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  • "The Biden Administration and the Senate have done just about all they can do..."

    Have they? This absolution of their political abilities and will to win means that some opposing politicians, a minority, have OUT-MANUEVERED their opponents.

    And the answer, in effect, is "Oh well. Can't gitterdun. Ain't that a shame?"

    Have these particular congresspersons been publically shamed? Have their arguments been either defeated or negotiated to compromise such that the public notices, polls are impacted and policy positions are reversed? Has Joe Biden publically invited these recalcitrant Representatives to any one-on-one heart to heart chats? Maybe throw some bones giving them some public day in the sun?

    Or is that too risky in an election year?

    I'll be throwing away my vote in the Washington Republican primary when voting for Nikki Haley. If she somehow secured the Republican nomination, I'd again vote for her. Biden has demonstrated an absence of vigor sufficient to run down objections on an existential issue for Ukraine and a defining issue for American values. He's not led in the manner equal of the moment.

    And the moment is huge.

    "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
    "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

    Comment


    • Originally posted by S2 View Post
      "The Biden Administration and the Senate have done just about all they can do..."

      Have they? This absolution of their political abilities and will to win means that some opposing politicians, a minority, have OUT-MANUEVERED their opponents.

      And the answer, in effect, is "Oh well. Can't gitterdun. Ain't that a shame?"

      Have these particular congresspersons been publically shamed? Have their arguments been either defeated or negotiated to compromise such that the public notices, polls are impacted and policy positions are reversed? Has Joe Biden publically invited these recalcitrant Representatives to any one-on-one heart to heart chats? Maybe throw some bones giving them some public day in the sun?

      Or is that too risky in an election year?

      I'll be throwing away my vote in the Washington Republican primary when voting for Nikki Haley. If she somehow secured the Republican nomination, I'd again vote for her. Biden has demonstrated an absence of vigor sufficient to run down objections on an existential issue for Ukraine and a defining issue for American values. He's not led in the manner equal of the moment.

      And the moment is huge.
      And while it may only be lip service and I could be mistaken but if I recollect correctly Halley has also commented once or twice on the need to work with the Democrats on issues of national importance and I believe she supports aid being given to Ukraine. Just not Donald!
      If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

      Comment


      • Russia Has Massed 500 Tanks For An Attack On Kupyansk. Thousands Of Ukrainian Drones Await Them.

        Five hundred tanks. More than 600 fighting vehicles. Hundreds of howitzers. Forty thousand troops. According to Ukraine’s eastern command, Russia has assembled a huge field army in eastern Ukraine opposite the free Ukrainian city of Kupyansk.

        It’s obvious what this army aims to do: retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022—until a powerful Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated most of the oblast late that year.

        Everything east of the nearest major river is the goal. “The Russian Federation plans to seize the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and part of Kharkiv Oblast up to the Oskil River by March 2024,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained. The river threads through Kupyansk from the north.

        Why March? Because that’s when Russia will “vote” for “president” in a national “election.” In fact, Vladimir Putin is the only real candidate—and will maintain his brutal, dictatorial control over Russia and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

        A slice of Kharkiv would be an election-day gift to Putin from the Russian army in Ukraine.

        Some or part of around 10 Ukrainian brigades, anchored in the north by the 3rd Tank Brigade and south by the 4th Tank Brigade, defends Kupyansk and surrounding settlements. It’s a significant forces with perhaps 20,000 troops and hundreds of tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers.

        But people and vehicles aren’t the problem for the Ukrainians. The problem is ammunition. The United States was one of the biggest donors of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine’s best big guns—and pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid to Ukraine last fall.

        Since then, Ukrainian forces’ daily allotment of shells has fallen by two-thirds to just 2,000 rounds. Russian forces meanwhile fire as many as 10,000 shells a day, thanks to a steady supply of ammo from North Korea.

        Russia’s new firepower advantage allows it to concentrate artillery without much fear of Ukrainian counterbattery fire—and aim the concentrated batteries at population centers.

        “This situation empowers Russia to execute a well-known approach: the systematic destruction of urban areas, rendering them indefensible,” Ukrainian analysis team Frontelligence Insight explained.

        The demolition already has begun. “Our satellite imagery reveals sustained and intense artillery damage” around Kupyansk, Frontelligence Insight reported.

        “Artillery shortages and delays in Western security assistance will create uncertainty in Ukrainian operational plans,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. warned, “and likely prompt Ukrainian forces to husband materiel, which may force Ukrainian forces to make tough decisions about prioritizing certain sectors of the front over sectors where limited territorial setbacks are least damaging.”

        It’s not clear whether Kyiv is willing to trade away any of Kharkiv Oblast. With a pre-war population of 1.4 million, Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second city—and hosts strategic war industries including Ukraine’s main tank plant.

        So the Kupyansk garrison must hold. Anticipating the coming offensive, the Ukrainian defense ministry has organized new mechanized brigades and deployed them to Kupyansk to reinforce the garrison. Engineers are digging trenches and building bunkers.

        Perhaps most importantly, Ukrainian workshops are building explosives-laden first-person-view drones—tens of thousands of them per month. As artillery ammunition becomes scarce, Ukrainian brigades are flinging more and more FPVs at the Russians: sometimes thousands per day all along the 600-mile front.

        But the FPVs range just two miles or so—too short to target artillery that might be 15 or miles from the line of contact. Drone-operators have made quick work of small Russian assault groups that, for months now, have been probing the Kupyansk sector.

        But can a swarm of two-pound drones, even thousands of them, defeat 500 tanks and 650 fighting vehicles as they attack behind a wall of artillery fire? We may find out.

        ————————————

        Comment


        • Originally posted by S2 View Post
          Have these particular congresspersons been publically shamed? Have their arguments been either defeated or negotiated to compromise such that the public notices, polls are impacted and policy positions are reversed? Has Joe Biden publically invited these recalcitrant Representatives to any one-on-one heart to heart chats? Maybe throw some bones giving them some public day in the sun?

          Or is that too risky in an election year?
          Risky? Yeah, but not for Biden. Remember what just happened to Lankford for daring to be bipartisan? Poor bastard got censured by the Oklahoma Republican Party for his crimes.

          You think other Republicans are going to risk the same thing, only worse? Meeting with Biden...might as well just shoot themselves in the head.
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • Originally posted by statquo View Post
            Russia Has Massed 500 Tanks For An Attack On Kupyansk. Thousands Of Ukrainian Drones Await Them.

            Five hundred tanks. More than 600 fighting vehicles. Hundreds of howitzers. Forty thousand troops. According to Ukraine’s eastern command, Russia has assembled a huge field army in eastern Ukraine opposite the free Ukrainian city of Kupyansk.

            It’s obvious what this army aims to do: retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022—until a powerful Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated most of the oblast late that year.

            Everything east of the nearest major river is the goal. “The Russian Federation plans to seize the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and part of Kharkiv Oblast up to the Oskil River by March 2024,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained. The river threads through Kupyansk from the north.

            Why March? Because that’s when Russia will “vote” for “president” in a national “election.” In fact, Vladimir Putin is the only real candidate—and will maintain his brutal, dictatorial control over Russia and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

            A slice of Kharkiv would be an election-day gift to Putin from the Russian army in Ukraine.

            Some or part of around 10 Ukrainian brigades, anchored in the north by the 3rd Tank Brigade and south by the 4th Tank Brigade, defends Kupyansk and surrounding settlements. It’s a significant forces with perhaps 20,000 troops and hundreds of tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers.

            But people and vehicles aren’t the problem for the Ukrainians. The problem is ammunition. The United States was one of the biggest donors of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine’s best big guns—and pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid to Ukraine last fall.

            Since then, Ukrainian forces’ daily allotment of shells has fallen by two-thirds to just 2,000 rounds. Russian forces meanwhile fire as many as 10,000 shells a day, thanks to a steady supply of ammo from North Korea.

            Russia’s new firepower advantage allows it to concentrate artillery without much fear of Ukrainian counterbattery fire—and aim the concentrated batteries at population centers.

            “This situation empowers Russia to execute a well-known approach: the systematic destruction of urban areas, rendering them indefensible,” Ukrainian analysis team Frontelligence Insight explained.

            The demolition already has begun. “Our satellite imagery reveals sustained and intense artillery damage” around Kupyansk, Frontelligence Insight reported.

            “Artillery shortages and delays in Western security assistance will create uncertainty in Ukrainian operational plans,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. warned, “and likely prompt Ukrainian forces to husband materiel, which may force Ukrainian forces to make tough decisions about prioritizing certain sectors of the front over sectors where limited territorial setbacks are least damaging.”

            It’s not clear whether Kyiv is willing to trade away any of Kharkiv Oblast. With a pre-war population of 1.4 million, Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second city—and hosts strategic war industries including Ukraine’s main tank plant.

            So the Kupyansk garrison must hold. Anticipating the coming offensive, the Ukrainian defense ministry has organized new mechanized brigades and deployed them to Kupyansk to reinforce the garrison. Engineers are digging trenches and building bunkers.

            Perhaps most importantly, Ukrainian workshops are building explosives-laden first-person-view drones—tens of thousands of them per month. As artillery ammunition becomes scarce, Ukrainian brigades are flinging more and more FPVs at the Russians: sometimes thousands per day all along the 600-mile front.

            But the FPVs range just two miles or so—too short to target artillery that might be 15 or miles from the line of contact. Drone-operators have made quick work of small Russian assault groups that, for months now, have been probing the Kupyansk sector.

            But can a swarm of two-pound drones, even thousands of them, defeat 500 tanks and 650 fighting vehicles as they attack behind a wall of artillery fire? We may find out.

            ————————————
            They won't all be 'two pound drones', not by a long shot. The Uki's have spent the last couple of years developing some highly effective and powerful drone systems as the recent sinking of that Russian corvette? demonstrates. To counter that threat of course I'm sure Russia will also have massed EW assets to support any offensive at that point in the line.

            The biggest problem the Russians have is NATO and Ukrainian intelligence gathering. Neither side can really hide the build of assets up needed for a large scale offensive any more. The Ukrainians know this is coming and will have been building up their own static defenses in turn. As far as I'm aware they've been trying to do this along most parts of their line since their own offensive petered out last year. Lay opinion only? While I anticipate Russia may well gain ground it highly unlikely they will achieve anything more than the type of marginal gains both sides have achieved everywhere else since the 'static' phase of this war began.

            It does give the Ukrainians the chance to kill a lot of hard to replace armored vehicles though and Russia has already lost about 80% of its pre-war front line/first tier tanks in the fighting to date. Last time I checked they can 'only' produce a couple of hundred new hulls a year and those tanks will not be the top of the line vehicles they're replacing.
            Last edited by Monash; 05 Feb 24,, 20:33.
            If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

            Comment


            • Poor bastard's state party chairperson called it a bogus censure. I won't discuss any violation of sovereign border issues here except Ukraine's.

              Out-manuevered by a minority of Congress it is.

              Where does the buck stop again?



              "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
              "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

              Comment


              • Originally posted by S2 View Post
                "The Biden Administration and the Senate have done just about all they can do..."

                Have they? This absolution of their political abilities and will to win means that some opposing politicians, a minority, have OUT-MANUEVERED their opponents.

                And the answer, in effect, is "Oh well. Can't gitterdun. Ain't that a shame?"

                Have these particular congresspersons been publically shamed? Have their arguments been either defeated or negotiated to compromise such that the public notices, polls are impacted and policy positions are reversed? Has Joe Biden publically invited these recalcitrant Representatives to any one-on-one heart to heart chats? Maybe throw some bones giving them some public day in the sun?

                Or is that too risky in an election year?

                I'll be throwing away my vote in the Washington Republican primary when voting for Nikki Haley. If she somehow secured the Republican nomination, I'd again vote for her. Biden has demonstrated an absence of vigor sufficient to run down objections on an existential issue for Ukraine and a defining issue for American values. He's not led in the manner equal of the moment.

                And the moment is huge.
                Not sure what news media you have been tracking. But I am seeing the House getting railed daily for their stance.

                But you can't be shamed if you don't feel shame.

                But the Senate only completed their compromise bill this weekend. And the Speaker has said repeatedly it is DOA. We shall see. And yes, Biden has had several face to face meetings with Congressional leaders to include Johnson and other GOP leaders.

                Everything which has been authorized in previous tranches of authorizations have been exhausted. We require new legislation and authorizations. The 2022 midterms results are coming home to roost.
                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                Mark Twain

                Comment


                • These new armored vehicles the Russians have massed...I would sure love to know what types/models!
                  “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                  Mark Twain

                  Comment


                  • The T-55 seems to be showing up more and more as the war drags on.
                    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by S2 View Post
                      Poor bastard's state party chairperson called it a bogus censure.
                      The rest of the Oklahoma Republican Party apparently doesn't give a shit what the state party chairperson thinks.

                      Originally posted by S2 View Post
                      Out-manuevered by a minority of Congress it is.
                      Tyranny of the minority, yes that's correct. That's a real problem for the Republican majority in the House. And it will continue to be a problem.

                      Originally posted by S2 View Post
                      I won't discuss any violation of sovereign border issues here except Ukraine's.
                      Seriously? Nobody is trying to discuss US border issues here, certainly not me. I didn't even mention it.

                      You wanted to know why bipartisanship hasn't been tried.

                      So I provided a very recent example of what happens to Republican Congresspeople that attempt that very thing, nothing more.
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                        The T-55 seems to be showing up more and more as the war drags on.
                        I saw a few in clips over the weekend belonging to Russian Marine units. Wonder how widespread the T-62s/55s are.
                        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                        Mark Twain

                        Comment


                        • You wanted to know why bipartisanship hasn't been tried.

                          The Bill coming out of the Senate as is being reported is the most bipartisan bill I've seen come out of either house of Congress in years...if not decades.
                          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                          Mark Twain

                          Comment


                          • Russia is drafting huge numbers of troops to fight in Ukraine — but it might not have enough guns for all of them

                            Russia is drafting huge numbers of troops to fight in Ukraine — but it might not have enough guns for all of them
                            A destroyed tank in Izium, Ukraine, on January 28, 2024.
                            • Russia is drafting hundreds of thousands of recruits to launch major assaults in Ukraine.
                            • But it's not producing enough weapons to equip them all, per military experts.
                            • The Institute for the Study of War said that Russia likely can't sustain a greater mobilization.
                            Russia isn't making enough weapons to arm the potential massive uptick in troops being drafted to fight in Ukraine, according to military experts.

                            The Institute for the Study of War drew its assessment in an intelligence update on Sunday, comparing comments and figures shared by military analysts as well as officials.

                            Russia's reserves — whether strategic or operational — are not ready for combat, despite a widespread belief among Russian commanders that they are "bottomless barrels," Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets said in a Telegram post on Sunday, per the ISW.

                            While Russia can produce about 250-300 "new and thoroughly modernized" tanks every year — enough to cover its battlefield losses — it cannot generate enough material to outfit substantial reserve personnel in the event of a crisis, Mashovets said, per the ISW.

                            In December, Janis Garisons, state secretary to Latvia's Ministry of Defence, said that Russia can "produce and repair" roughly 100 to 150 tanks a month, per the US-based think tank.


                            The UK's Ministry of Defence made a similar assessment in January.

                            Despite this, Russia's military-industrial complex would likely be unable to sustain a greater mobilization of personnel, the ISW said.

                            According to Mashovets, there are about 60,000-62,000 personnel in Russian reserve units, but the country has only equipped a third of these with weapons and equipment.

                            Russia's military production rates would need to grow significantly to support more extensive offensive operations that would require the deployment of additional personnel, the ISW said.

                            While Russia would be in a position to increase production if it kept up its military campaign this year, even this would probably not be enough to support a large number of conscripts or reservists, it added.

                            This gap could be significant for the outcome of the war.

                            Russia has been recruiting hundreds of thousands of often poorly-trained soldiers to intensify "meat wave" assaults on the front lines in Ukraine, according to reports.

                            However, this has come at a considerable cost to Russia's army, with major losses on the front lines.

                            For the most part, these attacks have also failed to make significant breakthroughs or advances.
                            ___________

                            They can replace the tanks, sure. Can they replace the crews so easily?
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

                              They can replace the tanks, sure. Can they replace the crews so easily?
                              And I want to know what model with what FCSs, etc.

                              “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                              Mark Twain

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post

                                And I want to know what model with what FCSs, etc.
                                Layman's question! Could an outside source; North Korea f.ex,, have supplied some of the reported armor?
                                When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

                                Comment

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