World War III

[Stefan Mikes]

Look at 3:38...

E-bikes!

 

[Mr. Coffee]

A very interesting map from

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1524743911817850881

:

This map shows a "heat map" where Russian SIM cards are being used in the Ukrainian cell network. Which is probably a pretty good estimate of where Russian forces are concentrated.

It doesn't bode well for an army when the opposition has this quality of information on where that army is. And it shows poor discipline of the soldiers that they seem to all have their cell phones on.

 

[Mulezen]

The lack of non-coms showing…also why so many Generals and Colonels have been killed. They have to get close to the action to command…and they have unrealistic orders from ‘the top’

 

[Handlebars]

The lack of non-coms showing…also why so many Generals and Colonels have been killed. They have to get close to the action to command…and they have unrealistic orders from ‘the top’

That statement relates to your lack of basic knowledge; Russian generals lead from the front along with their troops.

 

[mclewis1]

Putin's Spring 2022 To Do list

1) Reduce the size of Russia's military
2) Reduce the size of Russia's economy
3) Reduce the number of customers for Russian oil and gas
4) Reduce the number of Russian educated workers, especially those in hi-tech
5) Reduce the number of pesky yachts all his friends have
6) Reduce the amount of western investment capitol available to Russia (no investments)
7) Increase the number of NATO members
8) Increase the readiness and money existing NATO members are spending
9) Increase the economic and cultural isolation of Russia
10) Increase the solidarity within the EU and other western countries

Da Vlad, good job!

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Actually I disagree with #6, because they have basically outlawed capital outflows. So if you invested money in Russia the Russians just stole it all.

There was this interesting Medium post that came out a while ago:

Why Ukraine Will Likely Fall Despite Russian Capabilities

The current state of the invasion gamed out.

martinknapp.medium.com

His thesis is that Ukraine will inevitably lose this war.

I disagree with his thesis, profoundly, and think it is based on many flawed assumptions.

Yes, Russia still has a larger military than Ukraine. But a lot of those people are in the Navy, Air Forces, and Strategic Forces and aren't exactly useful or relevant to this kind of war. When you look at the ground forces the numbers are much, much closer. And yes, the Russians have a large reserve, on paper. But a lot of those reserves again go to the Navy and Air Force, and the for the remainder it will take quite a bit of time to equip them, retrain them, and get them into the fight. Russia has nothing like the quick reserve call-up systems that Ukraine has developed and a lot of other European countries have.

So realistically it will take many months (probably at least 4 months) to get those reserves into the war. And as of today they still haven't called up all of their reserves. And those reserves likely won't be present in overwhelming numbers anyway. As of today the Russians are outnumbered in Ukraine, and as more Ukrainian reservists are trained up and equipped those numbers will get a lot worse, and likely by the time Russian reserves get into the fight they will likely still be outnumbered.

His other assumption is that if things go really bad Russia will use nuclear weapons. I for one am extremely doubtful that this would happen. Like I've posted before, the people in power can't know if those weapons would even work. When you dig deeper on that topic the story gets much worse than you could possibly imagine (or hope). Just to give you an example: the plutonium pits used in the cores of all Russian nuclear weapons have a lifespan of 10-15 years (largely because of corrosion of the plutonium). Russia has had no operating facility to manufacture or recycle plutonium pits since 2003. Just do the math. This is a known problem and leaked documents from their military and FSB acknowledge that problem. So Russia is basically like a girl trying to "keep up appearances". If they were to attempt to use nuclear weapons on a small scale it likely would just expose how undefended they are, whereas if they do not use them until the balloon goes up nobody will really know.

 

[mclewis1]

Actually I disagree with #6, because they have basically outlawed capital outflows. So if you invested money in Russia the Russians just stole it all.

True, I was trying to keep it simple with the idea of all the western companies pulling out and no one investing in Russia. I changed the line item to better reflect this.

 

[Mulezen]

If you were the average American and all the Mickey Dee’s shuttered…there would be an insurrection

 

[mclewis1]

His other assumption is that if things go really bad Russia will use nuclear weapons. I for one am extremely doubtful that this would happen. Like I've posted before, the people in power can't know if those weapons would even work. When you dig deeper on that topic the story gets much worse than you could possibly imagine (or hope). Just to give you an example: the plutonium pits used in the cores of all Russian nuclear weapons have a lifespan of 10-15 years (largely because of corrosion of the plutonium). Russia has had no operating facility to manufacture or recycle plutonium pits since 2003. Just do the math. This is a known problem and leaked documents from their military and FSB acknowledge that problem.

I keep hearing this idea, and I just don't buy it. Well at least in that it doesn't remove the threat. First define "lifespan". It doesn't mean "doesn't work", it seems to define "may not work as originally designed". An interictally designed multi stage thermonuclear weapon doesn't need to work perfectly to still be really really dangerous. So what if the yield drops from 10MT to hundreds of KTs? It's still going to ruin your day. Plus it appears (but I can't find documents confirming this) that the Russians continue to build new warheads along with the new decoys and launch vehicles (and I guess this might also just be rebuilding parts of older warheads).

So I don't really care if the Russians can't properly or completely recycle older warheads, I think they can still do a lot of nasty things with what's currently operational ... and I sure don't want anyone to test that assumption.

 

[mclewis1]

If you were the average American and all the Mickey Dee’s shuttered…there would be an insurrection

I was thinking the same thing ... plus the idea that if the Clown doesn't believe in you anymore, you're done.

 

[Handlebars]

The steel factory fighters have surrendered. It is reported that the injured were transported to hospital under guard and the rest were stripped and photographed for nazi markings and shaved to ID them for war crimes. The nazis will not be traded in any prisoner exchange and mercenaries will be held as criminals, and NATO officers are to be transported to Moscow for interrogation etc.

 

[kmccune]

I think, for wheat, we are off to a good start here in Warshington. We are having rains about once a week here in the dry part, and the winter wheat is planted in the fall and likes rain this time of the year. We also had a pretty good snow cover, which is also favorable. From what I hear, the problem may be fertilizer availability and price.

The bad news is that we are having rain and cold weather while fruit trees are in bloom. I heard the orchard fans running again this morning.

Think mine are pretty well finished for the year,I suppose the winds have pollinated everything, have only had one near choking event so far.

 

[Handlebars]

NYT:
"The announcement came hours after the Russian news media began reporting that buses of Ukrainian servicemen were being evacuated from the steelworks, near the center of Mariupol, the last territory in the city not to fall to Russian troops.
Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said that 53 “seriously injured” people had been evacuated to a medical facility in Novoazovsk, a Ukrainian town near the Russian border controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. According to the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, another 211 people were evacuated via a humanitarian corridor to Olenivka, also under Russian control, and would then be returned to Ukrainian-held territory “under an exchange procedure.”
It was unclear how many soldiers remained inside the plant, with officials and relatives of the fighters saying in recent days that there could be as many as 2,000, including hundreds who were injured. Ukraine’s General Staff said that “measures to save the defenders who remain on the territory of Azovstal are ongoing.”

Russian reports say very differently about such proposed exchange

 

[Mr. Coffee]

I keep hearing this idea, and I just don't buy it...

I understand what you are saying there.

A couple of thoughts: we don't know exactly what will happen when you try to detonate a corroded pit, or if the tritium neutron activator is not properly maintained. It seems very unlikely to me that assembly would be initiated, but it is possible that you'd have a partial detonation. Keep in mind that a lot of the engineering effort in nuclear weapons design in the last 70 years has been to make sure those bombs never go off accidentally, or even that someone could steal the parts and make a bomb of their own. That to me seems to argue that they are likely to fail hard if things aren't perfect.

Our understanding is that in a nuclear war, most weapons would be used as airbursts against soft targets like cities. For a given yield there is going to be an optimum height that is going to produce death and destruction over the largest possible area. If your bomb has a much smaller yield, inverse-square effects will make the area of devastation smaller still. As an example, if your hypothetical 1MT bomb was a "dud" and produced a 100kT explosion but was still detonated at the optimal height for a 1MT bomb, you'd reasonably expect the damage to be on the order of 1 percent of what you'd get from the 1MT bomb at that height. That would still be very bad, but still far less bad than we should otherwise assume.

Because of similar surface area effects, and technological limitations on how small you can make a bomb, most missile-delivered bombs have yields under about 200kT. It turns out you can murder more people and destroy more cities with lots of smaller bombs than with fewer big bombs.

Yes, we'd still have to deal with the radiological effects on a pretty annoying scale, but we'd be doing it when our cities were only partially damaged and not completely destroyed. Compared to the alternative it is fair to describe that problem as an annoyance.

I can't possibly predict what would happen if the height-computation part of the delivery system failed as well.

The super-important point is that in the same way we must honor the worst-case scenario, the Russians have to do so as well. At this point in time it is pretty obvious to their leadership that the state of their military wasn't what they were led to believe. It will likely take them quite some time to know how bad (or how good) the situation with their nuclear weapons is as well. And also consider that if they send some general to check it out and he quickly comes back with, "Everything is okay here!" he is unlikely to be believed. What I'm saying is that the Russians are really, really, really unlikely to escalate unless they are pretty confident in the state of their nuclear forces or if the ballon has really gone up and that is all they have left. So there isn't likely to be any "limited" nuclear war against Ukraine with "tactical" nuclear weapons. To consider it another way, what would the consequences for Russia be if they tried to use nuclear weapons and they were all (or mostly) duds?

 

[Mulezen]

^already the wretched, rotten condition of their military has degraded their influence. Is Finland still afraid of their Army? What about their vassal states (excepting Belarus)…the ’Stans’…or even China? Putin is on borrowed time.

 

[Cowlitz]

If you were the average American and all the Mickey Dee’s shuttered…there would be an insurrection

Nonsense. I've lived in many a place where it was a good hour or two to get to one. We locals did fine. Tourists sucked it up. Subway is more common in the really small places so folks can feel at home with those.

However, should you be traveling along the Columbia River, the McD at Brewster is the best one I've ever et at. Their food looks like the pictures, is hot, and the employees are cheery and polite.

I haven't eaten at our local one at all. It's in a dangerous location in the intersection of death.

 

[ChezCheese:)]

This is a must watch!
Watch this Russian colonel talk reality on a Russian 60 Minutes-type TV show. He's giving the public some straight up truth for once:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1526329765065539592

 

[Mulezen]

Nonsense. I've lived in many a place where it was a good hour or two to get to one. We locals did fine. Tourists sucked it up. Subway is more common in the really small places so folks can feel at home with those.

However, should you be traveling along the Columbia River, the McD at Brewster is the best one I've ever et at. Their food looks like the pictures, is hot, and the employees are cheery and polite.

I haven't eaten at our local one at all. It's in a dangerous location in the intersection of death.

You are arguing with a joke…though #45 would surely miss a Mac and Fries

 

[indianajo]

The super-important point is that in the same way we must honor the worst-case scenario, the Russians have to do so as well. At this point in time it is pretty obvious to their leadership that the state of their military wasn't what they were led to believe. It will likely take them quite some time to know how bad (or how good) the situation with their nuclear weapons is as well. And also consider that if they send some general to check it out and he quickly comes back with, "Everything is okay here!" he is unlikely to be believed. What I'm saying is that the Russians are really, really, really unlikely to escalate unless they are pretty confident in the state of their nuclear forces or if the ballon has really gone up and that is all they have left. So there isn't likely to be any "limited" nuclear war against Ukraine with "tactical" nuclear weapons.

I think the nuclear question could be answered by analyzing "what do the Russians want?". Ukraine produces about 25% of world wheat, 40% of sunflower oil, 20% of other vegetable oils. I don't have the numbers right but Ukraine is hugely productive in agriculture. What has Russia been bombing? Apartment houses, theaters, airports, ammo dumps, military bases, community centers, hospitals, bridges across the Dnieper & Don, east/west rail lines, farms & homes. What have Russians not been bombing? The 9 nuclear electricity stations. The grain silos. The grain export facilities in the ports. The port piers, breakwaters, channels, markers. North-south rail lines.
I believe their goals are 1. drive all those nasty democratic Ukrainian speakers out of the country so they can hold an election and declare Ukraine voted to rejoin the CSTO. Replace those people with ethnic Russians: who would love Ukrainian weather as better than that in the frozen north.
2. gain control of the world grain market in wheat sunflower vegetable oils. Russia already controls fertilizer.
What makes grain fields useless? Nuclear contamination. Nobody will buy contaminated grains or oils.
Thus no nukes. Besides, cruise missiles are so accurate now, it doesn't take a nuke to knock down a bridge or destroy a tank formation.
The funny thing about this war is how capable the Russian armed forces are of parading around Kremlin square. How incapable they are of field maneuvers, destroying strategic or tactical targets, forcing their ground troops to close with the enemy and kill or capture him. The LT Kija tale all over again. The dictator (czar) hears what he wants to hear, not what is true.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

However, should you be traveling along the Columbia River, the McD at Brewster is the best one I've ever et at. Their food looks like the pictures, is hot, and the employees are cheery and polite.

Yeah, the one in Brewster in the Chevron station is pretty good. For a McD.