NPR

Hellraiser wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:16 am

Hellraiser wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 2:14 pm

Blackmac wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 6:37 pm
Unreal. Top snipers in WW1 would sit for days to get one kill.

Hellraiser wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:54 am AFU are withdrawing from Bakhmut. They blew all the bridges this morning.

let's hope that UA losses during the assault haven't been critical.

tabascoboy wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:47 am

Hellraiser wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:54 am AFU are withdrawing from Bakhmut. They blew all the bridges this morning.

A propaganda coup for Prigozhin, mixed blessing for Putin as once again the PMC Wagner do what the Russian regular forces can't do by themselves. As ever OPSEC makes it hard to evaluate exactly what is happening, but again RU just end up taking a massive pile of rubble they created...and let's hope that this has been largely a distraction from the next phase albeit one with a horrific loss of lives.

Reportedly the hills west of the city make for a better defensive line, and let's hope that UA losses during the assault haven't been critical.

Hellraiser wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:23 pm

tabascoboy wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:47 am

Hellraiser wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:54 am AFU are withdrawing from Bakhmut. They blew all the bridges this morning.

A propaganda coup for Prigozhin, mixed blessing for Putin as once again the PMC Wagner do what the Russian regular forces can't do by themselves. As ever OPSEC makes it hard to evaluate exactly what is happening, but again RU just end up taking a massive pile of rubble they created...and let's hope that this has been largely a distraction from the next phase albeit one with a horrific loss of lives.

Reportedly the hills west of the city make for a better defensive line, and let's hope that UA losses during the assault haven't been critical.

Conflicting reports coming out now. The 93rd Mechanized is saying they're still in the city.

PornDog wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:47 pm By backfill you mean they're going to be sent to other countries so that those countries can send their existing tanks to Ukraine, without them losing force effectiveness, no?

The 2A4s are pretty old themselves (not to denigrate them or anything), so what are the tanks that would be sent to Ukraine?

laurent wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 2:48 pm

PornDog wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:47 pm By backfill you mean they're going to be sent to other countries so that those countries can send their existing tanks to Ukraine, without them losing force effectiveness, no?

The 2A4s are pretty old themselves (not to denigrate them or anything), so what are the tanks that would be sent to Ukraine?

Still better than T72 ... Unfortunately Leclerc (even early models) are too few.

tabascoboy wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:33 pm

Hellraiser wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:23 pm

tabascoboy wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:47 am
A propaganda coup for Prigozhin, mixed blessing for Putin as once again the PMC Wagner do what the Russian regular forces can't do by themselves. As ever OPSEC makes it hard to evaluate exactly what is happening, but again RU just end up taking a massive pile of rubble they created...and let's hope that this has been largely a distraction from the next phase albeit one with a horrific loss of lives.

Reportedly the hills west of the city make for a better defensive line, and let's hope that UA losses during the assault haven't been critical.

Conflicting reports coming out now. The 93rd Mechanized is saying they're still in the city.

Magyar's "Birds" have been withdrawn, maybe this got conflated into a report of a total withdrawal? Who knows...

PornDog wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:59 pm

laurent wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 2:48 pm

PornDog wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:47 pm By backfill you mean they're going to be sent to other countries so that those countries can send their existing tanks to Ukraine, without them losing force effectiveness, no?

The 2A4s are pretty old themselves (not to denigrate them or anything), so what are the tanks that would be sent to Ukraine?

Still better than T72 ... Unfortunately Leclerc (even early models) are too few.

Of course, I'm not denigrating the 2A4s, but if they are the backfill, then obviously what's being sent on to Ukraine is less than them.

Sandstorm wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 11:45 am I think (some) people are getting way too de-sensitized to these images coming out of Ukraine and think it's just a video game. Far too many people "Loving" these Twitter posts...

_Os_ wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:06 pm

Sandstorm wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 11:45 am I think (some) people are getting way too de-sensitized to these images coming out of Ukraine and think it's just a video game. Far too many people "Loving" these Twitter posts...

This has come up before. It's actually the opposite, the more gore is shown the more average audiences will want the war to end, which is why combat isn't being shown on TV much at all. Western audiences would start demanding the war end even if the peace was a bad one (which would mean more war later), they would start demanding Ukraine not be supported. This was the Vietnam trajectory. Not showing combat footage is the pro-war move.

This is not Iraq where embedded journs didn't see or report much killing and it was over quickly. There's no embedded journs in this conflict giving edited content to 24 hour news channels, precisely because they would see a huge amount of death and would stand a decent chance of dying themselves if they were with a frontline unit. This was obvious from day 1 too, I posted back then 10s of thousands would die and whole cities would be destroyed.

I'm posting this now because not showing the combat footage is having odd outcomes I didn't expect. A small amount of South African twitter accounts I half follow decided to go pro-Russia. I've just been scrolling through them pushing the American conspiracy theory that goes "there's no combat footage, this means the war is fake", or "there's no combat footage this means Russia is winning", sometimes they say both things. They expect to turn on CNN or Sky and see fighting. People then send them links to where they can indeed view a lot of combat footage, I guess I'll see if that changes their mind (I doubt it). By this point I've seen 100s of Russian corpses, including all those inside vehicles that are hit I've probably seen over 1000 dead by now in this "fake war Russia is winning". The general vibe I get from those not following through social media, is a massive overestimation of Russia and a massive underestimation of just how awful this war is.

Other than some American outlets (NYT, Washington Post) mainstream media has done a terrible job of reporting this war. If you're not following it fairly closely on social media you're getting a considerably lower resolution picture, and then you may as well not bother following one of the most important events of this century. Something that potentially shapes the world more than 9/11.

Sandstorm wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:28 pm South Africa has a disproportionately large number of conspiracy morons. Not a good look using them in a post you want to be taken seriously.

Sandstorm wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:35 pm Also at no point did I suggest we should ignore the war.

Or that if we don’t see actual people being blown to bits every day on Twitter, the world will forget about the conflict.

In fact nothing you posted is relevant to what the rest of us said.

_Os_ wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 9:06 pm

Sandstorm wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 11:45 am I think (some) people are getting way too de-sensitized to these images coming out of Ukraine and think it's just a video game. Far too many people "Loving" these Twitter posts...

This has come up before. It's actually the opposite, the more gore is shown the more average audiences will want the war to end, which is why combat isn't being shown on TV much at all. Western audiences would start demanding the war end even if the peace was a bad one (which would mean more war later), they would start demanding Ukraine not be supported. This was the Vietnam trajectory. Not showing combat footage is the pro-war move.

This is not Iraq where embedded journs didn't see or report much killing and it was over quickly. There's no embedded journs in this conflict giving edited content to 24 hour news channels, precisely because they would see a huge amount of death and would stand a decent chance of dying themselves if they were with a frontline unit. This was obvious from day 1 too, I posted back then 10s of thousands would die and whole cities would be destroyed.

I'm posting this now because not showing the combat footage is having odd outcomes I didn't expect. A small amount of South African twitter accounts I half follow decided to go pro-Russia. I've just been scrolling through them pushing the American conspiracy theory that goes "there's no combat footage, this means the war is fake", or "there's no combat footage this means Russia is winning", sometimes they say both things. They expect to turn on CNN or Sky and see fighting. People then send them links to where they can indeed view a lot of combat footage, I guess I'll see if that changes their mind (I doubt it). By this point I've seen 100s of Russian corpses, including all those inside vehicles that are hit I've probably seen over 1000 dead by now in this "fake war Russia is winning". The general vibe I get from those not following through social media, is a massive overestimation of Russia and a massive underestimation of just how awful this war is.

Other than some American outlets (NYT, Washington Post) mainstream media has done a terrible job of reporting this war. If you're not following it fairly closely on social media you're getting a considerably lower resolution picture, and then you may as well not bother following one of the most important events of this century. Something that potentially shapes the world more than 9/11.

lemonhead wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:35 pm How suited is the modern media cycle to cover a long term 'present' war though. One that can't just be dismissed as a long way over there between two tribes no one knows from Adam.

Short of a massive comet steaming towards us or the impending heat death of the universe most narratives have a limited lifespan. The reporting's been cack for sure, social media's definitely the new normal there but the average viewer's attention span still needs something other than 'it's still going'.

Eventually the latest politician caught violating a cat caught up a tree gets better clickbait.

Danilov on Russian military losses near Bakhmut: 1 to 7 in our favor

03.03.2023 06:37

In the battles for Bakhmut, the Russian aggressors lose seven times as many soldiers as the Armed Forces of Ukraine do.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said this during the national news telethon, Ukrinform reports.

He noted that the issue of Russian military losses, in particular in the battles around Bakhmut, had been raised at the meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief on Thursday.

"It is difficult there, but keep in mind that every day our boys and girls send hundreds of them to where they are supposed to go, given that they came here to kill us," Danilov said.

According to the NSDC Secretary, the ratio of military losses is 1 to 7 in Ukraine’s favor.

As reported, on March 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky held another meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to discuss the situation on the battlefield.

Rheinmetall wants to build a tank factory in Ukraine

The western allies have been laboriously scraping together tanks for Ukraine for months - but the country probably needs hundreds more. Rheinmetall is now negotiating with Kiev about setting up its own Panther production facility.

03/04/2023, 09:56 am

The armaments group Rheinmetall is negotiating the construction of a tank factory on Ukrainian soil. "A Rheinmetall plant can be built in the Ukraine for around 200 million euros," company boss Armin Papperger told the Rheinische Post newspaper. It could produce up to 400 Panther-type main battle tanks annually. The talks with the Ukrainian government are »promising«. Papperger hoped for a decision "within the next two months."

The Rheinmetall boss was convinced that the plant could be protected against Russian air raids. "Protection by anti-aircraft defense would not be difficult." The Ukraine needs 600 to 800 tanks for a victory, emphasized the Rheinmetall boss. In order for the crowd to come together, the construction of new tanks would have to start quickly. "Even if Germany gave up all of the 300 Leopard 2 tanks available to the Bundeswehr, that would still be far too few."

Rheinmetall: The war will "probably last for years."

According to the current status, Rheinmetall is making around 250 tanks available in connection with the Ukraine war: "We are working at full speed," said Papperger. “We have already made more than 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles operational, and by the end of the year there will be around 100. Around 30 tanks are ready out of 50 Leopard 2A4s. There are also around 100 older Leopard 1 models, of which we can currently make 88 usable again.

Papperger expects the war to last "probably for years." "The Western Allies are sending enough weapons there so that Ukraine can defend itself, but the Ukrainians do not have enough equipment today to completely reconquer their territory." At the same time, Russia does not have as many resources as the West as a whole, Rheinmetall said -Boss. But he couldn't see "that the leadership around Putin is making cutbacks in its aggressive course towards Ukraine."

The Panther is a concept for a new tank. Rheinmetall presented it in the summer of 2022.

dkm57 wrote: Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:12 pm That's going to go very wrong at the first bump, long before it gets near any action. It's so unbalanced if the turret doesn't fall off the whole thing is going to and up sitting on it's @rse pointing at the sky.

dkm57 wrote: Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:12 pm That's going to go very wrong at the first bump, long before it gets near any action. It's so unbalanced if the turret doesn't fall off the whole thing is going to and up sitting on it's @rse pointing at the sky.