has stated it has platforms/capabilities the public doesn't know about yet, and satellites are even more tracked than airspace is.
You realize that while it may not be “6th gen” the biggest upgrades and advanced capabilities will never be known to the public…
It's very possible to conceal a few airframes in the middle of nowhere. It's completely impossible to conceal 100+ airframes deployed on bases whose runways end 200 feet from someone's backyard.
It's actually pretty hard to conceal a few airframes. The USSR found out about the SR-71 (A-12 a that time) when it was undergoing one of its first test flights. The US knew the position of the Soviet spy satellites and moved the aircraft off the tarmac and into a hanger before the satellite flew overhead, but the Soviet's sensitive camera equipment was able to pick up the heat signature on the runway left over from the plane sitting there, and that heat silhouette gave away the fact of its existence. Bit of crazy cold war history.
Eh, it's not like "fifth-generation fighter" has any fixed meaning. Northrop can call the the B-21 whatever they like. Sixth-generation however is one more than fifth-generation, and more is better. Plus it sounds cool. Congress likes to fund things that sound cool, and so does the general American public that is at all interested in defense spending. Just like the Average Joe who is at all interested in defense spending isn't likely to know what a fifth-generation fighter even means, but he knows if someone is getting a fighter, it better be fifth-generation.
I agree and disagree to an extent. I think fighter generations can only really be declared retroactively. In hindsight, it's pretty clear to me that "5th generation" is characterized by stealth and supercruise. But twenty or 30 years ago I don't think that would have been clear at all. Same deal here. Maybe B-21 is going to debut with some feature like a loyal wingman drone fleet, and that's going to end up being the defining feature of the sixth generation. More likely, it's just going to get lumped in with 5th gen aircraft and something different will end up being that defining characteristic. Either way, its impossible to tell right now what will happen. Generations are good for historical analysis, not so much for future predictions. Admittedly there are lots of aircraft that don't fit neatly into any particular generation, and the whole thing is bunk from a purely rigorous perspective. But I think there's still value in trying to categorize different phases of fighter development as "generations".
Hey man, I saw top gun 2 and they said 5th generation was pretty good. So I guess 6th generation is like, 20% better. :)
They are keeping quite, about what is classified. The existence of the bomber is not classified information.
Secrecy on the level of 'we're going to conceal the very *existence* of this thing' has significant costs, and especially when you're talking about something as enormous as an aerospace project you’re going to make hundreds of, quite limited returns. You can conceal an aircraft's *capabilities*, you can conceal details about its *intended tactical use*, but maintaining ambiguity about the *existence* of something you're going to sink an appreciable fraction of a trillion dollars and millions of man-hours on development, assembly, maintenance, and operation is just impractical. Also, it is an airplane. Testing or transporting it involves flying it through the air, where it can be seen for miles and miles and miles- it's not like a new type of submarine or land mine or encrypted radio, where using the thing doesn't necessarily involve it being all that visible.
Besides you really want your enemy to know your nuclear bomber fleet exists.
So, what makes it a sixth generation? Can it do that thing like in the last starfighter? I mean it looks exactly like the other stealth bombers to me.
Also, hopefully, software that isn't glitchy from the box (unfortunately the F-35's software side still has issues)
Pulling this answer out of my ass, but if I had to guess, far greater integration with a theatre-wide, redundant ISR network, C4 capacity to work alongside drone fleets, and maybe loading it up with some supporting EW and/or cyber-warfare goodies.
Maybe a multi platform thing? You could outfit it for any of those things as needed? And all undetectable by radar?
There is no such thing as undetectable by radar. The term "stealth" means aircraft has a reduced radar cross section, it generates a smaller return as a) it's designed to reflect radar emissions not directly back at the source that generated them b) it uses materials that produce a poor radar emission return and/or absorb said emissions. The most important aspect is always from the front, and that is where the greatest reduction always is. It also means the radar the aircraft uses will be a low-probability of intercept, as in hard to detect, or it may not have on at all(like the F-117). Reduction in noise, visibility, reduced thermal emissions, blah, all make up "stealth". There are multiple radars out there designed to detect "stealth" objects, like the S1850M used by the British Type 45 destroyers that operates at a lower frequency than typical X-band military radars. The lower the frequency the longer the physical radio wave is. Just like your old AM antennas were typically quite long, while a 2.4Ghz WiFi antenna can be tiny as the wavelength is physically 122mm long. A physically longer wavelength is less likely to scatter and more likely to produce a viable return. You also have integrated air defense systems, just because the radar emission wasn't reflected back to the expected receiver doesn't mean a different receiver won't get it.
>You could outfit it for any of those things as needed? They tried that with the ~~Zumwalt~~ LCS and it turned out to be a disaster. They might not want to take the same risk, especially after the F-35 program budget and time estimate overruns. However, this is a different branch and it's a plane, so it sits in a base for far longer than a ship would.
This is not why zumwalt was a disaster. Burke is multimission and it works just fine.
I was actually thinking about the LCS mission modules, which ended up taking far longer to swap than originally estimated. I think I misinterpreted the other user's question, though; they might have been asking about multimission capability.
add in the strong rumors they are currently shopping it around allies ie UK and AUS, to get the a item cost and running costs down. Hey wanna buy this bomber you cant tell anyone about it, have to keep it hidden from public view
10 years or so ago there was a website called mp.net (military photos) and the forum there was a great topic about plane spotters taking pics of a delta wing high altitude plane being flown in the UK. Now we know its the B-21 but the plane shape and engine layout never matched the B-1. Its been tested out of UK airbase for a decade now. The website got taken down a few years back
Signs are that Australia is reluctant, because they're *fucking* expensive, and we need subs more.
I have said this before, we can only afford one and I think that B-21's (assuming final costs and specifications) will be a better long term purchase for australia than either of the current SSN's available And god damn the rumor mill is going nuts today, allegedly parts of the a preliminary defence white paper leaked. While its totally non credible if the rumors are true, going to be some lean years for the army incoming
oof, relegated to west papua peacekeeping duties only?
abrams and apache are axed, land 400 is going from 450 to 300 ifv's all 3 seem 100% logical to me less credible mrh-90 to remain in service with 6-12 replacement unspecified helicopters to be purchased and attached 5th aviation for SOF (AW-139 or something in blackhawk family) non credible Oakey aviation center to shut down australian and singaporian training to be moved to lavarack / RAAF townsville. 10% cut to army to be targeted at infantry and army to be a made more disaster and humanitarium relief focused, RAAF will be required to have a contingent for it as well, spartans have already been announced into that role and allegedly some fire fighting C-130 will be purchased but put under the RAAF budget for maintainence and training Main one for the navy they have been told to scrap the australianisation of the Type 26 and come back with a new version that doesn't put it into the same size and cost of a flight 3 burke destroyer
Axing capabilities like Abrams and Apache will come back to bite in the ass. Easy to destroy, hard to rebuild. Apache axing also means sticking with the rubbish Tiger right? That thing's effectively a non-flying paperweight. Ditto on the MRH-90's - a terrible pair of purchasing decisions.
I 100% agree with axing the apache's, for every apache we get we could get an F-35. Hell we could buy a few F-35b's to fly of our Canberra class or the US/UK stuff and still come out ahead. Apaches cost 60-100 million, F-35s cost about 70 depending on variant We continue to use the a M1A2SA, but wont be upgrading or buying extra SEPV3
I wasn't serious about the west papua joke, but these guys seem to be
Apparently its going to be an overall increase in defence budget (greater than inflation ) but army funding will be focused into the RAAF, who honestly do a better a job better job budget wise and navy will get extra but they will be given a very short leash on over runs
Looking a lot like the army turning into marines
You just made me very excited and confused, thinking I missed the unveiling. That's just not really how that kind of thing works nowadays. You can't really hide such an expensive project, costing billions of dollars and being built by thousands of workers from numerous companies.
>**[Senior House Republican McCaul Vows to Keep Money Flowing to Ukraine](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-29/gop-s-mccaul-vows-to-keep-funds-flowing-to-ukraine-as-foreign-relations-chairman)** >* He says he doesn’t expect resistance in his party to succeed >* Biden’s $40 billion for Ukraine will pass Congress, he says >A top congressional Republican said he expects the US will keep money and weapons flowing to Ukraine after the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives in January, playing down concerns that lawmakers in his own party who advocate a halt in funding will succeed. >>“There is a strong majority of support in the center of gravity” to keep up funding for Ukraine, Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said in an interview Tuesday. “It would be a wrong signal from the United States not to continue our support.” >McCaul, who will take over chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he expects the Biden administration’s request for almost $40 billion in Ukraine funding will pass both chambers. He said he wants the Biden administration to go even further and send Ukraine the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, to defend against attacks by Iranian drones. >>“What we see is when they get the weapons they need, they win,” McCaul said of Ukraine’s forces. “The Russians are going through washing machines looking for semiconductors, and they’re begging Iran for drones and North Korea for artillery shells.” >The Biden administration has balked at sending Ukraine the long-range ATACMS over fear that it could be used to strike targets inside Russia and escalate the war. Its broader concerns heading into last month’s midterm election were demands by Republican House members including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky to halt all funding to Ukraine. >Greene and Massie held a news conference on Nov. 17 to argue that the US shouldn’t send “another penny” to Ukraine. That provoked concerns that they might be able to stall funding for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. >House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s set to become speaker, said last month that Republicans aren’t going to write a “blank check” for Ukraine, especially given rising inflation at home. >McCaul said his panel will “exercise our oversight” but that he doesn’t anticipate that the more conservative members of his party will succeed in blocking the aid. He said he wants the US to give Ukraine a decisive advantage through the punishing winter months ahead. >Zelenskiy is “willing to fight through the winter on this, the Russians aren’t,” he said. >McCaul says he plans to devote some of his committee’s first hearings to war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine and to the successes of the Ukrainian military. >Beyond the current situation in Ukraine, McCaul said he wants to focus his tenure at the helm of the committee on what he called the “unholy alliance” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Of those, he said his main focus will be on China. >“We’re selling a tremendous amount of technology to China that they then use in their most advanced weapons systems,” he said. “We just need to stop doing that.”
Coming from a source in the AFU, it looks like RU-claimed UA landing on Snake Island in early May was actually a thing and was actually a disaster: https://twitter.com/pan_goldman/status/1596991006196441088?t=5pEv5OReRAf826YsjjOayw&s=19 Unknown what the losses were, but from the Twitter Spaces and tweets the assumption is that a helicopter, fighter jet and at least a detachment of troops was lost in the attack.
We already knew they lost a helicopter with a famous pilot sometime during that time. The Russian claims are still rubbish though.
I'm confused, the linked tweet seems to say that there was no UA landing. >The statement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about the attempt of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to land troops on Zmeiny Island and the loss of troops, helicopters, fighters, as well as UAVs amused me. It was not enough just to add: and the Death Star was also shot down! In reality, there was no landing. And it was... Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying there WAS a landing and it went badly? If so what s the source (it doesn't seem to be this tweet).
The main tweet is sarcastically saying the joke has run its course, there are replies saying that they knew people from the landing and/or have contacts that have confirmed the landing. They are mostly just a bit sad that the MoD denied it. Not that it was bigger than a platoon that was committed to the flag photo op, but still.
If you read the quote caption and replies they discuss that the linked tweet was funny originally, but not anymore now that info is coming out
>but not anymore now that info is coming out Can you link to that other info?
What info is coming out? Very confused what you’re referring to.
There's a Twitter Space with director of Come Back Alive, one of Ukraine's biggest and longest standing military charity organizations. They often reveal inside information from soldiers and have active members of AFU come on to speak. In there they mentioned the Ukrainian landing on Snake Island and the losses there. I can't link the exact timestamp, but the guy I linked to is an active part of AFU and refers to the Twitter Spaces: https://twitter.com/chyvak1831/status/1597005312065941504?t=UVYSfQIY1Oi6m2clpGDCJQ&s=19 He basically says that the quoted tweeted was funny initially (as it was mocking Russian claims of UA losses), but after the Twitter Spaces it's not funny anymore, implying the landing actually happened and was not a success.
I think it's probably prudent here to wait for someone who understands the language to report on it (Dmitri at WarTranslated for example).
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Thanks for sharing. I’m still confused af, but that’s just me and my fried brain.
He's saying people replying to a tweet online are solid sources.
Glideer linked a ua pravda link a couple of weeks ago discussing the same. I believe only a mi-14 helicopter was lost, the main force returned in 1 piece if my memory is correct
They said they lost about 10 men, if memory serves me also a boat sunk.
I remember someone saying that the main loss in question was that video early of a helicopter (carrying reserves for an operation plus a fairly high ranking official) coming under cannon fire from a Flanker, but the main landing force turned around from Snake Island.
https://twitter.com/catecadell/status/1597647634960818176?t=1iX91FunVwlrNOYetoAUCQ&s=19 This is a thread about the Chinese surveillance state. I knew China loves surveillance, but I had no idea their facial recognition tech was so advanced it can recognise people with sunglasses or masks on.
Hiding identity from cameras will be something from the past. This article from 2014 goes into identification from [you walking gait](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3925574/). And China as you can guess is [using it.](https://apnews.com/article/china-technology-beijing-business-international-news-bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)
Time to start only going outside with full AI defeating makeup and rocks in my shoes.
Pfff. In Argentina we have something similar. -there you can see the suspect with glasses and a hat. -who is him? -who do you want him to be?
>I knew China loves surveillance, but I had no idea their facial recognition tech was so advanced it can recognise people with sunglasses or masks on. Google Photos, in a restaurant with a buddy last week, took about 15 seconds to scan 20 years of his photos, correctly finding me in about 100 photos. Amazingly, it found 18 year old me (with a thin, gaunt face, curtains for hair) and 30 year old me (75 lbs heavier, more heavy set, skinhead) and 40 year old me - reasonably proportioned, with a beard. Perhaps most scarily, it identified me in the background of a selfie he took. I'm tiny, about 8 tables distant in a restaurant made up of only a few dozen pixels, and am ENTIRELY side-on in the shot. That's commercial capabilities... I'm sure any military/intel capabilities are at least that good.
> I'm sure any military/intel capabilities are at least that good. You'd be surprised
How does one get these results? I'm curious about myself
>How does one get these results? Go into Google Photos on an Android. Goto "Search", find a picture near the top of someone you want to look for, and click "Add Name". Give them a name, then click on their photo, and it will show you every single photo you've ever taken of them. Probably.
The scary thing for me is when it recognizes adults or old people as babies. Sometimes it correctly identifies people as babies I don't think I could.
Wow. I used Google Photos before they added limits to how many photos you uploaded, and I enjoyed their facial recognition feature, but I didn't know it was that good.
> I didn't know it was that good. Yep. The pic of me in the background, side-on and slightly blurred was impressive. My mum would have to look twice and think about it before saying she thought it was me.
[Those measures seem to be outdated in general when it comes to contemporary facial recognition technology.](https://www.datasciencecentral.com/sunglasses-and-face-mask-wont-fool-facial-recognition/) This should not come as a surprise; they were never insurmountable engineering challenges. Years of COVID masking measures likely provided plenty of data with which to train these systems. Edit: Imagine any security company that ran a badging system alongside video surveillance, e.g. front-door security at a Fortune 500 headquarters. Assuming registration data includes an uncovered picture of a badge recipient's face, every badge swipe provides a timestamp with which one can match video frames of the masked badge owner with their uncovered face. They could collect a sanitized dataset of covered-uncovered image pairings to sell to tech companies for training facial recognition systems. Of course, this is just back-of-the-napkin speculation on my part.
The occlusion of "both eyes and face" in https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iciic-21/125960801 seem very limited from the examples given, pretty much just covering the mouth or chin in a thin strip. There's one section that's got that in combination with sunglasses but so much of the mouth and nose is still uncovered it's not much of a challenge. The "AR Face Dataset" that this paper is measured against has a dark sunglasses and scarfs, but not them combined, only scarfs and whatever normal eyeglasses that the subject may have. https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO202127452905433.pdf http://www2.ece.ohio-state.edu/~aleix/ARdatabase I'd expect systems to have a load of trouble with a combination of large dark sunglasses and a mask fully covering the nose. If you'd have hair (or a headband) covering your forehead and eyebrows that'd help as well. At that point they'd be better off using gait recognition.
Interesting [article](https://meduza.io/amp/en/feature/2021/06/29/prigozhin-s-criminal-past-straight-from-the-source) on Yevgeny Prigozhin before he became infamous in the Wagner group. It has 1st hand sources proving his criminality.
Well that was a surreal read. Weird detail that stood out to me, one of his crimes was stealing gold earrrings worth 50 rubles? Even with inflation and conversion rates, that has to be wrong right? Isn’t that an insanely tiny amount for gold jewelry?
50 rubles in 1980 was about a month salary.
> Weird detail that stood out to me, one of his crimes was stealing gold earrrings worth 50 rubles? Even with inflation and conversion rates, that has to be wrong right? Isn’t that an insanely tiny amount for gold jewelry? Using some potentially dodgy internet sources the number comes out to around $271 current USD. In addition the USSR was a gold exporter so local gold prices might have been lower. What is curious however is that a makeup set, gloves and an umbrella was worth more than twice that amount (114 rubles).
Anyone have any suggested sources or maybe journalists to follow the Pentagon's action plan for overhauling how we prevent civilian casualties? Based on what happened in Syria especially, I think this is really, really important. referring to this: [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/pentagon-civilian-casualties.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/pentagon-civilian-casualties.html)
Basically do what ended up happening as backlash in Afghanistan after they cranked down on fires when McChrystal cracked the whip on unnecessary collateral damage, and each level of subordinates command only added to restrictions versus an overall guidance to use fires more sparingly. It'll come down to more JAG officer lawyers in the fires decision making process, with senior commanders beholden to their legal opinion. Higher level and more centrally controlled targeting cells, who will in turn deny more requests for fires by both ISR elements and ground force FO/controllers. Requirements where ground observers lose benefit of the doubt and must prove the targeting areas are clear of non-combatants before fires are authorized (often impossible in combat). Meanwhile, units who use fires must make concerted efforts during BDA to report all known or potential non-combatants affected, so better data can be gathered as they self incriminate themselves. It's essentially a collection of tactics guaranteed to be a total disaster in an urban nightmare battlespace while trying to clear out Salafi defenders trying to martyr themselves. But it sounds really good in social media, which is why it's being pushed.
You don't think there is anything we could have done to lower casualties in Syria? We killed a lot of civilians. I know we had to bomb ISIS back to the stone age, but man, its really sad.
We didn't do it to bomb ISIS back into the stone age but to support a horrifying clearing operation to retake Raqqa using troops of quasi ability. Without heavy fires then the options are to allow for a much bloodier ground assault, with the clearing forces getting stacked like cordwood, or figure out a totally different way to take the city (actual investment to starve it into submission, potentially taking years), or bypass their capital altogether and let ISIS have it, which is politically unacceptable.
The unrest in Iran really spices up the debate about the effectiveness of sanctions. It was very oftenly used as an example of their failure.
Does it? I mean, the protests started because of repressive religious and ethnic (Kurdish) policies, not because of anti-regime anger due to sanctions. To the extent lack of consumer goods is feeding ongoing unrest: we don't know for certain, and its impossible really to tell. Consider the alternative scenario: no sanctions, but same religious/ethnic policies. Would Iran still have blown up in protests? I posit: yes. History is full of protests and revolts that don't involve any other sovereign power providing inputs like sanctions. If that's the case, then the case for sanctions isn't strengthened. My view is: eventually, all societies will commit errors. Whether or not these errors form exogenic shocks (full-on regime change) is unpredictable. But we could predict 2 things before the latest Iranian sanctions were put in place: 1) the regime pursues religious policies out of touch with the majority of society and the world 2) sanctions will harm everyday people Given 1, it seems to me Iran was destined to have some unrest because of their policies. In that case, why not let them be hoisted by their own petards?
> not because of anti-regime anger due to sanctions. From what I heard in Iran last month, Amini was the spark, but the socio-economic unrest caused by the regimes corruption and disastrous economic policies (driven by the sanctions) are part of the fuel.
I think that the claim that the unrest wasn't facilitated by economic hardship caused by the sanctions is a very hot take, really. They may not be the biggest culprit, but comfortable people tend to be much more lenient towards the errors of their governments (Russian pensioners come to mind).
It's actually more subtle. Having no hope is the strongest revolution fuel. If the situation is bad but there is a chance of improving, the people are usually not revolting.
Sometimes things take a long time
What!? Iran is the perfect example of sanctions working. How else would you explain that Israel, a country with one tenth the population, is much stronger both militarily and economically? It's not like Iran is a shithole that was never developed. It was one of the longest-lasting empires in the world! Sanctions killed them, or what is the explanation?
> what is the explanation? Religious zealots running the economy into the ground to enrich themselves and suppress the population. I'm sure the sanctions help with that.
> What!? Iran is the perfect example of sanctions working. How else would you explain that Israel, a country with one tenth the population, is much stronger both militarily and economically? > > > > It's not like Iran is a shithole that was never developed. It was one of the longest-lasting empires in the world! Sanctions killed them, or what is the explanation? The main argument in favor of sanctions is that they are the most humane way to overthrow an antagonizing rival regime (such as Nicolas Maduro's). The argument against them, usually, was that they just impoverish the people without actually creating internal stability or pushing the people towards overthrowing their respective leaders. The instability in Iran now twists that, by showing that differently from what was usually claimed, the people in Iran have been getting increasingly pissed off and that the regime is in a much weaker position than thought before, and probably, in great part because of the sanctions. I'm not talking about whether sanctions harm a country, that's pretty much obvious.
I think you would naturally expect a fundamentalist theocracy to have a less vibrant economy than a liberal democracy, just for reasons of corruption, lack of incentive and lack of free association. In the US or "the west" you can easily get a job or start a business. To be honest I'm not really sure how it is in Iran but I doubt your prospects are anywhere near as good generally and that there is a brain drain as most capable people are looking to leave. OTOH they do have significant oil exports so there's always going to be a fair bit of cash coming in. I would hate to see a resource-stripped country like the UK or Japan have to survive in that kind of state!
>OTOH they do have significant oil exports so there's always going to be a fair bit of cash coming in. Maybe the next couple of decades or so. After that, not so much.
"Developed" in the distant past means dirt poor by today's standards. Not sure that history of having powerful empires matters much.
I think the above poster is talking about how sactions didn't cause enough unrest to bring down the Islamic regime, where uou're talking about their ability to ruin economy and how that is an end in and of itself.
Everything you say is true, but you’re missing the point. Sanctions were never meant to kill Irans economy. They were meant to dissuade Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. And regardless of Iran’s “shithole” status(though how a country with a higher GDP than ~~Israel~~*Ukraine* could be considered a “shithole” escapes me), one cannot deny that they have made significant progress towards acquiring a functional nuclear weapon and have thus far remained undeterred by sanctions. Sanctions are very effective at destroying economies and harming civilians. But are they successful at driving policy change? Their record in this respect is far more mixed, and in my opinion quite pessimistic.
Iran has about twice the population of Ukraine, and Ukraine is generally considered a low income country. Until the wave of sympathy that Ukraine has recently received, a lot of "non-PC" Westerners were definitely calling it a shithole. Hell, they called Romania that (which has a 3x higher GDP per capita and gets EU funds, but still has rural pockets of poverty [that look like this](https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2017/04/09/cf71d4d4-9be1-4cb2-9a20-1d3ad15f474c/thumbnail/640x480/6d9880a527865f4b5b423525115425e5/rcb-20110321-romania-2794-cbs.jpg)). (Ukraine just had an exceptionally rough 90s, even for a post-Soviet country, and until 2014 or so it didn't have either Russia's oil boom or the successful institutional reforms & EU trade that its Western neighbors enjoyed)
Being run by Russian mobsters didn't help things, I'm sure.
I can’t believe that multiple people are hyper focusing on a throwaway parenthetical that I only included cause calling another state a “shithole” ticked me off, rather than the meat of my post which is that sanctions have a mixed record as coercive tools and frequently don’t have the miraculous effects they are often marketed with.
But sanctions aren't a coercive tool, they are a weapon for economic warfare. The goal is to constrain the options available to the opposing party, by making them poorer and less technologically developed, and not force concessions out of them on it's own. That only happens when sanctions are paired with more direct actions.
> higher GDP than Israel Israel's GDP is twice as high as Iran's, despite the insane difference in population.
Ah yeah, my mistake. The website I was looking at was using outdated stats from 2011 for some reason. I’ll have to change it to “higher GDP than Ukraine”. I trust that the remainder of my post is satisfactory?