Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

So are these journalists just bored, or do they think this'll change anything? The entire thing about snipers is they pick off a few targets then GTFO, or they die messily to artillery. They're a nightmare on the individual level, but a mild annoyance at the higher level of strategy.

And I don't even know what a "Top Machine-Gunner" is, a successful machine gunner just puts heads down for a while so the maneuver elements can do something about the enemy - Any kills are lucky at best, and if your MG is holding fire to try and guarantee a kill, they're not doing their job.

If you're gonna write a fluff piece about some soldiers, at least try and understand the effect and impact of what they're actually doing. Propping a military up with heroes and protagonists is a recipe for demoralization when it turns out bullets don't respect the LARP.
They are not journalists. They are running protection for a narrative.

There is very little honest or sober coverage in western media.

Some of it is outright fraud.

"Multiple deaths as a market is attacked in Ukraine." If you don't read the article, sounds like the Russians bombed a civilian market, right? Except the event happened in DNR not Ukraine and it was the Ukrainians that fired.

"Child casualties after a pizza shop attack in Eastern Ukraine." Again with the evil Russians? Except when you look at it, it was a meeting between a bunch of NATO guys at probably the only joint in town whose food they can stomach, the kids that died happened to be outside at the wrong time.

It goes on an on.

"Ukrainian Democracy." Until you point out to them, we still held election during both world wars.
 
The entire thing about snipers is they pick off a few targets then GTFO
It's kind of hard to imagine either of these two GTFO'ing without a tracked mobility scooter, or at least a 4wd minivan.

We're about to see a new chapter in modern warfare, where Russian drones pepper no-man's-land with booby-trapped rotisserie chickens and poisoned donuts.
 
Here's a vid of the Norwegians doing it with F-35s in Finland. At the end of the video they say F-16s can land on roads.
Not that hard to do.
Yes it is.

Its been done.
But, every inch of these roads would have been walked before the exorcise and picked clean of any FOD. Every pothole and defect fixed.
Ya you can land on roads. You just can't land on the roads you will find today in Ukraine...or even the USA, and expect to take off again with out a FOD caused failure.
 
The thing I find sadly funny is if the U.S. announced it will give Ukraine 100 F-35s and 100 F-22s the media will go crazy about how Ukraine is so going to win the war even if they got 200 trained pilots for that.
Ukraine is like 1,316kms wide and Poland is like 590kms wide.
The combat range of the F-22 is 600 nm or 1111kms without drop tanks at 850kms.
The combat range of F-35As is 950kms.
I guess if you put them all in Lviv you can still have the F-35s perform air to air and air to ground roles that can target Donetsk and have F-22s engage only aerial targets all the way up to Donetsk before flying all the way back to Lviv to refuel and restock on missiles.

Now if you give the Su-57 2nd stage engines which is what the next batch will receive by the end of this year(they will replace the 1st stage ones with 2nd stages while giving those 1st stages to Su-35s)

https://naukatehnika.com/izdelie-30...estvennoe-foto.html?ysclid=lueq95ui9p22873394 The Fuel consumption of the 2nd stage engine is to that of the AL 31F which is basically that of the Su-27.

https://masterok.livejournal.com/267227.html?ysclid=lufzfuj9ed528138241
This distribution of tasks was based on a significant difference in flight range and maximum weight of the combat load: Su-27 - flight range 4000 km without refueling, payload weight 8000 kg; The MiG-29 has a flight range of 1,500 km, a payload weight of 4,000 kg, which meant that the Su-27 aircraft has a combat range of 1,600 km, that is, it can conduct air battles near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, performing the functions of an "air raider" I think the combat range could be somewhere between 1650km-1800km(su-57 weights 1,700kg more but it has 900kg of extra fuel) they can bump up the range with fuel tanks but I dont think that is needed.

They can basically fly from the far western border of Poland all the way to Donetsk and fly all the way back they can extend their range farther with fuel tanks and the aircraft stays with mach 2+ super cruise performance without using afterburners. The Su-57s can fly all the way to Lviv but their range is great enough to fly deep into Russia and have cover in one of the densest air defense networks there is. MRBMs and cruise missiles would need to be launched from Lviv to pass through that dense air defense network and you would need a shit load of missiles of those kinds in order to achieve that.

Problem is I don't think Ukraine has that much of a dense air defense network that can protect the F-35s and F-22s using the runways in Lviv. I wish I was in Lloyd Austins position saying I will give Ukraine 100 F-22s and 100 F-35s just to see how hyped western media and their fans will be, just to go hahaha psyche later.
 
Ukraine had the second-best anti-aircraft system, the S-300, but they have been depleted. I think they still retain one S-200, but that system is not easily portable (though still extremely capable against conventional aircraft). Patriots are dogshit. They can shoot down ersatz missiles from Gaza, not modern aircraft. Fielding F-16's is a stupid, stupid idea. Based in Ukraine, they will just be blown up. Fielding them from Poland will give Russia the excuse to wreck a bunch of Polish infrastructure and I'm sure the Poles are not that stupid. This is why there is this delay, everyone's hoping Biden will either drop dead or lose the election and something will change.

Even the Biden people will not risk giving them modern jets. They spent 30 years developing them, only for the Russians to snap a couple up. No. They won't do it, just like they didn't give tanks to Al-Nusra.
 
Ukraine had the second-best anti-aircraft system, the S-300, but they have been depleted. I think they still retain one S-200, but that system is not easily portable (though still extremely capable against conventional aircraft). Patriots are dogshit. They can shoot down ersatz missiles from Gaza, not modern aircraft. Fielding F-16's is a stupid, stupid idea. Based in Ukraine, they will just be blown up. Fielding them from Poland will give Russia the excuse to wreck a bunch of Polish infrastructure and I'm sure the Poles are not that stupid. This is why there is this delay, everyone's hoping Biden will either drop dead or lose the election and something will change.

Even the Biden people will not risk giving them modern jets. They spent 30 years developing them, only for the Russians to snap a couple up. No. They won't do it, just like they didn't give tanks to Al-Nusra.
Just as i was reading this it was revealed another S-300 battery was taken out, Radar, crew launchers everything.
And yes everything to do with these F-16s appears to be a shitshow. base them in Lvov and they will eat cruise missiles and balletic missiles in hours. put them behind a wall of SAM sites as will be required and you are using your most valuable systems far from the front where they are needed.

And all this rubbish about taking off from roads is amusing. are you going to tow them out to a highway and launch them? are they going to make a landing on eastern European roads and suck in who knows what into their intakes? and then what? F-16s are not Frogfoots or MIG-21s they need carful maintenance, well trained support crews and most importantly the right facilities to function. now the F-16 is a very nice airplane with very capable weapons. but will it survive in the SAM red zone of Donbass? i do not think so.
 

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Ukrainian Democracy." Until you point out to them, we still held election during both world wars.
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Speaking of which there should have been Ukrainian presidential elections 2 days ago . I think this is last nail in the coffin of narrative that this war is struggle of democracy against Russian autocracy..
But even if there were elections and you were fighting age man would you show up and vote?

:thinking:
 
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Speaking of which there should have been Ukrainian presidential elections 2 days ago . I think this is last nail in the coffin of narrative that this war is struggle of democracy against Russian autocracy..
But even if there were elections and you were fighting age man would you show up and vote?

:thinking:
I have to get this funny idea of my head while reading this.
Zelensky will be using the election as bait to lure out the potential dissidents that have yet to raise their objection to his rule. Anyone who voted against Zelensky will be vanned to the nearest conscription office and send to the front.
 
That is a fully retarde
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Y'all are greatly over estimating the amount of care these aircraft need, and its not like the aircraft can't be flown back to Poland if they need serious work.
That is a fully retarded take. It is fully known exactly how much work these planes need in order to keep flying.

It is well documented that an F-16 needs approximately 18 hours of maintenance after each hour it has spent in the air.
50 years of data about this airframe in airforces around the world can show this.

Those ~18 hours of maintenance per flight hour is also based on the assumption that the maintenance is performed by fully trained and competent people. Not basically somali-tier gypsies that can not even fi a broken bicycle.

EDIT: This is not fucking 1945 where you land your spitfire for an hour to re-fuel, re-load the machine-gun and duct-tape over some bullet holes in the fuselage and then you are back in action.
 
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Those ~18 hours of maintenance per flight hour is also based on the assumption that the maintenance is performed by fully trained and competent people. Not basically somali-tier gypsies that can not even fix a broken bicycle.
If nothing is broken, you can turn an aircraft in a couple hours. However, that is exceedingly rare with the age of the F16 and just adds stresses to the airframe, and after a certain amount of time the jet has to go in for more comprehensive maintenance.

Taking off and landing from a highway can be done, but now you have a jet sitting on a highway. Not to mention the stresses of take off and landing are not what a highway is designed for.
After landing, you'd have to cut the engines, and tow the jet to a cleared area that you have covered with cam netting for maintenance. Trying to hide it so they don't get bombed right away. I don't think it's an impossibility to stage from a highway, but it would be so complex and with so many points of failure. I can't see it really working, and all but the dumbest of commanders wouldn't even bother to try it.
 
That is a fully retarde

That is a fully retarded take. It is fully known exactly how much work these planes need in order to keep flying.

It is well documented that an F-16 needs approximately 18 hours of maintenance after each hour it has spent in the air.
50 years of data about this airframe in airforces around the world can show this.

Those ~18 hours of maintenance per flight hour is also based on the assumption that the maintenance is performed by fully trained and competent people. Not basically somali-tier gypsies that can not even fi a broken bicycle.

EDIT: This is not fucking 1945 where you land your spitfire for an hour to re-fuel, re-load the machine-gun and duct-tape over some bullet holes in the fuselage and then you are back in action.
My first thought was he's confusing reality with Spectrum Holobyte's F16 combat simulator from the early 1990's where if you were somehow able to miraculously land then you were automatically refueled/rearmed and ready for immediate takeoff again. That game was hard as hell.

Falcon_3.0.jpg


That game rocked. It still lives on today 30 years later with community-made graphics mods, etc. I think DCS finally dethroned it.

I can just see it now, the headlines going "Zelensky's clever scheme for launching F16 fighters will be the key to defeating Putler!"
That's been the mantra since the war started along with Challenger tanks, Leopard tanks, Abrams tanks, Storm Shadow missiles, Taurus missiles, Switchblade drones and on and on.
 

Ukraine considering following suit if US bans TikTok​

Ukraine would consider banning TikTok if the U.S. does it first, lawmaker Yaroslav Yurchyshyn said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine released on April 1.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 requiring Chinese TikTok's parent company ByteDance to sell its stakes in the company within six months or lose access to U.S. markets. The bill has yet to be passed in the Senate, and the app is still freely available in the U.S.

When asked if Ukraine would also ban TikTok, Yurchyshyn said that a decision by the U.S. could provide a basis for Ukraine to follow suit.

Yurchyshyn acknowledged that actually banning the app would be difficult and said that we "are still monitoring the process."

Lawmakers in the U.S. opposed to TikTok have often pointed to its Chinese connections, even though TikTok has said it would not approve of Chinese government requests to access the data of users in the U.S.

TikTok has also been widely used to spread disinformation, including about the war in Ukraine.

Bloomberg reported in February 2023 that TikTok had uncovered a massive network of pro-Russian disinformation spread on the app.

TikTok reportedly had more than 13 million users in Ukraine as of the beginning of 2023, the site Data Reportal wrote, citing data from ByteDance.
“On the one hand, we have this basis for sanctions - if such sanctions are introduced in a partner country, we impose them. It's a difficult situation, but this could become another trump card in negotiations not only with TikTok, but also with Telegram, if the United States takes such a drastic step"
Ukraine apparently looking towards Tiktok ban as precedent to target Telegram.
 
I feel like shorting a nations currency is a rather evil move.
If you're not familiar with it, you may find Black Wednesday an interesting historical note. Apologies if already aware. The short version (sorry!) is that George Soros went to war against the British economy, shorting the £ massively and then using his position and influence to encourage others to pile on and then when that still wasn't enough, started selling some of his stock to collapse the price of the £ and start the run. He cost the British taxpayer billions. It also helped usher in the demon that is Tony Blair.
 
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