Zoraptor

Write in vote for Awesome Brotocols sequel. Or Omega Methodology/ whatever to avoid Sega.

They're getting significant manpower support from shia groups from Iraq and Iran (plus Hezbollah, though they've been there ages) which will help a lot, while theoretically ad hoc those are often better formations than regular Syrian Army. The big problem they've had is not direct lack of manpower but having it in small dribs and drabs trying to hold lots of land which allowed the rebels to hit and run almost at will and which made it very hard to make any meaningful attacks themselves since reserves and the effective formations were constantly being rushed around to respond to the latest attacks, plus some bad morale and relying on low quality conscripts fighting highly motivated (if often as lightly trained) jihadis. An effective airforce helps massively with the first problem, it makes it a lot more difficult to attack the dribs and drabs when your column of pickups can get taken out in full by a Hind, or seen and the target warned by a drone/ artillery support/ air strike support delivered; while conversely making it a lot easier for the government to concentrate their forces. The morale problem is helped a lot by success and new equipment, plus the obvious and apparently long term commitment from their allies. On the ground the government is, broadly speaking, winning at the moment when they were losing two and a bit months ago, badly enough that they'd managed perhpas one significant victory all year. In contrast they've had two significant victories in the past two months- relieving Kweyres airbase and taking a big chunk of the south Aleppo countryside.

Mi-28 is pretty impressive too, though I can't imagine it being all that useful in Syria. I actually mentioned TOS-1 earlier, IIRC- there's a video of a buratino lighting up a hillside in Latakia on youtube. Quite impressive, I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end; though it's pretty far from MOAB level impressive. And in rather unsurprising news, apparently the arab side of the 'coalition' hasn't actually bombed ISIS in multiple months. Even Jordan, who got one of their pilots burnt alive hasn't bombed them in 4 months. It's more than rumour, some extra deployment is definite. The 120 certainly isn't confirmed though and would almost certainly be 'copters and planes combined, perhaps also including strategic bombers based in Russia. That would also require more SAMs and troops to guard the air bases- certainly there have been a lot of new weapons deliveries since there are T-72Bs and even T-90s* in theatre and in actual action instead of just glorified guard duty now, including ones with improved protection against anti tank missiles (modern explosive reactive armour and the shtora soft kill system). *which are really just rebadged modern T-72s, russian tank builders are as bad as nVidia at rebadging old stuff as new. He's almost certainly just some unfortunate chechen/ dagestani who has pissed off an emir or tried to desert and is being made an example of to make a point. He's a russian from the north caucasus, as is the guy doing the beheading for that matter but I doubt Russia or anyone else (potentially except some arab states) has much human intelligence at all within ISIS, far too easy for them to get randomly killed given that there are multiple different groups bombing them. If anyone has much human intelligence it's probably Assad's Mukhabarat and their contacts within the civilian population. Summary execution of 'collaborators' 'spies' or 'fifth columnists' in graphic manner is pretty common even in more moderate rebel areas- not that Assad is actually much if any better in that respect, they just tend towards secret torture and executions rather than public.

I own about a third of the mystary games elsewhere, so I basically never buy them. I really don't need a third copy of Hearts of Iron 2 or EU3. I'd guess that some people would be interested in the LucasArts/ Film bundles though, with two Star Wars bundles and an adventure bundle. Again, I own about half of the titles retail, and the individual discounts aren't so great. Unless there's something great I'll almost certainly wait until after Christmas to buy anything further.

We actually got ISIS's accountant, he was called Abu Sayyaf and the US killed him plus captured his wife and records during a raid on Deir-ez-Zor. While nothing official has been released about their contents all the leaks have them confirming large scale links with Turkey and plenty of oil smuggling. And those petrol tankers? Obviously not petrol tankers, they were for... baby milk, yes, that's it! Russia is deliberately starving babies in Syria! When will the west take action to stop the madness of these barbarians! Kind Uncle Tayyip supplying the literal milk of human kindness even unto his mortal enemies in ISIS and that horrible bear riding exhibitionist from St Pete'sburg blatantly and callously attacked them. Won't someone think of the children? Syria does buy (though 'buys' is more accurate) oil from ISIS, strange as it may seem. It's a consequence of the government holding most of the electricity generation infrastructure but ISIS holding most of the oil and gas fields that supply it- ISIS still supplies them with fuel and gets electrical power back in return. Since the alternative is neither side having electricity that arrangement is likely to continue until such time as the gas fields in particular are recaptured. The US does accuse the government of actually buying [as opposed to swapping/ bartering] oil as well, but that's very questionable since they can very easily get petrol/ diesel supplies from Iran, if not Russia as well, without funding their enemies. Natural gas is far harder to supply though, if you don't have the existing infrastructure for supply, hence it pretty much has to come from ISIS.

I'd only feel like a hypocrite if I advised people to ignore your trolling and deliberate provocations then spent pages responding to your drivel myself, Bruciekins. As it is I content myself with the occasional one liner.

Your idea of Western Culture is a state with neoliberal ideals? Bruce's definition of the fantastic characteristics of western civilisation is, well, what Bruce himself believes (or purports to believe to get responses). Utterly unsurprising. Though I suspect in this case he'd be far from alone in that.

On the annexation front, Turkey has already stolen a bit of Syria previous; the part of 'Turkey' where the Su-24 was shot down was part of Syria until France gave it away and there was a referendum held to annex it which involved bussing large numbers of Turks in to ensure the right result was found. Indeed, that is a very easy way to claim that Turkey's airspace was never violated, simply say that it's occupied Syrian airspace (same for Golan Heights, where no one except Israel recognises their annexation). But in any case, getting Turkey out of any safe zone would be a big problem, anyone thinking otherwise can look to Cyprus.

Wonder if they're R-77-1s then, I would have said that they'd swapped from bomb only to carrying AAMs at all but there are pictures of Su-34 returning to base carrying missiles so some at least had air-to-air capable load outs before; if they are new weapons then they'd pretty much have to be R-77-1s. I'd bet everything in my bank account that Turkey wouldn't have attacked anything other than a Su-24 anyway, since it fundamentally cannot defend itself against anything approaching a modern fighter. Su-34 isn't really designed as a fighter either but it is actually modern and based on a fighter design, it wouldn't be the equivalent of sneaking up and king hitting an old lady like attacking a Su-24 was.

God ancaps are embarrassing. Not that ancaps aren't embarrassing, but I'm as prone to believe that actually happened as I would be to believe a story from Bruce about him getting beaten up by SJWs when he goes to one of their meetings and tells them he's an old money banker who loves Saudi Arabia. Story is too cliche and nobody is that dumb.

The deal doesn't really mean anything significant. There was no way that Turkey was getting into the EU under the CHP, there's less than no chance it will under the AKP. The cash is nice, but less than the refugees would be costing. It's basically the Tukrish leadership and the EU pretending to like each other for political and PR reasons plus a sop to Erdogan's ego. Could be something interesting coming up though, there are multiple reports of hundreds of tanks and AFVs being moved from western Turkey towards Syria. Heh, that's more or less exactly what I said about the Turkish version. Can't say I'd be in the least bit surprised if their analysis of the Russian version is correct too, for all that I believe Turkey was looking for an excuse to act it seems unlikely they'd do something for which there could be conclusive evidence of them outright lying since that would mean at least theoretically no NATO backing.

I'd consider it the worst of the IE games as well, but still consider it a good game overall and worth playing. It has a distinctly mechanistic feel to it that the others lack and feels far more linear and 'grindy' than even its predecessor.

Yep. Same with Facebook games. Farmville was the next great thing and Zynga had a licence to print money- right up until they didn't- and everyone thought FB games would be the next big thing. In reality 'Discovery' is even harder on mobile platforms, one or two titles do very well but most, don't. Who knows, maybe Game of War or whatever the big mobile game is at the moment will have such successful sequels that they can hire Mariah Carey and Kate Upton to do adverts simultaneously instead of sequentially, but I won't be betting on it.

Merkel is on the left? If she is, it's only on the refugee issue, and then only because she wants to kick the can of Germany's impending demographic crisis further down the road instead of dealing with the issue.

The US hasn't ever (deliberately, some air drops have gone astray) directly supplied ISIS as its ultimate origin is from Al Qaeda in Iraq who was their most implacable enemy there; some of the Gulf States did supply them, though not openly and both supplied 'moderate' groups who defected to ISIS in 2013-14. But most of their US equipment stocks come from the numerous Iraqi and Kurdish bases they overran in 2014. ISIS having stocks of US ammo isn't an issue unless it can be shown it was a recent acquisition, and from a 'friendly' state. Even then we won't hear about it, there would just be some fist waving on the quiet.

They've been getting US+ a few others (Germany at least) small arms for a while now. I wouldn't expect anything more significant than that and targeted air strikes though, even when under their new umbrella organisation. The problem with anything more significant is that they'd be increasingly likely to be used against Turkey- who strongly dislikes even small arms supplies- and their proxies rather than ISIS; and have almost no chance of being used against the Syrian Army. Indeed, fighting with Turkish proxies like Al Nusra and Ahrar ash Sham is directly helpful towards the Syrian Government since it massively narrows the rebel supply line into Aleppo as well as dividing the rebel forces. Plus, the Syrian Kurds are fundamentally reluctant to expand outside of Kurdish regions and cannot politically be the main force attacking places like Raqqa/ Deir ez Zor or especially the big population centres held in the north near to Turkey like Manbij or El Bab. Same general principle applies for Russia as well since the YPG isn't strictly their allies, though they certainly aren't their enemies, if they want to trouble the Turks they'll put SAMs into government controlled Hassakeh rather than arm the Kurds directly as that would annoy the Syrian Government [and Iraq, and Iran] too much.

Is Hilary related to Bernie Wiliams? (She was, after all, named after world famous Hamiltron apiarist Edmund Hillary, who reinforced his fame by climbing Everest a few years after her birth)

I don't think POE2 being made was ever a question, I'm just wondering will it be via KS or did they make enough money for a sequel. Unless KS (or equivalent) has been too much of a pain in the arse it makes a very useful pre-order system, less cut taken, no need to have Paradox publishing at the start, built in and sustained early publicity etc. I'm not entirely sure they've found the overall 'kickstarter experience' to be worth those advantages though, at least for a sequel.

That would be moronic, it isn't even slightly legit and would be a clear article 5 situation. A Turkish 'copter having a ping at some YPG around Hassakah as happened yesterday, that's fair game for a warning then shoot down. There are pics of the S-400 at Hmemeim airbase from today. Some ambiguity is possible since S-400 is a direct evolution of the S-300 and certain elements of each system are interchangeable, but it certainly seems legit. In these circumstances the Russians are not going to blink, that's why shooting a plane was fundamentally stupid; if they say they're going to deploy something at the moment then they will deploy, anything else sends exactly the wrong message to Turkey. To quote Barbie "Math is hard!". The radar trace has the Su24 at a near constant 300kph or slightly above, including during intrusion (300kph == 5km/ min or 1km per 12s, so intrusion speed was 300-375kph). Two other relevant bits of information too, the Russian navigator claims the Su24 was following a normal flight path home, which would allow for setting up of cameras to capture a shoot down*, it would just be a matter of waiting; and allegedly (ie not confirmed) communications between Russian planes and coalition ones are not supposed to be on the standard Guard frequency but on a separate frequency. Both are unconfirmed but plausible, since ISIS could easily monitor any Guard communications and the Su24 had finished bombing and was returning to base. If true the 2nd would explain why the Russians were potentially not monitoring Guard**, they'd have been monitoring the other channel, and potentially why the Turkish planes did not contact the Su24, only the radar station and why the Russians made that specific statement. *that's how the Serbs shot down a F117 with a venerable Sa-3 despite it being theoretically incapable of targeting an F117, the plane used the same return path on a regular schedule so they knew where it would be. ** it's unclear if they should have been anyway, it's for use in international or foreign airspace and is not usually required to be monitored if you're in the foreign airspace by direct invitation of that country, at that point it becomes friendly airspace.

I don't know whether that was significant, so far as I am aware the warnings did not identify their origin as being radar station or plane. Probably depends on when the statement was said and whether the Russians presumed warnings would be sent by the planes, certainly the pilot himself seems to give a blunt denial of receiving any warnings whatsoever in his interview. One of the more interesting things is that you can extrapolate back on the Turkish radar plot to see when the jets turned towards Turkish airspace, and the only way the Turkish story works is if the Su24 was flying at around 300kph and around 5 minutes flight time towards Turkey but 600kph when intruding, both are way below the average cruise speed for a military jet of around 900kph (which would give about 1.30 flight time towards Turkey and a ~6s intrusion, per the trace). Some discrepancy might be explained by dropping bombs during the trace, but it's well known that most russian bomb drops are semi dumb computer assisted releases, not actual ground attack (due to Sa-7 etc they stay at 5000m+) Russia is also sending S400 SAMs to Syria now, not exactly unexpected.

Because it would piss the Turks off, mostly, since they're making money from the trade too. The financial information from the abu Sayyaf raid made the links between Turkey and ISIS explicit. It doesn't have anything to do with direct US economic interests, just not wanting to annoy an ally and the belief that with limited attacks ISIS could be funnelled to attack the right people, ie Assad and pro Iran Shia in Iraq. Russia started bombing the oil infrastructure in a big way a week or so ago, and I think it's fair to say that Turkey has shown some annoyance in their response.

Heh, the 'Turkman' commander who was machine gunning the pilots in their parachutes is actually a proper Turk citizen, it seems, and a prominent member of their phalangist/ fascist movement the Grey Wolves. Might be wise for him to invest in a lifetime supply of EDTA... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=subNDl0FFl0 is the audio (ignore the video, it's stock) released by the Turkish air force. Means pretty much literally nothing though, it's in english which russian pilots are not required to learn and does not identify which craft it's directed at in any way. There are examples of other warning that have been given in similar circumstances, eg when the Vincennes shot down IranAir655 it identified airspeed, aircraft type and tried various frequencies. OK, so they misidentified speed, aircraft type, and used frequencies that an airbus mostly couldn't monitor, but at least they tried. The Turkish warning which was delivered over a similar time span apparently did none of these things by Turkey's own admission, and there appears to have been no attempt to directly contact or identify the Su24 in any way. It certainly doesn't detract from the distinct impression that it was a deliberated act where a shoot down with pretext was the desired outcome rather than a last resort.

We can both play the emphasis game, I just have to emphasise the one, confirmed, lock during the one, confirmed, intrusion. As I said, I presumed you were talking about the two separate incidents, not two locks during the same one. Easy mistake to make given you were talking about a 2nd, seemingly mythically confirmed by Russia intrusion at the same time. So, no Russian confirmation of the 2nd incident, you just believe NATO? Fair enough, so far as it goes, but you were talking explicitly about Russia admitting two incidents, which it seems never happened and only one was admitted to. That's significantly beyond simply not believing the Russian version, that's putting words into their mouths.

Mostly I'm wondering what the asterisks you're going on about, there's a whole lot of windmill tilting going on there. The Turkish accusation was that the Su-30 was in their airspace for minutes, it's them saying that nothing to do with me saying it, and since you referred to 2 F16s being locked onto I presumed you meant the two incidents in which that happened, one of which was the Mig29 which everyone agrees wasn't in Turkish airspace and Turkey did claim was russian. As for the quoted section got an actual cite, from Russian officials, for an admission to both incursions? Because both the AJE Moscow correspondent and RT said today that only one incident had been admitted to, by Russia, and everything else I've seen is people citing the Turkish accusation and Russian admission, singular. As for the pilot, he may have been rescued. Should be taken with large grain of salt until there's official confirmation/ pictures, of course, though the rebels are claiming both are dead still. The navigator is definitely dead, and definitely shot while descending by Turkish proxies. An interesting aside is that the Russians are insisting their helicopter was destroyed by a mortar despite the pretty clear video evidence it was destroyed on the ground after abandonment and not by a mortar, presumably because the sight of a clearly german origin, US manufactured TOW destroying the helicopter would be very inflammatory if admitted to.

You could actually run across the Turkish territory faster than their initial claim, it's only 1.5-2km wide, you can measure it yourself. Unsurprisingly Turkey has rather enlarged and enhanced the width of that territorial peninsula on their radar trace, it's extremely narrow. However, the initial claim may well have either been a translation error or the period in Turkey's self declared exclusion zone rather than actual intrusion. Either way that story lasted about 5 minutes itself before it was changed. Deliberate shooting of a Russian plane by the Turks equals Illuminati conspiracy theories. Hahaha, you're mental. Yeah, not exactly rational analysis. Even according to the Turkish story the jet must have been either fired on while outside Turkish airspace or hit while outside it, both of which are legally dubious and both of which say it was both 100% deliberate action and 100% deliberate escalation. There's no way at all that it wasn't calculated, it was the right target- the oldest plane the Russians have in theatre- and not a fighter as various media refer to it as- there were cameras, plural, ready to capture the moment the plane was hit not just when it crashed, the pilots were captured by a direct Turkish proxy and the more general Turkish acts in the area have been consistent with such an interpretation. Not only have they shot down the russian jet, they've also attacked the closest thing to genuinely moderate rebels (YPG) repeatedly and their known proxies have been routinely attacking the specific anti-ISIS force on the ground as well. The worst thing is the execution of the pilots by the Turkish proxies though. For those defending Turkey just imagine if Iran shot down a US warplane and Kataib Hezbollah then machine gunned them in the air and what the response would be and whether anything Iran said would be listened to.