Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

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SpellowHouse said:
Our armed forces have been run in to the ground by successive governments. You would expect that from a Labour government, perhaps, but the same is true of the Conservatives. They come up with all sorts of BS about spending 2% but we all know that they use "inventive" accounting to achieve that figure. The UK government includes war pensions and sickness, and things like that to make the % seem bigger than it really is.
The politicians are being typically short sighted idiots, risking the very freedom of the country itself. They deserve to be held account. We should see a lot more politicians in court being charged with deception or incompetence because, lets face it, everything they get involved with they make a mess of.
I mean UKraine wanting aircraft is almost hilarious. Hasn't anyone told them we don't have any? Jees. We even have an aircraft carrier that we had to rent to America because it has no planes!
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Sadly it goes beyond that.
The money we do have is wasted and squandered on highly inefficient and horrendously managed procurement projects that continually fail to deliver on time, on budget or to specification... How these defense companies dont get held to account for failures is so beyond me. I can think of a couple of Large defense manufacturers who should be banned from tendering for any future procurement projects. I mean its not all on the Defense industry the MOD are just as bad for continually moving goalposts.
We also do not get value for money on the majority of civilian contracts that are there to support our daily running, Feeding, Facility Managment services and military housing crisis being the most prominent ones at the moment.
That is before we even get to the level of waste in both equipment, manpower and time from inefficiencies, old out of date practices within the system.

As for Jets to Ukraine, we could spare a token number if it were to prompt a shift in thinking about supplying air power to Ukraine, just like we did with CR2. However its only really a valuable contribution if other countries follow suit. Nobody else seems to want to go first. Feels like its always UK taking the first risk.
 
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We should just give our older Eurofighters to Poland, but then that doesn't really entice anyone to give other jets other than MIGs to Ukraine so something has to give.
 
The body count on both sides is pretty horrific.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, estimated in early December that as many as 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the war began. In early November, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, estimated that both sides had seen about 100,000 soldiers killed or injured. More recently, on Sunday, Norwegian Chief of Defense Eirik Kristoffersen also estimated the Ukrainian side to have over 100,000 personnel killed or injured. (Updated Jan. 25; source, source.)

From the early days of the war, casualty counts for Russian soldiers have varied widely — depending on the source. Ukraine raised its estimate of Russian soldiers killed in the conflict to more than 134,000 on Wednesday. These numbers have been updated frequently through the Facebook page for the country’s General Staff of the Armed Forces. In its first update on casualties since March, Russia claimed in late September that there had been 5,937 Russian military deaths. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in April that there had been “significant losses of troops, and it’s a huge tragedy for us.”

A report by Meduza, an independent Russian media outlet, and the Russian branch of the BBC confirmed at least 10,000 dead Russian soldiers as of Dec. 9.

Russia has also suffered a high rate of casualties among senior officers. Thirteen Russian generals have been killed, according to Ukrainian authorities; the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency puts the figure at eight to 10. Grid’s Tom Nagorski and Keating previously reported on the possible explanations for this “inconceivable” toll: poor communications and command-and-control structures within the Russian military. (Updated Feb. 8; source.)
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(Source).

I doubt Europe has seen casualties on this scale since WWII.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
If you give MiGs to Ukraine, they can fly them next week. If you give them something else, they’ll be ready to take them into battle by the summer.
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I'm not so sure that your statement is valid.

When a commercial Airline Pilot trains on a new version of an aircraft (Type Rating they call it) it typically takes around 1 month.

And that is for a commercial airliner which arguably has a much greater "weight of responsibility" on the Pilot(s).
 
Sankari said:
What's really needed is an alternative to Starlink. No country should find itself in a situation where national security hinges upon access to a single privately owned telecommunications service.
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Last thing we need is another 1000 satellites orbiting around - US gov should just pay Elon what they're worth and take them off his hands..
 
Devilman said:
I'm not so sure that your statement is valid.

When a commercial Airline Pilot trains on a new version of an aircraft (Type Rating they call it) it typically takes around 1 month.

And that is for a commercial airliner which arguably has a much greater "weight of responsibility" on the Pilot(s).
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That‘s mostly learning the control layout and various landing/takeoff/emergency procedures on modern airliners with very similar flight characteristics.

Moving from 3rd generation Soviet fighters to 4th generation Western is basically re-learning how to fly. Think going from the Ford Cosworth era of F1A to the current turbo hybrid era cars.
 
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Sankari said:

Yikes.

:eek:
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Thats gotta be pretty freakin annoying! Keep it down out there! I'm on the nightshift!!!!!!
I've dealth with short intense periods of IDF/explosions but never anything sustained like that. I can imagine any lulls in the firing would be just as bad with the stress of anticipation of it starting back up again.
 
Devilman said:
I'm not so sure that your statement is valid.

When a commercial Airline Pilot trains on a new version of an aircraft (Type Rating they call it) it typically takes around 1 month.

And that is for a commercial airliner which arguably has a much greater "weight of responsibility" on the Pilot(s).
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Airliners are in the end just buses that fly. They fly in fairly straight lines between one point and another. Fighter jets are a completely different ball game with multiple systems airline pilots never have to worry about. That is even before you take into account the immense pressure fighter pilots are under dealing with multiple threats while trying to achieve their actual objective. To work under extreme pressure your actions need to be second nature. Yeah I'm sure Ukrainian pilots could be taught to fly and land NATO aircraft fairly quickly but to fly them in actual combat is a different ball game.
 
bingham67 said:
Musk is from South Africa who seem neutral and supportive to Russia maybe this is why he changed some back handed politics?
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Sadly I'm not sure its anything quite as interesting as that.
He's just so far down the rabbit hole now that he has lost perspective. I think its also partly business. I suspect that if the US Gov picked up the full bill with some sort of contract put in place, he would be a lot less fussed with how its used. I guess there is the legal side of things as well. Is he maybe fearful of this being flipped on him years down the road?

I struggle to read/understand his decision making anymore. He is so unpredictable these days. It is just sad that someone I used to respect for what he was doing at SpaceX and Tesla etc has fallen down this path.
 
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Brutal biff said:
I was listening to the radio at work on some chat show dunno what program it was wasnt my radio it was a plasterers let's say uk does get directly involved in a war with Russia they were saying we wouldn't last a week due to the lack of equipment and ammo we have in stock
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This is quite true, from the equipment/ammo POV (both we and France ran dangerously low during Libya and in some cases had to be resupplied by the USA) however as Ukraine have managed to maintain control of most of their skies the Russian air force would be no match for the combined forces of the UAF and the RAF. Having said that the UAF/RAF wouldn't be enough to push into occupied territory either so the aerial stalemate would continue. The big danger though would be that if we went in to help Ukraine we would be making ourselves a legitimate/legal target for Russian counterattack with no NATO backup (this is the only reason Poland aren't in Ukraine stomping Russia right now).

Uther said:
It wouldn't be the UK against Russia though. It would be NATO against Russia...
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Technically speaking that is incorrect in the scenario of the UK going to help Ukraine fight Russia, NATO members cannot invoke article 5 in response to an attack resulting from their own offensive action. This is why everyone held their breath a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian plane in Syria, because Russia could have hit them in response with no fear of NATO reprisal. In retrospect it's quite funny that everyone was so worried at the time as we all know now that Russia would have been no match for Turkey even sans NATO assistance xD

On a related point though, it's worth mentioning that NATO A5 is a requirement for assistance, it's up to each nation what assistance they provide. I.E if Russia had smashed Ukraine as they expected to, and then decided to march into Estonia and Estonia invoked A5, the USA might have sent everything they had or they might have sent Estonia a shipment of Bradleys. A5 was specifically set up that way because the USA wanted to make sure they were under no actual obligation to get involved in a European war if they did not want to.
 
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bingham67 said:
Musk is from South Africa who seem neutral and supportive to Russia maybe this is why he changed some back handed politics?
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Musk is a white South African who moved to Canada after it became clear that Apartheid was destined to fall, the Apartheid government were always pro-west during the cold war.

To be clear I'm not saying Musk is pro-Apartheid, just that the South Africa he grew up in was anti-Russian and so South Africa's current neutral to supportive stance of Russia will have zero baring/influence on his decisions.


Sankari said:
Blood for the blood god.
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Skulls for the skull throne.
 
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