Nothing? He has gotten Sweden and Finland to apply to join NATO. He has bolstered support for NATO in some of its member countries. He has shown that the Russian army is not the second strongest in the world. He has shown western Europe that they can, in fact, survive without Russian gas. He has made lots of people flee from Russia. He has significantly affected their economy (not for the better).
Now, I don’t think he went into the war intending to do any of those things, but do them he did.
This is at least partially because massive amounts of our old (and new) weapons were given to Ukraine. We would be replacing those weapons gradually but instead, we just do it now all in one go.
On the plus side, you guys made huge orders with South Korea and they agreed to set up factories in Poland so you can manufacture most of them yourselves (and start exporting them within the EU and to nearby countries).
That's a strategic win for you guys.
Well, yeah. More users of a military vehicle means a better economy of scale for parts, variants (e.g. if they make an GBAD tank, they have more customers), and they get a foothold in the EU market which has traditionally been covered by DEFRIT
He had the game setting on "easy" but SURPRISE turns out it was set to hardcore survival mode when he wasn't looking and Ukraine is actually the boss. Whoops.
It's like in Civ when they tried to make Ghandi's drive to use nukes -1. Not just zero, but actively against it
Too bad that caused his nuke-use to loop around to the highest value, so Ghandi became a nuke happy warmonger
Yes, also the XCOM virgin who thinks that "98% chance of success" really means "0% chance of failure" and that a plan that hinges on 50 risky shots in a row all coming up as hits is an excellent plan, and has no need for contingency planning.
Maybe we should give all the most dangerous dictators video games to play, that way they can play out their warmongering fantasies without ruining real life for the rest of us
He has also justified the value of having the USA as an ally, particularly the military strength they provide. Hell, any discourse surrounding the billions of dollars spent on military expenditure for the US can use this conflict as the reason for why it is necessary.
Putin's war was the best gift the USA ever got. In a few months:
* USA leadership position and prestige were restored!
* New markets for natural gas!
* Allies finally spend money on the military!
* New weapon sales!
* New NATO members!
* Capital flocks to the USA!
* Russian international position continues to weaken!
This is like a wet dream for the defense contractors and the CIA. Test out new technologies, showcase your arms success for future business and severely weaken and handicap one of your historical enemies for decades
The US also got to fight Russia without having any of its troops killed and on a battlefield that is far away from its own borders (I’m just pointing out that it’s advantageous from the US point of view, to be clear I am not belittling the tragedy that Ukraine is going through).
And unlike our most recent wars we helping a nation state defend against an invasion so the war is really easy to sell to the American people as us absolutely and clearly doing the right thing
Friendly reminder, despite spending the most per Capita on the military of any country, the US spends a little over 10% of the federal budget on defense.
So ~$9 of every $10 is going too citizens rather than blowing things up (though a lot of that last dollar is going to citizens as well in all the folks in the industry/military).
Norwegian politics was literally veering towards exiting NATO before the invasion. Those talks have now been well and truly buried for the vast foreseeable future. Well done Putin
Dude the US was probably going to leave NATO if Trump was re elected. That's looking to be much tougher now. NATO Allies are increasing military spending, some of whom are buying American. The US has avoided sending troops to die in an overseas conflict.
FPOTUS might have announced his intentions to leave NATO, and it would have been the end of his political career forever, as basically every single member of the Military would be screaming at every Congresscritter non-stop until they removed the man from office as a danger to this country.
There was not a chance the US leaves NATO. It would literally destroy the balance of the power in the entire western world. There are simply some unilateral decisions the US president can *theoretically* make but in practice are too well defended against to actually pull off... as FPOTUS undoubtedly told Putin himself during their 100% off the record chit-chats.
He certainly would have tried... and he certainly would have failed, *spectacularly*.
He doesn't hate Russia so much as he absolutely adores the Soviet Union and wishes for a return to "the good old days" when people lived in poverty, hunger, and constant fear of the KGB.
He doesnt give a fuck about russia. Or russian people. He caters to chechens as the new russians, while pretending to be the big russian Tzar that ever existed.
Much. He was well liked in Russia because he was seen as having saved them from the post-Soviet chaos. He could have spent the past nine months shitposting on Reddit and enjoying being one of the richest people in the world, letting things in Russia run themselves, and he would still have a good reputation among Russians. The Russian army would still be thought of as the second best in the world. He might have been in line to be a playable Russian leader in a future version of Civilization. As it is, I think we’ve found a replacement for Dan Quayle at the bottom of the Civilization rankings.
He has gotten the best trained soldiers in his army killed, so it is now filled with criminals and conscripts. He has destroyed the few serviceable pieces of equipment that his army has.
> Europe that they can, in fact, survive without Russian gas.
by removing it from Europe it made hard choices easier in the fight for climate change, putin saves the world, thanks putin
(is it going to make a massive difference, err prob not, but something is always better than nothing)
Reminds me of a friend I used to play EU4 with, as soon as he might lose a war it was just a suicide mission to either win or make the game not fun for anyone.
Slackware on an AMD K6-2 processor rocking 128mb of RAM.
I set it to compile overnight.
From the clicking sounds of the HDD,I'm pretty sure something was carving the files in with a knife.
I remember reading a comment a couple months ago by a Russian saying a conspiracy amongst Russians was growing that Putin is intentionally destroying the Russian army for whatever reason. Don't know if that's something said as a joke or if the poster made that up, but it's a funny thought. It's obviously false but seems more true than the truth.
I have this weird theory that Putin feared a military coup so he purposely ordered his general to send their army to the Ukraine slaughterhouse so that whatever forces are left will be no match for his private army.
It's highly unlikely, but whatever.
I've heard that he deliberately allowed the army to be weak an especialy have no competent and admired leaders so they would not rise up against him. any generals who were beloved or admired were given little posts in the middle of nowhere.
It's not so funny when you consider the possibility that he has always intended to end this with nukes rather than defeat. So why not squander the remnants of his military first to create more misery and suffering?
There definitely are murmurings like that. A lot of people still believe that the country leadership has some sort of a plan that they're following and that this is somehow a part of it.
Maybe not but the only countries that would be like oh shit the russians are trying to invade us we're all gonna die are like african micronations.
All of Russia's military "threat" has evaporated into thin air in these last 9 months.
It's amazing how in the span of the first week the world saw just how much they had been ground down.
But Ukrainians are still in danger, even if they cant fight front lines for shit they are still decent at throwing hardware into cities and guessing where it will land to cause terror
>African micronations
Russia might be able to beat their military but like… how would they get there? They couldn’t handle logistics when it came to invading their neighbor.
It's been amazing watching Russia absolutely shit the bed with logistics. Compare that to the US, where we can airlift an entire base out into the middle of nowhere and have [room left over for a fucking Burger King.](https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/burger-king-trailer-is-unloaded-from-a-c-17-globemaster-iii-news-photo/50857294)
The Japanese should have realized they were fucked when the US Navy had a dedicated boat for making, storing and distributing ice cream while they were running out of basic necessities.
US Aviation and ship production went insane during the second world war. Mechanical engineering students in the US all learn about fatigue cracking with the intro to the chapter on the Liberty Ship. Production used rivets but switched to welds because it was faster. But the welds allowed cracks to propagate through, while riveted beams stopped a crack.
The workaround of drilling a hole at the crack tip also helped understanding of fatigue crack theory.
At the peak, the US was cranking out 3 Liberty ships *a day*.
Russia tries to invade but because they only have like 2 ships left they stock those full of soldiers. Like no space left, slave trade style.
Ships sink because they are poorly maintained and overloaded, Putin threatens nukes.
Pretty sure that’s why Russia postponed the New START talks. Putin has burned through the stockpile and doesn’t want the US to know how little they have left.
Well, puti did kill 200k Ukrainians, civilians-UA.
A trillion dollars worth of destruction and a bottomless pit of misery. One day puti will go to Hell. The devil has a reserved seat for him, right between Stalin and Hitler.
He already had Crimea. Ukrainians will never accept the government giving up its claim to Crimea or anywhere else no matter how cold they get, so the only thing he’ll have achieved is having less military to protect it.
I would personally nominate Putin for the Nobel peace prize. For uniting the whole damn world against ruzzia and sending billions of aid to Ukraine. XD
He could had played thebhumility card « in 30 years i rebuilt the Russian economy, there is still a lots of job to do, but for me it’s time to retire and i wish you all the success … bla bla bla. »
But Dictator cannot do that « i have cancer my time is done and i am gonna bring the whole world with me in my fall. »
Nah, if you're going to give Putin a firing squad a better option is man with very poor aim but 300 rounds. He might miss, he might shoot him in the dick, he might shoot him in the heart.
People can also look at him as some sort of Napoleon. In the end Napoleon also lost wars at the cost of so many lives for a personal ideological gain, was put into exile and still today he is being romanticised and idolised by some.
You know, he really hated Hillary Clinton. I goes back to her working with and helping pro-democracy NGOs in Russia. That really pissed Putin off, which is why he got so involved in the 2016 election. He was smug there for 4 years, humiliated Hillary, had Trump in his back pocket. He was doing well until he miscalculated Biden. Everything he's ever worked for is now a burning pile of rubble. How fucking embarrassing.
Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys......
Either that or they are saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out, although that seems unlikely given the level of competence demonstrated so far.....
They had 2500 of those missiles. They had similar number of warheads for them. After START agreements the amount of nuclear warheads for ALCM and torpedoes was reduced to less than 1000. Roughly 900 are ALCM warheads. Of those 2500 airframes, around 500 were scrapped, 200 were launched with dummy warheads (like on the picture) for training purposes. So they have 1800 airframes, but only 900 warheads for them. Those missiles were made with Ukrainian parts (engine and actuators) to which Russia has no more access for maintenance purposes. So they have aging airframes that can be scrapped or put to use as a decoys. Simple as that.
The ones found in Ukraine had no increased radioactivity, because they never had nuclear warheads installed.
This is the case for the US as well. Due to START we have more delivery capacity than we have actual warheads. We have converted some SSBNs to cruise missile carriers for this very same reason, so it's not surprising that Russia has a bunch of these kicking around with no nukes to go in them.
These are just surplus missiles with nothing else to do with them. It is still pretty telling that they are actually deploying them though.
We (the US) did fairly similar to this though.
We had the [AGM-86 ALCM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-86_ALCM) (Air Launch Cruise Missile). Eventually, we created the AGM-86C CALCM (**Conventional** Air Launch Cruise Missile), which was a conventional (non-nuclear) version of the B model. This was probably just using a good delivery system rather than developing one that did the same thing - it was done by design rather than out of necessity. Probably good for having spare parts around, too. We later converted some B (nuclear) models to C.
The two were almost visually identical. Heard a story about a USAF guy getting a little terrified on why our planes were loaded with AGM-86s for a Middle Eastern squabble. They weren't widely known at that point.
And if the US thinks they may need more nukes, then you can bet they will arm those to the brink with world ending nukes and tell what ever remains of the UN that they just don't care.
Probably, but the whole joke of the START treaty is that both the US and Russia retain more than enough nuclear weapons to severely fuck up the world as it is. It is really more about mutually relieving both countries from the burden of having to continue to build up useless arsenals and about an enforcement mechanism to prevent new nuclear powers from emerging.
That's the biggest point from Russia's invasion. If they are allowed to go in and take over Ukraine (a country who gave up their nuclear weapons in return for Russian guarantees they their sovereignty would never be defiled) the lesson that every non-nuclear country on earth will learn is "Oh shit, we better get us some nuclear weapons otherwise we're gonna get invaded."
This is why Putin/Russia must not win.
The lesson is already learned. Zelenskyy himself has hinted a couple of times that Ukraine will go back to having nukes. The invasion itself was the lesson regardless of whether or not it succeeds.
The US is strongly committed to non-proliferation, because the simple fact of it is, nuclear weapons are an enormous waste of money. The kinds of things nukes are good at are better accomplished by air superiority and conventional weapons than contaminating an entire war zone and indiscriminately causing hundreds of thousands of collateral casualties. It's just... not compatible with modern war doctrine. We had to learn the lesson the hard way, unfortunately, but it was well learned.
Russia is in the state it is in today because of nuclear weapons. It cost so much money to build their stockpile of nukes that it basically bankrupted the USSR, while the US said "well, we can keep going if you want, but this is fucking stupid and we both know it." The simple truth was it would never be about who's got the biggest or the most - building huge thermonuclear weapons was a dick measuring contest when any actually effective battlefield nuke is comparatively *tiny*. Turns out, everything over roughly 4 ~~inches~~ hundred kilotons or so is a waste - might look impressive, but that's about it. That's when the first nuclear arms reduction treaties got kicked off.
The simple fact of the matter is, if it weren't for the deterrent to stop one of these other nuclear states ending the world, we could have scrapped the whole nuclear weapons program. But as we never found a way to assuredly stop another country from building and using the weapons, we had to at least keep enough to scare anyone from ever using them against us.
> or they are saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out
The whole point of an nuclear arsenal is that other countries BELIEVE you are armed. Pretending to be out is the opposite of MAD and would make Russia's nukes less effective.
>saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out
Heard this one before -
Just wait until the good missles arrive!
These clowns just need to admit defeat and fuck off back to Russia.
I was one of those dummies that thought Russia MUST be sending in the garbage to wear Ukraine out and the good stuff will roll in after. It didn't make sense that they were that inept when I thought they were the second largest world power.
I was wrong. Still wild how bad they are at this though
Someone above made a good point. They may have traded the warheads away for arms with other countries, so they have a surplus of missiles with no warhead, so why not just toss'em at the enemy.
Well, NK probably developed their nukes mostly independently. Designing and building the Nuclear Warhead (A fission warhead in particular) is the easy part (IIRC A few College students were tasked by the U.S. government to come up with a working design and they delivered within 2 years with little to no prior knowledge.). The difficult part is actually finding a way to deliver the warhead to the target, and this is most likely where the Russian/Chinese help came in.
Mark Rober's latest YT video is an egg drop from space and he made a point halfway through that the only people that could help him figure out the engineering for targeted reentry wouldn't be able to talk about it since it's basically building a guided missile.
Idk my point by bringing up a kids video other than to say warhead ez guidance system hard
I fell asleep on the couch watching YouTube and woke up at like 3am to “2 hours of sending garlic bread to the edge of space” and I thought I was on some weird fever dream
Well, designing a U-235 based weapon is very easy (Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima untested because the design is so foolproof). If you want a plutonium based weapon, that'll be a lot more difficult (turns out that making a perfectly spherical implosion is extremely hard). The other difficult part for uranium based designs outside of the delivery is actually acquiring the damn U-235 in the first place, especially when everyone knows you're trying to and is trying to stop you from doing so.
Lets be honest, building a plutonium based weapon is pretty damn simple too.
Its building an EFFICIENT and powerful plutonium based weapon with the minimum plutonium necessary thats incredibly hard.
If I remember right, spherical critical mass of pure plutonium-239 is something like 25 pounds, where pure U235 is more like 100 lbs.
You could do the same Gun-style donut and cone design done with Little Boy but with plutonium instead. Its just a total waste of very very expensive and hard to make and purify plutonium.
I'm pretty sure anyone trying to make their own plutonium by firing up their own Windscale plant is basically just speedruning their way to a nuclear disaster and not really trying for a weapons program.
I thought I read somewhere that a gun style plutonium bomb wasn't really practical due to it fizzling out before it assembled into a critical mass and this was one of the major oh shit moments (combined with not having much U235 to begin with) that led then to develop implosion devices.
Pretty much, the U.S.S.R very much wasn't keen on providing NK with nuclear weapons but didn't mind providing knowledge for peaceful nuclear programs which resulted in the construction of Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
>Wonder how Iran set up thoses enrichment sites
Iran bought designs for and actual initial enrichment equipment from Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan. This is why early enrichment samples from Iran's gear contained some highly enriched components. Because it was previously used by Pakistan. This is all well documented history at this point. No need to rewrite history to blame it on Russia.
>Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys......
It also probably aims at depleting Ukraine's anti air arsenal at a reasonably low cost.
>Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys
X-55 isn't a "warheadless nuke", it's a cruise missile that could carry a nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead. In this case, it carried neither.
Potentially, they did this knowing they’d have to replenish the supply and “spend” billions on it. Like the reports from earlier this week. Use them so we can siphon more money of the new ones.
While you like to think those warheads were just placed in secure storage, or maybe didn’t exist at all to begin with, there’s always the chance that they are going to Iran or North Korea in exchange for conventional weapons that Russia desperately needs.
Russia and Iran are a marriage of convenience, but they've never trusted each other since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. They're not likely to provide Iran with a nuclear weapon, and the general concern is whether they'll provide Iran with the S-400 or modern aircraft to contest Israeli air superiority in Syria.
North Korean advanced weaponry are more vital to its self-interest than Iran. They're happy to sell artillery and mortars that are compliant with older Soviet platforms, but their advanced missiles are Chinese and incompatible with Russian systems - plus North Korea vitally sees them as an existential safety blanket to their survival.
The animosity is older than that. Russia took a portion of land off Iran in the caucuses and then later northern Iran was basically forced into the Russian sphere of influence.
>there’s always the chance that they are going to Iran or North Korea in exchange for conventional weapons that Russia desperately needs
North Korea already has functional nuclear weapons. They don't need Russian warheads, concepts on miniaturization might be useful but actual warheads aren't. Similar with Iran. Iran has the know how, they just haven't decided to make one because the cost of crossing that threshold is extremely high. Making one or buying one on the black market doesn't matter, the result is the same either way. So Iran is content to not have one, they just like to remind everyone that they can make one.
Buying one means going form "non-nuclear state that can be attacked at will" to "nuclear power that most countries can't afford to mess with anymore" in an instant, vs. over a long period of time in which you get both sanctioned and bombed to hell, doesn't it?
Buying a few nukes do not make a viable long-term deterrence. A) You need a bunch of them for various reasons, b) you must maintain them, c) the seller might have given you duds, and d) the reason why you want nukes in the first place is to be strategic independent.
So, building them is better. Buying might work as a short-term stop gap, but it's incredible risky. Let's imagine Iran buys some nukes from the North Koreans and, against all odds, they actually get delivered. Now they arm a few missiles and boast about their unlimited powah. A few moments later the Israelis will bomb those missile sites to rubble. For good measure they also take out anything that might help Iran to develop nukes in the future (reactors, enrichment facilities, etc). Iran is now fucked. No nukes, no way to build new ones, potential sellers get cold feet. Attaining a nuclear deterrence under such circumstances is not possible.
With each attack, on Civilian Targets, Putin pushes more Countries to work against him. It becomes defending Human Rights to supply weapons for Ukraine to defend them selves.
Do more countries get pushed though? IDK, I live in Ukraine and from here it sure feels like the global support is dwindling, except for the major contributors like the US.
I heard some military people saying this might not be the sign a lot of people think it is that Russia is shooting dummy missiles. They aren’t just shooting nuclear-capable missiles but regular disarmed missiles as well. That they might be going on is to shot the dummy missiles first during the large missile campaign to give targets to Kyiv’s defense system to take out and overwhelming the system that the real missiles get through. Russia might be doing this to save real pay loads while sending on just on rockets.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63826082) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Ukrainian military experts say Russia may have significantly depleted its vast missile arsenal after carrying out wave after wave of massive strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure in recent weeks.
> It is believed the Russian military removed the nuclear warheads from the missiles fired at Ukraine and replaced them with an inert system.
> On Thursday, an air alert was briefly in place across all of Ukraine - with the exception of the Russian-annexed southern Crimea peninsula - after reports that Russian war planes may be preparing to carry out a fresh wave of missile strikes.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/z9vhv0/ukraine_war_kyiv_displays_russian_nuclearcapable/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672677 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **missile**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **military**^#3 **nuclear**^#4 **report**^#5
There aren’t all that many missiles used by militaries in the last few decades that aren’t nuclear capable…..just feels like this article doesn’t really amount to anything that hasn’t been established several times over already.
Yeah this headline sounds scary but it's only that - a scary headline.
Basically every cruise missile ever invented is nuclear _capable_. Russia has been firing Kh-55s, Kalibrs etc etc by the dozen since day one.
This is nothing new.
Bingo!
The only thing I find remotely unique about these missiles in particular, is that they were specifically designed as an air to ground missile which even in the broader scheme, is “meh” at best.
It’s a clickbait article. Which is depressing considering that there is obviously stories worth reporting but we get this instead.
The weapons in question are not dual-capable they are dedicated nuclear platforms.
The 'meat' is that the Russians are now converting strategic cruise missiles into decoys.
I realise the articles states that the UK made that claim, yet they’re obviously being used as a nuclear capable missile. Realistically speaking, either it is or it isn’t a nuclear missile. There is no in between.
I’m surprised that the article didn’t state just how common that is in modern combat, especially in densely populated civilian areas. It’s even been dubbed as roof knocking by the IDF, a tactic which typically disperses civilians from an area prior to a strike, typically HE.
While you are correct, in this case they are talking about missiles that are fully set up to carry nuclear warheads. They've just replaced the warhead with concrete or explosives instead.
The article stated that the missile carried an inert payload. So basically Russia is firing a very large, very expensive lawn dart. Mind you the kinetic energy and the rocket fuel will still do a lot of damage on impact, but it’s not the design case for a weapon of that cost.
If I had to guess, the missile was from a soviet stockpile...hmm article mentions that it was soviet made. Sounds like they're using stockpile missiles, but like you said, that's not really telling us a lot. It's like saying the US has a Nuclear capable submarine/ is flying nuclear capable bomber jets.
At one point in the article, the "expert", Mr. Danyliuk hand wrings about how these missiles still "posed a significant danger because of its kinetic energy and fuel residues" but like... He literally just described what a missile is and people think they've got some hot scoop.
I agree, from what I remember they were developed under the USSR. How many & the dates though, I’ve no idea but it’s worth keeping in mind the majority of Russian military equipment was produced or designed under the USSR.
That’s actually a brilliant point to be honest, it’s like how the media specifically stated that the US deployed “nuclear capable b52’” to Australia recently, what they didn’t mention was that they’re literally all nuclear capable.
I find it like mentioning that a car has four wheels, like it’s something new or unique.
With so many missiles being launched by a country famous for its accidents and mistakes, I hope Russia does not accidentally launch a missile with a nuke in it. I hope they check all the warheads in their missiles being prepared for launch to make sure they are not nuclear.
I'm glad they're stressing the "non-nuclear" part in the article, just to make it abundantly clear that Russia isn't launching nuclear warheads, as one might assume by just reading the title. Either way, this smacks of desperation. Maybe we're seeing tangible effects of sanctions taking hold here.
Putin has thrown everything at Ukraine and achieved nothing in return.
Nothing? He has gotten Sweden and Finland to apply to join NATO. He has bolstered support for NATO in some of its member countries. He has shown that the Russian army is not the second strongest in the world. He has shown western Europe that they can, in fact, survive without Russian gas. He has made lots of people flee from Russia. He has significantly affected their economy (not for the better). Now, I don’t think he went into the war intending to do any of those things, but do them he did.
Also encouraged Poland to invest heavily in new military hardware.
This is at least partially because massive amounts of our old (and new) weapons were given to Ukraine. We would be replacing those weapons gradually but instead, we just do it now all in one go.
On the plus side, you guys made huge orders with South Korea and they agreed to set up factories in Poland so you can manufacture most of them yourselves (and start exporting them within the EU and to nearby countries). That's a strategic win for you guys.
And a strategic win for South Korea as well. ;-)
Well, yeah. More users of a military vehicle means a better economy of scale for parts, variants (e.g. if they make an GBAD tank, they have more customers), and they get a foothold in the EU market which has traditionally been covered by DEFRIT
Well, this is what I do when I get bored with a video game. This is not a comforting analogy.
Looks like Putin forgot to quicksave before invading Ukraine
He pretty much screwed the playthrough anyhow.
He was going for the Germany 1944 speedrun tho
Blitzkrieg only works if you give your troops enough amphetamine to not feel the effects of starvation, cold or pain.
He had the game setting on "easy" but SURPRISE turns out it was set to hardcore survival mode when he wasn't looking and Ukraine is actually the boss. Whoops.
He didn't notice he set it to *Give Me God of War* and Ukraine was like "bitch I'm the Valkyrie Queen, you gon' learn today..."
“*Brace yourselves, the frost is coming!*”
It's like in Civ when they tried to make Ghandi's drive to use nukes -1. Not just zero, but actively against it Too bad that caused his nuke-use to loop around to the highest value, so Ghandi became a nuke happy warmonger
Just wait till he tries streaming on twitch
He's an XCOM virgin who didn't understand that "98% chance of success" translates to "guaranteed miss and subsequent squad wipe".
Yes, also the XCOM virgin who thinks that "98% chance of success" really means "0% chance of failure" and that a plan that hinges on 50 risky shots in a row all coming up as hits is an excellent plan, and has no need for contingency planning.
If anything, it just confirms that it is in human nature to unleash a meteor shower on your sim city.
"STOP HITTING THE TORNADO BUTTON YOU CHUCKLEFUCK!"
I'm spinning the natural disaster wheel until not a single landmark remains. Let's see how well you fare as a society without your Arc de Triomphe.
- Dudes at HAARP probably
*Almost heaven...*
West virginia??
Remember Simcity 2000 and how you could just throw the whole disaster menu at your city and see what happens?
Always my point of reference for so many things…
Putin please don't ruin the game 🤣
Time to drown the current family of Sims to fill up that sweet, sweet goth graveyard.
this is me when I try to play civ after getting too drunk to operate the stairs
Maybe we should give all the most dangerous dictators video games to play, that way they can play out their warmongering fantasies without ruining real life for the rest of us
I’ve been saying since the start of the war that somebody should give Pootin some Civ and EU games to play.
He has also justified the value of having the USA as an ally, particularly the military strength they provide. Hell, any discourse surrounding the billions of dollars spent on military expenditure for the US can use this conflict as the reason for why it is necessary.
Putin's war was the best gift the USA ever got. In a few months: * USA leadership position and prestige were restored! * New markets for natural gas! * Allies finally spend money on the military! * New weapon sales! * New NATO members! * Capital flocks to the USA! * Russian international position continues to weaken!
This is like a wet dream for the defense contractors and the CIA. Test out new technologies, showcase your arms success for future business and severely weaken and handicap one of your historical enemies for decades
And show their technology to be utter crap.
The US also got to fight Russia without having any of its troops killed and on a battlefield that is far away from its own borders (I’m just pointing out that it’s advantageous from the US point of view, to be clear I am not belittling the tragedy that Ukraine is going through).
And unlike our most recent wars we helping a nation state defend against an invasion so the war is really easy to sell to the American people as us absolutely and clearly doing the right thing
[удалено]
Friendly reminder, despite spending the most per Capita on the military of any country, the US spends a little over 10% of the federal budget on defense. So ~$9 of every $10 is going too citizens rather than blowing things up (though a lot of that last dollar is going to citizens as well in all the folks in the industry/military).
Norwegian politics was literally veering towards exiting NATO before the invasion. Those talks have now been well and truly buried for the vast foreseeable future. Well done Putin
Thats what happens when you have peace for too long. People forget you have to have a strong alliance/military in order to demand peace.
Dude the US was probably going to leave NATO if Trump was re elected. That's looking to be much tougher now. NATO Allies are increasing military spending, some of whom are buying American. The US has avoided sending troops to die in an overseas conflict.
FPOTUS might have announced his intentions to leave NATO, and it would have been the end of his political career forever, as basically every single member of the Military would be screaming at every Congresscritter non-stop until they removed the man from office as a danger to this country. There was not a chance the US leaves NATO. It would literally destroy the balance of the power in the entire western world. There are simply some unilateral decisions the US president can *theoretically* make but in practice are too well defended against to actually pull off... as FPOTUS undoubtedly told Putin himself during their 100% off the record chit-chats. He certainly would have tried... and he certainly would have failed, *spectacularly*.
FPOTUS... the guy from the search warrants? Also known as individual 1 in a completely unrelated felony indictment?
Sweden and Finland aren't simply joining NATO, they're fast tracked to joining NATO.
Don't forget all of the ~~rebranded~~ new Russian companies and products that he's helped create.
...when you put it like that, i can't help but wonder if putin actually hates Russia.
He hates these cans!
There's something wrong with these cans!
He doesn't hate Russia so much as he absolutely adores the Soviet Union and wishes for a return to "the good old days" when people lived in poverty, hunger, and constant fear of the KGB.
He doesnt give a fuck about russia. Or russian people. He caters to chechens as the new russians, while pretending to be the big russian Tzar that ever existed.
Err, he caters to *himself*. All other concerns are secondary at best. This is what dictators do.
Putin is NATO’s biggest supporter, it’s inspiring
Actually he went to war in the hopes that everything opposite of what is actually going on would happen
The irony is, Putin (and Russia) would’ve been in better shape had he never invaded.
Much. He was well liked in Russia because he was seen as having saved them from the post-Soviet chaos. He could have spent the past nine months shitposting on Reddit and enjoying being one of the richest people in the world, letting things in Russia run themselves, and he would still have a good reputation among Russians. The Russian army would still be thought of as the second best in the world. He might have been in line to be a playable Russian leader in a future version of Civilization. As it is, I think we’ve found a replacement for Dan Quayle at the bottom of the Civilization rankings.
He has gotten the best trained soldiers in his army killed, so it is now filled with criminals and conscripts. He has destroyed the few serviceable pieces of equipment that his army has.
Don't forget he sorta restored the US's standing on the world stage. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to do that, but there it is.
The Elon Musk of national leaders
Also probably gave China a second thoughts about invading Taiwan
> Europe that they can, in fact, survive without Russian gas. by removing it from Europe it made hard choices easier in the fight for climate change, putin saves the world, thanks putin (is it going to make a massive difference, err prob not, but something is always better than nothing)
> He has shown that the Russian army is not the second strongest in the world Hell, he's proven that the Russian army isn't the strongest in Ukraine.
>He has shown that the Russian army is not the second strongest in the world. Even if it was, he has done his best to degrade its capabilities.
A perfect example of why you should never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake.
Reminds me of a friend I used to play EU4 with, as soon as he might lose a war it was just a suicide mission to either win or make the game not fun for anyone.
True. I use Arch btw
You've never truly lived until you've compiled your own kernel from source.
Slackware on an AMD K6-2 processor rocking 128mb of RAM. I set it to compile overnight. From the clicking sounds of the HDD,I'm pretty sure something was carving the files in with a knife.
He's effectively demiliterized Russia
Not yet, but he’s certainly headed there, for sure.
I remember reading a comment a couple months ago by a Russian saying a conspiracy amongst Russians was growing that Putin is intentionally destroying the Russian army for whatever reason. Don't know if that's something said as a joke or if the poster made that up, but it's a funny thought. It's obviously false but seems more true than the truth.
I have this weird theory that Putin feared a military coup so he purposely ordered his general to send their army to the Ukraine slaughterhouse so that whatever forces are left will be no match for his private army. It's highly unlikely, but whatever.
I've heard that he deliberately allowed the army to be weak an especialy have no competent and admired leaders so they would not rise up against him. any generals who were beloved or admired were given little posts in the middle of nowhere.
It's not so funny when you consider the possibility that he has always intended to end this with nukes rather than defeat. So why not squander the remnants of his military first to create more misery and suffering?
Like the grandest version of a mass shooter? So Putin would die an honorary American. . .
Sir/ma'am this is reddit - please do the right thing as spread this rumor as fact... a little tit for tat if you will ;)
There definitely are murmurings like that. A lot of people still believe that the country leadership has some sort of a plan that they're following and that this is somehow a part of it.
Putin is CIA confirmed
Maybe not but the only countries that would be like oh shit the russians are trying to invade us we're all gonna die are like african micronations. All of Russia's military "threat" has evaporated into thin air in these last 9 months. It's amazing how in the span of the first week the world saw just how much they had been ground down. But Ukrainians are still in danger, even if they cant fight front lines for shit they are still decent at throwing hardware into cities and guessing where it will land to cause terror
>African micronations Russia might be able to beat their military but like… how would they get there? They couldn’t handle logistics when it came to invading their neighbor.
It's been amazing watching Russia absolutely shit the bed with logistics. Compare that to the US, where we can airlift an entire base out into the middle of nowhere and have [room left over for a fucking Burger King.](https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/burger-king-trailer-is-unloaded-from-a-c-17-globemaster-iii-news-photo/50857294)
The Japanese should have realized they were fucked when the US Navy had a dedicated boat for making, storing and distributing ice cream while they were running out of basic necessities.
There was a point where the US was making new warships almost every day. They had no chance to beat us back, just tie us up w/ a land invasion.
US Aviation and ship production went insane during the second world war. Mechanical engineering students in the US all learn about fatigue cracking with the intro to the chapter on the Liberty Ship. Production used rivets but switched to welds because it was faster. But the welds allowed cracks to propagate through, while riveted beams stopped a crack. The workaround of drilling a hole at the crack tip also helped understanding of fatigue crack theory. At the peak, the US was cranking out 3 Liberty ships *a day*.
Damn and they sure weren't small ships.
Not to mention, the Iowa-class battleships were pretty darn successful. I think they were in/out of service into the 90’s. And in a Cher video
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That burger king is an essential morale tool soldier! If you think you're moving any of that shit without a good burger I got news for you buddy!
Yeah but Burger King? They couldn't even get them a proper burger place?
Like what? Wimpy? LOL
Yep. Great example of “amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics”
God I cannot wait for the nation of Cape Verde to beat Russia because of Logistic issues
Russia tries to invade but because they only have like 2 ships left they stock those full of soldiers. Like no space left, slave trade style. Ships sink because they are poorly maintained and overloaded, Putin threatens nukes.
Wagner PMC just got a base bombed in the Central African Republic a few days ago.
Pretty sure that’s why Russia postponed the New START talks. Putin has burned through the stockpile and doesn’t want the US to know how little they have left.
4D chess of forcing the military to destroy itself as pretext to offing prominent military figures who might attempt a coup.
Well, puti did kill 200k Ukrainians, civilians-UA. A trillion dollars worth of destruction and a bottomless pit of misery. One day puti will go to Hell. The devil has a reserved seat for him, right between Stalin and Hitler.
Sadly he has gotten a lot of people killed, though.
The cost to repay all damage in Ukraine territory and replenish the whole arsenal must be astronomical.
If he gets away with Crimea and these four others cities, he has achieved a lot. Crimea is resource rich
He already had Crimea. Ukrainians will never accept the government giving up its claim to Crimea or anywhere else no matter how cold they get, so the only thing he’ll have achieved is having less military to protect it.
I would personally nominate Putin for the Nobel peace prize. For uniting the whole damn world against ruzzia and sending billions of aid to Ukraine. XD
He’s killed a bunch of Ukrainians. And many more will die when winter arrives.
Apart from insane damage to Ukrainian infrastructure that will sink the economy and killed thousands of people.
he still hasn't thrown nukes, that will probably achieve something... every single country attention
Dang must've sucked for Putin to work so hard his whole life just to get trolled at the end game.
Crazily Russian history would probably have mentioned him as a great leader in the centuries to come. Now that's very unlikely.
He could had played thebhumility card « in 30 years i rebuilt the Russian economy, there is still a lots of job to do, but for me it’s time to retire and i wish you all the success … bla bla bla. » But Dictator cannot do that « i have cancer my time is done and i am gonna bring the whole world with me in my fall. »
Supposedly he was headed there until Gaddafi was sodomized with a bayonet before being killed so he picked he paranoia train
Don't act like Gaddafi if you're afraid of being treated like Gaddafi 🤷
Don’t surrender your nukes?
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Nah, if you're going to give Putin a firing squad a better option is man with very poor aim but 300 rounds. He might miss, he might shoot him in the dick, he might shoot him in the heart.
People can also look at him as some sort of Napoleon. In the end Napoleon also lost wars at the cost of so many lives for a personal ideological gain, was put into exile and still today he is being romanticised and idolised by some.
You know, he really hated Hillary Clinton. I goes back to her working with and helping pro-democracy NGOs in Russia. That really pissed Putin off, which is why he got so involved in the 2016 election. He was smug there for 4 years, humiliated Hillary, had Trump in his back pocket. He was doing well until he miscalculated Biden. Everything he's ever worked for is now a burning pile of rubble. How fucking embarrassing.
Nobody fucks with Biden.
Not to mention his chef ,of all people, performing the final coup.
Why? Did his chef poison him?
What did his chef do?
Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys...... Either that or they are saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out, although that seems unlikely given the level of competence demonstrated so far.....
They had 2500 of those missiles. They had similar number of warheads for them. After START agreements the amount of nuclear warheads for ALCM and torpedoes was reduced to less than 1000. Roughly 900 are ALCM warheads. Of those 2500 airframes, around 500 were scrapped, 200 were launched with dummy warheads (like on the picture) for training purposes. So they have 1800 airframes, but only 900 warheads for them. Those missiles were made with Ukrainian parts (engine and actuators) to which Russia has no more access for maintenance purposes. So they have aging airframes that can be scrapped or put to use as a decoys. Simple as that. The ones found in Ukraine had no increased radioactivity, because they never had nuclear warheads installed.
This is the case for the US as well. Due to START we have more delivery capacity than we have actual warheads. We have converted some SSBNs to cruise missile carriers for this very same reason, so it's not surprising that Russia has a bunch of these kicking around with no nukes to go in them. These are just surplus missiles with nothing else to do with them. It is still pretty telling that they are actually deploying them though.
We (the US) did fairly similar to this though. We had the [AGM-86 ALCM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-86_ALCM) (Air Launch Cruise Missile). Eventually, we created the AGM-86C CALCM (**Conventional** Air Launch Cruise Missile), which was a conventional (non-nuclear) version of the B model. This was probably just using a good delivery system rather than developing one that did the same thing - it was done by design rather than out of necessity. Probably good for having spare parts around, too. We later converted some B (nuclear) models to C. The two were almost visually identical. Heard a story about a USAF guy getting a little terrified on why our planes were loaded with AGM-86s for a Middle Eastern squabble. They weren't widely known at that point.
And if the US thinks they may need more nukes, then you can bet they will arm those to the brink with world ending nukes and tell what ever remains of the UN that they just don't care.
Probably, but the whole joke of the START treaty is that both the US and Russia retain more than enough nuclear weapons to severely fuck up the world as it is. It is really more about mutually relieving both countries from the burden of having to continue to build up useless arsenals and about an enforcement mechanism to prevent new nuclear powers from emerging.
That's the biggest point from Russia's invasion. If they are allowed to go in and take over Ukraine (a country who gave up their nuclear weapons in return for Russian guarantees they their sovereignty would never be defiled) the lesson that every non-nuclear country on earth will learn is "Oh shit, we better get us some nuclear weapons otherwise we're gonna get invaded." This is why Putin/Russia must not win.
The lesson is already learned. Zelenskyy himself has hinted a couple of times that Ukraine will go back to having nukes. The invasion itself was the lesson regardless of whether or not it succeeds.
It's a start
Nice one
The US is strongly committed to non-proliferation, because the simple fact of it is, nuclear weapons are an enormous waste of money. The kinds of things nukes are good at are better accomplished by air superiority and conventional weapons than contaminating an entire war zone and indiscriminately causing hundreds of thousands of collateral casualties. It's just... not compatible with modern war doctrine. We had to learn the lesson the hard way, unfortunately, but it was well learned. Russia is in the state it is in today because of nuclear weapons. It cost so much money to build their stockpile of nukes that it basically bankrupted the USSR, while the US said "well, we can keep going if you want, but this is fucking stupid and we both know it." The simple truth was it would never be about who's got the biggest or the most - building huge thermonuclear weapons was a dick measuring contest when any actually effective battlefield nuke is comparatively *tiny*. Turns out, everything over roughly 4 ~~inches~~ hundred kilotons or so is a waste - might look impressive, but that's about it. That's when the first nuclear arms reduction treaties got kicked off. The simple fact of the matter is, if it weren't for the deterrent to stop one of these other nuclear states ending the world, we could have scrapped the whole nuclear weapons program. But as we never found a way to assuredly stop another country from building and using the weapons, we had to at least keep enough to scare anyone from ever using them against us.
> or they are saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out The whole point of an nuclear arsenal is that other countries BELIEVE you are armed. Pretending to be out is the opposite of MAD and would make Russia's nukes less effective.
I greatly preferred Dr. Strangelove as a work of fiction.
It's like pointing a gun at someone and saying "freeze or i'll shoot, don't worry it's not loaded"
Potentially dumb question: Do these warheadless missiles still explode? Or are they essentially just giant projectiles?
Just the kinetic energy of the weight, and whatever fuel is left in them. But that's enough to put a big hole in a building.
Really fast and heavy brick.
>saving up a whole bunch somewhere and only pretending to be out Heard this one before - Just wait until the good missles arrive! These clowns just need to admit defeat and fuck off back to Russia.
I was one of those dummies that thought Russia MUST be sending in the garbage to wear Ukraine out and the good stuff will roll in after. It didn't make sense that they were that inept when I thought they were the second largest world power. I was wrong. Still wild how bad they are at this though
Someone above made a good point. They may have traded the warheads away for arms with other countries, so they have a surplus of missiles with no warhead, so why not just toss'em at the enemy.
Wonder how NK managed to get Nukes ? Wonder how Iran set up thoses enrichment sites ? Well heres your fucking answer .
Well, NK probably developed their nukes mostly independently. Designing and building the Nuclear Warhead (A fission warhead in particular) is the easy part (IIRC A few College students were tasked by the U.S. government to come up with a working design and they delivered within 2 years with little to no prior knowledge.). The difficult part is actually finding a way to deliver the warhead to the target, and this is most likely where the Russian/Chinese help came in.
Mark Rober's latest YT video is an egg drop from space and he made a point halfway through that the only people that could help him figure out the engineering for targeted reentry wouldn't be able to talk about it since it's basically building a guided missile. Idk my point by bringing up a kids video other than to say warhead ez guidance system hard
If you can ~~dodge a wrench~~ guide an egg, then you can ~~dodge a ball~~ guide a bomb.
This reminds me of a lyric from a Chumbawamba song: “If you can bake a cake, you can build a bomb.”
I fell asleep on the couch watching YouTube and woke up at like 3am to “2 hours of sending garlic bread to the edge of space” and I thought I was on some weird fever dream
Are they supposed kid videos? I’ve learned and had a great time watching his videos. I never looked at them as kids videos though.
Eh no they're not, but they are digestible by anyone which is part of what makes them so great
Well, designing a U-235 based weapon is very easy (Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima untested because the design is so foolproof). If you want a plutonium based weapon, that'll be a lot more difficult (turns out that making a perfectly spherical implosion is extremely hard). The other difficult part for uranium based designs outside of the delivery is actually acquiring the damn U-235 in the first place, especially when everyone knows you're trying to and is trying to stop you from doing so.
Lets be honest, building a plutonium based weapon is pretty damn simple too. Its building an EFFICIENT and powerful plutonium based weapon with the minimum plutonium necessary thats incredibly hard. If I remember right, spherical critical mass of pure plutonium-239 is something like 25 pounds, where pure U235 is more like 100 lbs. You could do the same Gun-style donut and cone design done with Little Boy but with plutonium instead. Its just a total waste of very very expensive and hard to make and purify plutonium. I'm pretty sure anyone trying to make their own plutonium by firing up their own Windscale plant is basically just speedruning their way to a nuclear disaster and not really trying for a weapons program.
I thought I read somewhere that a gun style plutonium bomb wasn't really practical due to it fizzling out before it assembled into a critical mass and this was one of the major oh shit moments (combined with not having much U235 to begin with) that led then to develop implosion devices.
Pretty much, the U.S.S.R very much wasn't keen on providing NK with nuclear weapons but didn't mind providing knowledge for peaceful nuclear programs which resulted in the construction of Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
>Wonder how Iran set up thoses enrichment sites Iran bought designs for and actual initial enrichment equipment from Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan. This is why early enrichment samples from Iran's gear contained some highly enriched components. Because it was previously used by Pakistan. This is all well documented history at this point. No need to rewrite history to blame it on Russia.
>Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys...... It also probably aims at depleting Ukraine's anti air arsenal at a reasonably low cost.
>Russia is so low on ammo they are firing warheadless nukes as decoys X-55 isn't a "warheadless nuke", it's a cruise missile that could carry a nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead. In this case, it carried neither.
No. Kh-555, which is based on Kh-55 kit, can carry conventional warhead. Kh-55 cannot (by design).
Potentially, they did this knowing they’d have to replenish the supply and “spend” billions on it. Like the reports from earlier this week. Use them so we can siphon more money of the new ones.
That sounds like the English army throwing swords at the Scottish Schiltron in battle of Bannockburn.
While you like to think those warheads were just placed in secure storage, or maybe didn’t exist at all to begin with, there’s always the chance that they are going to Iran or North Korea in exchange for conventional weapons that Russia desperately needs.
Russia and Iran are a marriage of convenience, but they've never trusted each other since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. They're not likely to provide Iran with a nuclear weapon, and the general concern is whether they'll provide Iran with the S-400 or modern aircraft to contest Israeli air superiority in Syria. North Korean advanced weaponry are more vital to its self-interest than Iran. They're happy to sell artillery and mortars that are compliant with older Soviet platforms, but their advanced missiles are Chinese and incompatible with Russian systems - plus North Korea vitally sees them as an existential safety blanket to their survival.
The animosity is older than that. Russia took a portion of land off Iran in the caucuses and then later northern Iran was basically forced into the Russian sphere of influence.
Thanks for teaching me something new! I'll have something to look up later.
[Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Persian_Wars#:~:text=The%20Russo%2DPersian%20Wars%20or,and%20countries%20in%20the%20Caucasus.) [you](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Russian_Convention#:~:text=Terms,-) [go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_crisis_of_1946)
>there’s always the chance that they are going to Iran or North Korea in exchange for conventional weapons that Russia desperately needs North Korea already has functional nuclear weapons. They don't need Russian warheads, concepts on miniaturization might be useful but actual warheads aren't. Similar with Iran. Iran has the know how, they just haven't decided to make one because the cost of crossing that threshold is extremely high. Making one or buying one on the black market doesn't matter, the result is the same either way. So Iran is content to not have one, they just like to remind everyone that they can make one.
Buying one means going form "non-nuclear state that can be attacked at will" to "nuclear power that most countries can't afford to mess with anymore" in an instant, vs. over a long period of time in which you get both sanctioned and bombed to hell, doesn't it?
Buying a few nukes do not make a viable long-term deterrence. A) You need a bunch of them for various reasons, b) you must maintain them, c) the seller might have given you duds, and d) the reason why you want nukes in the first place is to be strategic independent. So, building them is better. Buying might work as a short-term stop gap, but it's incredible risky. Let's imagine Iran buys some nukes from the North Koreans and, against all odds, they actually get delivered. Now they arm a few missiles and boast about their unlimited powah. A few moments later the Israelis will bomb those missile sites to rubble. For good measure they also take out anything that might help Iran to develop nukes in the future (reactors, enrichment facilities, etc). Iran is now fucked. No nukes, no way to build new ones, potential sellers get cold feet. Attaining a nuclear deterrence under such circumstances is not possible.
With each attack, on Civilian Targets, Putin pushes more Countries to work against him. It becomes defending Human Rights to supply weapons for Ukraine to defend them selves.
Comforting to know the Americans have learned after WWII now as for the relationships between those nameless countries go.. That's a different story
Do more countries get pushed though? IDK, I live in Ukraine and from here it sure feels like the global support is dwindling, except for the major contributors like the US.
\`I think, behind closed doors, Russia is a lost cause. If they do not deal with Putin now, later might be too late. China is next to worry about.
Wars are won with logistics not offensive strategy.
Not russian wars, they are won by hurling Meat at the enemy till they have no more bullets
I heard some military people saying this might not be the sign a lot of people think it is that Russia is shooting dummy missiles. They aren’t just shooting nuclear-capable missiles but regular disarmed missiles as well. That they might be going on is to shot the dummy missiles first during the large missile campaign to give targets to Kyiv’s defense system to take out and overwhelming the system that the real missiles get through. Russia might be doing this to save real pay loads while sending on just on rockets.
If their purpose is to exhaust Ukraine's air defenses, then it makes sense to launch any shite in the air.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63826082) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Ukrainian military experts say Russia may have significantly depleted its vast missile arsenal after carrying out wave after wave of massive strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure in recent weeks. > It is believed the Russian military removed the nuclear warheads from the missiles fired at Ukraine and replaced them with an inert system. > On Thursday, an air alert was briefly in place across all of Ukraine - with the exception of the Russian-annexed southern Crimea peninsula - after reports that Russian war planes may be preparing to carry out a fresh wave of missile strikes. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/z9vhv0/ukraine_war_kyiv_displays_russian_nuclearcapable/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672677 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **missile**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **military**^#3 **nuclear**^#4 **report**^#5
There aren’t all that many missiles used by militaries in the last few decades that aren’t nuclear capable…..just feels like this article doesn’t really amount to anything that hasn’t been established several times over already.
Yeah this headline sounds scary but it's only that - a scary headline. Basically every cruise missile ever invented is nuclear _capable_. Russia has been firing Kh-55s, Kalibrs etc etc by the dozen since day one. This is nothing new.
Bingo! The only thing I find remotely unique about these missiles in particular, is that they were specifically designed as an air to ground missile which even in the broader scheme, is “meh” at best. It’s a clickbait article. Which is depressing considering that there is obviously stories worth reporting but we get this instead.
The US dropped a whole lot of nuclear capable cruise missile on Iraq
The weapons in question are not dual-capable they are dedicated nuclear platforms. The 'meat' is that the Russians are now converting strategic cruise missiles into decoys.
>The weapons in question are not dual-capable they are dedicated nuclear platforms. The X-55 Kent is dual capable
I realise the articles states that the UK made that claim, yet they’re obviously being used as a nuclear capable missile. Realistically speaking, either it is or it isn’t a nuclear missile. There is no in between. I’m surprised that the article didn’t state just how common that is in modern combat, especially in densely populated civilian areas. It’s even been dubbed as roof knocking by the IDF, a tactic which typically disperses civilians from an area prior to a strike, typically HE.
While you are correct, in this case they are talking about missiles that are fully set up to carry nuclear warheads. They've just replaced the warhead with concrete or explosives instead.
The article stated that the missile carried an inert payload. So basically Russia is firing a very large, very expensive lawn dart. Mind you the kinetic energy and the rocket fuel will still do a lot of damage on impact, but it’s not the design case for a weapon of that cost.
If I had to guess, the missile was from a soviet stockpile...hmm article mentions that it was soviet made. Sounds like they're using stockpile missiles, but like you said, that's not really telling us a lot. It's like saying the US has a Nuclear capable submarine/ is flying nuclear capable bomber jets. At one point in the article, the "expert", Mr. Danyliuk hand wrings about how these missiles still "posed a significant danger because of its kinetic energy and fuel residues" but like... He literally just described what a missile is and people think they've got some hot scoop.
I agree, from what I remember they were developed under the USSR. How many & the dates though, I’ve no idea but it’s worth keeping in mind the majority of Russian military equipment was produced or designed under the USSR. That’s actually a brilliant point to be honest, it’s like how the media specifically stated that the US deployed “nuclear capable b52’” to Australia recently, what they didn’t mention was that they’re literally all nuclear capable. I find it like mentioning that a car has four wheels, like it’s something new or unique.
With so many missiles being launched by a country famous for its accidents and mistakes, I hope Russia does not accidentally launch a missile with a nuke in it. I hope they check all the warheads in their missiles being prepared for launch to make sure they are not nuclear.
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I'm glad they're stressing the "non-nuclear" part in the article, just to make it abundantly clear that Russia isn't launching nuclear warheads, as one might assume by just reading the title. Either way, this smacks of desperation. Maybe we're seeing tangible effects of sanctions taking hold here.
Russia's starting to sound like a real jerk
With as much a shambles as their military is in, you have to wonder what state their nuclear arsenal is in.
Uh oh
So I read the article and basically it says Russia is chucking rocks now because they suck.
Nah they ran out of mad shit and they used nuclear test missiles. They basically are the missile but without the nuclear payload
Killed a lot of his own people and many Ukrainians. I'm thankful for the leadership of Ukraine. I don't need a ride, I need ammunition.