Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Malthus]

I don't think tankies really have a coherent ideology beyond "America bad".

Imperialism, colonialism, racism, Nazism. These are all things America does, so anything against America is by definition anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-Nazism etc etc. All traditional tankie tenets.

What is more interesting to me is now there are right-wingers joining the tankie crowd, because America, as it currently exists, is bad, but for different reasons (liberalism, feminism, homosexualism etc etc).

I am less puzzled by the right-wingers getting turned on by Russia. Both the nominal propaganda of the country and the actual realities of how it is run match what they want to see.

The weird part is that both groups see things to love in Putinism.

[The Minsky Moment]

The weird part is that both groups see things to love in Putinism.

The other interesting thing is that Putin and Putinist Russia seems to have far more Western fanboys than Xi and the PRC, even though the performance of China in every domain of national achievement well exceeds Russia since 1989.  Gee I wonder why.

[KRonn]

I don't know if this has been posted in this forum yet, but I've read a couple of news stories wondering how many missiles Russia has left given how they have used so many. The crux of the stories were that some parts for certain Russian missiles are made in Ukraine. 

[The Larch]

Russophobia is apparently barring Russian influencers from buying Chanel handbags. 

Russian influencers destroy Chanel bags to protest compliance with European Union's sanction

As luxury brand Chanel cuts off sale to Russia, Russian social media influencers are cutting up the brand – literally taking scissors to their handbags.

Chanel closed its stores in Russia in March to comply with European Union sanctions that ban the sale to Russia of luxury goods priced at more than $327. Chanel's handbags often go for thousands.

Russian influencers and socialites who claim this is an act of Russianphobia are boycotting the brand and posting videos to Instagram ruining their Chanel bags.

Russian TV host and actor Marina Ermoshkina told USA TODAY that she was the first one to start the challenge for Russian influencers to cut up their Chanel handbags.

"To make Russian women, who are trying to make a purchase in their store outside territory of former Soviet Union, sign a humiliating document, that they have nothing to do with Russia, and to insist that they prove that, as well as get them to promise they will never wear this items on Russian territory in my view is a total contradiction to the modern world's values," Ermoshkina wrote in a statement to USA TODAY.

Ermoshkina has 300,000 followers on Instagram. She uploaded a video to her social channels on Wednesday where she is destroying a Chanel handbag with garden shears.

Other influencers started to join Ermoshkina. Russian model Victoria Bonya showed her 9.3 million followers on Instagram how she cut her Chanel bag to pieces.

"If Chanel House does not respect its clients, why do we have to respect Chanel House?" Bonya says in her video.

She caption her video with the hashtag "bye bye CHANEL"

DJ Katya Guseva joined when she destroyed her Chanel with scissors. She posted the video Tuesday, followed by a statement where she reprimands the brand.

"I am against Russophobia, I am against the brand, which supports Russophobia and discrimination against women based on nationality. We Russian girls are beautiful whether we have a Chanel bag or not," she wrote.

Many government, sports and other agencies from across the world have implemented bans or sanctions on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly approved a U.S.-initiated resolution to suspend Russia from the world organization's Human Rights Council.

[KRonn]

Oh man, I guess I'll have to find another place to get my fashion accessories.   

[grumbler]

Chanel must be delighted; those are a lot of future sales being created.

[DGuller]

I have a military technology question for all those who served, especially in artillery:  how can artillery, with proper spotting, be so accurate?  My understanding is that even a 100 years ago, you could zero in an artillery to hit a pretty small spot, if you just observe where the shots land and do the necessary corrections. 

What I find difficult to fathom is how you control for so many random variables?  It seems to me that your artillery rounds have to be exactly the same, the aiming system has to have exactly zero slack in it and not be thrown off by the violence of shell firing, the platform on which the artillery sits has to be perfectly solid and incompressible, the barrel has to stay exactly the same despite the heat and explosive forces of the rounds being fired, and so on.  When you're firing from many miles away, being off even by just a tiny bit on any of those things would count for a lot, I would think. 

Am I missing something that makes those factors not that important?  Or are the people working in artillery units so trained that all these sources of variance are eliminated with precision unimaginable to lay people?

[Jacob]

I would guess that there are enough sensors, stabilizing systems, and computational power that anything thrown out of alignment from firing is tracked, adjusted, and reset without any need for human input.

[Syt]

I have a military technology question for all those who served, especially in artillery:  how can artillery, with proper spotting, be so accurate?  My understanding is that even a 100 years ago, you could zero in an artillery to hit a pretty small spot, if you just observe where the shots land and do the necessary corrections. 

What I find difficult to fathom is how you control for so many random variables?  It seems to me that your artillery rounds have to be exactly the same, the aiming system has to have exactly zero slack in it and not be thrown off by the violence of shell firing, the platform on which the artillery sits has to be perfectly solid and incompressible, the barrel has to stay exactly the same despite the heat and explosive forces of the rounds being fired, and so on.  When you're firing from many miles away, being off even by just a tiny bit on any of those things would count for a lot, I would think. 

Am I missing something that makes those factors not that important?  Or are the people working in artillery units so trained that all these sources of variance are eliminated with precision unimaginable to lay people?

It's been a while, but it's multiple factors:
1. Knowing how to aim (i.e. factor in wind etc.). Includes mechanical tools as Jacob mentions.
2. Having forward observers or otherwise eyes on the target to provide feedback and adjust aim if necessary.
3. Any clips you see online will be curated. If you see videos of a number of rounds hitting their target, there's a chance any target finding shots may have been edited out. On that topic Nicholas Moran had a good video: https://youtu.be/W9pVEP0AzZ4

[Sheilbh]

Excellent by VDL to visit Ukraine - especially moving scenes in Bucha

Edit: Striking to see they're still clearly in the House of Chimeras/presidential complex.

[celedhring]

So, a friend of mine says he's seen an ad from the government of Ukraine in his local mall 

This campaign:

https://brave.ua/en.html

[Jacob]

Ursula von der Leyen visited Kyiv today, and apparently brought the application paperwork for Ukrainian membership of the EU. She also said that the processing time of a potential application is like to be in the order of weeks not years, is is otherwise typical.

[Jacob]

Oh, remember how Elon Musk was so nice and generous sending all that Starlink technology to help Ukraine. Turns out, the US gov't paid a substantial amount of the cost for that:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/

[grumbler]

I have a military technology question for all those who served, especially in artillery:  how can artillery, with proper spotting, be so accurate?  My understanding is that even a 100 years ago, you could zero in an artillery to hit a pretty small spot, if you just observe where the shots land and do the necessary corrections. 

What I find difficult to fathom is how you control for so many random variables?  It seems to me that your artillery rounds have to be exactly the same, the aiming system has to have exactly zero slack in it and not be thrown off by the violence of shell firing, the platform on which the artillery sits has to be perfectly solid and incompressible, the barrel has to stay exactly the same despite the heat and explosive forces of the rounds being fired, and so on.  When you're firing from many miles away, being off even by just a tiny bit on any of those things would count for a lot, I would think. 

Am I missing something that makes those factors not that important?  Or are the people working in artillery units so trained that all these sources of variance are eliminated with precision unimaginable to lay people?

The short answer is that artillery isn't all that accurate, but doesn't need to be.  It just needs to be accurate enough to drop a sufficient quantity of shells within the burst radius to the target.

In the olden days before radar, CEP radius was generally considered to be an irreducible 2% of range (that is to say, that was the best that could be done) for heavy naval artillery. They knew shell weight, breech temperature, surface wind speed and direction, humidity, and barometric pressure and could account for those.  They couldn't account for significant differences in quality of powder or shell, atmospherics aloft (remember, these shells go a long way up:  at 45 degree firing angle, I think the ordinate is 30% of range, so about 12,000 meters for a 40,000 meter shot), barrel wear, etc. 

Nowadays there's a lot more info about atmospherics aloft and larger guns have radars that measure the MV of each departing shell, so the gun internal effects can all be calculated.  There's still a lot of variability in things like winds and air pressure, so there's still some variations that can't be excluded.

With an observer, artillery still is "walked onto" the target.  First-shot hits are rare (but not as rare as they used to be).

Hope this helps.

[The Minsky Moment]

The Russians have it easy as children's hospitals tend to be big sprawling targets.  Don't have to be that accurate to get hits in.