Humor Random Comments Thread

[Notebook]

RAF Lossiemouth jets scrambled to Russian aircraft

The RAF said the military aircraft did not enter UK airspace during the "quick reaction alert" incident.

www.bbc.co.uk

This happens often enough not to be news, but usually only in pairs. Can't remember when four aircraft were intercepted.

 

[Notebook]

Just a couple of Bears yesterday, but the Western Approaches are getting busy:

Russian Navy adds to pressure on Ukraine and NATO - Navy Lookout

There is growing concern that another Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. Here we look at the naval dimension of the Russian military build-up and the implications for NATO navies. In the last week of January, the Russian Ministry of defence announced a surge of 140 warships and support...

www.navylookout.com

 

[Urwumpe]

Just a couple of Bears yesterday, but the Western Approaches are getting busy:

Russian Navy adds to pressure on Ukraine and NATO - Navy Lookout

There is growing concern that another Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. Here we look at the naval dimension of the Russian military build-up and the implications for NATO navies. In the last week of January, the Russian Ministry of defence announced a surge of 140 warships and support...

www.navylookout.com

Just make sure the japanese torpedo boats are not fishing there this time.

 

[Notebook]

Yes that didn't end well.

I read the USS Roosevelt is also in the English Channel.

 

[N_Molson]

French President Emmanuel Macron is going to Ukraine and Russia next week, to talk with both Zelensky and Putin.

 

[Urwumpe]

French President Emmanuel Macron is going to Ukraine and Russia next week, to talk with both Zelensky and Putin.

Same for Olaf Scholz, who suddenly reappeared after his mysterious disappearance.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

Comparing the size of d***s at the back of innocent people. Homo sapiens will very likely never be any different...

 

[N_Molson]

True, but the "innocent people" do that too, at their lesser level.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

True, but the "innocent people" do that too, at their lesser level.

Yeah. I see this on a regular basis at work. Humans...

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah. I see this on a regular basis at work. Humans...

We should kill them all and replace them by AIs. Its better for this planet. Nothing good arises if you combine a brain with the ability to fly to the moon with reptilian instincts and emotions. No AI would go on a killing spree because another AI discovered its flaws.

 

[jedidia]

No AI would go on a killing spree because another AI discovered its flaws.

Well, we don't know yet, do we...

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, we don't know yet, do we...

Would make a good plot for a science fiction movie. What about letting an AI kill the crew of a spacecraft to prevent them from discovering that the AI is failing in its programming. Maybe put some more mystery to it, like weird monoliths appearing on the moon.

 

[N_Molson]

This is an interesting paradox because an AI that would have "feelings" would indeed be very advanced and very close from being an actual being, and not only a machine.

 

[jedidia]

This is an interesting paradox because an AI that would have "feelings" would indeed be very advanced and very close from being an actual being, and not only a machine.

If our experience with AI so far has taught us anything, then it's that you don't need emotions to act irrationally. All it needs are some neural connections getting wired more strongly than they were supposed to...
In fact, I think AI development will be (and already kind of is, it's just not widely known) the ultimate downfall for the argument that human emotion is a liability. AI safety experts are already trying to solve problems that have very close parallels to human psychology, all without a single emotion. It's our bloody neural nets that's causing most of the issues, emotions are merely one input into that. An input that, as AI development shows us, can be replaced by almost any reward/penalty stimulation, and it'll cause the same addiction and avoidance patterns in the neural network.

 

[clipper]

Russian forces at 70% of level needed for full Ukraine invasion, U.S. officials say

Russia has in place about 70% of the combat power it believes it would need for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is sending more battalion tactical groups to the border with its neighbor, two U.S. officials said on Saturday.

www.reuters.com

In the last two weeks, the number of battalion tactical groups (BTG) in the border region has risen to 83 from 60 as of Friday and 14 more are in transit, the officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information. As to the timing of an invasion, the ground is expected to reach peak freeze around Feb. 15, the officials said, allowing for off-road mechanized transit by Russian military units. Such conditions would continue until the end of March.

It's going to be a long winter.

 

[N_Molson]

It's going to be a long winter.

I don't think so. If Russia really wanted to attack, they would have done that before we even knew about it. The element of surprise is essential to modern warfare : that's the difference between WWI and WWII, when Germany defeated in a few days the French army which held strong fortifications and was superior on paper.

 

[clipper]

I don't think so. If Russia really wanted to attack, they would have done that before we even knew about it.

It's practically impossible to conduct a large-scale invasion of another sovereign state without everyone and their grandmother knowing about it. Aside from all the intelligence-gathering tools available to nation-states today from cyberwarfare all the way to recon satellites, moving hundreds of thousands of troops and a few dozen armored battalions is a massive undertaking both in terms of logistics and financing, which is why you'd never do it unless you were preparing to actually use it, more so when your economy can't exactly afford the luxury of power projection like the US does by constantly maintaining carrier battle groups in every major sea/ocean out there.

The element of surprise is essential to modern warfare : that's the difference between WWI and WWII, when Germany defeated in a few days the French army which held strong fortifications and was superior on paper.

In both of those conflicts dirigibles and slow-moving piston-powered aircraft were literally the most advanced tools of strategic and tactical reconnaissance, so I'm not really sure how rational it is to use either of those as case studies for how conventional 21st century wars can unfold.

 

[N_Molson]

more so when your economy can't exactly afford the luxury of power projection like the US does by constantly maintaining carrier battle groups in every major sea/ocean out there.

But Russia has common borders with Ukraine. There's no need for "power projection" at all. One country is supposed to be sovereign on its own territory and deploy troop the way they like.

In both of those conflicts dirigibles and slow-moving piston-powered aircraft were literally the most advanced tools of strategic and tactical reconnaissance

No, both Axis and Allies got most of their information through spies networks. This is the oldest way of the world to get intel, and it remains true nowadays. Sure military satellites help, but the first people that are going to know that something is going on are infiltrated spies. And there's plenty of them both in Russia and USA, with Europe being a big spy hub.

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't think so. If Russia really wanted to attack, they would have done that before we even knew about it. The element of surprise is essential to modern warfare : that's the difference between WWI and WWII, when Germany defeated in a few days the French army which held strong fortifications and was superior on paper.

It was WAY more complex than that. Don't forget the phony war / Drôle de guerre, which is essentially the situation we have now.

What defeated France quickly were three things: Past heroes insisting on fighting a second WWI (The Germans had been friendly enough to do that, but ignored the Maginot line until overrunning the Seine line), the devil in the detail (like overly complicated fuel logistics) and retreating critical units all the time, hoping for better fighting conditions that never came.

There is an animation somewhere, that showed how German essentially really just followed the retreating heavy tank units of France and only had battles with the French heavy tanks, when the French tanks had been unable to retreat. The prejudice about French warfare has a grain of truth there. The Germans NEVER had been great strategic geniuses or had the better army at all. The allies simply let them win by making really poor decisions early in the war and never really recovering from the following blows. The allies did even KNOW the German attack plan, and still they considered their own positions far inferiour to the Germans - one small counterattack, one small bit of resistance more could have thrown the Germans off-balance.

What to learn from that for today?

1. Never expect your opponent to play by your rules.
2. Never retreat late to new defensive positions.
3. Never expect static defenses to win a war, especially when aircraft and paratroopers are involved.
4. Don't expect allies to sacrifice their soldiers for you - they will usually fight for their own lives first and retreat as they want.
5. If you have intelligence reports confirming an eminent attack, don't reduce the readiness of your troops, when the expected attack doesn't come on the expected day. It will come.
6. Don't hold back your best assets until it is too late.
7. A superiority in numbers does not exist, even a smaller army can win a war, when the bigger army is fighting multiple different wars at the same time.

Russia can and will likely attack. And it will do so, when our attention is not on the Ukraine. I still hope for everything just being a huge gamble, but the past weeks just increased the commitment of Russia to an attack. Every day the preparations go on, it will get harder for Russia to return to normal.

And I see little chance of a peaceful diplomatic deal, that will not be a defeat for the west. Russia keeps everything, but has to pay nothing in return? Appeasement? Or Russia gives up the Donbas basin, by dropping their "consultants" like a hot potato and risking the wrath of the many Russian nationalists? This could literally kill Putin, its an unrealistic scenario. Everything stays like it is, but with more soldiers waiting for the other side to try deciding this war or exploit an apparant weakness of the opponent?

The only chance I see for this to end with minor blood shed would be NATO and especially Europe going all in. Only in this case, Russia could keep Crimea, loose a lot of the Donbas basin, but can still sell this as a victory. Neither NATO or Russia would be involved in the fighting officially, but both won't be far away. We would be back in a cold war for a while, Ukraine could join the west and NATO, we could pretend to still have some amount of spine left, despite practically being forced into a carthatic conflict by Russia that we didn't need.

The war won't end because Russia or NATO won, but because China uses our distraction to try annexing Taiwan, forcing the west to either accept poor terms for a cease fire or have to let China gain full strategic control over the west pacific. And in this case, the strategic interests of the USA will decide it. And the European public will be busy watching football, happy that this Ukraine distraction is over before the beginning of the knockout phase, so only a small number of interlectuals will complain.

 

[N_Molson]

The difference with 1940 is that we're literally cooking on Russian natural gas and 90% of the things we own were manufactured in China. It works both ways though, Russia needs badly the income from natural gas and China would collapse if it suddenly could not sell its goods anymore. So a "real" war, even without nuclear weapons, would be devastating.