Enidigm
4335
China will never invade Taiwan directly. Their whole strategy is to encircle and blockade the island until Taiwan capitulates.
SeaGreen
4336
See this Grauniad thing, how immediately would this affect Russia? I’m not an economist.
Fucking Will Hurd on CNN right now imploring Biden to establish a no fly zone in Ukraine. Fuck me. I wonder which irrelevant person they’ll dig up next?
Oh, I agree, I just thing sending in actual combat troops is a specific sort of line that means something. But yes, toadies ‘r’ us is Minsk’s byline.
I’m not so sure, though you could be correct. I don’t think surround and blockade is a viable strategy unless the entire rest of Asia and the USA decide to let them, though. Blockade is an act of war, though of course exerting pressure on trading partners to break off relations with Taipei or something to that effect could happen. But Taiwan supplies a lot of things people need, and there are a fair number of Asian nations who are not exactly thrilled with the PRC’s expansion either.
Is this a personal interest or do you have something in your background that made it necessary to know about “regular bombs aren’t good enough for runways”?
Bombs and runways are a known quantity, to anyone who has read a lot of military history especially history of air forces and air operations. Concrete runways require fairly specialized munitions if you are going to actually make them unusable for any length of time. Otherwise you just patch the holes and keep on truckin’.
Belarus is for all intents and purposes, Russia. It was a dictatorship before, it’s even more now after they got in hot water with the West. It’s gotten to the “how high” stage, at least apparently.
You guys are weird, why don’t you have regular interests, like DOTA champions, baseball stats or knowing the entire comics history of Wolverine? /s
schurem
4343
Not work related, but I reckon I’ve done enough study on the subject to qualify to having an opinion on it.
@wombat, when used specialised munitions such as the BeTab series or a durandal, it just takes a little longer to patch the holes because they’re deeper ;-) Now if you do something truly nefarious, such as spreading timed explosives and mines along with cratering munitions like the Germans did with MW-1 and the Brits with JP-233…
Well, we can debate the pros and cons of the Witcher books, TV show, and game versions of the lore if you want! Or discuss the differences between the MkVI GTI and MkVII GTI too!
Dejin
4345
Former Commanding General US Army Europe on Belarus:
Dejin
4346
That’s what I was thinking related to this whole thing. Xi seems to have eliminated anyone that doesn’t agree with him, which increases the chances of insular thinking and “yes” men. Which is likely how Putin got himself into this mess.
Plus higher chance of messianic thinking, after being in power so long with so many people fawning over you.
Grifman
4347
Actually, it does translate well - though it may take longer. After all, this is still the US plan for war with a near peer power. But for whatever reason, it appears the Russians are unable or unwilling to do so. I suspect it is because they were on a quick timeline. A Western style assault would have consisted of several days to take out air defenses, then several more days to cripple enemy command and control. Then as units advanced, CAS would take out strong points and any units attempting to reinforce. But the Russians I believe thought the UA would crumble, and they wanted a quick win, so why waste time on an extensive (and expensive) air campaign?
I still don’t understand the Russians though. There’s still no reason why they aren’t dominating the skies and just hammering the UA from the air. Is their AF unable to operate more planes due to lack of maintenance? Is it a lack of munitions (I do know that they do not have a large inventory of smart bombs). It’s just all very puzzling, like many things about Russian planning and operations during this war.
I think at this stage, if they could, they would, no?
I think we are seeing is an air offence that is no where near as potent as guestimated, probablty as a result of the factors you mentioned an more - poor maintenance, poor command and control, cronyism and grifting, etc.
Thanks for that Hertling tweet. Excellent comments from him, and I love how he - very simply - shot down the whole idea of a no-fly zone.
Yes, that’s a better way to put it. What I mean to say is that it is much harder to do than it looked against countries like Iraq and Libya.
orald
4353
As someone that dumped Twitter I do trust folks here to do their best to screen out obvious disinformation/misdirection and I appreciate the curated tweets. As was said up thread while mistakes get made I do trust that folks here operate from good intentions.
I am curious if/how Russia fighting in a country where freedom of speech is better tolerated and has a more robust internet than does Syria or Georgia will be impacted? Will Russian tactics be just as brutal if the eyes of the world are watching and they can’t control the information war?
I would like to think that the answer is yes for the sake of the civilians caught in the crossfire but the harder part of me does not think it will alter their tactics.
Enidigm
4354
It’s more a matter of looking at Chinese military build ups. They have the largest surface fleet, if shorter ranges, and they have anti-carrier missiles to shoo away US intervention. There might be strikes against anti-missile positions but China doesn’t want to bomb Taiwans invaluable tech industry to rubble. Basically the opposite.
