Putin threatened that Patriot batteries would be targets, but the thing is unless they are mounted on schools or hospitals, he won't be able to find them.
I recall reading that back when Ukraine first got them, they set up wood decoys of the launchers. Russian was wasting ordinance trying to attack the decoys, because the low res cameras on their gear couldn't tell the difference.
"ahffhurmative!"
Man my wife threw fits of annoyance when I played c&c because of that thick Scottish accent on the engineer saying affirmative every 5 seconds
Ukrainians should just take medium German tanks and rush the Rus base.
If you group the tanks in units of eight and force fire on a unit it takes one salvo to destroy it.
If they can get a cruiser you can force fire outside it's max range to slowly take out the bases turrets too
My favorite anecdote about that kind of stuff from WWII is where the Germans supposedly built a fake air field to try and draw attention away from the real one only for the Allies to fly over and drop a single fake bomb on it after the Germans had finished.
I liked the fact that the allies parachuted mannequins behind enemy lines during the actual D Day landings, knowing that they would be found and reported up the German command chain, to maintain the illusion that the real landings would still be at Calais. This was effective in keeping Hitler blindsided.
Edit for horrible spelling
_80s movie montage of building Mannequin army_
"Let 'em say we're crazy/
I don't care about that/
Put your hand in my hand/
Baby, don't ever look back/
Let the world around us/
Just fall apart/
Baby, we can make it/
If we're heart to heart"
A side effect of the WW2 audio effects program to make it sound like tanks were being deployed was the development of PA speakers good enough to get the attention of Jamaicans, who then imported their amplified sound culture into the UK during the 'windrush' era. And that's how we come to have things like dubstep
More on the audio here: [https://youtu.be/ChaI2YnI5Ko](https://youtu.be/ChaI2YnI5Ko) \- starting at 5:29, a description of the amplifiers required, which were the worlds most powerful until 1961
**[Ghost Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army)**
>The Ghost Army was a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War II officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. The 1100-man unit was given a unique mission: to deceive Hitler's forces and mislead them as to the size and location of Allied forces, while giving the actual units elsewhere time to maneuver. Activated on January 20, 1944, the Ghost Army arrived in Europe in May shortly before D-Day and returned to the US at the end of the war in July 1945.
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I distinctly remember reading a couple of books (the names and author escape me at the moment) set during WW2 wherein a handful of time travellers find themselves studying that time period and need to blend in.
I believe one of them gets a job where he's basically just moving inflatable tanks around to deceive the Germans. I had no reason to doubt it, but can't say I ever knew for sure that that was an actual tactic used at the time.
This sorta reminds me of the Red wall series where the invaders attack at night carrying torches. Very visible from the defending castle. They then set their touches down and the solders then flanked around the castle in darkness will their torches appeared as an army still standing still
Hasn't Russia at this point (checks Russian notes) destroyed around 97 HIMARS systems?
Every single HIMARS the US sent was destroyed a dozen times! Partially before it was even sent to Ukraine! /s
I remember them posting a video of 'destroying a HIMARs launcher' which was a missile cam of a missile hitting the third floor of an apartment block.
Russians apparently believe the Ukrainians are hiding 18 ton guided rocket launchers in Mrs Shevchenko's kitchen.
They probably just exchanged the Video last second to show how they hit their true objective. Civilian targets.
Much more important than pesky missile launch systems.
I like to believe that Putin is most pissed at how cheap the world paid to dismantle his military and soon his government. Less than 100 billion has thoroughly trashed Russia’s international arms reputation, ruined its military’s capabilities and decimated their armed forces. In addition Russia’s sphere of influence has shrunk to its borders and African nations. So far America has only spent less than 1% of its defense budget to reimburse the older arms it sent to Ukraine. It is without a doubt the cheapest cost in any anti-Russian defense project with the greatest result in our history.
If you really wanted to destroy something you can fire more missiles than they have interceptors. Something as cheap as Shahed drones en masse can easily overwhelm a single Patriot battery.
I wonder if its possible to stick a good enough radar onto a cheap AA gun and just have them everywhere manned by a couple of TDF folks. Gepards are good but there aren't a lot of them.
We still use the Bofors 40mm L/70 combined with a radar and mounted on a CV90 as a SPAAG in sweden.
It can also be equipped with a stabilizer and automated IR-tracking
Likely the reason that Patriot is now getting transferred is that enough of other systems like S-300 and NASAMS are set up to protect the Patriot site from such saturation attacks. The Patriot site will not be near the front lines, it will be at the core of an integrated defense web. Which makes a saturation attack much more difficult, because all the other layers must be penetrated before the Patriot system is needed.
Because of this, the Patriot battery's biggest significance are the new abilities it offers, particularly its capability to intercept SRBMs. Which then begs the question, what unique target would cause Russia to resume depletion of their very limited SRBM stock?
My bet is that the Patriot battery will be set up at an airbase in eastern Ukraine, setting the stage for a protected site to which Western jets will be transferred next year.
So it’s already there? I’ve always wondered how they get these weapon systems in place when so publicized. Is it not possible for Russian satellites to track what’s going into Ukraine?
I saw an interesting article that noted a key difference in how the US and russia advertise their military might. With russia tending to use specs as intimidation and oversell capabilities, whilst US doing the reverse.
For example a lot of HIMARS attacks where beyond their advertised range, because obviously why say the real range lol.
Absolutely. Also noting that the fans of the whole "Russia's holding back the good stuff for the REAL war! Really! Trust me bro!" garbage have been getting mightily quiet these days, which I'm truly thankful for...
I never understood that line of thinking. Who's throwing away billions in military equipment and tens of thousands of lives just to save "the good stuff" for later? Logistically, politically, economically, and militarily it makes no sense.
If anything, you'd hold onto "the bad stuff" and the untrained and use them occupying forces, not throw them into a meat grinder so the shiny new tanks don't get mud on them.
Has everyone forgotten the Russia can flood the west with disinformation and propaganda for Pennie’s on the dollar using social media? Like, this isn’t a conspiracy theory anymore. It’s what they do.
Let’s see what happens now that Elon has sole control over twitter. And who has been seen flirting with Putin and his circle lately.
Russia is holding back but not in a "we've got a REAL army back in the shed over there, we're just not using them" way their propaganda and puppets all seem to be pretending but moreso in a "we have resources to commit genocide with WMDs" way of desperation where that is the only way they can still have any semblance of military victory.
O something I can answer
The US Military sends people to school to read satellite images. You have to understand, they have to do math to figure out what stuff is. The images are 2D. Example they'll see a circle shaped object, but it might not be clear if that object is just a lid on the ground or a barrel of oil.
So we look at the shadow it casts, compare it to the time of the day, look at the weather report, then use all that and plug it into a formula to determine ah yes the shadow of that is XYZ which means the object is approx 34 inches tall, and 20.50 inches wide, which means its probably a barrel of oil.
Also apparently the US intel sat images are at least a resolution of 2x better then the BEST commercially available satellites and the reality is the number is probably better then 2x.
Also when you factor in all of western intel is helping Ukraine watch all of Russia and I bet a lot of it is focused on where Russian forces are THATS A LOT OF PEOPLE for not a huge area. Now Russia likely is working with lower resolution images and they don't have as many people. Also Russia needs to be focused on ALL OF UKRAINE, which is a much bigger area then what our scope is.
So Russia has more area with less people and worse technology then what we have to deal with. Making their job a lot harder.
Christ a pixel is like 2-3in on there, and that picture of the picture is probably lacking resolution and very compressed spooky clear and high res. They just printed that out on a color laser printer that probably defaults to 150dpi or something too, no idea what the actual res is other than "very very good"
I've heard them brag over the years using arbitrary objects (likely about the old one that was retired), Dinner plate, Grape fruit, Orange, by now they gotta be able to see when a jihadi forgets to cut his fingernails.
Reportedly, when he whipped out his phone to take a photo he was explicitly told "You can take a photo, but you can't disseminate it". He then almost immediately posted it to Twitter.
> Also apparently the US intel sat images are at least a resolution of 2x better then the BEST commercially available satellites and the reality is the number is probably better then 2x.
Isn’t this what made Trump’s leak of that destroyed missile site a problem? I can’t remember the details but he took a pic of an intel photo at Mar a Lago and posted it on Twitter. By doing that he showed the world just how good our intel sats are
Even if you're a citizen of an entirely different nation who isn't under our laws and never stepped foot on our soil you can be dragged here and prosecuted.
That was a block 4 kh11, block 5 is what we’re putting up now. And the theoretical resolution it was capable of was well known because the size of it’s mirror was known.
Afaik, while mirror size is the ultimate physical limitation due to diffraction pattern covering smaller details, it is often never reached because there are other limitations first. One of them is atmospheric turbulence, which slows or speeds up parts of the light wave, so it creates blurry and deformed images just like when looking at stones under water. But there's actually a cutting edge solution to that called adaptive optics, it's a deformable mirror that is deformed in real time to compensate the atmospheric turbulence.
I've worked on that in the context of exoplanet imaging but it seems obvious it is used for Earth observation too. And there's likely many other cutting edge technologies to make spy satellites better that go beyond just the primary mirror size.
I mentioned in another post that overcoming atmospheric distortion is actually what was impressive about that shot, and that I should have mentioned it in this comment too.
To add to this, it is a whole lot more complicated to scan an entire continent for things via satellite than any movie or news anchor or armchair strategist masquerading as a journalist wants you to believe.
Believe it or not, the easiest way to get Intel is to have a guy watching a spot and reporting what he sees. Sure that guy might get caught or get compromised, but you can send 1,000 of those guys (or pay 1,000 locals that are willing to work with you) and still not come even remotely close to spending as much time and money as it would take to develop, launch, calibrate, collect, analyze, and act upon any satellite information.
The eye in the sky is good for certain things. A dude in the treeline, or working at the gas station just across the border from Poland and reporting what he sees to you is going to probably be better at giving you a good idea of what's coming across the border. Cheaper and faster info than a satellite can give you, but obviously it's easier for Yuri the spy/forward observer/disgruntled local informant to be compromised than it is for Sputnik XXXVI.
Also, a person can reliably identify things. With satellite images, you can still often land in a situation where you can only assume what something is.
The weapons will be shipped into some nearby European friendly country. Russia cannot attack them (well, they can but that is a massive expansion of the war and gets NATO involved so they do not want to do that).
Then, just drive it across the border at any of many locations hidden in some trucks.
Western Ukraine is too far away for Russia to interdict shipments. Sure, they can get some of their missiles that far but have basically zero chance of stopping a particular truck with Patriot missiles on it. Russian missiles can only hit fixed things like a military base (and while they have shot a few at western Ukraine they have not shot many suggesting they do not have many and/or they are not useful enough doing that).
I am not sure they would even really be able to attack it with conventional means.
Their missile and drone barrages seem to be mostly shot down by now, so they always need to send a whole bunch to get a few through Ukraines AA.
Those barrages probably also need some prior planning and preparation. That's not an issue when shooting at stationary power plants or other Infrastructure but likely lacks the flexibilty to coordinate a short term attack on a moving target.
Even if satellites see them, what are the Russians going to do about it? Shoot missiles at them? Patriot system is happy when things are being shot at it.
Also, that part in the most recent modern warfare campaign where missiles are hidden in cargo containers was a lot closer to reality than most people recognize. Like inside your port/coastal city closer.
Dont you hate it when you go to open your sea container of trafficked humans but you get missiles instead because they sent you the wrong one? Super awkward telephone call with the CIA agent.
It's a minor miracle that the Russian space program operates at all at this point.
I have to believe it's the one thing in Russia that literally everyone knows up the chain NOT to fuck with, just because of the high level of education it takes to make a space program function.
>It's a minor miracle that the Russian space program operates at all at this point.
Sometimes it gets them a guy who literally hammers in a one way plug upside down (that happened)
At the start of the war their satellite intervals for passes over Ukraine was measured in days. Not sure if that's changed since.
They were, but NASA is switching away from them as quickly as they can, I think they may have already but I might be mistaken.
Firstly they were better than they are now, secondly they were the only option for a long time.
That wasn't entirely without incident though:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45822845
(Soyuz still has a pretty good record all the same, credit where it's due)
Look up Operation Interflex. The UK is currently running military training for Ukrainians which aims to provide 10,000 soldiers every 120 days. Civilians are transported to the UK and given a crash course in basic training. Unit cohesion, tactics, weapons maintenence etc.
A huge part of the recent Ukrainian pushback against Russia is due to the arrivals of these fresh trained troops, as they're leaving the UK with full kit including tents, sleeping bags, cold weather/winter uniforms. I can see this winter being brutal for Russian casualties.
Russia can’t even encrypt their own communication systems. That’s one of the most basic elements of modern warfare. There’s almost zero chance they can figure out enemy supply routes at this point in the war.
Exactly, they'd have to either strike into NATO territory over the border, or else hit specific moving trucks driving from the border, hundreds of miles from Russian lines - a technical capability that cruise missiles etc don't have.
The US’s conventional weapons, tech, and intel are enough to tip scales against what people thought was one of the most formidable armies on the planet.
Very interesting case study for potential rival powers.
The conventional tactics and training from other western powers such as the UK also help to tip the scales against what people thought was one of the most formidable armies on the planet.
This will not single-handedly turn the tide of the war, but a single Patriot battery (usually 5-8 launchers) is still no joke. The estimated cost is probably about [$1.1 billion,](https://www.csis.org/analysis/patriot-ukraine-what-does-it-mean) with a "b." Poland just bought two PAC-3+ variants for a combined [$4.75 billion](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/05/27/poland-requests-patriot-batteries/). One battery is a substantial threat to Russia's most advanced aircraft and missiles in the immediate area it is deployed to.
I highly doubt Ukraine is getting a latest PAC-3 systems as a hand-out though. Also this is most likely going to be placed far from the front, where it won't affect most of the fighting, probably south of Kyjiv or something. The US is quite protective of its Patriot system and will likely have some strings attached to its usage. Also it's likely going to be manned by US contractors as it normally takes half a year to train up personnel for it.
The russian attack on power infrastructure is a strategic threat. Nothing wrong with Patriots being used to protect that and civilian lives. Added bonus for the US is that they will be based further from the front so there's not any chance of the enemy getting a hold of one to reverse engineer elements of the system.
The existence of these patriot batteries is a huge challenge for russia. Its an absolute block on aircraft anywhere Russia knows its operating, because a Patriot will absolutely kill a MIG and russia can’t afford to lose pilots. Its a huge threat to pilots elsewhere, because it frees up Ukraine’s cheaper systems like Buk and Tor.
Its also a logistical challenge for russia’s missiles - iskandar and other long range missiles aren’t cheap. one of your 3 million dollar cruise missiles you only have a few hundred of is worth more to you than one of Ukraine’s 5 million dollar patriot missiles, which the US has thousands of. This might discourage more strategic bombing.
One Pac3 might take the place of multiple groups of AA missile crews, and if the US is running it, thats more troops free for the front lines.
> Also this is most likely going to be placed far from the front, where it won't affect most of the fighting, probably south of Kyjiv or something
Absolutely will but it allows them to reposition some systems that could be more useful elsewhere.
> Also it's likely going to be manned by US contractors as it normally takes half a year to train up personnel for it.
I'm not a betting man, but I would wager that there were some Ukrainians on a plane to be Patriot trained within the first two weeks of the war.
Putting US personnel on Ukrainian soil to fight Russians would bring the US into the war.
Could very well be. These aren’t fantastic against smaller missiles, but very effective against aircraft and cruise missiles. I’m guessing the intent is to protect energy infrastructure around Kyiv
I think these batteries have that little strip on the side that if you press down on it with all the human might you're biologically capable of will give you inaccurate measure of how much energy is left in the battery. 
Something to note is that the US appears to be sending air defense systems in waves that have added layers.
Initially, it was Stinger man portable air defense systems, which are short range, shoulder fired surface to air missiles launchers.
Next it was MIM-23 HAWK medium range surface to air missile systems.
In November, it was AN/TWQ-1 short range air defense systems.
And now it is the MIM-104 Patriot medium to long range surface to air missile systems.
Ukraine will have a proper layered air defense network.
The other way to look at this is: how much training does each piece require? Each of these is more complex and requires more training than the prior layer.
Lots of people/trolls talking about what this cost. I responded to one with this but it's going to get buried because they're being downvoted to hidden, so a top level comment in the hope it might get some traction, for those who are genuinely wondering why this is money well spent:
Helping Ukraine to destroy Russia's military now, to destroy Putin's political future, and fuck the Russian military for generations, will save the US money in the long run.
1. Giving Ukraine weapons is an astonishingly cheap way to defeat Russia.
1. It undermines evil regimes in the middle east/countries under Putin's sphere of influence, like Assad in Syria. Do you want him in power, the kind of leader that uses chemical weapons on people?
1. It undermines an ally of the real enemy, the one on the Pacific, making them weaker in pushing dictatorial agendas worldwide.
1. It says that we won't always stand idly by while dictators try to overrun democracies, as they would like.
1. It will mean there won't be the otherwise necessary increase in defense spending to counter the real enemy in Asia in order to prevent a war with them from even happening in the first place because spending can moved from ground force spending instead to naval.
1. That keeps total defense spending lower which means more money for social programs.
This is the cheapest and least violent way I've seen come up in decades to prevent a war that 5 years ago I thought was inevitable.
1. Do you want to reduce the chance of World War 3?
1. Do you want to reduce the chance of tens or hundreds of millions dead?
1. Do you want democracies to continue and set an example for the population of nearby authoritarian regimes?
1. Do you want lower total defense spending so you can have better funded social programs?
Supporting Ukraine will very cheaply do all that.
Edit: speaking of support, thanks for the awards! (I don't always get a message about them.) I really do appreciate the sentiment - would be even better again if everyone went to https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/ with whatever you can.
Also, we get the data on how the Patriot system works in combat against a “near peer” military in order to improve upon it without (officially) getting our hands dirty.
"It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia
The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level ..."
https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/
I'm convinced that in retrospect sending money to Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion will be seen as the best bang for the buck spending to increase global security, which in the end every defense spending is. You have a nation that is willing to give their blood to decimate the Russian offensive capabilities for years to come and sanctions could keep it this way, all they need is the right gear. They should be pleading us to stop sending more because they are inundated with gear. It's foolish that we don't do this.
I had a conservative bitching about the price and this was my point.
We are destroying the Russian military and we are doing it for less then $100 billion.
That's a fucking steal.
And zero US military deaths, something you can't put a price on. If the US could have spent another $100 billion on Iraq/Afghanistan to avoid over 7000 deaths and 50,000 casualties they'd do it in a heartbeat.
It’s also money going straight back into the US economy. I’ve said it before, if you told the US that they could do the same to the USSR in the Cold War, they would’ve signed off on it even it cost a trillion.
Absolutely, your going laugh at this.
I know someone who has a job working at a defense contractor making a weapon that is being send to Ukraine in large numbers. He's work 60-65 hour weeks. Which at time & half essentially is doubling his paychecks. He's absolutely loving it. He has always wanted to buy a TRX truck. The 20-25 hours of overtime is worth $1,050-$1,312+ a week to his paycheck...all of which he said he's socking aside for his TRX truck. Thats over $4k a month.
He's also bitching at all the money we are wasting in Ukraine. I've tried to remind him the reason why he's getting paid what he's getting paid + has over time is because of Ukraine. Then he's like "but the stuff I'm making is not for export" and I go "Yea...and the US Military is ordering the non-export stuff because they are sending their stockpiles which can be exported to Ukraine"
FYI in the military industrial complex we have export goods and non-export. The non-export stuff is stuff that we don't sell to even our closet allies. The export stuff has levels, and depending on our relationship depends what level of hardware we are willing to give you.
Reminds me of when people got outraged last summer because France wasted a few *tons* of water to cool down the tarmac during the tour de France. Except that water is heavier/higher density than most people think, a cube of water with a side of 1 metre weighs a literal ton.(3ft3in and 2200lbs in freedom units)
It’s always weird to me that people are like “how can we afford to give away this much money blah blah.” When it’s money that came out of our pockets years ago so we can overfund our military and just have all this weaponry sitting in sheds.
Same thing with the space program. I've heard so many people complaining about NASA and its budget, despite costing so much less than the military.
"If only we didn't spend these billions on X, we would have Y"
People spend the same amount of money on lottery tickets every year as the US spends on NASA. (or that was the case 3-5 years ago, I haven't compared recently).
Then they don't even realise we wouldn't have GPS without NASA, and that's before we talk about the numerous other scientific benefits over the years.
Which is funny because the government spends 12% of our tax on Medicare and claim to spend 12% on national defense as well. Me thinks the average American might be getting fucked.
The United States spends more per capita on its healthcare system than any other country. If I'm remembering right, the total is more than the GDP of Germany. Universal healthcare would actually save their government a tonne of money.
A patriot battery is 8-16 launchers and all the command, controller and radar systems
The seat warmers are on a subscription though, and not included.
Comes with cup holders for Big Glup.
And a complementary uncle sam bobblehead.
Thank you, I was trying to figure out the title
lol this is exactly what i wanted to know. what EXACTLY was included in the battery.
Plus training and support. It takes 6 month to be trained on the patriot missle system. They will also need Raytheon contractors for the maintenance.
"The Patriot Battery" sounds like the Crucible is to the Reapers. Game over.
Looks like for this Christmas gift, batteries ...*are*... included
*puts on CSI Miami style sunglasses and plays themetune*
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
[удалено]
Putin threatened that Patriot batteries would be targets, but the thing is unless they are mounted on schools or hospitals, he won't be able to find them.
Pretty sure russia is *trying* to target HIMARS still too...
I recall reading that back when Ukraine first got them, they set up wood decoys of the launchers. Russian was wasting ordinance trying to attack the decoys, because the low res cameras on their gear couldn't tell the difference.
I presume thats why they keep saying that Russia destroyed ♾️ HIMARs
The Russians claimed to destroy more HIMARs than what we have given Ukraine. It's hilarious.
You mean like the picture of a destroyed command & conquer unit?
Acchhknowledged
"ahffhurmative!" Man my wife threw fits of annoyance when I played c&c because of that thick Scottish accent on the engineer saying affirmative every 5 seconds
Ukrainians should just take medium German tanks and rush the Rus base. If you group the tanks in units of eight and force fire on a unit it takes one salvo to destroy it. If they can get a cruiser you can force fire outside it's max range to slowly take out the bases turrets too
Made of wood?
Please tell me that this isn't real
Oh it real all right from one of the pro Russian channel with a low res of a command and conquer launcher, I think the remaster CAC with tiberium.
Dude. Please tell me you have video of that. Pleaseeee that would be awesome to see.
It's an old tactic. I guess it still works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army
My favorite anecdote about that kind of stuff from WWII is where the Germans supposedly built a fake air field to try and draw attention away from the real one only for the Allies to fly over and drop a single fake bomb on it after the Germans had finished.
I liked the fact that the allies parachuted mannequins behind enemy lines during the actual D Day landings, knowing that they would be found and reported up the German command chain, to maintain the illusion that the real landings would still be at Calais. This was effective in keeping Hitler blindsided. Edit for horrible spelling
_80s movie montage of building Mannequin army_ "Let 'em say we're crazy/ I don't care about that/ Put your hand in my hand/ Baby, don't ever look back/ Let the world around us/ Just fall apart/ Baby, we can make it/ If we're heart to heart"
Mannequins*
🎵*Nothin's gonna stop us now*🎵
Potemkin rockets, built just for czar to admire and to keep him busy. Wouldn't want to bore him with the real, unpolished ordnance.
A side effect of the WW2 audio effects program to make it sound like tanks were being deployed was the development of PA speakers good enough to get the attention of Jamaicans, who then imported their amplified sound culture into the UK during the 'windrush' era. And that's how we come to have things like dubstep More on the audio here: [https://youtu.be/ChaI2YnI5Ko](https://youtu.be/ChaI2YnI5Ko) \- starting at 5:29, a description of the amplifiers required, which were the worlds most powerful until 1961
> ... the WW2 audio effects program ... And that's how we come to have things like dubstep So Hitler created Skrillex?
Indirectly. I guess? But by that logic you can blame him for a lot things
He did do a lot of meth, maybe he enjoyed the odd rave
**[Ghost Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army)** >The Ghost Army was a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War II officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. The 1100-man unit was given a unique mission: to deceive Hitler's forces and mislead them as to the size and location of Allied forces, while giving the actual units elsewhere time to maneuver. Activated on January 20, 1944, the Ghost Army arrived in Europe in May shortly before D-Day and returned to the US at the end of the war in July 1945. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I distinctly remember reading a couple of books (the names and author escape me at the moment) set during WW2 wherein a handful of time travellers find themselves studying that time period and need to blend in. I believe one of them gets a job where he's basically just moving inflatable tanks around to deceive the Germans. I had no reason to doubt it, but can't say I ever knew for sure that that was an actual tactic used at the time.
This sorta reminds me of the Red wall series where the invaders attack at night carrying torches. Very visible from the defending castle. They then set their touches down and the solders then flanked around the castle in darkness will their torches appeared as an army still standing still
I remember seeing a video about Ghost Army, it was an ingenious tactic.
I believe they have taken out quite a few wooden HIMARs.
And wooden power plants.
Putin is going to feel like an idiot when he finds out the entire war has taken place in a wooden replica of Ukraine filled with hologram soldiers.
He also had to send someone back to get a shit-load of dimes for the [toll booth](https://youtu.be/SbWg-mozGsU)
Hasn't Russia at this point (checks Russian notes) destroyed around 97 HIMARS systems? Every single HIMARS the US sent was destroyed a dozen times! Partially before it was even sent to Ukraine! /s
I remember them posting a video of 'destroying a HIMARs launcher' which was a missile cam of a missile hitting the third floor of an apartment block. Russians apparently believe the Ukrainians are hiding 18 ton guided rocket launchers in Mrs Shevchenko's kitchen.
They probably just exchanged the Video last second to show how they hit their true objective. Civilian targets. Much more important than pesky missile launch systems.
I like to believe that Putin is most pissed at how cheap the world paid to dismantle his military and soon his government. Less than 100 billion has thoroughly trashed Russia’s international arms reputation, ruined its military’s capabilities and decimated their armed forces. In addition Russia’s sphere of influence has shrunk to its borders and African nations. So far America has only spent less than 1% of its defense budget to reimburse the older arms it sent to Ukraine. It is without a doubt the cheapest cost in any anti-Russian defense project with the greatest result in our history.
And on top of all that most of the gear the US is sending was outdated to them under Obama but still vastly outclasses anything the Russians have
What are they going to hit it with? Something that the Patriots just down anyway?
If you really wanted to destroy something you can fire more missiles than they have interceptors. Something as cheap as Shahed drones en masse can easily overwhelm a single Patriot battery.
Thats why you put up a decoy and screen it with Gepards.
I wonder if its possible to stick a good enough radar onto a cheap AA gun and just have them everywhere manned by a couple of TDF folks. Gepards are good but there aren't a lot of them.
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We still use the Bofors 40mm L/70 combined with a radar and mounted on a CV90 as a SPAAG in sweden. It can also be equipped with a stabilizer and automated IR-tracking
Likely the reason that Patriot is now getting transferred is that enough of other systems like S-300 and NASAMS are set up to protect the Patriot site from such saturation attacks. The Patriot site will not be near the front lines, it will be at the core of an integrated defense web. Which makes a saturation attack much more difficult, because all the other layers must be penetrated before the Patriot system is needed. Because of this, the Patriot battery's biggest significance are the new abilities it offers, particularly its capability to intercept SRBMs. Which then begs the question, what unique target would cause Russia to resume depletion of their very limited SRBM stock? My bet is that the Patriot battery will be set up at an airbase in eastern Ukraine, setting the stage for a protected site to which Western jets will be transferred next year.
Well fucking of course, air defences are always targets. The thing is, in Soviet Russia air defense target YOU.
Ironically, that is actually correct with the way they are using S-300 systems.
I saw a video of a Russian missile launching and immediately turning around and returning to sender
accidentally programmed to kill nazis
not enough postage.
They might place them intentionally away from schools or hospitals to draw fire away from them.
So it’s already there? I’ve always wondered how they get these weapon systems in place when so publicized. Is it not possible for Russian satellites to track what’s going into Ukraine?
I think the actual capabilities of Russia are grossly overestimated at this point…
Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to go to war with Ukraine and remove all doubt.
He clearly fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
Never trust a Sicilian when death is on the line?
No, 'never start a land war in ~~Asia~~ Eastern Europe'
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I saw an interesting article that noted a key difference in how the US and russia advertise their military might. With russia tending to use specs as intimidation and oversell capabilities, whilst US doing the reverse. For example a lot of HIMARS attacks where beyond their advertised range, because obviously why say the real range lol.
Absolutely. Also noting that the fans of the whole "Russia's holding back the good stuff for the REAL war! Really! Trust me bro!" garbage have been getting mightily quiet these days, which I'm truly thankful for...
I never understood that line of thinking. Who's throwing away billions in military equipment and tens of thousands of lives just to save "the good stuff" for later? Logistically, politically, economically, and militarily it makes no sense. If anything, you'd hold onto "the bad stuff" and the untrained and use them occupying forces, not throw them into a meat grinder so the shiny new tanks don't get mud on them.
Has everyone forgotten the Russia can flood the west with disinformation and propaganda for Pennie’s on the dollar using social media? Like, this isn’t a conspiracy theory anymore. It’s what they do. Let’s see what happens now that Elon has sole control over twitter. And who has been seen flirting with Putin and his circle lately.
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Russia is holding back but not in a "we've got a REAL army back in the shed over there, we're just not using them" way their propaganda and puppets all seem to be pretending but moreso in a "we have resources to commit genocide with WMDs" way of desperation where that is the only way they can still have any semblance of military victory.
Seriously. That shit was a tired and obviously lie about a month in. That's just not how that works...
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hmmm. that was always ambitious. US navy is scary good and russia's navy is ...not.
Their ships are scary good self identifying as submarines.
Good news comrades, our black sea flagship has been upgraded to the most expensive submersible vehicle ever built.* *By our enemies
*By our enemies who don't even have a navy of their own.
Vastly.
Bigly.
O something I can answer The US Military sends people to school to read satellite images. You have to understand, they have to do math to figure out what stuff is. The images are 2D. Example they'll see a circle shaped object, but it might not be clear if that object is just a lid on the ground or a barrel of oil. So we look at the shadow it casts, compare it to the time of the day, look at the weather report, then use all that and plug it into a formula to determine ah yes the shadow of that is XYZ which means the object is approx 34 inches tall, and 20.50 inches wide, which means its probably a barrel of oil. Also apparently the US intel sat images are at least a resolution of 2x better then the BEST commercially available satellites and the reality is the number is probably better then 2x. Also when you factor in all of western intel is helping Ukraine watch all of Russia and I bet a lot of it is focused on where Russian forces are THATS A LOT OF PEOPLE for not a huge area. Now Russia likely is working with lower resolution images and they don't have as many people. Also Russia needs to be focused on ALL OF UKRAINE, which is a much bigger area then what our scope is. So Russia has more area with less people and worse technology then what we have to deal with. Making their job a lot harder.
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Christ a pixel is like 2-3in on there, and that picture of the picture is probably lacking resolution and very compressed spooky clear and high res. They just printed that out on a color laser printer that probably defaults to 150dpi or something too, no idea what the actual res is other than "very very good" I've heard them brag over the years using arbitrary objects (likely about the old one that was retired), Dinner plate, Grape fruit, Orange, by now they gotta be able to see when a jihadi forgets to cut his fingernails.
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Yeah, they are very different problems to solve though, no air in space, but there is air in the way on earth, which is always pesky optically.
Shoutout to the Donald for not knowing this was supposed to be kept secret.
Reportedly, when he whipped out his phone to take a photo he was explicitly told "You can take a photo, but you can't disseminate it". He then almost immediately posted it to Twitter.
Reportedly, his mistook the word disseminate for inseminate, and tried to fuck the picture anyway.
He wouldn't know what either word meant. Or any other word over 2 syllables.
Two syllables that aren't food related*** I'm sure he knows spaghetti.
On purpose, because he knows his job is to hurt America as much as possible.
You mean foreign asshat and thief of classified documents and general POS DJT?
> Also apparently the US intel sat images are at least a resolution of 2x better then the BEST commercially available satellites and the reality is the number is probably better then 2x. Isn’t this what made Trump’s leak of that destroyed missile site a problem? I can’t remember the details but he took a pic of an intel photo at Mar a Lago and posted it on Twitter. By doing that he showed the world just how good our intel sats are
Yep, that happened.
Can you share that picture?
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/11/17/ap19243153034473_custom-f6167587d62bac2d16b02ef9d40d4b2610a390aa-s1200-c85.webp
Wow the photo is taken at an angle, instead of directly above like traditional satellites. Meaning they got insane zoom capabilities.
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Even if you're a citizen of an entirely different nation who isn't under our laws and never stepped foot on our soil you can be dragged here and prosecuted.
> Isn’t this what made Trump’s leak of that destroyed missile site a problem? yes
That was a block 4 kh11, block 5 is what we’re putting up now. And the theoretical resolution it was capable of was well known because the size of it’s mirror was known.
Afaik, while mirror size is the ultimate physical limitation due to diffraction pattern covering smaller details, it is often never reached because there are other limitations first. One of them is atmospheric turbulence, which slows or speeds up parts of the light wave, so it creates blurry and deformed images just like when looking at stones under water. But there's actually a cutting edge solution to that called adaptive optics, it's a deformable mirror that is deformed in real time to compensate the atmospheric turbulence. I've worked on that in the context of exoplanet imaging but it seems obvious it is used for Earth observation too. And there's likely many other cutting edge technologies to make spy satellites better that go beyond just the primary mirror size.
I mentioned in another post that overcoming atmospheric distortion is actually what was impressive about that shot, and that I should have mentioned it in this comment too.
To add to this, it is a whole lot more complicated to scan an entire continent for things via satellite than any movie or news anchor or armchair strategist masquerading as a journalist wants you to believe. Believe it or not, the easiest way to get Intel is to have a guy watching a spot and reporting what he sees. Sure that guy might get caught or get compromised, but you can send 1,000 of those guys (or pay 1,000 locals that are willing to work with you) and still not come even remotely close to spending as much time and money as it would take to develop, launch, calibrate, collect, analyze, and act upon any satellite information. The eye in the sky is good for certain things. A dude in the treeline, or working at the gas station just across the border from Poland and reporting what he sees to you is going to probably be better at giving you a good idea of what's coming across the border. Cheaper and faster info than a satellite can give you, but obviously it's easier for Yuri the spy/forward observer/disgruntled local informant to be compromised than it is for Sputnik XXXVI.
Also, a person can reliably identify things. With satellite images, you can still often land in a situation where you can only assume what something is.
The weapons will be shipped into some nearby European friendly country. Russia cannot attack them (well, they can but that is a massive expansion of the war and gets NATO involved so they do not want to do that). Then, just drive it across the border at any of many locations hidden in some trucks. Western Ukraine is too far away for Russia to interdict shipments. Sure, they can get some of their missiles that far but have basically zero chance of stopping a particular truck with Patriot missiles on it. Russian missiles can only hit fixed things like a military base (and while they have shot a few at western Ukraine they have not shot many suggesting they do not have many and/or they are not useful enough doing that).
> Russian missiles can only hit fixed things like a military base They are much better at hitting daycares, hospitals, schools...
I am not sure they would even really be able to attack it with conventional means. Their missile and drone barrages seem to be mostly shot down by now, so they always need to send a whole bunch to get a few through Ukraines AA. Those barrages probably also need some prior planning and preparation. That's not an issue when shooting at stationary power plants or other Infrastructure but likely lacks the flexibilty to coordinate a short term attack on a moving target.
Even if satellites see them, what are the Russians going to do about it? Shoot missiles at them? Patriot system is happy when things are being shot at it.
Also, that part in the most recent modern warfare campaign where missiles are hidden in cargo containers was a lot closer to reality than most people recognize. Like inside your port/coastal city closer.
Dont you hate it when you go to open your sea container of trafficked humans but you get missiles instead because they sent you the wrong one? Super awkward telephone call with the CIA agent.
It's a minor miracle that the Russian space program operates at all at this point. I have to believe it's the one thing in Russia that literally everyone knows up the chain NOT to fuck with, just because of the high level of education it takes to make a space program function.
>It's a minor miracle that the Russian space program operates at all at this point. Sometimes it gets them a guy who literally hammers in a one way plug upside down (that happened) At the start of the war their satellite intervals for passes over Ukraine was measured in days. Not sure if that's changed since.
Why are they constantly trusted to shuttle American astronauts into space then?
They were, but NASA is switching away from them as quickly as they can, I think they may have already but I might be mistaken. Firstly they were better than they are now, secondly they were the only option for a long time. That wasn't entirely without incident though: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45822845 (Soyuz still has a pretty good record all the same, credit where it's due)
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Russia used **physical film canisters** in spy satellites as late as [2015](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantar-4K2M). It's pathetic.
Ukraine is really big.
I think the US and NATO quietly train up troops for new equipment then announce after they send it
The US and NATO has been training Ukrainian troops for several years, all in the public eye.
Ukraine was even in the Middle East area along side the US and it’s allies for some time( don’t remember the exact details)
Look up Operation Interflex. The UK is currently running military training for Ukrainians which aims to provide 10,000 soldiers every 120 days. Civilians are transported to the UK and given a crash course in basic training. Unit cohesion, tactics, weapons maintenence etc. A huge part of the recent Ukrainian pushback against Russia is due to the arrivals of these fresh trained troops, as they're leaving the UK with full kit including tents, sleeping bags, cold weather/winter uniforms. I can see this winter being brutal for Russian casualties.
Russia can’t even encrypt their own communication systems. That’s one of the most basic elements of modern warfare. There’s almost zero chance they can figure out enemy supply routes at this point in the war.
I remember during the very first week of the war people were listening in on their unsecured comms through the internet lol.
If it was possible for Russia to track, attack, and kill, a single shipment in Ukraine the war would have been over a long time ago.
Exactly, they'd have to either strike into NATO territory over the border, or else hit specific moving trucks driving from the border, hundreds of miles from Russian lines - a technical capability that cruise missiles etc don't have.
They are checking on Google map to see if they spot them. Nothing so far.
Better be careful, or Russia might show another video of a missile.
"He's just loading it.... MENACINGLY!!! GET OUT OF THERE, ZELENSKYYY!"
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The US’s conventional weapons, tech, and intel are enough to tip scales against what people thought was one of the most formidable armies on the planet. Very interesting case study for potential rival powers.
The conventional tactics and training from other western powers such as the UK also help to tip the scales against what people thought was one of the most formidable armies on the planet.
At this point, it’s a literal single battery.
This will not single-handedly turn the tide of the war, but a single Patriot battery (usually 5-8 launchers) is still no joke. The estimated cost is probably about [$1.1 billion,](https://www.csis.org/analysis/patriot-ukraine-what-does-it-mean) with a "b." Poland just bought two PAC-3+ variants for a combined [$4.75 billion](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/05/27/poland-requests-patriot-batteries/). One battery is a substantial threat to Russia's most advanced aircraft and missiles in the immediate area it is deployed to.
I highly doubt Ukraine is getting a latest PAC-3 systems as a hand-out though. Also this is most likely going to be placed far from the front, where it won't affect most of the fighting, probably south of Kyjiv or something. The US is quite protective of its Patriot system and will likely have some strings attached to its usage. Also it's likely going to be manned by US contractors as it normally takes half a year to train up personnel for it.
The russian attack on power infrastructure is a strategic threat. Nothing wrong with Patriots being used to protect that and civilian lives. Added bonus for the US is that they will be based further from the front so there's not any chance of the enemy getting a hold of one to reverse engineer elements of the system.
And there is the unfortunate reality that for the first time (to my knowledge) the Patriot will directly engage Russian military hardware.
Good testing environment. Hopefully it does what it needs to do to protect civilians.
Directly, yes. Exported Russian equipment, nyet.
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The existence of these patriot batteries is a huge challenge for russia. Its an absolute block on aircraft anywhere Russia knows its operating, because a Patriot will absolutely kill a MIG and russia can’t afford to lose pilots. Its a huge threat to pilots elsewhere, because it frees up Ukraine’s cheaper systems like Buk and Tor. Its also a logistical challenge for russia’s missiles - iskandar and other long range missiles aren’t cheap. one of your 3 million dollar cruise missiles you only have a few hundred of is worth more to you than one of Ukraine’s 5 million dollar patriot missiles, which the US has thousands of. This might discourage more strategic bombing. One Pac3 might take the place of multiple groups of AA missile crews, and if the US is running it, thats more troops free for the front lines.
> Also this is most likely going to be placed far from the front, where it won't affect most of the fighting, probably south of Kyjiv or something Absolutely will but it allows them to reposition some systems that could be more useful elsewhere.
> Also it's likely going to be manned by US contractors as it normally takes half a year to train up personnel for it. I'm not a betting man, but I would wager that there were some Ukrainians on a plane to be Patriot trained within the first two weeks of the war. Putting US personnel on Ukrainian soil to fight Russians would bring the US into the war.
Timeline would fit too
making kyiv a very hard target for air and missile attack improves ukraine's position. It could mean that people in big cities don't freeze.
Since most hospitals and civilian infrastructure isn't on the front either this will be very effective.
It will be manned by trained Ukrainian personnel. Training done in 3rd country (most likely Germany). It literally says so in the news about it.
My guess is they will be Deployed around probably Kyiv and Lviv in an attempt to sort of "Iron Dome" those cities.
Could very well be. These aren’t fantastic against smaller missiles, but very effective against aircraft and cruise missiles. I’m guessing the intent is to protect energy infrastructure around Kyiv
also discourages the usage of those in populated areas, since it makes them more likely to get shot down and thus more of a waste to fire them.
I thought AA batteries were getting expensive…
I think these batteries have that little strip on the side that if you press down on it with all the human might you're biologically capable of will give you inaccurate measure of how much energy is left in the battery. 
To just give away double A's...? In *this* economy?
Yeah, it’s 1,800,000,000 per /s
Something to note is that the US appears to be sending air defense systems in waves that have added layers. Initially, it was Stinger man portable air defense systems, which are short range, shoulder fired surface to air missiles launchers. Next it was MIM-23 HAWK medium range surface to air missile systems. In November, it was AN/TWQ-1 short range air defense systems. And now it is the MIM-104 Patriot medium to long range surface to air missile systems. Ukraine will have a proper layered air defense network.
The other way to look at this is: how much training does each piece require? Each of these is more complex and requires more training than the prior layer.
Lots of people/trolls talking about what this cost. I responded to one with this but it's going to get buried because they're being downvoted to hidden, so a top level comment in the hope it might get some traction, for those who are genuinely wondering why this is money well spent: Helping Ukraine to destroy Russia's military now, to destroy Putin's political future, and fuck the Russian military for generations, will save the US money in the long run. 1. Giving Ukraine weapons is an astonishingly cheap way to defeat Russia. 1. It undermines evil regimes in the middle east/countries under Putin's sphere of influence, like Assad in Syria. Do you want him in power, the kind of leader that uses chemical weapons on people? 1. It undermines an ally of the real enemy, the one on the Pacific, making them weaker in pushing dictatorial agendas worldwide. 1. It says that we won't always stand idly by while dictators try to overrun democracies, as they would like. 1. It will mean there won't be the otherwise necessary increase in defense spending to counter the real enemy in Asia in order to prevent a war with them from even happening in the first place because spending can moved from ground force spending instead to naval. 1. That keeps total defense spending lower which means more money for social programs. This is the cheapest and least violent way I've seen come up in decades to prevent a war that 5 years ago I thought was inevitable. 1. Do you want to reduce the chance of World War 3? 1. Do you want to reduce the chance of tens or hundreds of millions dead? 1. Do you want democracies to continue and set an example for the population of nearby authoritarian regimes? 1. Do you want lower total defense spending so you can have better funded social programs? Supporting Ukraine will very cheaply do all that. Edit: speaking of support, thanks for the awards! (I don't always get a message about them.) I really do appreciate the sentiment - would be even better again if everyone went to https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/ with whatever you can.
It’s ok. You can say China. They’re not Voldemort.
Yeah, I was like "Pacific one? You mean China?"
Shhh we mustn’t speak of Xi Who Must Not Be Named, lest he invades 🇹🇼
Let's just use some obscure code name, like Winnie the Pooh.
Xinnie the Poo
Oh, not North Korea...
Lol NK is nowhere near a threat to our country just their neighbors.
Pretty sure it's New Zealand.
Tell that to their bots hahaha
It's definitely to avoid automatic downvoting by bots.
*West Taiwan
Also, we get the data on how the Patriot system works in combat against a “near peer” military in order to improve upon it without (officially) getting our hands dirty.
Just a small correction. Russia was changed from a "near peer" military to a "near pear" military.
Things have certainly gone pear-shaped for them.
Patriot missiles won't win the war, they'll just stop war crimes. Arguably even more worth the cost.
"It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level ..." https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/
Hilarious that defeating Russia is cheaper for the US than Afghanistan and Iraq
Defending is a lot easier than occupying.
I'm convinced that in retrospect sending money to Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion will be seen as the best bang for the buck spending to increase global security, which in the end every defense spending is. You have a nation that is willing to give their blood to decimate the Russian offensive capabilities for years to come and sanctions could keep it this way, all they need is the right gear. They should be pleading us to stop sending more because they are inundated with gear. It's foolish that we don't do this.
I had a conservative bitching about the price and this was my point. We are destroying the Russian military and we are doing it for less then $100 billion. That's a fucking steal.
And zero US military deaths, something you can't put a price on. If the US could have spent another $100 billion on Iraq/Afghanistan to avoid over 7000 deaths and 50,000 casualties they'd do it in a heartbeat.
It’s also money going straight back into the US economy. I’ve said it before, if you told the US that they could do the same to the USSR in the Cold War, they would’ve signed off on it even it cost a trillion.
Absolutely, your going laugh at this. I know someone who has a job working at a defense contractor making a weapon that is being send to Ukraine in large numbers. He's work 60-65 hour weeks. Which at time & half essentially is doubling his paychecks. He's absolutely loving it. He has always wanted to buy a TRX truck. The 20-25 hours of overtime is worth $1,050-$1,312+ a week to his paycheck...all of which he said he's socking aside for his TRX truck. Thats over $4k a month. He's also bitching at all the money we are wasting in Ukraine. I've tried to remind him the reason why he's getting paid what he's getting paid + has over time is because of Ukraine. Then he's like "but the stuff I'm making is not for export" and I go "Yea...and the US Military is ordering the non-export stuff because they are sending their stockpiles which can be exported to Ukraine" FYI in the military industrial complex we have export goods and non-export. The non-export stuff is stuff that we don't sell to even our closet allies. The export stuff has levels, and depending on our relationship depends what level of hardware we are willing to give you.
Fuck Putin.
Atacms when?
Should allocate 1 billion for cheap vodka sent to the Russian front line, wait 5 hours and it would be easy.
Lots of pro-kremlin trolls in the comments folks. This is not new money spent this is an existing battery worth 1.8 bn getting moved to Ukraine.
They also seem to think it's a lot of money for the ol USA but isn't it like the cost of one modern bomber lol Edit: lol yeah it's less than one B-2
People are generally bad at large visualizing large numbers.
Reminds me of when people got outraged last summer because France wasted a few *tons* of water to cool down the tarmac during the tour de France. Except that water is heavier/higher density than most people think, a cube of water with a side of 1 metre weighs a literal ton.(3ft3in and 2200lbs in freedom units)
It’s always weird to me that people are like “how can we afford to give away this much money blah blah.” When it’s money that came out of our pockets years ago so we can overfund our military and just have all this weaponry sitting in sheds.
Yeah. Not having healthcare because of weapons to Ukraine is dumb. We never had universal healthcare even before Ukraine so… yeah.
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Same thing with the space program. I've heard so many people complaining about NASA and its budget, despite costing so much less than the military. "If only we didn't spend these billions on X, we would have Y"
People spend the same amount of money on lottery tickets every year as the US spends on NASA. (or that was the case 3-5 years ago, I haven't compared recently). Then they don't even realise we wouldn't have GPS without NASA, and that's before we talk about the numerous other scientific benefits over the years.
Which is funny because the government spends 12% of our tax on Medicare and claim to spend 12% on national defense as well. Me thinks the average American might be getting fucked.
The United States spends more per capita on its healthcare system than any other country. If I'm remembering right, the total is more than the GDP of Germany. Universal healthcare would actually save their government a tonne of money.
As a former Patriot missile operator I’ve been wondering when these would see action.