Ukraine War Thread Part 2

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12th Sep 2023, 11:19

#4901 (permalink)

ORAC

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-a...12-p5e3w4.html

Elon Musk’s refusal to let Starlink support Ukraine attack prompts call for probeNational Harbor, Maryland:

Quote:

SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch a surprise attack on Russian forces in Crimea last September has raised questions about the company’s relationship with the US military, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said on Monday.

Kendall said the US may need to be more explicit in future contracts that services or products it purchases could be used in war.

Excerpts of a new biography of Musk published by The Washington Post last week revealed that the Ukrainians had asked for the Starlink support to attack Russian naval vessels based at the Crimean port of Sevastopol in September 2022. Musk had refused due to concerns that Russia would launch a nuclear attack in response….

The fallout from the disclosure in the book continues to rattle Washington.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has demanded an investigation into SpaceX after Musk acknowledged he had blocked Ukraine from using Starlink for the attack.

“The Congress needs to investigate what’s happened here and whether we have adequate tools to make sure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire,” the Massachusetts Democrat said Monday at the Capitol.

Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX, is expected to be among the technology industry chiefs to attend a closed-door summit with senators at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Musk was not on a military contract when he refused the Crimea request; he’d been providing terminals to Ukraine for free in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion. However, in the months since, the US military has funded and officially contracted with Starlink for continued support.

The Pentagon has not disclosed the terms or cost of that contract, citing operational security.But the Pentagon is reliant on SpaceX for far more than the Ukraine response and the uncertainty that Musk or any other commercial vendor could refuse to provide services in a future conflict has led space systems military planners to reconsider what needs to be explicitly laid out in future agreements, Kendall said during a roundtable with reporters at the Air Force Association convention at National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday.

“If we’re going to rely upon commercial architectures or commercial systems for operational use, then we have to have some assurances that they’re going to be available,” Kendall said.

“We have to have that. Otherwise, they are a convenience and maybe an economy in peacetime, but they’re not something we can rely upon in wartime.”….

Until Musk’s refusal in Ukraine, there had not been a focus on whether there needed to be language saying a firm providing military support in war had to agree that that support could be used in combat.

“We acquire technology, we acquire services, required platforms to serve the Air Force mission, or in this case, the Department of the Air Force,” said Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. “So that is an expectation, that it is going to be used for Air Force purposes, which will include, when necessary, to be used to support combat operations.”

Last edited by ORAC; 12th Sep 2023 at 11:38.

12th Sep 2023, 11:21

#4902 (permalink)

ACW342

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Chay Bowes -

A load of bo!!ocks out of a Dublin Russian apologist and edited by RT. Probably also complains about British QRA being scrambled in response to getting those feckin pesky Bears out of Irish/Shanwick airspace.<br /><br />A342<br />

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12th Sep 2023, 11:21

#4903 (permalink)

NutLoose

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Casualty lists of Russians and their equipment from Ukraine.

https://returnoftheliberal.wordpress...ine-what-next/

What I find interesting is the charts below, thats a heck of an increase in a short period of time and shows Ukraine is upping their game, though as before we do not know the true figures and may never know them.

12th Sep 2023, 11:34

#4904 (permalink)

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Laser Marking

As a general question: I believe that RF use laser directed shells with the laser marker airborne in a drone; does Ukraine or the West use laser guided shells? I appreciate that gps guided shells are used but if gps jamming is efficient wouldnt laser guided shells be a good substitute?

12th Sep 2023, 11:45

#4905 (permalink)

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You could almost believe Solovyov actually believes the crap he spouts.

Quote:

https://twitter.com/TheKremlinYap/st...39589204791529

12th Sep 2023, 11:50

#4906 (permalink)

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Leeet's Nuuke em... back on their favourite show.. I do like his conception that all the vehicles etc are equipped for nuclear warfare, after the renactors helmets, rusty Ak's and tinplate body armour, putting ones faith in a 50 year old tank dragged out of some boneyard to protect you is a pipe dream.

Quote:

https://twitter.com/TheKremlinYap/st...47286934671668

Quote:

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/...73268399419805

Last edited by NutLoose; 12th Sep 2023 at 12:28.

12th Sep 2023, 11:56

#4907 (permalink)

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Sweden to assess if they can send Gripen

Quote:

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...64476405760345

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12th Sep 2023, 11:59

#4908 (permalink)

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Honouring their dead. I fitting tribute to one brave soldier that may expand their dreams of reuniting their country.

Quote:

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...59742974276059

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12th Sep 2023, 12:05

#4909 (permalink)

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Congress are after answers from Musk re the outages near Crimea, personally I think they should and a global satellite system such as this should NOT be under the control of one man who can interfere in Wars resulting in the loss of life, I am surprised the US has not tried to take it under their wing. After the West has poured billions into this venture, Musk could at a flick of a switch cripple Ukraines ability to comunicate with their units on the ground.

Quote:

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...20598957011043

12th Sep 2023, 12:12

#4910 (permalink)

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It says it all.... Brave guy

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https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/stat...49829340266991

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12th Sep 2023, 12:26

#4911 (permalink)

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https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/...91976563929335

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12th Sep 2023, 12:30

#4912 (permalink)

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Russian torture.

Quote:

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/...60231995048105

12th Sep 2023, 14:49

#4913 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by NutLoose

Russian torture.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/...60231995048105

Torture is a terrible thing but where is the moral high ground here? Guantanamo bay prison, waterboarding? The West is not exactly clean on the subject of torture. It should all be banned.

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12th Sep 2023, 14:58

#4914 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by James7

This pretty much sums up the situation from Chay Bowes
@boweschay

Golly!

Vlad7.0, I have taken some time to review the... "prose" that flowered from the manure pile, and have tried to turn it into a coherent and accurate account that may reflect the status of the events in the field at the whim of the death star canteen boss, Vlad.

It still needs some work, but at least it is now more accurate to to the state of play:

This pretty much sums up the situation from Chay Bowes
@boweschay
The wall of text counter-battery fire is in the spoiler, for those interested (and if you don't crack a smile or two I'd be surprised).
T28B

Spoiler

Why Ukraine’s defeat could mean the end of NATO in its current form.

As the West’s proxy war in Ukraine slips inexorably towards utter failure, the neocons behind the debacle are faced with dwindling avenues of retreat.

Early confidence that Russia, in its current form, would collapse under the pressure of the harshest sanctions regime in history failed to materialize. Early Russian miscalculations on the battlefield were not followed by a military meltdown, but by a pragmatic display of strategic adaptability, which is begrudgingly admired in the military war rooms of the West. The Russian army, far from falling apart, has steeled itself into making bold decisions to retreat when prudent and advance when required, both of which have proven devastating for their Ukrainianopponents. It follows that, as the Western political elites that cultivated this conflict peer into another winter of political, military, and potentially economic discontent, it is now that we potentially face the most dangerous period in Europe since the outbreak of WWII.

The catalyst for a wider war in Europe isn’t, in fact, a limited conflict in Ukraine in itself, one that started in 2014 and, notably, had been largely ignored by Western powers for almost a decade. The real issue is that NATO, which is currently engaged in a proxy War with Russia, is facing a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ scenarioregarding its growing military involvement in Ukraine. If the US-led bloc escalates further as defeat looms, it could likely lead to direct confrontation with Russia. If it doesn’t, its proxy will collapse and leave Russia victorious, a fate once utterly unthinkable in Brussels, Washington, and London, but now becoming a nightmarish reality.

Such a defeat would be devastating and potentially terminal for the prestige and reputation of the whole NATO brand. After all, despite the Soviet Union having long ceased to exist, the bloc still markets itself asan indispensable bulwark against imagined Russian expansionism. In the event of an increasingly likelyUkrainian defeat, that ‘essential partner’ in ‘countering Russia’ will have been proven utterly impotent and largely irrelevant. More cynically, the vast US arms industry would also be denied a huge and lucrative market. So, how does a multi billion-dollar machine that has prophesied absolute victory against Russia even begin to contemplate defeat? And how do senior EU bureaucrats like Ursula Von der Leyen climb down from their quasi-religious devotion to the ‘cause’ of utterly defeating Russia, which she has shamelessly evangelized for over a year and a half? Lastly, how does the American administration, which has gone politically, morally, and economically ‘all in’ against Russia in Ukraine, contemplate what amounts to an increasingly inevitable European version of Afghanistan 2.0?

They will need to do two things: Firstly, find someone to blame for their defeat and secondly, find a new enemy to deflect public opinion onto. The ‘someone to blame’ will be quite easy to identify – the narrative will be flush with attacks on states like Hungary, China, and to some extent India, who will be accused of "undermining the unified effort needed to isolate and defeat Russia."

Blaming Ukraine itself will also be central to this narrative. Western media will insure it’s singled out as incapable of ‘taking the medicine’ proffered by NATO and therefore suffering the consequences, not listening to Western military advice, failing to utilize Western aid correctly and, of course – given that little has been done by Zelensky to tackle the endemic corruption in Ukraine – this fact will be easily weaponized against him and used to lubricate a slick narrative of ‘we tried to help them, but they simply couldn’t be saved from themselves’.

The ‘shift focus to another enemy’ narrative is the simplest and most obvious – that will be China. NATO is already trying to expand its influence in Asia, including via a planned ‘liaison office’ in Japan. The ‘China is the real threat’ narrative is bubbling steadily to the surface in Western media.

And, most worryingly, should Western powers fail to make their case for ‘plausible deniability’ around the culpability for this war, there is always the option of further escalating it. Such an escalation could rapidly lead to direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, an outcome no lucid observer on either side of the debate could or should be contemplating. The problem is, rational assessment and negotiation seem to have become so rare in Washington and Kiev that a devastating escalation could, quite remarkably, be considered an option by the deluded neocon think-tank advisers wielding disproportionate influence over an increasingly desperate political class in Washington and Brussels. In the event that NATO does indeed sanction a direct intervention into Ukraine, it will, of course, be justified as a ‘peacekeeping’ or humanitarian intervention by Polish or Romanian troops, but the categorization of the ‘mission’ will become gloriously irrelevant when the first clashes with Russian forces occur, followed by a potentially rapid spiral into all-out war between Russia and NATO.

It could be argued that the process to disassociate from Ukraine has already started, beginning with the embarrassment Zelensky faced at the recent NATO summit and progressing with the open spats between Western ‘partners’ over whether to give Ukraine ever deadlier weapons to essentially insure its self-destruction.

From here on out one thing is abundantly clear, nothing will happen by accident when it comes to the EU and NATOs interaction with the Zelensky regime. Whatever comes next may need to be spun both ways, to either pull out or to escalate. A case in point is the blame game being openly acted out around the obvious failure of Ukraine’s counter offensive, with open finger-pointing in the Western media by Ukrainian officials like theambassador to Germany, Aleksey Makeev. Kiev’s top man in Germany recently blamed the West for the bloody failure of the ill-fated project, suggesting it was solely due to European and American delays in shipping weapons and cash to Kiev. According to the ambassador, it was this Western failure that apparently allowed the Russians to build their defenses in eastern Ukraine, where tens of thousands of unfortunate Ukrainian conscripts have met their fate in the past three months.

In the real world, the counteroffensive, which has now become a slow-motion calamity, had been telegraphed to the Russians and the wider world for almost a year and will surely be recalled as one of the greatest military misadventures in history. The fact that the Ukrainian regime openly advertised its intentions, even loudly pointing out the avenue of assault and strategic goals, is conveniently ignored by the likes of Makeev. It now seems apparent that Kiev believed that its overt saber-rattling would stimulate faster and larger weapons shipments from its increasingly concerned partners – it didn’t, and by the time those very same sponsors’ patience ran out with Kiev’s lack of progress on the battlefield, it was glaringly obvious any offensiveagainst long-prepared Russian defenses was doomed to fail. Yet, because of Kiev’s PR need and demands fromWestern political elites, the counteroffensive began, wiping out entire battalions of Ukrainian troops and burning through a huge portion of the Western heavy weapons previously provided.

The situation evokes a kind of tragic romantic folly, with Ukraine desperate to woo NATO and the EU to the point of suicide, NATO and the EU playing the aloof lover; never having really considered marriage but willing to allow its admirer to throw itself onto the spears of the real object of their attention – Russia. Of course, the real concern now preoccupying the EU-NATO cabal is how to survive this tawdry affair and move on. While the hapless Jens Stoltenberg would have us believe NATO has never been stronger, the reality is far less rosy for the ‘defensive alliance’ that has bombed its way across Europe and the Middle East, and now seeks to expand to the Pacific. The reality is that the Ukraine conflict could destroy NATO. It has become something of a modern day League of Nations, adept at admonishing small fish, but utterly incapable of standing toe to toe with any peer adversary, a failed political institution, posing as a military alliance, that in reality would collapse in the face of a direct challenge from either Russia or China. Of course, it seems that NATO has also willfully fallen under the spell of its own propaganda.

The big question now is whether the bloc would in reality contemplate a direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine? Or will the Western political elites who built the scaffold the Ukrainian conflict is now blazing on choose to reverse through blame or escalate through desperation?

One thing is indisputable: The fate of NATO and its credibility as a ‘defensive alliance’ is irrevocably intertwined with the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict, yet because NATO is, in reality, a political rather than military institution, these crucial issues will never be debated openly, as the answers would be akin to a priest announcing the nonexistence of God from the pulpit.

Last edited by T28B; 12th Sep 2023 at 18:38. Reason: Wall of text not needed

12th Sep 2023, 15:03

#4915 (permalink)

fdr

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Quote:

Originally Posted by ORAC

One one thing wrong with that article - it’s garbage from start to finish - include the adaptability of the Russian armed forces, the likely hood of Ukrainian defeat and the reaction of NATO.

Looks like a standard Russian psyops piece searching for a way to get NATO to withdraw support - which isn’t going to happen.

A bit of Russian projection going on.... seems to be the season for that.

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12th Sep 2023, 15:40

#4916 (permalink)

ORAC

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If this just the donation if more IRIS-T, then it’s good.

If it’s the offer to deploy German and perhaps other allied units to provide cover, it’s a major escalation….

Quote:

https://x.com/samramani2/status/1701...HhlFHGKbTPQr_A

BREAKING: Germany proposes the creation of a "winter air defence shield" over Ukraine's critical infrastructure.

Annalena Baerbock made this statement in an interview released today following her visit to Kyiv …

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12th Sep 2023, 16:29

#4917 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by ORAC

If this just the donation if more IRIS-T, then it’s good.

If it’s the offer to deploy German and perhaps other allied units to provide cover, it’s a major escalation….

BREAKING: Germany proposes the creation of a "winter air defence shield" over Ukraine's critical infrastructure.

Annalena Baerbock made this statement in an interview released today following her visit to Kyiv …

0.000% chance.

This would require Bundestag approval, such contentious debates you couldn't imagine and there has been nothing. Listening to her speech* she did not say "winter air defence shield"" but simply Schutzschild - defensive screen/protection shield - and she spoke of building it with G7 members.. This took just a few seconds of her nine-minute speech, so really just a by-the-way remark to show she had touched on defence as well as energy, kidnapped-children, Russian war-crimes, enduring G7 support i.e. all the points that people will have been wanting to tick off. She spent more time talking about a new wind-park to be developed at Chernobyl.

Just to underline, there was no mention of ANY military system at all, just the very vague protection shield which can be anything that shoots/launches.

* I don't know if she made more than one speech, this was yesterday with no time quoted.

Last edited by Tartiflette Fan; 12th Sep 2023 at 17:06.

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12th Sep 2023, 16:29

#4918 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by James7

This pretty much sums up the situation from Chay Bowes@boweschay {Some absolute Russian propaganda tosh...}

"...strategic adaptability..."?

The Russians are still struggling to understand the concept of palletisation & the benefits it bestows to military logistics, NEARLY 100 YEARS AFTER IT BECAME COMMONPLACE IN WESTERN MILITARIES!

Honestly, give your head a wobble.

12th Sep 2023, 16:53

#4919 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by The Helpful Stacker

"...strategic adaptability..."?
The Russians are still struggling to understand the concept of palletisation & the benefits it bestows to military logistics, NEARLY 100 YEARS AFTER IT BECAME COMMONPLACE IN WESTERN MILITARIES!
Honestly, give your head a wobble.

They couldn't do it even if they wanted to. Anything as valuable and attractive as a fork lift truck or teleloader would be stolen before it got out of the depot.

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12th Sep 2023, 17:27

#4920 (permalink)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Video Mixdown

They couldn't do it even if they wanted to. Anything as valuable and attractive as a fork lift truck or teleloader would be stolen before it got out of the depot.

Anything as valuable as a pallet would disappear.

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