Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread

[JosephStalin]

Have been looking through posts.

Those calling for the utter subjugation of Russia and the Russian people are utter fucking idiots. The issue is with Putin's regime and their actions regarding the war. Strongly doubt the average Russian in the street was consulted before Putin declared war on Ukraine. And, as always, it is the Russian people paying the price for their regime's actions. By now would guess a number of Russian sons, fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins have come home in a box - and the families don't know why their loved ones died.

Those who call for punishing Russia and the Russian people handily forget the Russian nuclear arsenal. So that call for punishment is just verbal masturbation.

Do atrocities happen in war? Sadly, yes. Am sure both sides have committed what the other side considers atrocities. US forces have committed atrocities in war, as well. Would want atrocities by both sides to be investigated and the perpetrators punished.

Here's hoping this war ends soon, but more likely it will be a temporary peace of exhaustion.

 

[DumbDude42]

im not sure if tanks should be built at all anymore tbh
out in the open they're sitting ducks for long range atgm and aircraft attacks, while inside urban areas they're sitting ducks for panzerfausts and RPGs
i dont think the concept of a mobile bunker to break through enemy lines is practical anymore, seems like advances in anti tank weaponry have outpaced tank armor over time. you can keep making your rockets and bombs bigger and better pretty much forever, but you can't keep making your tank armor thicker and heavier forever cause eventually the thing becomes so heavy it can barely move anymore. germans ran into this issue 70 years ago already with their maus meme tank.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

Turbines can run off ethanol. The T80 tank they have uses one. You can actually run a turbine engine off of damn near anything.

My 73 Dodge Dart Slant Six, built at the height of the oil crisis in the 70s, used leaded gasoline, unleaded gasoline and ethanol. The OG owner included the OG owner's manual, which advised you to check the gaskets as the alcohol tended to dry them out. Regular engines can use ethanol too.

I turned the odometer once myself and the engine was in great condition when I sold it.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

im not sure if tanks should be built at all anymore tbh
out in the open they're sitting ducks for long range atgm and aircraft attacks, while inside urban areas they're sitting ducks for panzerfausts and RPGs
i dont think the concept of a mobile bunker to break through enemy lines is practical anymore, seems like advances in anti tank weaponry have outpaced tank armor over time. you can keep making your rockets and bombs bigger and better pretty much forever, but you can't keep making your tank armor thicker and heavier forever cause eventually the thing becomes so heavy it can barely move anymore. germans ran into this issue 70 years ago already with their maus meme tank.

That's why the new thing is active protection systems. Armor isn't the only defense for tanks anymore, the rpg won't kill it if you destroy it before it hits.

 

[AnotherOne]

One of my thoughts was, when you're in a warzone and people are killed. Wouldn't you move the bodies outside, or even to the streets. So they can be collected. As opposed to leaving them wherever they fell.

There are just endless explanations we can think of. We're in the fog of war and have no idea.

Maybe the Ruski's were lining up civilians along roads and shooting them. Yet that makes no sense. They would know the footage would be used by Ukrainians. Yet maybe they did and didn't care.

Maybe they were shooting civilians lining the streets watching them leave. Yet why would civilians be watching them leave while they are being executed?

Maybe they are people killed by Ukrainians for being Russian helpers or sympothisers. Yet that also makes no sense, because why would they pass off their own crimes as Russia? Yet maybe they would.

Nothing makes logical sense.

The Russian soldiers don't care. Yes the war crimes are probably exaggerated, but they are almost certainly happening on a large scale. Putting aside the questionable strategy and the likely corruption the Russian Army has one fundamental problem: the average Russian soldier is deliberately shit.

The American military is full of yokels, but at least they signed up to be there. Russian conscription is literally reserved for the dumb losers who can't get out of it. And everyone (dumb losers included) knows it, Imagine rounding up a bunch of Chicago dropouts and Navajo drunks and Appalachian junkies and trying to create a coherent unit out of them. The abuse you go through is worse than in most prison systems. Then they send you to fight a war they swear up and down you aren't going to fight. Unsurprisingly Russian conscripts are some of the most bitter and nihilistic people on the planet.

That's why Ukraine keeps capturing intact hardware. The Russian soldier sees it as a liability.
That's why you get reports of random gruesome atrocities that don't serve Russia any purpose. Some 19yo fuckwad doesn't want to die a virgin so he rapes a 10 year old.
That's why the Red Army got a reputation for raping anything that had a pulse and stealing anything that didn't. These guys are poor as dirt so they'll steal anything they can pawn.
That's also probably why Russian generals keep getting killed-they're going in person to try to tardwrangle these dipshits.

 

[Kane Lives]

im not sure if tanks should be built at all anymore tbh
out in the open they're sitting ducks for long range atgm and aircraft attacks, while inside urban areas they're sitting ducks for panzerfausts and RPGs
i dont think the concept of a mobile bunker to break through enemy lines is practical anymore, seems like advances in anti tank weaponry have outpaced tank armor over time. you can keep making your rockets and bombs bigger and better pretty much forever, but you can't keep making your tank armor thicker and heavier forever cause eventually the thing becomes so heavy it can barely move anymore. germans ran into this issue 70 years ago already with their maus meme tank.

despite all the shortcomings, I don't see tanks (or armoured vehicles really) going away anytime soon. The mere presence of tanks forces you to employ heavy weapons in order to deal with it, which is a benefit all on its own. It is far more likely, however, that tanks will be subordinate to the infantry once more, as pre-World War II doctrine dictated, acting as mobile heavy weapons to clear the way for the infantry screening ahead.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

My 73 Dodge Dart Slant Six, built at the height of the oil crisis in the 70s, used leaded gasoline, unleaded gasoline and ethanol. The OG owner included the OG owner's manual, which advised you to check the gaskets as the alcohol tended to dry them out. Regular engines can use ethanol too.

I turned the odometer once myself and the engine was in great condition when I sold it.

When I say almost anything, I mean it. You can run those fuckers off of peanut oil if you need too.

 

[DumbDude42]

That's why the new thing is active protection systems. Armor isn't the only defense for tanks anymore, the rpg won't kill it if you destroy it before it hits.

i know these things exist in, but i'm not convinced of how well they perform in practice. people in this thread earlier talked about how the soviets were making systems like that already in the 80s, yet here we are 40 years later and russian tanks are getting blown out by missiles left right and center. active protection idea to stop missiles has been around for a while, but in practice we're not seeing a lot of missiles being stopped, so there must be some big drawback about it that prevents people from deploying it in large numbers.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

i know these things exist in, but i'm not convinced of how well they perform in practice. people in this thread earlier talked about how the soviets were making systems like that already in the 80s, yet here we are 40 years later and russian tanks are getting blown out by missiles left right and center. active protection idea to stop missiles has been around for a while, but in practice we're not seeing a lot of missiles being stopped, so there must be some big drawback about it that prevents people from deploying it in large numbers.

They don't actually have many, we haven't seen any deployed yet. The Israelis on the other hand already have a system in service, and it has been successfully used in combat.

 

[draggs]

i know these things exist in, but i'm not convinced of how well they perform in practice. people in this thread earlier talked about how the soviets were making systems like that already in the 80s, yet here we are 40 years later and russian tanks are getting blown out by missiles left right and center. active protection idea to stop missiles has been around for a while, but in practice we're not seeing a lot of missiles being stopped, so there must be some big drawback about it that prevents people from deploying it in large numbers.

The big drawback is Russia is a poor second-rate power

Actual modern tanks like the ones in America and Japan and Western Europe and Israel and China wouldn't be invulnerable to modern anti-tank weapons but you'd see a lot fewer losses than Russia is

 

[Feline Supremacist]

When I say almost anything, I mean it. You can run those fuckers off of peanut oil if you need too.

I know people who do. My beekeeper and his kid modified a Dodge to run off used cooking oil. It was trial and error but they worked it out and drive it from upstate NY to North Carolina all the time.

 

[Psychotron]

I want a PVP war sim game where you can get warcats, but they just don't do anything but PVP buff whoever is feeding them, and you can shoot them, cause this is a video game not real life, but like as a statement on the player, how how a real cat would behave in a war. Where if you killed it's person, it may get mad, or it may be cool with it if you feed it, who knows, just like a whole gameplay system around this.

 

[DumbDude42]

The big drawback is Russia is a poor second-rate power

nah thats not enough of an explanation. they're rich enough to maintain like 4 separate naval fleets, a gigantic nuclear arsenal, and cutting edge tech like hypersonic cruise missiles. im confident that if the protection stuff was good, they'd have the money to use it.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

im not sure if tanks should be built at all anymore tbh
out in the open they're sitting ducks for long range atgm and aircraft attacks, while inside urban areas they're sitting ducks for panzerfausts and RPGs
i dont think the concept of a mobile bunker to break through enemy lines is practical anymore, seems like advances in anti tank weaponry have outpaced tank armor over time. you can keep making your rockets and bombs bigger and better pretty much forever, but you can't keep making your tank armor thicker and heavier forever cause eventually the thing becomes so heavy it can barely move anymore. germans ran into this issue 70 years ago already with their maus meme tank.

Don't fixate on the current device, focus on the purpose of the device. You do not have tanks for the sake of having tanks - the modern main battle tank is a highly mobile armored fighting platform, which happens to be an excellent option for defeating the enemies highly mobile armored fighting platforms. The fact that other tools are now available that can do so does not in itself mean that it is useless. Just for one, guns will always have a significant advantage over missiles in time to target - a missile is slower and easier to intercept/evade than a tungsten penetrator. The whole goal of a tank has been to take a heavy weapon system, and make it both more mobile and more survivable than other options.

This war hasn't made light infantry superior or tanks obsolete - all its done is confirm the effectiveness of light infantry in defensive war, which beforehand was speculative - we didn't have good examples of near peer enemies with modern infantry weapon systems engaged in this kind of war. Closest we had was insurgencies with western weapons fighting other sandniggers with old soviet vehicles, and we couldn't really tell if the problem was the crews, the vehicles, or if the weapons were effective. The biggest lesson to take from this is that the DARPA warnings about mega cities in future warfare are probably right and that new measures need to be found to deal with infantry in those environments.

On the drone side, its more nebulous, this is more comparable to the early introduction of tanks - they're proving really useful, but in no small part because nobody really has a great idea of how to counter them. Expect modernized lighter MANPAD and aircraft missile systems, optimized to engaging the generally slower, loiter on target drone systems that exist today. And then I'm sure drone designers will make better drones to make that more difficult. Always a back and forth in weapons technology, unless you're using an M2, then you just have god in your hands.

 

[Trust Me I Know]

I know people who do. My beekeeper and his kid modified a Dodge to run off used cooking oil. It was trial and error but they worked it out and drive it from upstate NY to North Carolina all the time.

You had a personal beekeeper? Sweet!

 

[Kane Lives]

On the drone side, its more nebulous, this is more comparable to the early introduction of tanks - they're proving really useful, but in no small part because nobody really has a great idea of how to counter them. Expect modernized lighter MANPAD and aircraft missile systems, optimized to engaging the generally slower, loiter on target drone systems that exist today. And then I'm sure drone designers will make better drones to make that more difficult. Always a back and forth in weapons technology, unless you're using an M2, then you just have god in your hands.

I'm confident we'll see jury-rigged solutions to drones being field-tested in this war. The slavs are masters at that sort of thing.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

I'm confident we'll see jury-rigged solutions to drones being field-tested in this war. The slavs are masters at that sort of thing.

Honestly I think stuff like the tunguska and shilkas would work well if they were modernized with radars optimized towards picking up drones, especially for loitering munitions.

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

“bad things for globohomo”

Some people here love globohomo. The only universally hated things here (as far as I know) are trannies and deathfats. Theres a lot of SJW feminist types here, for example, who are only here because trannies kicked them out of feminism for not wanting to suck girl dick, yet still cling to all their old ideals not realizing how it led to their own downfall.

im not sure if tanks should be built at all anymore tbh
out in the open they're sitting ducks for long range atgm and aircraft attacks, while inside urban areas they're sitting ducks for panzerfausts and RPGs
i dont think the concept of a mobile bunker to break through enemy lines is practical anymore, seems like advances in anti tank weaponry have outpaced tank armor over time. you can keep making your rockets and bombs bigger and better pretty much forever, but you can't keep making your tank armor thicker and heavier forever cause eventually the thing becomes so heavy it can barely move anymore. germans ran into this issue 70 years ago already with their maus meme tank.

Militaries need to start working on bipedal giant mechas.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

Militaries need to start working on bipedal giant mechas.

We also need civilian versions. Imagine the fun you could have on your morning commute in one.

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

Big disagree here. Wars between equals in the future will be won by whoever has the superior autonomous/semi-autonomous screen for their armies. This means spending will need to go up not down as these screening networks become wider, deeper and all around more comprehensive.

That is indeed a wild card and would overturn a lot of current military realities but I don't think the current roster of powers will make it there. The US and China may prototype some of this technology but I don't feel they will get to the point of production. Calling it a dark age would be extremely overblown language, but I get the sense that globally we're in for a downturn that will probably take a good 50-100 years to shake out. China and the West have their demographic time bombs, population and racial demographics respectively to sort out over the course of this century. Russia has been in decline since the USSR collapsed and even if they did have a few upticks here and there along the past 30 years their country is not doing well. Most of Africa's growth is tethered to the current banking and global order that seems to be very much on the ropes since covid hit the scene. South and Central America have always been a mix of gold and shit for the past century and nothing seems to be on course to change. I feel we're in for a situation akin to the General Crisis in the 17th century or the period immediately after the Black Death in Europe where everything in society gets restructured, often at the point of a sword. Some nations will do extremely well navigating the chaos and others eat shit. The covid response caused a lot of turmoil in the waters and this Ukraine war has only made said waters even more choppy.