Noddaz said:Civilian uses include counterweights in aircraft, radiation shielding in medical radiation therapy and industrial radiography equipment, and containers for transporting radioactive materials.
And this is what they consider a dirty nuclear bomb.
Yeah, that tracks...
stroker said:I'd love to know the performance difference between DU and Tungsten penetrators...
DU is also pyrophoric, so it has secondary incendiary affects after punching through armor. Those little bits coming off as it ablates and self sharpens also self ignite.
Opti said:In reply to frenchyd :
Do you understand that they've had about 143 million people for the last 20 years and have been pretty close to that peaking at like 148 for the last 40 years? Yes they have demographic problems, like most developed countries these days, BUT you frame it as if it's something new and they've lost a huge percentage of their population, but really they are pretty much where they've been for a few decades.
You can easily look up their demographics. This war will hurt their demographics even more in the future, but it's not like they are almost out of people and it's going to have an impact on the conflict anytime s
oon.
Then something is wrong someplace. When Putin came into power he said he was going to do something about Russia's declining population. It's generally required to have 2.1 children per women to maintain population. At the time Russia was at 1.3 and after the incentive it went down to 1.1. Some years more people died from
Covid, aids and ( something else). than were born. By a lot. ( from Russian sources sources and generally believed under reported. By the West) he then installed a cash incentive for each child born and an annual cash allowance until the child was 18. I think if I remember correctly he raised it once.
Part of the reason given for invading Ukraine was to add their population back into Russia.
Then we have the estimated 1.1 million people who have left Russia since the latest draft announcement. Finally, an estimated 100,000 Russians have been killed or injured ( at least that's the number our side is reporting).
OK so let's say some of those numbers are wrong. How far wrong would they have to be for Russia's population to be growing or steady?
We have jut seen where both america and russia were comfortable losing over one million people to covid without "taking it seriously" or "playing it down". Based on this, I have to think that this war in Ukraine can go on for a looooooooooonnnngg time because war is one thing that both nations do take seriously.
So far we have very few NATO fatalities and nowhere near a million dead russians in the Ukranian war. So compared to covid, this war is just a finger splinter for NATO and russian leaders.
Economic sanctions are not going to do anything to stop putin from puting warm bodies in the field even if he can only arm them with wiffle bats. He does not really have an off-ramp, so better them than him.
The question then becomes if Ukraine can keep up their rate of attrition until russia sees some number of dead that they might consider intolerable. History has yet to find a limit to how many people russian leaders are happy to sacrifice.
What I find even more amazing is that the russian population has historically been pretty OK with any level of sacrifice asked of them.
Just give it a couple more weeks and the Russian army will be fighting the Wagner group.
NOHOME said:The question then becomes if Ukraine can keep up their rate of attrition until russia sees some number of dead that they might consider intolerable. History has yet to find a limit to how many people russian leaders are happy to sacrifice.
very quotable and sad.
I was surprised to learn that their Afghanistan withdrawal was influenced by general population dissatisfaction-- in the Soviet era, no less. They "only" lost 15,000 KIA, 35,000 wounded, but I wonder if the protracted timeline is what really wore out the Soviet ppl (which was many more ppl than just current "Russia"). If that's the case then this Ukraine thing could probably last another 5 years before there's enough discord to end it. OTOH, it's on their very border and they've always been nervous of the open plains to their west, so losing there is probably a non-negotiable, no matter the cost.
It sucks so bad that they started this disaster. They bit off more than they could chew and now it's hard to imagine any scenario where they will voluntarily go home with their tail between their legs.
Frenchy is actually correct on the population stats. Russia is long-term screwed and has been for some time now- says a lot, that their epidemics of AIDS and COVID along with over 110,000 dead are only lightly pushing the needle.
Ukraine still holds Bakhmut. It seems their goal is to keep using the city as an open wound that Russia bleeds men into until Western armor and tanks can be used to finally break the stalemate- hopefully we're also going to see F-16s going soon as well, which there's been quite a lot of talk about.
No idea on what affects Israel's attacks on Iran will do. So far the word is, that the Headquarters of the IRGC, their special base "Quds", Ammunition and UAV production center, refineries, weapons factories, and military bases in Hamadan and Keredzh have been struck by missiles and jets are scrambling now. A drone attack last night on a facility in Isfahan was supposedly a "Tremendous Success" as reported by the Jerusalem Post from Western Intelligence.
In my personal view, even a retake of Crimea or Donbass by Ukraine won't see it end- Putin's will never come to a table to accept any terms of surrender, simply because it's what his fascist Russia-centric worldview calls for.
In reply to P3PPY :
At that time, the USSR was basically spending +30% of it's total GDP on the Afghanistan war. That population dissatisfaction was also due to loss of living standards and increasingly imperialistic attitudes towards the other "republics", but I'll openly admit I don't know enough about general living standards to say more (other than living standards in Moscow mattering more than standards everywhere else).
NOHOME said:We have jut seen where both america and russia were comfortable losing over one million people to covid without "taking it seriously" or "playing it down". Based on this, I have to think that this war in Ukraine can go on for a looooooooooonnnngg time because war is one thing that both nations do take seriously.
So far we have very few NATO fatalities and nowhere near a million dead russians in the Ukranian war. So compared to covid, this war is just a finger splinter for NATO and russian leaders.
Economic sanctions are not going to do anything to stop putin from puting warm bodies in the field even if he can only arm them with wiffle bats. He does not really have an off-ramp, so better them than him.
The question then becomes if Ukraine can keep up their rate of attrition until russia sees some number of dead that they might consider intolerable. History has yet to find a limit to how many people russian leaders are happy to sacrifice.
What I find even more amazing is that the russian population has historically been pretty OK with any level of sacrifice asked of them.
Without taking it seriously?
Did we live someplace different? Business and schools shut down. Masks and test kits not for days or weeks but seemingly forever.
I still wear a mask as kids, those walking Petri dishes climb on my bus.
Look, I can see how Russia used space to isolate most of their population. They are what? 2-3 times the land and less than 50% our population.
But their loss of a million is more than twice what our loss of a million was.
I've seen those maps of population density. Here in the US the 50% of population line is way biased towards the East coast in spite of the population density along the Pacific.
Russia on the other hand, their population circle is defiantly towards Europe the whole eastern side of Russia has 3 family's and a cow, ok not many people.
Russia doesn't have to worry so much about NATO as crowded China taking a stroll due North to the "northern resource region". That' s where the oil, gold and minerals are not to mention a bazillion acres of old growth timber.
In reply to frenchyd :
Frenchy you missed the whole point. Russia has a demographic problem, I even said that in the post, you might be surprised to learn that a bunch of the developed world has a similar problem.
What I said is, yes they have a demographic problem, but it's not an immediate problem like you where saying. They aren't going to run out of people to fight and run the factories anytime soon. They have enough people to fight this war for a while.
Yes it will hurt their demographics even more, and unless they do something this is a huge problem going forward, but saying they are out of people to fight or run the factories is not correct, we are a long ways from that, and hopefully this war ends long before that happens.
I was making a point that all this Russia is out of money, the ruble is worthless, Russia is out of people, Russia has lost, this is over, Russia isn't a threat, is hyperbole and not based in reality.
An important piece from Foreign Affairs on George Kennan's assessments of Ukraine as a factor in US-Russian relations. Well worth reading, and happily it includes links to the primary source documents quoted as well.
In reply to 02Pilot :
Good read.
He did get the "Rust Belt" vs "Midwest" analogy wrong. More like the USA vs Arizona and Texas. But still the same point.
In reply to NOHOME :
Geographically, perhaps, but economically Ukraine is more akin to the Midwest (agriculture) and the Rust Belt (heavy industry).
P3PPY said:I was surprised to learn that their Afghanistan withdrawal was influenced by general population dissatisfaction-- in the Soviet era, no less. They "only" lost 15,000 KIA, 35,000 wounded, but I wonder if the protracted timeline is what really wore out the Soviet ppl (which was many more ppl than just current "Russia"). If that's the case then this Ukraine thing could probably last another 5 years before there's enough discord to end it. OTOH, it's on their very border and they've always been nervous of the open plains to their west, so losing there is probably a non-negotiable, no matter the cost.
It sucks so bad that they started this disaster. They bit off more than they could chew and now it's hard to imagine any scenario where they will voluntarily go home with their tail between their legs.
I'm less inclined to think "general dissatisfaction" had as much to do with it as the number of heroin addicts and the amount of heroin coming back from the 'Stan had more to do with it... I'm willing to bet somebody plotted a graph with the problem from the beginning of the invasion in 1979 and then looked at the projected curve into the 1990's and said, "К черту это" ("Berkeley that")
O2, that article you cited was excellent. Thank you.
I think that Kennan was worried about nuclear escalation in the event that the west tried to invade Russia. He even attributed the Soviet failure in Afghanistan to the opposite factor, to Russia overextending itself. He believed Russia to be a superpower that fed on Western encroachment, but if anything Russia's internal politics have been made weaker as time goes by and Soviet legacies die off. US and EU foreign policy did exactly what Kennan wanted - they lead by peaceful (and not highly corrupt) example. Kennan's warnings of Russian "lashing out" is exactly what Ukraine is. Only instead of NATOs encroachment threatening Russia, it was merely the economic and political independence of Ukraine. Kennan rightly believed that such "peaceful" influence would change Russian culture for the better, and it has, but Soviet ideals still exist in the Kremlin and in Putin, and until the failed legacy of the USSR is truely dead, Russia will need reminded that it is no longer a superpower.
In reply to pheller :
I dont think he meant nuclear escalation solely in the event of an invasion. I also dont think Soviet ideals are completely dead outside of the Kremlin and Putin. At the beginning of the invasion, reporting was there was large support for the invasion among the Russia populace, especially the older group. I do think the ideals are softening which is shown in polling of the younger generation but I think it will take a couple more generations (assuming nothing huge changes) for them to really dissappear.
pheller said:Soviet ideals still exist in the Kremlin and in Putin, and until the failed legacy of the USSR is truely dead, Russia will need reminded that it is no longer a superpower.
Putin's ideals are more along the lines of Imperial Russia from before the USSR. Pretty much any Soviet imagery is nostalgic for Russian strength and not any of the Bolshevik ideals.
Opti said:In reply to pheller :
I dont think he meant nuclear escalation solely in the event of an invasion. I also dont think Soviet ideals are completely dead outside of the Kremlin and Putin. At the beginning of the invasion, reporting was there was large support for the invasion among the Russia populace, especially the older group. I do think the ideals are softening which is shown in polling of the younger generation but I think it will take a couple more generations (assuming nothing huge changes) for them to really dissappear.
By "Soviet" you mean authoritarianism/ dictatorship, not communism. If the communism ideal was even close to being able to continue, the billionaire oligarchs would not exist at all. What you imply is that the russian population just likes to be told what to do, what to watch, and what to think.
And as far as I can tell, the USSR hasn't really been communist for most of the time they existed, and most certainly as the system fell apart.
alfadriver said:By "Soviet" you mean authoritarianism/ dictatorship, not communism. If the communism ideal was even close to being able to continue, the billionaire oligarchs would not exist at all. What you imply is that the russian population just likes to be told what to do, what to watch, and what to think.
And as far as I can tell, the USSR hasn't really been communist for most of the time they existed, and most certainly as the system fell apart.
Perhaps Lenin believed in the ideal concept of communism, but I really doubt any of the other Soviet leaders from Stalin onwards did. It was always about power.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
Seeing how he led, I don't think Lenin believe in what he said, other than to use it to gain power. He and Stalin murdered a lot of the more purist communists.
For the most part, I also really don't think real communism has actually ever happened. It was a "reason" to get the worker support to get power.
alfadriver said:In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
For the most part, I also really don't think real communism has actually ever happened.
"Real Communism" is kinda the end goal that requires a lot of work (and power) to acheive. A society like Star Trek isn't going to just spontaneously happen, and there are a lot of people who will fight against going in that direction.
In reply to red_stapler :
I agree. I think that Putin and the Russian leadership will use any emotional imagery or nostalgia that might be effective in order to manipulate the Russian people. There's nothing unique about that, we have excellent examples here.
In reply to alfadriver :
As you mentioned the USSR wasnt ever communist (the ideal that is, seems pretty standard application though), so I dont know why you bought it up. What I imply is that pheller mentioned essentially the old guard is dead outside of the Kremlin and Putin (unless I mistook him and he wasnt saying they where exclusive to Putin and the Kremlin), and that reporting is that there is still (or was at the beginning of the invasion) pretty broad support for the old guard among the populace, and that it will take a couple generations for it to die.
In reply to Opti :
Because you specifically laid out "Soviet ideals" which, on a public level, was communism. As pointed out every time the Soviets had any kind of a win.
They never tried to sell an authoritarian/dictatorship, even though that is what it was.
NOHOME said:We have jut seen where both america and russia were comfortable losing over one million people to covid without "taking it seriously" or "playing it down". Based on this, I have to think that this war in Ukraine can go on for a looooooooooonnnngg time because war is one thing that both nations do take seriously.
COVID has taken a large majority of its numbers from the elderly and infirm, usually with several comorbidities.
Hardly the same as losing over 100K of your (mostly) male population in their prime fighting/working age (from a total male population of all ages that is around 700K). And this isn't even counting those who are crippled or injured who will never be as productive aa they were before the war. A dead/critically injured male at 20-35 just lost 30 or more years of productivity for Mother Russia. Most of the people lost to COVID were on the downslope of giving the Motherland, or already in the valley of drawing from society.
None of this is to say their lives are expendable in my eyes, far from it, as I believe every life is precious. But in the sterile view of the economy and war machine, these are simply truths.
In reply to Opti :
Considering we are a generation or three post-Hitler and there are still those who want to follow his ideals, "a couple of generations" may be a bit optimistic. As long as there are people willing to use a distorted vision of the past in order to accumulate power in the present, the Star Trek future will stay that way.
You'll need to log in to post.
