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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2023 2:38 pm 
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Could be, though it's not as straight forward as the recent few Republican presidents. First of all, everyone already knows what kind of oligarchs might replace him. Also, for Putin to designate a realistic successor is basically to sign his own death warrant; uncertainty deters assassinations. And to designate some Quayle Pence type would just make him look stupid, which is hardly a help under the circumstance. So I suspect he keeps his cook around because he still thinks of him as a net asset to use for now.

Just as aside for armor spotters. Back in 1952 the Soviets designed a tracked battle taxi called the BTR-50, which was basically just a turret free version of a not very useful amphibious light tank. They're very roomy for an armored vehicle (though very lightly armed) and capable of crossing water barriers; and they were manufactured from 1954 to 1970, with the last going out of service in the late 70s. But in case you happened to miss them then, they're back; a trainload of them was spotted en route to Ukraine.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2023 5:27 pm 
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As much as I want Putin gone, the more desperate his situation becomes, the more likely he's going to nuke someone, no?

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:05 am 
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Dodger77 wrote:
As much as I want Putin gone, the more desperate his situation becomes, the more likely he's going to nuke someone, no?

It's a 50 minute long video, but this is a good lay-out as to why this will remain unlikely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4

Also, the war is 1 year old now, so what do you say in those circumstances?

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 7:36 am 
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Yeah, Putin's a megalomaniac but I don't think he's suicidal. He knows he's toast if he lobs a nuke. That said, there's always the possibility of unintentional escalation.

Unfortunately, elite dissatisfaction with the war in Russia seems to be divided between those who think that the war was a stupid idea in the first place (these people have been intimidated into silence), and ultra-nationalist armchair generals who think that the military is doing it wrong and they'd have totally conquered Ukraine by now if they were put in charge. If Putin stroked out and dropped dead tomorrow, that's not a guarantee the war would end.

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2023 6:38 pm 
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Rumor has it that the current Russian army in Ukraine is 97% of their total army, and about 300,000 men. Which is within shouting distance of how many were mobilized. So they basically lost their peacetime army so far.

Of course other rumors would tell us that they've raised a lot more then the official 300,000 mobiks; but that's not exactly making things better. T-62s and BTR-50s. Yeesh. Soon they're going to be asking the North Koreans for their T-34s back.

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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2023 7:33 pm 
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Where the heck did Russia even dig these 1950s armoured vehicles out from? Tell me it's not normal for militaries to keep old gear in storage for 70 years. Makes me wonder what cold war junk the US military still has kicking around.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2023 2:50 pm 
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This is me, not looking at the B-52s...

Seriously, very little aside from some airframes. Unlike the Russians who simply left most of that stuff out in the elements to rot, we spend money on storage; and we never had much use for the idea of a 'mobilization only' division. So by and large when we replace obsolescent equipment it does a tour in the national guard formations, then goes off to the recycling yard in the sky. Or we sell it to someone else; but either way we don't keep it sitting around.

Oh, yes. Mobilization Only divisions were a byproduct of WW II and what lessons the Russians took from it. The idea was that if you mobilize the folks who did their service 10-20 years ago in the event of a war, you can then give them back the equipment they used in the first place; and so form completely second rate, but incredibly cheap and quick to raise, divisions to throw into battle (on the basis that they're better than nothing). And it might have worked, more or less, for the Soviets if they were invaded by a peer level rival (China, say); but for the modern Russians at least 2/3 of those vehicles are nothing but scrap metal.

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:10 am 
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weremensh wrote:
The idea was that if you mobilize the folks who did their service 10-20 years ago in the event of a war, you can then give them back the equipment they used in the first place

Uh...anyone who did military service in the 1950s is older than Joe Biden. Anybody who was trained to use these things has got to be pushing 60.

Plus how is it that vehicles that have been left in the open for 70 years aren't just a pile of rust flakes? Surely they can't still run. Did they duct tape a bunch of tractor engines to the insides before sending them to the front? I wonder if they stole them out of museums.

Or was there some Soviet factory that still cranked out these dinosaurs well into the 1980s because nobody told them to stop?

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:01 pm 
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This was a Soviet idea. The plan didn't involve an intervening kleptocracy letting almost everything rust unguarded in a field for 40 years without being replaced by the next generation of equipment (though apparently it should have). They got a thousand tanks or so out of the pile, but not much more to come without completely rebuilding them.

Oh, and Ukraine got in some new glide bomb kits. They don't have many yet; but since they're quite cheap (perhaps $30,000 each) they'll probably be getting a lot of them fairly soon. As for what they can do: they'll let their fighter bombers drop 250, 500, or 1,000 kilo bombs on Russian positions up to 30 km behind Russian lines without ever exposing themselves to Russian AA assets. Since those bombs will have GPS and inertial guidance, a large majority will destroy their targets as well. Needless to say this will not make the life of Russian hard points or field fortifications all that pleasant.

And should the Ukrainians be willing to risk AA, then with some HARM missiles and a bit of being sneaky they can drop a spread of half a dozen half-ton bombs on targets quite some way into the Russian rear from a single plane. I'm sure they'd love that.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2023 3:14 am 
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Oh fun, Ron DeSantis is positioning himself as a Ukraine quitter because he imports all of his opinions from Tucker Carlson now in an effort to out-Trump Trump.

That's going to set...a bar... for the presidential primary. It seems that no matter how unpopular a position is among the general electorate, once some stupid idea lodges itself in the right-wingosphere as the Most Hardcore, every Republican somehow tries to pander to it.

We shoulda let them convince themselves drinking bleach was manly.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2023 3:57 pm 
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I guess the calculation is that he can always hope that election fraud and a miracle will let a Republican win the general election once nominated by openly pandering to the base; but nothing will help if he doesn't pander to the most (ahem) 'populist' whims of the base and hence doesn't get nominated. Which mostly demonstrates that the GOP doesn't have candidate quality problems so much as it has primary voter perversity and/or perversion problems.

The Russian winter offensive seems to be petering out; attacks per day are way down. There are still some uncommitted formations known to be floating around; but if they burn those up then they've got absolutely nothing left to deal with Ukrainian breakthroughs come their offensive(s) later on this spring.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:37 pm 
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Later this spring, as in mud season? Surely Ukraine's army is smart enough not to send all their shiny new tanks into the mud.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:35 am 
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It's already the mud season. I suspect that unless they're planning to get cute around Bakhmut, by the time their new tanks and IFVs are integrated the ground will be a lot drier.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:17 pm 
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Russia is fielding ever more armored vehicles from the Korean War now: BTR 50s and T-54s have been seen heading for the front. Or at least the reserve units, not that that's a great improvement. Someone even filmed a train of T-34s going somewhere; and it's not quite as obvious that it should be that this isn't a train headed for Ukraine. After all, we know that they have about a battalion of them that can drive; we see them in parades from time to time.

I hear the North Korean army has a lot of old tanks still on the books, and they're heading into a famine; if Russia steals enough Ukrainian grain this year, then I'm guessing a trade will be arranged.

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 3:35 am 
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I heard the theory that Russia's pulling T-54s out of storage because they're compatible with the 100mm shells that they're buying from Iran. They don't have a whole lot of artillery guns in that size so an old AF tank is the next best thing, with the advantage that it can drive away before the Ukrainians bomb it. They don't have enough trucks to serve as designated artillery getaway vehicles, so their regular cannons are sitting ducks.

Anyhoo, when's this spring offensive happening? Haven't heard anything yet. Both sides still appear to be pointlessly beating their heads against the wall in Bakhmut.

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