We will see if the reactors will be shelled in reaction... It will be a very long, dark and cold winter in Ukraine.
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The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Took him long enough. Only Putin would wait 6 months to do this
Here I was thinking that the Ukranians had wiped out the entire VKS, if we were to believe some posters.
If true, have they finally decided to increase the sorties, particularly into the west?.
If true, have they finally decided to increase the sorties, particularly into the west?.
It was sure that all Russian bases in artillery range would be target, it's just surprising that Ukraine didn't launch multiple salvos of Tochka on them in the first months of the war... wide area fragmentation/submunition are quite efficient against aircrafts without shelter.
It's not just "driving tanks". There is an actual skill involved.
A truck driver is used to driving on paved roads, he is probably plenty capable of maneuvering a heavy vehicle. However, put him cross country and he could very well just get stuck in the mud because he doesn't recognize the difficulty posed by the terrain. This is not even getting into the gunnery aspect.
Your pilot assertion is even worse, pilots in NATO countries are university graduates, not barnstorming crop-duster pilots. These are complex machines, it requires time to learn, and even more time to be excel. A civilian pilot doesn't deal with formations, weapons, countermeasures, afterburners, and the obvious... getting shot at. You cannot just "will" yourself to become an ace fighter pilot.
Iraq did not have a defunct military and according to America at the time, morale was quite high. They had fresh equipment and NATO training. Plus, you totally missed the big one, how is Turkey defunct? And I didn't mention it before, but Saudis have lost some Abrams in Yemen as well, again, far from defunct.
I also forgot to mention, they've actually gone backwards in equipment supply, they are supplying older and older equipment. M777 has went down to M119, Javelin has gone down to TOW.
Surely the mighty banderites of the Baltic states and European sponsors can feed electricity into Ukraine to make up for any short commings with ease.
There's nothing to worry about. It's quite obvious this had to be done since there are some very irresponsible people among the UAF who thought unleashing a nuclear disaster on Europe was the path to some kind of pyrhic victory
Let's hope it can be defueled in time and any fuel can be evacuated from the site to some place safe that these lunatics can't reach with their weapons
Iraqi military was not defunct. It has an air force of F-16s, an army of 100k+ soldiers with M16s and Abrams, some light ground control IRST like RC-208, etc. basically, a mini Saudi Arabia/Egypt. They are 100% US trained and backed, all connections with Baath regime is severed.
so what did that do against rag tag ISIS with some rusty AKs?
In my first post it was assuming that if EU survives this winter, so already I'm thinking a timescale of 1+ years, are you seriously going to tell me that you can't train people to fly combat aircraft within a year's time from civilian pilots? They don't need to reach NATO standards for them to be an effective fighting force, heck they don't even need to reach Russian standards, just having the ability to fire off airborne NATO standoff munitions would be enough to affect Russian planning regarding air defence and forward artillery.
That's even more so for tanks. Russia has thousands of armoured vehicles involved in this conflict, do you think they're all some super genius tank driver? It's a skill that's a given, but like all skills can be trained in time. We're currently 6 months into this war, there's plenty of time for "good enough" training for NATO systems. Dying in a tank beats getting pounded by artillery any day.
Of course the US military is going to hype up the military they trained, do they want to be called incompetent? Fundamentally the Iraqi military post desert storm is defunct simply because there's systematic corruption and they always thought that uncle Sam would do all the heavy lifting. You can't call an Army that abandoned it's position against a few dozen guys on utes firing aks into the air as competent.
In the case of turkey they basically did the same thing Russia did at the start of this conflict, greatly underestimate their enemy causing unneeded losses.
On your last point, I do agree that infantry anti tank and artillery is a weak point for NATO militaries, that's because they're supplying a war for a way of fighting that they themselves do not train for, NATO millitaries are planned around having air power be the primary source of fire support.
Not necessarily that it would turn the tide of war now that Ukraine is pretty spent in terms of manpower, just what I think the next logical step for the West's actions if they survive this winter and can afford to escalate further, that would be supplying last generation aircraft and current generation tanks to a small number of trained crew.
That might be partially true for most soviet equipment, where they focused on ease of manfucturing, maintenance and operation at the expense of sophistication and capabilities.
That isn't the case for the majority of NATO equipment, specially those produced or upgraded after the 90's; it is the reason why maintenance of equipment in places like Saudi Arabia isn't done by the saudis themselves but by an army of contractors employed by the manufacturers and for by saudis.
That's the downside of extensive professionalization, you start to require High School or College level graduates to operate and maintain your stuff. Great during peace time or if your wars are limited to droning kids in Africa and the Middle East, not so great if most of your population is under siege, leaving the country in droves, or getting bombed.
Well, how about the local grid, like those in Russian occupied area like Kherson city, Melitopol, Mariupol ? AFAIK Crimea tho already connected to Russia but those three cities. i wonder.
Ukraine was included into EU Energy Commission so, well i guess more burden for the EU as their energy grid now have to make-up for the loss.