Picking Cain's Brains

[altered]

Anyone who says “mainstream, media-backed position” as a serious response to the regulars of this forum has made a serious mistake. I’d wager that if people here aren’t sure of what to think but have the fear of saying “I don’t know,” they’d go with the goddamn contrarian position for fucking kicks. Get real, please.

Also, POFP, you have a habit of using loads of words to say nothing. It’s very, how do I put this kindly, first year philosophy student of you.

Say what you fucking say, direct and simple. Because no one has time for these walls with no paragraph breaks and no fucking point. And before you even go there, it isn’t like we don’t read text walls, it’s that yours suck.

[chaotic neutral observer]

Anyone who says “mainstream, media-backed position” as a serious response to the regulars of this forum has made a serious mistake. I’d wager that if people here aren’t sure of what to think but have the fear of saying “I don’t know,” they’d go with the goddamn contrarian position for fucking kicks. Get real, please.

I'd love for some actual discussion of the propaganda stream.

I hear a lot about Russian military casualties and destroyed materiel, and there's a lot about Ukrainian civilian casualties (and footage of blown-up apartment buildings), but there's practically nothing about Ukrainian military losses.  I understand that broadcasting information on the state of your troops isn't exactly good practice, but the lack of even casualty numbers is conspicuous to say the least.  Just how bad is it?

The videos of Ukrainians towing Russian tanks and disarming bombs are great for morale, but doesn't say much about the real situation (and I think the bomb disarming one may have been staged).

And what's up with Russia deciding to break out the hypersonic missiles?  It's nifty tech and all, but... those things have to be stupidly expensive, they probably don't have many to spare, and if they provided a path for Russia to wrap this up quickly, they'd have done so long ago.  Is this just Putinesque dick-waving?

[altered]

Serbia is theoretically neutral but practically somewhat Russia-aligned, so some Serbian people I know have been giving me information there.

Estimated Ukrainian military losses are pretty small, actually. Their materiel isn't being captured. They lose troops mostly to shelling, and Russia is sort of just shelling at random, they don't have good intelligence on potential strongpoints (which is why doofuses posting their location on social media and Russia bombing the fuck out of them is such a common theme right now, it's literally the best intel Russia can get).

And while Ukraine's economy is hurting on small arms, they have two refurb programs ongoing for updating captured mounted machine guns into practical man-portable shoulder-fired units, they have taken a page out of the Kurdish resistance book and begun putting together cheap anti-materiel rifles to match them, and they have at least Germany providing SUBSTANTIAL arms assistance, including the PzF3s they donated most recently (which even the latest Russian tanks should be total kills with).

One problem I see continuing to come up with Russia's approach is that they have no combined arms doctrine worth mentioning. Their tanks are in all-armor units, making them easy kills for sneaky mechanized infantry. Their infantry are not well-organized either, it seems.

I can't speak to the hypersonic missiles with confidence, Cain might be able to. I can say there are two LIKELY scenarios:
1: Putin waving his dick.
2: Pattern of escalation. "We don't want to do this but you give us no choice." The T-14s rolling out en masse to get totally fucking crushed by Ukrainian anti-armor units should be next if that's the case, and after that we might be in danger territory for actual nukes -- probably tactical payloads on theater ballistic missiles to start with. I think Russia would deploy any potential "Wunderwaffen" they have before that point. It's a really WW2 playbook Putin's using as a general rule, so I am not ruling out Russia having some under-baked top mega secret weapons programs they think they can deploy before the big guns come out.

[Doktor Howl]

Serbia is theoretically neutral but practically somewhat Russia-aligned, so some Serbian people I know have been giving me information there.

Estimated Ukrainian military losses are pretty small, actually. Their materiel isn't being captured. They lose troops mostly to shelling, and Russia is sort of just shelling at random, they don't have good intelligence on potential strongpoints (which is why doofuses posting their location on social media and Russia bombing the fuck out of them is such a common theme right now, it's literally the best intel Russia can get).

And while Ukraine's economy is hurting on small arms, they have two refurb programs ongoing for updating captured mounted machine guns into practical man-portable shoulder-fired units, they have taken a page out of the Kurdish resistance book and begun putting together cheap anti-materiel rifles to match them, and they have at least Germany providing SUBSTANTIAL arms assistance, including the PzF3s they donated most recently (which even the latest Russian tanks should be total kills with).

One problem I see continuing to come up with Russia's approach is that they have no combined arms doctrine worth mentioning. Their tanks are in all-armor units, making them easy kills for sneaky mechanized infantry. Their infantry are not well-organized either, it seems.

I can't speak to the hypersonic missiles with confidence, Cain might be able to. I can say there are two LIKELY scenarios:
1: Putin waving his dick.
2: Pattern of escalation. "We don't want to do this but you give us no choice." The T-14s rolling out en masse to get totally fucking crushed by Ukrainian anti-armor units should be next if that's the case, and after that we might be in danger territory for actual nukes -- probably tactical payloads on theater ballistic missiles to start with. I think Russia would deploy any potential "Wunderwaffen" they have before that point. It's a really WW2 playbook Putin's using as a general rule, so I am not ruling out Russia having some under-baked top mega secret weapons programs they think they can deploy before the big guns come out.

It's worth mentioning that the latest Russian tanks are less survivable than the older ones.  The T90 is a piece of shit that is useful only as a crematorium coffin.

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BUT IT GOES FAST. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ARMOR IS ALL ABOUT SPEED. SURVIVABILITY IS FOR MECHANIZED INFANTRY!

[altered]

Also, cause I just got what you were trying to say: I was mostly talking about their T-14.

The PzF3 is, IIRC, close to penetrating the theoretical maximum for practical ERA, so even if the Armata's goofy Malachit ERA performs 1000% efficiently it's probably a tactical kill at the bare minimum. But I think it's a total kill: the interior armored capsule won't protect the crew because of edge effect, based on leaked schematics, so if you get past the ERA its all toast. And the turret's unmanned... so they stow all the ammunition in it. So if you blow open the crew capsule you probably detonate the magazine. Goodbye tank, seeya later.

[Cain]

Anyone who says “mainstream, media-backed position” as a serious response to the regulars of this forum has made a serious mistake. I’d wager that if people here aren’t sure of what to think but have the fear of saying “I don’t know,” they’d go with the goddamn contrarian position for fucking kicks. Get real, please.

I'd love for some actual discussion of the propaganda stream.

I hear a lot about Russian military casualties and destroyed materiel, and there's a lot about Ukrainian civilian casualties (and footage of blown-up apartment buildings), but there's practically nothing about Ukrainian military losses.  I understand that broadcasting information on the state of your troops isn't exactly good practice, but the lack of even casualty numbers is conspicuous to say the least.  Just how bad is it?

The videos of Ukrainians towing Russian tanks and disarming bombs are great for morale, but doesn't say much about the real situation (and I think the bomb disarming one may have been staged).

And what's up with Russia deciding to break out the hypersonic missiles?  It's nifty tech and all, but... those things have to be stupidly expensive, they probably don't have many to spare, and if they provided a path for Russia to wrap this up quickly, they'd have done so long ago.  Is this just Putinesque dick-waving?

Honestly? The casualty numbers look worse for the Russians right now, though of course any hard data is tricky. Estimates put Ukrainian military casualties between 2000 and 4000 at the moment. I assume this excludes paramilitary groups like Azov, because no-one cares about them.

At the same time, Russian military casualties are estimated to be between 4000-10,000. Komsomolskaya Pravda, a pro-Putin outlet, reported a casualty number of 9,861 from Russian MoD sources, but quickly scrubbed it from the internet.

What we can say with some certainty is that Russian tactical intelligence sucks on the ground, while Ukrainian intelligence seems very much on the ball. Five different Russian generals have been killed by the Ukrainians since the start of the conflict, some with service records going back to the Chechen conflicts. That's not sheer luck, I can assure you.

As for the hypersonic missiles, while a psychological shock factor certainly can't be ruled out, the Pentagon believe it's because Putin is running low on precision-guided weaponry. Ukranian air defence has denied Russia the air superiority it needs to turn this campaign around, and so this could be a case of throwing everything that has a chance of getting through at them, and hoping it's enough to put a dent in their defences to allow that.

[Doktor Howl]

BUT IT GOES FAST. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ARMOR IS ALL ABOUT SPEED. SURVIVABILITY IS FOR MECHANIZED INFANTRY!

But it doesn't go fast.  They're still using ancient diesels.

[altered]

The T-90 has a turbine-powered variant (which is actually the original variant, and not the modernized "upgrade") that is indeed pretty nimble. By, you know, Cold War standards. Its not very powerful as tank turbine engines go, as I recall, so they did that by having absolutely garbage conventional armor and relying entirely on ERA. So vulnerable to mines, any decently heavyweight KE projectile, thermal (i.e. not learning your lessons, they should have known better from the Continuation War) and basically made out of tissue paper and hope once the ERA blows.

The joke is that the armchair tactician types have been saying for years that the speed of the T-90s makes them a serious threat to NATO armor. To which I have only question marks. I thought we learned that lesson in WW2, but apparently...

[Doktor Howl]

The joke is that the armchair tactician types have been saying for years that the speed of the T-90s makes them a serious threat to NATO armor. To which I have only question marks. I thought we learned that lesson in WW2, but apparently...

Bugs hit my window at high speed.  One day, one of them will stop me.

[Bruno]

Hey, Cain. How much of an issue do you think the food/grain/fertilizer/etc shortages are going to be?

[Cain]

Hey, Cain. How much of an issue do you think the food/grain/fertilizer/etc shortages are going to be?

In combination with a lot of other factors, it's not pretty. Uptake from Canada, Australia and China is helping offset a significant loss from the Ukrainian and Russian markets but it only goes so far and China in particular will likely be struggling due to harvest conditions there. I'd say further price rises are all but inevitable at this point.

[Bruno]

Hey, Cain. How much of an issue do you think the food/grain/fertilizer/etc shortages are going to be?

In combination with a lot of other factors, it's not pretty. Uptake from Canada, Australia and China is helping offset a significant loss from the Ukrainian and Russian markets but it only goes so far and China in particular will likely be struggling due to harvest conditions there. I'd say further price rises are all but inevitable at this point.

Are we looking at a situation where millions of impoverished people die of starvation? That bad?

[Cain]

Hey, Cain. How much of an issue do you think the food/grain/fertilizer/etc shortages are going to be?

In combination with a lot of other factors, it's not pretty. Uptake from Canada, Australia and China is helping offset a significant loss from the Ukrainian and Russian markets but it only goes so far and China in particular will likely be struggling due to harvest conditions there. I'd say further price rises are all but inevitable at this point.

Are we looking at a situation where millions of impoverished people die of starvation? That bad?

Potentially. Any price instability when people are on thin margins is always going to carry that risk, and this disruption is significant (low double digits of global trade, but that's still a big plurality given we're talking about...well, global trade).

The countries I would worry about most are Afghanistan, which is already suffering a starvation crisis partially created by the freezing of assets by the US State Department, Ethiopia and Yemen. All three rely primarily on a mix of Russian and Ukrainian exports and are also suffering from ongoing fighting, and so are extremely exposed to this kind of thing. To a lesser extent Egypt, Syria and Iran are also heavily affected and there may be increased domestic instability as a result of this

[POFP]

Okay, I'm thoroughly caught up on it all, including the context of the decades of Russian State propaganda I was not yet aware of and certainly didn't understand in modern contexts around the Ukraine conflict. The brainrot I was spouting before, while primarily just irrelevant outside of the context of the Russian Propaganda, was highly offensive in the worst cases, and highly insensitive in the best cases, specifically when the Russian Propaganda is taken into account.

I'm sorry for being such a dumbass.

And also an asshole.

I've also been trying my best, for a couple months, to battle that same kind of brainrot wherever I see it online.