Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
You can deduct two things from this:
-Russia is not as big of a threat as propaganda depicts it
-Spending trillions in “defense” is useless
Huh? But the equipment that was developed by those trillions of dollars proved to be super effective. The HIMARS missiles can even handle jamming by a much less funded army.
You are spot on on point 1 though.
Super effective to destroy another useless trillion dollar military assets. Imagine spending trillions on something which main purpose isn’t to dig a hole in the ground.
I agree with that. But that is not a conclusion that should be drawn from the article. Hence my reaction. If anything, the article shows a prime example for why we should spend all those trillions.
They seem to be saying that Russia also has a massive military budget, but ours is way way bigger. The money we spend actually is worth it. We have the best military in the world by every metric you can come up with.
If even a small fraction of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is functional then they are still incredibly dangerous
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If they use nuclear weapons, it will end in one of two ways.
Escalation to full scale nuclear exchange. Putin dies or has to live in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
The rest of the world saying “that’s enough”. Nobody in power wants using nukes to be normalized. It’s so profoundly destabilizing to the status quo that everyone sees it as a threat given it will inevitably lead to escalation. Every intelligence agency in the world will be making phone calls, offering sweet deals, and promising support to unhappy, powerful people in Russia to deal with the “Putin” problem. Ideological enemies will work together to eliminate this threat to their stability.
Option 3: Russia is converted into parking lot via a joint operation using conventional weaponry. Siberia is declared west Alaska.
It’s a dark version of funny thinking about the nuclear weapon deterrents.
Everyone wants them to force their way to the big boy table, they’re incredibly expensive, and using them is self defeating.
Also interesting how we spend a bunch of time, money, meddling, and military power on preventing proliferation, we are the only country that ever used them, twice.
Imagine being Truman and authorizing a weapon that was just invented that the scientists all regretted, conveyed they would be unimaginably powerful and at the same time, they had no idea if it would work or not.
Then after the first one, Japan doesn’t quit and you say, do it again.
I’m not sure if anyone has the balls to push that button now under modern circumstances.
When you stop and think about the amount of money just the US has spent on maintaining (barely) a nuclear arsenal I think, our species is stupid.
Scary thoughts. I don’t even think scientists realized the full extent of the device potential. Much less someone like Truman without an extensive science background. Even though they talked about the destructive potential, actually grasping it as a reality wasn’t comprehensible.
Let’s spend trillions on offense for Ukraine instead! Help them take back Crimea and make Russia afraid to go on conquest again.
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Who knew that skimming money off the top at every level will leave you with nothing but a shell of a military?