Whoever in Turkey pushed hard for the S400 and argued (successfully) that being locked out of the F35 was worth the trade off, should be forced to walk around with a pointy hat with donkey ears for the rest of their life.
At the same time, the S400 sales reps did not get paid enough...
I'm just surprised that the Russian air defense across the board seems to be as ineffective as it is (even naval AA... The Moskva).
So, if you cannot question those in power.. you have to accept what they tell you. In the West companies had to prove stuff works ad nauseam. In the end ... War does not accept close enough... It either works or you end up on Oryx.
Ironically, the S-400 was designed to have an anti-missile capability, but it obviously doesn’t work. Russia’s S-400s can’t defend nearby friendly forces—and they also can’t defend themselves.
Specifically, an anti-ballistic-missile capability. It's easier to shoot down cruise missiles than ballistic missiles.
Yeah, with the caveat that we don't actually know for sure that there's a 0% intercept rate, it does seem pretty clear that, even if the rate is non-zero, ATACMS is certainly having no problem taking out S-400 batteries, when the S-400 was designed as a counter for weapons like ATACMS.
I remember watching that video that someone in Ukraine put out a few weeks ago with the glowing-eye trollface overlay...
...where Ukraine filmed a couple of cluster ATACMS shots obliterating an S-400 battery and thinking "well, that's about as bad as it gets for Russia. If it can't counter ATACMS missiles heading straight at the S-400 itself, Russia's only options are going to be destroying the ATACMS on the ground or just absorbing whatever damage Ukraine can do with them."
And absorbing them is gonna suck, because it's a pretty good bet that Ukraine is gonna use them to destroy defenses that could counter other weapons systems to permit those to operate.
So we've got a situation where Russia can't intercept Ukraine's ballistic missiles, but Ukraine can intercept Russia's ballistic missiles.
An awful lot of the footage that we've seen recently is of attacks on Russian air defenses. SAMs, early-warning radars, AEW&C aircraft. That means that it's a pretty good bet that Ukraine intends air attacks.
Some Russian observers are worried that much worse attacks are coming. If the Ukrainians are following American strike doctrine, attacks on air-defense batteries come first. After that, “aviation based on the F-16 comes into play, under the wings of which there is a wide range of ammunition,” one Russian blogger noted in a missive translated by Estonian analyst War Translated.
The Ukrainian air force is getting 85 ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16s—and already has radar-homing missiles and precision glide-bombs for the F-16s to employ in combat.
Yeah. And it seems likely that JASSM-ER is in the upcoming mix too.
The AGM-158 JASSM is the most likely, but not the only option, when it comes to missiles with a range of 300-500 km
Ukraine may acquire F-16 fighter jets, and it is already a matter of the relatively short-term perspective, along with missiles with a range of 300-500 km.
"In the upcoming military aid packages, Ukraine expects to receive F-16 aircraft and missiles with a range of 300–500 kilometers, enabling the Armed Forces of Ukraine to achieve even greater success on the battlefield and liberate our territory from the enemy," as Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, the Commander of the Joint Forces stated.
Early-on in the conflict, when Russia was doing mass missile strikes and dropping artillery across Mariupol and the like -- I remember images of one missile that targeted a field of Ukrainian solar panels, probably on a generic command to hit electrical infrastructure -- I remember commenting that yeah, it has an impact now, causes some damage, but Russia may regret not having those munitions later on if they need them for actual military targets. Same thing during the campaign against Ukraine's grain infrastructure later.
EDIT: If Ukraine's using F-16s against Russia, Russia is going to have to either defend against them in the air or be able to identify them and destroy them on the ground. Those ballistic missiles Russia used would have been a tool for the latter, and it's probably a good bet that Ukraine's going to be sticking their airbase under a Patriot umbrella. Russia may need a lot of ballistic missiles to get through that.
Ukraine's also explicitly stated that they're going to keep F-16 reserves in NATO countries, use them for training. Russia can't hit those, not without starting a war with NATO.
Serhii Holubtsov, head of aviation within Ukraine’s air force, said that “a certain number of aircraft will be stored at secure air bases outside of Ukraine so that they are not targeted here.”
Holubtsov told the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that those F-16s could be used to replace damaged aircraft as they undergo repairs as well as for training Ukrainian pilots abroad.
So Ukraine's only exposing the aircraft that it's actively-employing at any one time. If Russia gets some, there's going to be time for Ukraine to adjust tactics and feed more in. Russia may want those ballistic missiles they expended back when.
Early-on in the conflict, when Russia was doing mass missile strikes and dropping artillery across Mariupol and the like – I remember images of one missile that targeted a field of Ukrainian solar panels, probably on a generic command to hit electrical infrastructure
Russia was banking on terror itself being a weapon. The brutality of Russian soldiers on Ukrainian civilians (and especially children) underscores this. I don't know why Russia though this would work. Ukrainians were unarmed during Euromaidan and still went up against and won against superior equipped forces.
I'm still working on it, but I've cut out quite a bit. Start with Chrome, and work your way down.
When you get to email, Gmail has a very convenient forwarding feature so you can forward all email to the new one while you change accounts and whatnot. I made a new account elsewhere, and I have a separate folder for email from my old Gmail and my new email. Every so often I'll go fix an account or two, so I'm making steady progress.
For me, docs/drive is the hardest, so I'm doing it last. I'm playing with self-hosted options, and am still in an adjustment period.
Getting away from Google Maps has been a tough one. There aren't many options there, it's either Google, Apple, Microsoft, or OpenStreetMap.
I've been contributing to OSM for my local area as much as possible to update businesses and their opening hours, website, etc., but it's not a small task.
Remember, it's not an all-or-nothing situation, every step you take away from google helps. And you can always reevaluate later, and take time to figure out what works best for you.
A good solution to this is for less dependency on them. This is the nature of them taking too much, and that's just... really not going to work out great for them, nor anyone.
That anybody can disagree with this is truly flabbergasting. China should not be the sole decider of whether our planet lives or dies. I don't... I don't get how anyone, even the Chinese, can disagree with that.
Update: I think it's the petrochemical industry. They've corrupted all the green energy focused subs here super badly from what I've seen so far. I think we've caught their attention already - which may actually be a good sign. We must be doing something effective enough to warrant it.
They’re mad because they’re terrified that, in order to compete without paying slave wages for Chinese labor, they might have to gasp! get paid less to make up the difference! Not smaller profits! Oh, no!
I read it— but, more importantly, I also know the one thing that China has which constantly allows them to undercut Western manufacturing: cheap labor.
His comments highlight the complexity for firms desperately needing supplies and parts manufactured in China, but not the competition from complete kits made there that undercut Western firms.
We can't afford not to buy parts so other companies can assemble them...
But we also can't allow China to sell complete units because then those middle men companies can't make money...
I'm no climate scientist, but at this point I have no sympathy for energy companies or their profits.
It's insane lots of world leaders say climate change is an important issue, then turn around and tariff or outright ban green energy products from China because they're so cheap everyone would buy them.
Just sounds like corporate welfare where whatever maximizes their profits is necessary, and everything that doesn't gets banned.
The issue is China is producing things below cost to push out competition. That's not good for anyone but China. They want to be supplier at the expense of everyone else.
That legitimately a good reason to put tariffs in place.
BUT more money should be spent on renewables also.
I mean aren't we a globalized economy? There is stuff made by many countries, of whose quality and or cheapness certain countries cannot completely compete with, see Taiwan and their chip fabs, see Japanese car manufacturers. Are we going to throw a hissy fit over their stuff (yes I know we did with Japan but we don't anymore for whatever reason).
Unfair competition with the aim to destroy industries in foreign countries which disrupts industries and the workers (obviously), governments and national security. That is what we are speaking about here.
Idk man, I'm not sure what the solution here even is, but there must be a better solution to this problem than complete autarky and or mercantilist-esque policies.
Imagine you were starving in the desert for weeks, finally stumble across a McDonald's, but then go "nah, I don't like their business decisions" and walking away...
Climate Change is kind of a big fucking deal
We constantly bail out industries, they can take a short term hit while they learn to compete.
It's better than causing long term damage to our entire fucking planet.
Jesus dude, just listen to yourself:
Short term profits are more important than the survival of intelligent life on Earth.
I didn't say anything if the sort. You're understanding of how things work is wrong.
Imagine this. 10 factories in China that produce renewable goods for the entire world low enough that no other factories in the world can produce anything.
Or 10 factories in China. 10 in US, 10 in Europe. All producing renewables.
Currently there is not enough factories in china to supply the world. More needs to be built. Building them in the west doesn't destroy the ones in China.
BUT more money should be spent on renewables also.
If the US had been subsidizing renewable to the same degree as China instead of continuing to subsidize fossil fuels, we wouldn't be in a place to need to protect our renewable industry from their cheaper goods.
As far as I'm concerned, the entire problem is us not spending enough on renewables, not that China has 'undercut' anything
They already pushed everyone else out years ago. If it was truly the Amazon business model prices would have gone up. If they want to keep subsidizing the transition to clean energy we should take advantage of it.
Its not that simple. Western money is going to the pockets of Chinese workers when it could be going to the pockets of western workers. The West might not even be taking advantage of it might be that they have been so naive that they have been losing money to China and investing back home could have been the cheaper option and also the option that spread up renewables globally.
It also gives then huge leverage on things like trade and war.
Kind of stupid idea. There is a place and need for light weight transport that is assisted bicycle. Our law classifies these (and electric scooters) as light electric vehicles and has special set of rules for them. Things like when driving on pedestrian paths they can't move faster than 5km/h. On roads maximum is 25km/h but they have to wear reflective west. Kids must wear helmets, etc. For the most part sensible requirements.
That said I am of the opinion everyone should take a test to participate in traffic, bicycles included. For bikes there aren't many rules they need to know anyway. They can skip almost all of the signs except those for the right of way. So it would be easy test but a necessary one. And simply bar kids on bicycles in traffic lanes and that's it. Safest for everyone.
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