19779

That video tracks exactly the experience of joining a random Arma III server.

19780

Vitae imitatur ars.

19781

A week in the lives of the newly mobilized - rusty weapons, little food, poor leadership:

19782

Vanya was either drunk or just can’t drive.

19783

I would posit that Vanya had a dozen people yelling at him at the same time, and was freaking the fuck out.

19784

I don’t know Cooper either, but, from the context, I think he was saying that the West isn’t fighting to win the war in Ukraine, but instead is looking to profit from the war in Ukraine (presumably by selling weapons). Which is a whole different level of stupid, since Ukraine isn’t paying for anything, it’s all being donated.

A more valid (and perhaps less obfuscatory) way of making the same point would be to say that the West isn’t supplying Ukraine, for free, with weapons that would guarantee a decisive victory for Ukraine, even though it could begin transferring tactical nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and every armed drone in the Western stockpile. And yes, while the West could do this, the West isn’t attempting to court Armageddon, and hence has been more measured in the transfer of arms to Ukraine. Clearly Ukraine could use more weapons, but the West has also done a hell of a lot more for Ukraine than it was legally obligated to do, and it continues to ramp up the aid to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

19785

maybe he meant profit from the situation by bleeding Russia? caveat: I have not read the article.

19786
19787

Right. It’s one thing to say that the West isn’t giving Ukraine all the weapons in its arsenal, but the reason for that isn’t mercenary pursuit of profit.

19788

That’s supreme irony of this war - it was supposed to protect Russia from NATO. Instead, NATO has added two very strong militaries (Finland and Sweden), Germany is manning to rearm (along with other NATO members), some of the best units of the Russian army have been ground down to nothing, and the Russian military has been exposed as a Potemkin military. If anything Russia is in a much worse strategic position than when the war began. Putin has actually decreased Russia’s security.

19789

Doesn’t one of the other BTR’s get hit about 56 seconds into the clip? There’s a loud bang, and when the camera pans over, it looks like a lot of smoke coming from what looks like a vehicle on the other side of the road. The panic level on some soldiers seems to go way up. Paradoxically, there are still some soldiers on the ground who seem to be dawdling non-chalantly.

19790

Well… someone paid for the weapons in the first place, and in general someone is paying to replace the ones that are sent to Ukraine. Ukraine is not making any money off this war, but I’ll bet that Raytheon, General Dynamics and their ilk are going to have a banner year.

19791

QT3 Military Experts, help me out here. 100 tanks and a couple hundred BTRs for 12,000 troops seems super-low to me. That’s 100 tanks x 3 crew men and 300 BTRs x 3 crew + 7 dismounts = 3300 soldiers accounted for. Am I just not accounting for the correct tooth-to-tail ratio and the vast majority of those 12,000 troops are there supporting the actual troops fighting?

19792

Maybe it was a mixed force and only part of the forces stationed there were armor or mechanized infantry?

19793

I gave up after his second reference to Keystone Cops. If you’re doing a puff opinion piece, fine, but I don’t go for military analysis to someone interested in calling people names instead of giving hard analysis.

19794

No idea what the right number is, but everything that isn’t a vehicle is a “troop” so that number likely includes all the teams necessary to keep those vehicles running, keep the supply lines flowing, feed the soldiers, etc. There may have only been a couple thousand front-line soldiers in that number. I would assume a single MBT requires more like 12 dedicated troops to maintain and fight.

19795

I agree with this take, but Cooper’s point is nonsensical because Raytheon, GD, etc. are not the ones making the decisions about what does (or doesn’t) get supplied to the Ukrainians. I’m sure they’re lobbying like crazy, but it’s bonkers to say the West is being mercenary in what it supplies to Ukraine in this context. In fact, if anything, the big military suppliers probably want more supplied to pad their quarterly reports, rather than equipment being doled out piecemeal.

19796

The force was a mixed motorized infantry force, and I imagine it had a battalion or so of tanks attached along with maybe a battalion or two of wheeled APCs. I suspect it was mostly truck-mobile. It was designed supposedly to be able to move rapidly as an adjunct to an attack with heavier forces I guess, or to defend as a tripwire. It was hardly an assault force.

19797

I don’t think the troops in Kaliningrad are for mobile operations - they’re basically just there to defend the Oblast (and realistically probably only the military installations within said Oblast). There are also various missile forces which might come into that total number.

19798

I asked a buddy who was a USMC M88 mechanic (tank recovery vehicle for the Abrams) what the force looked like soup to nuts. For just tanks, recovery, and ops (excluding things like fuel, food, etc. that are spread out among too many other groups to estimate) he said 5500 for 400 tanks. I’d say you could be reasonably confident to bump that up to 8000 or so when you add in everything else to keep those 5500 running and those tanks and support vehicles running, so call it more like 20 per tank.