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

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I watched a video on YouTube recently of a cruise ship turning around mid ocean to take a look at a life raft they'd spotted. Just watching that made me realise how difficult it is to see anything small like that at sea even with the high visibility markings on it.

No wonder these small drones are able to go unnoticed for so long.

Indeed its why the Navy protocol for a man over is to have multiple eyes looking and if spotted so many have the sole responsibility to try to keep eyes on.

Now imagine the drone is black and its night.
Even if noisy the noise is often difficult to pin point.

 

[Werewolf]

Also US ships don't sail alone as seems to be common for Russian ships. They sail in combined groups, which makes picking one off much harder for the enemy and much easier to defend. When Russia lost its flagship Moskva, she was sitting off the Ukranian coast all alone and it took hours for backup to arrive. The US strategy is one learned in WW2, where German subs would find it easy to destroy lone ships in the middle of nowhere but when ships grouped up and defended eachother, the Germans found it much harder to attack and 75% of German submarine crews ended up dying for it

Yup

Basically if it's a ship on it's own it's only got the resources on board (including the crew) to deal with everything at once, including full 360 watch and cover which is incredibly hard, especially over a longer period of time as you can't have the crew resting as normal or doing a lot of maintenance without your ability to protect yourself affected.
A group of ships working together have far more redundancy and duplication in their protective abilities as they'll be able to have overlapping watches of the same area and overlapping coverage for their protective weapon systems so something like a torpedo or a small boat lying low in the water that might be missed (both by the watch and weapons) of one boat is far more likely to be seen and be able to be engaged by another.

You also have the ability to have ships designed specifically to excel in one role such as anti sub/anti air protecting the larger ones that might have some capacity for that, but are really meant to be doing something else.

I can quite see the likes of the current ships that are used as part of the missile defence role getting new equipment or updates to improve their ability to deal with smaller targets as they're already designed to spot small, hard to detect fast moving objects such as see skimming missiles, so potentially additional fast firing small calibre weapons could be the cheap and effective way to deal with a lot of the drones rather than relying on large anti missile/anti air weapons (which you run out of fast).
I can think of a a few ways that potentially something like a frigate could possibly improve it's ability to detect incoming drones involving taking ideas from WW1 and 2 and updating them with modern tech, and do so without making the ship itself an easier target for anti radar missiles.

 

[bingham67]

The ship that was blown up was made in Gdansk, Poland.

 

[Roar87]

No , the easy answer is to make sure Trump is in prison and barred from politics due to being a treasonous insurrectionist.

I mean I wouldn't recommend that course of action in a country so well armed, but Democrats aren't exactly bright.

 

[CaneyJ]

The ship was named after this guy

Tsezar Kunikov - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Note the date of his death.

Happy Valentines Putin.

 

[Freddie1980]

Ha ha, nice OFAH reference:

 

[delta0]

Interesting update on Russian oil and tankers

 

[Sankari]

Russians taking absolutely savage Ls on Twitterx right now.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1757529886921478269

 

[delta0]

Indeed. Maybe it is time for change, I just don’t think Trump and the Trump-ets fully understand what that actually means for the United States.

Sounds like Europe is already starting to consider what needs to be done to do things without support of the US. https://www.euractiv.com/section/de...be-used-to-boost-europes-defence-experts-say/

 

[Roar87]

Maybe Germany and France could start by meeting their commitment to NATO defence spending, which is what Trump has asked them to do, and what they themselves ought to be doing anyway. For a country the size of Germany with their economy to have a smaller Army than the UK, an island nation with a smaller population, is an insult to the members of the alliance like the US and Poland who are meeting their agreed defence spending.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Maybe Germany and France could start by meeting their commitment to NATO defence spending, which is what Trump has asked them to do, and what they themselves ought to be doing anyway. For a country the size of Germany with their economy to have a smaller Army than the UK, an island nation with a small population, is an insult to the members of the alliance like the US and Poland who are meeting their agreed defence spending.

Their armed forces are larger than the UK so its not exactly a slam dunk.
Their actual expenditure is higher than ours despite being a lower %. God knows how the UK has managed to cripple our economy so badly the last 7-8 years or so

It wasn't up to Trump, but anyway it was already agreed. He just asked them to do something they already were working towards.

Germany vs United Kingdom | Comparison military strength

German and British armed forces comparison. Here you can graphically compare chosen parameters

armedforces.eu

Funny thing is go back a few years and certain demographics would have been frothing over their newspaper if the Germans were spending almost twice as much as the UK on their military, but suddenly when Trump mentioned it the position changed.

 

[Werewolf]

I watched a video on YouTube recently of a cruise ship turning around mid ocean to take a look at a life raft they'd spotted. Just watching that made me realise how difficult it is to see anything small like that at sea even with the high visibility markings on it.

No wonder these small drones are able to go unnoticed for so long.

I was reading something a while back that made the point that IIRC most of the better/regulation modern life rafts actually have to have a mylar foil sewn or glued in places to give them a radar signature that radar has a better chance of picking up, apparently early ones and some of the cheaper ones that don't meet proper modern standards don't, meaning there is effectively no radar signature as the materials they are otherwise made off don't give anything for the signal to bounce off.

 

[Sankari]

We interrupt this program to bring you a special message from notable foreign policy expert George Galloway, who posted the following zinger 2 years ago.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1757671140351180931

 

[bingham67]

War-weary Ukrainians endure as Russia's invasion drags on

Two years into Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukrainians carry deep wounds from the fight.

www.bbc.co.uk

Tragic waste of life for one evil man goals

 

[Mr Badger]

Their armed forces are larger than the UK so its not exactly a slam dunk.
Their actual expenditure is higher than ours despite being a lower %. God knows how the UK has managed to cripple our economy so badly the last 7-8 years or so

It wasn't up to Trump, but anyway it was already agreed. He just asked them to do something they already were working towards.

Germany vs United Kingdom | Comparison military strength

German and British armed forces comparison. Here you can graphically compare chosen parameters

armedforces.eu

Funny thing is go back a few years and certain demographics would have been frothing over their newspaper if the Germans were spending almost twice as much as the UK on their military, but suddenly when Trump mentioned it the position changed.

Some people literally demanded Brexit because they didn't want UK armed forces to be in any way committed to acting as part of a possible combined European defence union. "No EU Army!" etc. I wonder what threat European nations would most likely want such a coordinated force to defend against?

 

[Roar87]

Their armed forces are larger than the UK so its not exactly a slam dunk.

???
The UK Armed Forces consists of just the Army, Airforce and Navy.

Germany is including all of the following into their numbers:
German Army
German Navy
German Air Force
Joint Support Service
Joint Medical Service
Cyber and Information Domain Service

Where as we don't include GCGQ, etc in ours. They're a much larger country, their Army is only 62,800, ours is 76,000. Part of our budget as well is dedicated to maintaining our nuclear weapons, Germany doesn't even have that expenditure yet still manages to have a smaller Army than us.

Their actual expenditure is higher than ours despite being a lower %. God knows how the UK has managed to cripple our economy so badly the last 7-8 years or so

Fantastic and completely irrelavant, the target is 2% of their GDP. Not "more than the UK".

It wasn't up to Trump, but anyway it was already agreed. He just asked them to do something they already were working towards.

Well, when they meet the target, at their own leisure of course, perhaps Trump will agree that to send the exceptionally well funded US military to their aid in the event of an attack.

Germany vs United Kingdom | Comparison military strength

German and British armed forces comparison. Here you can graphically compare chosen parameters

armedforces.eu

Funny thing is go back a few years and certain demographics would have been frothing over their newspaper if the Germans were spending almost twice as much as the UK on their military, but suddenly when Trump mentioned it the position changed.

Are these winky faces supposed to mean something? At no point in the past 20 years has anyone taken an issue with Germany meeting it's NATO contributions rather than letting other countries effectively subsidise them, while they buy lots of cheap Russian oil indirectly funding this war we're now all paying for.

 

[Bug One]

Some people literally demanded Brexit because they didn't want UK armed forces to be in any way committed to acting as part of a possible combined European defence union. "No EU Army!" etc. I wonder what threat European nations would most likely want such a coordinated force to defend against?

I know Brexit pain seems to run deep into some people's psyche. But I think you're misunderstanding the difference between not wanting to head down a path where UK forces operate under the direct command of an EU superstate, and working in combined operations with our NATO allies as we do now.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Some people literally demanded Brexit because they didn't want UK armed forces to be in any way committed to acting as part of a possible combined European defence union. "No EU Army!" etc. I wonder what threat European nations would most likely want such a coordinated force to defend against?

Indeed. But you got the usual drivel about EUSSR as opposed to a force somewhat like the way NATO operates which was far more logical.

Edit, see above.

 

[XPE]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1757771471139618830

I was wondering what happened to them, this isn't something that's been siting in a warehouse for decades I suspect armies with M270s will be keeping a close eye on the results.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

???
The UK Armed Forces consists of just the Army, Airforce and Navy.

Germany is including all of the following into their numbers:
German Army
German Navy
German Air Force
Joint Support Service
Joint Medical Service
Cyber and Information Domain Service

Where as we don't include GCGQ, etc in ours. They're a much larger country, their Army is only 62,800, ours is 76,000. Part of our budget as well is dedicated to maintaining our nuclear weapons, Germany doesn't even have that expenditure yet still manages to have a smaller Army than us.



Fantastic and completely irrelavant, the target is 2% of their GDP. Not "more than the UK".



Well, when they meet the target, at their own leisure of course, perhaps Trump will agree that to send the exceptionally well funded US military to their aid in the event of an attack.



Are these winky faces supposed to mean something? At no point in the past 20 years has anyone taken an issue with Germany meeting it's NATO contributions rather than letting other countries effectively subsidise them, while they buy lots of cheap Russian oil indirectly funding this war we're now all paying for.

Precisely, the numbers do not equate.
You seem very certain in regards GCHQ when I have not seen a clear number listed, everyone, including MPs struggle to understand precisely whats included and not. At any level than high level categories.
Eg https://www.sipri.org/commentary/to...-military-expenditure-estimate-united-kingdom

The point of NATO is to build on each others strengths not to replicate the same structure across all nations.

Its funny I know loads of people who have stated that Germany shouldnt even be allowed a military after starting two world wars.
Typically older people who saw (like my grandparents) or indirectly saw the consequences of the war (WW2) however, (eg many at my local C&UP club.)