Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread - Episode III - Revenge of the Ruski (now unlocked with new skins and gameplay modes!!!)

[TheAntiCoomer]

For Russia it's a defensive war against hordes of western barbarians who are at their very gates. Again. And it will end just like the other ones, with western barbarians getting the shit kicked out them, so they take another 100 years to recover.

Who made you Amerisharts invade Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan? And only to shamefully lose and run away like cowards, too. America is truly the nigger of nations.

Bruh who the fuck marched armies into who? Ukraine was invaded by Russia, not the other way around. Once again this war will end like all wars in Russia end, with massive cope about how actually they won despite taking massive losses and relying on some old glory from centuries past.

America can go fuck itself for Afghanistan, Iraq was gay too. We never invaded Syria, just trained them, and all of those were still more justified than whatever gayops Putin wants to claim, from Azov to homos to biolabs.

American cope is mostly based on projection. See all the talk about Chinese demographics for another example of this.

China has our economy, but we have theirs too. They crash ours, they crash theirs and no one ever buys from them again.
If China grabs Russias economy, Russia has zero leverage against them. All Xi has to do is threaten a pullout from Russia and Russia gives whatever it wants to him, and they want a lot.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

are you saying russia is making the same mistakes the US did in Libya Syria and Iraq? using paramilitary companies to fight instead of Armies?

I'm just pointing out that Libya is now within Russia's purview as one of those "blowback" effects US glowniggers specialize in.

 

[Narcotics]

View attachment 4478980

https://twitter.com/thatdayin1992/status/1623653164565278722

Look, col Douglas is respetable to a point, but i'm really tired of these "x will collapse/run our of ammo/vehicles/men/etc" prediction statements, this applies to both ukraine and russia.
Hell, for all i know he might be right and i'll be left to eat shit, but just saying.

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if thousands of Pink Floyd fans suddenly decide that Roger Waters was never a big influence in the band itself.

https://news.yahoo.com/roger-waters-pink-floyd-stars-115150194.html

 

[Fait Accompli]

Relying on Chinese back to currency is epic on edge on the part of Russia. Nothing says strong economic powerhouse like being China’s bitch.

Well, thats their only option. Atleast they get som low-key smuggling of advanced components. They are slowly but surely turning towards being China's bitch, selling natural resources to a reduced price is bad but neccessary for Russia, good for China. Russia should've just eradicated corruption, develop an advanced sector and expand their natural resource sector. If they had done this without warring, Russia would've been in a much stronger place. Conquest wars against a European neighbour is an extremely bad option compared to all the other things they could have pursued.

The globe is slowly warming, there is alot of resources in the arctic that could be exploited. Russia could have focused their efforts on claiming these for example, leveraging their huge amounts of natural resources to gain soft power in the world. Instead, they threw all their cards and are now stuck in a grinding war. I get that Russian politics is an extremely corrupt and complicated issue, but a strong leader that focused on economics rather than cold war politics would've had much more success than Putin

 

[Useful_Mistake]

Ukrainian officials say that they almost never launch HIMARS rounds without detailed coordinates provided by U.S. military personnel situated elsewhere in Europe
Ukrainian officials say they require coordinates provided or confirmed by the United States and its allies for the vast majority of strikes using its advanced U.S.-provided rocket systems, a previously undisclosed practice that reveals a deeper and more operationally active role for the Pentagon in the war.
One senior Ukrainian official said Ukrainian forces almost never launch the advanced weapons without specific coordinates provided by U.S. military personnel from a base elsewhere in Europe. Ukrainian officials say this process should give Washington confidence about providing Kyiv with longer-range weapons.
A senior U.S. official — who like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue — acknowledged the key American role in the campaign and said that the targeting assistance served to ensure accuracy and conserve limited stores of ammunition for maximum effectiveness. The official said that Ukraine does not seek approval from the United States on what to strike and routinely targets Russian forces on their own with other weapons. The U.S. provides coordinates and precise targeting information solely in an advisory role, the official said.

Seems like US involvement to me.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian military official has estimated that Russia already has 1,800 tanks, 3,950 armoured vehicles, 810 Soviet-era multiple-rocket-launch systems and 400 fighter jets ready for 'a new wave of attacks' in the coming days.

The official, speaking to Foreign Policy, also estimated that Russia has 300 helicopters and 2,700 artillery systems prepared.

'We expect in the next 10 days a new, huge invasion,' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Big if true

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/invasion-of-ukraine-news-megathread.113457/post-14771088 for both

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

Seems like US involvement to me.

US is involved but good at playing a diplomatic game of “I’m not touching you”

 

[Feline Supremacist]

Big if true

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/invasion-of-ukraine-news-megathread.113457/post-14771088 for both

"Russia has lost a metric fuckton of aircraft, tanks and missile launchers! And soldiers!"

"Halp, we are winning! Send more money, tanks and planes!"

Yeah excuse me if I call bullshit on anything Keef says.

 

[ditto]

ETA: And wrt MH17, wasn't it known pretty much immediately that separatists shot it down using a Russian Buk that 'fell off the back of a truck'? Why is it in the news now?

Apparently Russia smuggled the Buk into Donbass, shot down MH17, then immediately returned it to Russia.

Seemed plausable to me at the time, but now I wouldn't be suprised if it was just a Ukrainian fuckup.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

China has our economy, but we have theirs too. They crash ours, they crash theirs and no one ever buys from them again.
If China grabs Russias economy, Russia has zero leverage against them. All Xi has to do is threaten a pullout from Russia and Russia gives whatever it wants to him, and they want a lot.

Its not 2005 anymore. China can stand without the US.

The globe is slowly warming, there is alot of resources in the arctic that could be exploited. Russia could have focused their efforts on claiming these for example, leveraging their huge amounts of natural resources to gain soft power in the world. Instead, they threw all their cards and are now stuck in a grinding war. I get that Russian politics is an extremely corrupt and complicated issue, but a strong leader that focused on economics rather than cold war politics would've had much more success than Putin

What resources in the arctic has Russia given up? Are you suggesting that they should have conquered greenland/canada?

 

[Fait Accompli]

What resources in the arctic has Russia given up? Are you suggesting that they should have conquered greenland/canada?

Not at all, what i meant was that Russia has threw their cards on the table. The war in Ukraine has drained their military, geopolitical and economical power. All their ambitions are now exposed and more clear to their opponents, they alse have less resources to spend on said ambitions

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Second the UK's armed forces are a global joke and giving even a few fast jets to the hohols means they'll be stripping their own defences. Johnson has come out and outright said they should do this, leave the country defenceless so they can earn ass pats from the Burgers. Amazing.

It'd have made more sense to send all their tanks. the UK is a fucking island, and I guess they forgot the lesson they learned in the Blitz that planes can fly over water.

Surface ships are forced to stay out of range of Chinese weapons, meaning they play more of a supporting role out in the pacific. Submarines are the only thing that can operate near Taiwan. Sub operations are made very difficult if the Chinese are able to set up minefields.

The new big thing for the PLAN in ASW is detailed oceanography data for Magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) and gradiometer anomaly detectors (GAD). The counter for the former is tedious or expensive to defend against (degaussing, or in the case of the Swedish have magnets shipwide to offset the magnetic field), the later is not counter able but requires extremely precise measurements of the background levels.

I will disagree with the CSIS wargame though. Few things to consider:
1)Any shooting war with China and the US the Koreas' become a shitshow because Golden fatty the third doesn't listen to anyone. I also don't think they're taking in consideration the strategic petroleum reserves of either country.
2) Mainland China is more constrained by resources The US has 4-12 months in the strategic petroleum reserve, China has 3 days-3 weeks. In addition, the majority of China's oil (like 89% back in 2010) comes through the straight of Malacca and is easily interdicted (This is changing with Russians new pipelines a bit). On the reverse side, the US has niggers, additional obligations, (NATO) and a declining industrial base (like the UK in the interwar era).
3) PLA ammo storage is around 200 miles inland (outside of most weapon ranges at the time). Part of the reason for the severe lockdown right after Russia-Ukraine kicked off was that China would need around 200,000 drivers to be able to move ammo effectively 24/7 and the Chinese though the RFAF was gonna rofl stomp Ukraine.

Now, unless something drastic happens (eg: 5th fleet and jarheads try to land at Sevastopol and gets vaporized via a nuke), PLA has exactly four possibilities of winning:
1) Neutralize the USAF and USN aircraft effectively in Taiwan and prevent resupply by interdicting all shipments from the east (Maybe)
2) Knock out the 7th and 3rd fleet (very unlikely)
3) Knock out enough of the USN to make it politically unacceptable to the US populace (Most likely)
4) Some sort of hail marry like Sealion (impossible without significant defections from ROC)
The PLA went for a mixture of 1 and 3. You can tell from the J-20 original design, it is designed to "push out" the USN CVGs by launching ASMs and then running away.
The backbone of the the PLAAF is J-10 (An indigenous design with some "reverse engineering" from Pakistan's F-16s) and J-11 (A "better" copy of the SU-27).
I highly suspect that any fight between the US and mainland China will be the first war where guided missiles are slung around en-masse. It'll be a question of who's got better IADS, semiconductor production (for missile guidance) and if the PLAF can consistently strike ships with the J-20. China either goes big or goes home with a lack of petroleum reserves, there's no "long lasting fight in which the USN eventually wins".

If the US sends fighter jets to Ukraine, China would be really fucking happy to see the Russians shoot them down. Kinda like how the US wants Ukraine to fight to the last holhol.

 

[The Foxtrot]

I highly suspect that any fight between the US and mainland China will be the first war where guided missiles are slung around en-masse. It'll be a question of who's got better IADS, semiconductor production (for missile guidance) and if the PLAF can consistently strike ships with the J-20. China either goes big or goes home with a lack of petroleum reserves, there's no "long lasting fight in which the USN eventually wins".

Basically a lower budget version of a Cold War Gone Hot in the North Atlantic. Both sides will win or lose based on whatever they brought to the table initially.

My money is on the USN (for now...) simply because the Chinese doctrine is a shittier version of Soviet naval doctrine in the 1980s (I.E., use smaller ships to harass and chip away at NATO merchant fleets and smaller task forces), but without those handy things called "Kiev-class Heavy Aircraft Cruisers" and "Kirov-class Nuclear Battlecruisers" to actually try and match our Carrier Task Forces. They are completely reliant on using cheap, one-shot, disposable "mosquito fleet" ships to attempt to overwhelm the defenses of a Carrier Task Force, forgetting that this is exactly what the USN has been preparing to face since the 1970s or so.

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Basically a lower budget version of a Cold War Gone Hot in the North Atlantic. Both sides will win or lose based on whatever they brought to the table initially.

My money is on the USN (for now...) simply because the Chinese doctrine is a shittier version of Soviet naval doctrine in the 1980s (I.E., use smaller ships to harass and chip away at NATO merchant fleets and smaller task forces), but without those handy things called "Kiev-class Heavy Aircraft Cruisers" and "Kirov-class Nuclear Battlecruisers" to actually try and match our Carrier Task Forces. They are completely reliant on using cheap, one-shot, disposable "mosquito fleet" ships to attempt to overwhelm the defenses of a Carrier Task Force, forgetting that this is exactly what the USN has been preparing to face since the 1970s or so.

The issue with this is that building capital (surface) ships makes no sense when there's a huge chain of islands called Japan, Taiwan and half of Korea that basically limit your blue water capability. The Russians could actually contest the Artic and Pacific. I'm waiting to see something to come out like a dedicated SSG(N) who's sole job is lob a fuck ton of AShM missiles at a CTF (Think 949A but with with a 128 rack of tomahawks), or a SSGN who's sole job is to stay in the deep Pacific and launch MIRV ASBMs.

 

[Fatniggo1488]

@Secret Asshole

Which came from the constant mistake of every empire that has ever invaded Afghanistan, including repeating the mistakes we made when we got involved in the 1980s: That it is a culture driven by tribal allegiances and you cannot force a minority, democratic government upon it.

Gotta say, it's entirely too rare that people online mention this when talking about Afghanistan. Almost everyone who had actually been to Afghanistan, and by that I mean people who didn't just do an entire deployment within one of the city like FOBs like KAF or Bagram knew that a centralized government would never actually work in Afghanistan. It was not even all that strange, especially on mounted patrols, to go from one village which seemed like it was in an entirely different country from another you'd visited on the same patrol. At the lowest levels, everyone knew that Afghanistan would need something more like a confederation to even have a chance at being functional. Top level leadership didn't want that though. Their grand dream was an Afghanistan that looked like the post civil war US. A powerful central government which was entirely top down. No one in Afghanistan wanted this even if they didn't have a high opinion of the Taliban. One of the biggest follies of American thinking in Afghanistan was that a non-indoctrinated peoples would be willing to give up their rights to self determination in favor of a system which at the best of times, appointed the major population centers as slave masters, and in the worst of times appointed the most influential members of society as slave masters. In the US you had a slow erosion of states' rights followed by an unsuccessful revolution over a shaky cause which allowed the US to progressively indoctrinate the population into such an oppressive system. In Afghanistan you had the opposite. A series of oppressive centralized governments followed by liberations when the various factions fought as a confederacy for their own rights to self determination.

Now, there's a reason why the common soldier was able to realize that a top down government would not work in Afghanistan while the decision making class thought that it was a must for Afghanistan. The average enlisted man, particularly in combat arms units, tends to be someone who got the short end of the stick of the glorious "American dream." They're able to objectively see the faults in American society, and can emphasize at at least a basic level with peoples whom are skeptical of such a society. Officers and the political class can not comprehend this. Minimum effort for them within American society has always produced far better results than maximum effort has for the common man. To them the "American dream" is a very real thing.

TLDR
In farmers' terms, US military leadership is autistic. They can't understand anything outside of other autists.


In military terms

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

 

[Romeo]

Rheinmetall announced that they are currently in talks with Ukraine to export their replacement of the Leopard 2 MBT, the Panther KF51 (following the WW2 German tradition lol).

Rheinmetall hatte den Panther im vergangenen Sommer auf einer Messe in Paris vorgestellt und ihn als stärksten Kampfpanzer weltweit angepriesen. Die Ukraine wäre der erste Kunde für das Fahrzeug. Rheinmetall hatte den Panther im vergangenen Sommer auf einer Messe in Paris vorgestellt und ihn als stärksten Kampfpanzer weltweit angepriesen. Die Ukraine wäre der erste Kunde für das Fahrzeug. Noch gibt es vom Panther lediglich ein Vorführmodell. Dennoch stellt Papperger eine Lieferung „in 15 bis 18 Monaten“ in Aussicht. Die Panzer könnten in Deutschland oder in Ungarn gebaut werden. Für einen Export ist die Zustimmung der Bundesregierung nötig, da der Panther in Deutschland entwickelt wurde. Papperger argumentiert für eine Einwilligung: Die Europäer könnten keine weiteren Kampfpanzer aus ihrem Bestand mehr entbehren, „weil wir blank sind“.

Rheinmetall presented the Panther at a show in Paris last summer and presented it as the most powerful battle tank in the world. Ukraine would be the vehicle's first customer. Rheinmetall presented the Panther at a show in Paris last summer and presented it as the most powerful battle tank in the world. Ukraine would be the vehicle's first customer. There is still only a demonstration model of the Panther. Nevertheless, Papperger (CEO of Rheinmetall) promises delivery "in 15 to 18 months". Tanks could be built in Germany or Hungary. Federal government approval is required for export, as the Panther was developed in Germany. Papperger pleads for approval: The Europeans could no longer do without battle tanks from their stock "because we are empty".

Hopefully Ukraine still exists by the time Rheinmetall finalizes the Panther.

 

[The Foxtrot]

The issue with this is that building capital (surface) ships makes no sense when there's a huge chain of islands called Japan, Taiwan and half of Korea that basically limit your blue water capability. The Russians could actually contest the Artic and Pacific. I'm waiting to see something to come out like a dedicated SSG(N) who's sole job is lob a fuck ton of AShM missiles at a CTF (Think 949A but with with a 128 rack of tomahawks), or a SSGN who's sole job is to stay in the deep Pacific and launch MIRV ASBMs.

Oh I didn't mean to imply the Soviets couldn't contest the Arctic and Pacific, especially back in those days. I'm saying that the Chinese don't actually have the firepower to really contest the USN. The Soviets did. So their doctrine worked for them, the Chinese trying to copy it won't work out.

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Oh I didn't mean to imply the Soviets couldn't contest the Arctic and Pacific, especially back in those days. I'm saying that the Chinese don't actually have the firepower to really contest the USN. The Soviets did. So their doctrine worked for them, the Chinese trying to copy it won't work out.

They can't openly contest the USN (not on open water) but the USN also has additional obligations so they aren't facing the entirety of it, kinda like a reverse Russia-Ukraine situation.
It would be interesting to see if the PLAAF can utilize the advantage of having land based airbases to push the CTF to near maximum range on it's F-35s after (assumedly) yeeting any jets+AAA in Taiwan via ASBS or AShMs, I think if they can do that then the USN is going to have serious trouble since a CTF has been the backbone of the USN since WWII.

Regardless, lots of missile lobbing is my guess, much more than Russia-Ukraine. Like we're talking the entire CSG-5 + Squadron 15 launching all their VLS tubes in a single engagement, every engagement tier.

 

[Derka Derka]

The political dynamic, in a nutshell

 

[870EVO]

Conquest wars against a European neighbour is an extremely bad option compared to all the other things they could have pursued.

Do I have to keep posting this? The US always wanted this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/01/john-mccain-russia-vladimir-putin-ukraine-georgia