Ukraine Conflict - conflict continues

[Gorth]

41 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Thats interesting, good to know. So the cluster bombs can clear minefields?

They could learn something about mine clearing from the English army in 1945...

German "soldiers" (young teenage boys, rounded up in Germany), were sent to Denmark as "POW's". Clearing the beaches at gunpoint, they were forced to walk abreast across the beach afterwards. Needless to say, many of them never made it back to Germany.

[BruceVC]

20 minutes ago, Gorth said:

They could learn something about mine clearing from the English army in 1945...

German "soldiers" (young teenage boys, rounded up in Germany), were sent to Denmark as "POW's". Clearing the beaches at gunpoint, they were forced to walk abreast across the beach afterwards. Needless to say, many of them never made it back to Germany.

Gorhfuscious thats sounds like "British bashing " ....are you sure thats true?

Do you links to share ?

[Elerond]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

But you talk about Erdogan flip-flopping, 2 days ago he was saying he first wanted EU entry talks revived and then he agrees to Sweden joining

I guess he was reminded that Cyprus is EU member and not in NATO, making entry talks quite complicated

[HoonDing]

"F-16s"

finally a real game-changer

[Gfted1]

2 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

"F-16s"

finally a real game-changer

Technologically, and performance wise, I would still put 4th gen US fighters (especially the F-15) up against most of the worlds air forces. Theyre just old and structurally tired now.

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

Technologically, and performance wise, I would still put 4th gen US fighters (especially the F-15) up against most of the worlds air forces. Theyre just old and structurally tired now.

If it's Tom Cruise flying it then a F-14 would dominate the skies today.

[Zoraptor]

5 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Also, not all cluster munitions are the same. US cluster munitions, as employed in ATACMS and cruise missiles, are very advanced compared with Russian cluster munitions, and include auto-deactivation whereby they deactivate themselves after they've been sitting around undetonated on the ground for a little while.

Completely irrelevant, since the munitions being sent are, what, M864 155mm shells (hence the "running out of conventional ammo" justification which would be bizarre if ATACMS/ Cruise Missiles were being supplied) from... 1987, not ammunition for cruise missiles or ATACMS. And their failure rate, per your own Congressional Research, is up to 30%. Unless that too is pro Russian propaganda.

4 hours ago, Keyrock said:

And here's the reply from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki: "It is, it would be.  I don’t have any confirmation of that.  We have seen the reports.  If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime."

I'm not one to usually defend mealy mouthed PR officers but in this case she's being completely accurate- if they're used specifically against civilians it's a war crime, because using any munition used specifically against civilians is one by default whether you have signed the CCM treaty or not, since civilians are by default a protected category that should not be specifically targeted. There is, as always, rather a lot of wiggle room where military targets and civilian are mixed and that's always the claim made when they are used in civilian areas.

Same with thermobarics since they were mentioned as well, though there is not additional treaty effecting their use.

6 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Is napalm illegal now, US or otherwise?

Its use on civilians is specifically banned by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (1980; specifically ratified by the US in ~2008). Fine to use against military targets though, but unlike WP/ thermite it doesn't have other uses you can use as justification to get around the CCCW's more stringent/ specific protections for civilians than the default.

[Keyrock]

37 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I'm not one to usually defend mealy mouthed PR officers but in this case she's being completely accurate- if they're used specifically against civilians it's a war crime, because using any munition used specifically against civilians is one by default whether you have signed the CCM treaty or not, since civilians are by default a protected category that should not be specifically targeted. There is, as always, rather a lot of wiggle room where military targets and civilian are mixed and that's always the claim made when they are used in civilian areas.

Civilians are mostly the ones that get hurt by cluster munitions one way or the other, hence why they're banned by a lot of nations. Cluster munitions are virtually useless against anything decently armored and a percentage of the bomblets don't go off on impact creating a very unpleasant surprise for some unlucky family to drive over with their minivan.

[Zoraptor]

Oh yes, my personal opinion is that it's detrimental long term to civilians and the supply is incredibly hypocritical when professing to a better standard, in particular parroting manufacturers claims when the government's own research has a minimum failure rate ~5x the claim, and ten times the allowed amount for export is very obvious propaganda. Same goes for depleted uranium ammunition too. Despite that it isn't illegal in international law if you haven't signed the CCM, just morally questionable and rather two faced. So, par for the course for geopolitics in general really.

One can imagine the reaction from a US administration if someone used CM or DU on US territory. It would not, one suspects, be quite as clinical/ logical as their justification for using CM/ DU elsewhere.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Chilloutman]

Cluster munition is also very good for clearing trenches since you don't need direct hit. 

[Zoraptor]

I'd be skeptical that something with 33g of explosive (ie the m42 submunition) is going to be all that effective against well prepared trenches. They do claim to be able to penetrate 60+mm of rolled steel though, so maybe, but I'm pretty skeptical given it's a multi purpose munition.

[Gorth]

10 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Gorhfuscious thats sounds like "British bashing " ....are you sure thats true?

Do you links to share ?

https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2817&context=cisr-journal

Mind you, the Danes were no better, thinking it awesome getting all those "volunteers" at gunpoint. This was an opportunity for a bit a vengeance after 5 years of occupation after all...

"To better allow for the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Convention, the Germans were officially categorized as Surrendered Enemy Personnel rather than POWs. The other 200,000 odd German troops in Denmark returned to Germany in the weeks following the surrender. Clearance started quickly and proceeded quickly. On 11 May 1945, within one week of the unconditional surrender, the first clearance tasks had begun. 4 This arrangement was formalized on 18 June 1945 with the founding of Minekommando Dänemark by order of General Dewing, commander of the British forces in Denmark. "

Tl;dr; they were supposed to send pioneers, but rounded up any young man/boy they could get and sent 2600 back to Denmark, to clear the mines on the beaches. Over a million mines were removed this way.

I mostly knew of this because I watched a movie ("Land of Mine"), which revealed a less glorious part of Danish history and a cause of a bit of self reflection for the sometimes holier than thou Danish attitude. It made me curious and I started digging (no pun intended) into the underlying real events the movie is based on.

Edit: Can recommend watching the movie btw... it's a good movie

 

[BruceVC]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2817&context=cisr-journal

Mind you, the Danes were no better, thinking it awesome getting all those "volunteers" at gunpoint. This was an opportunity for a bit a vengeance after 5 years of occupation after all...

"To better allow for the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Convention, the Germans were officially categorized as Surrendered Enemy Personnel rather than POWs. The other 200,000 odd German troops in Denmark returned to Germany in the weeks following the surrender. Clearance started quickly and proceeded quickly. On 11 May 1945, within one week of the unconditional surrender, the first clearance tasks had begun. 4 This arrangement was formalized on 18 June 1945 with the founding of Minekommando Dänemark by order of General Dewing, commander of the British forces in Denmark. "

Tl;dr; they were supposed to send pioneers, but rounded up any young man/boy they could get and sent 2600 back to Denmark, to clear the mines on the beaches. Over a million mines were removed this way.

I mostly knew of this because I watched a movie ("Land of Mine"), which revealed a less glorious part of Danish history and a cause of a bit of self reflection for the sometimes holier than thou Danish attitude. It made me curious and I started digging (no pun intended) into the underlying real events the movie is based on.

Edit: Can recommend watching the movie btw... it's a good movie

 

I enjoy these types of war stories and I didnt know anything about it so thanks for sharing

I read the article but I probably need to watch the move because the article mentions POW and not young boys rounded up from Germany as you said in this post. And they did  use certain methods, like distancing, that woudnt be seen as safe today but the article for me is more about the overall success of the project 

Anyway interesting story, I must watch the movie

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by BruceVC

[Lexx]

Problem with cluster munition is that not all of the pieces explode. They leave a quite high percentage of duds behind, which are dangerous and can still explode at any time, same way as other explosives.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Lexx

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

I enjoy these types of war stories and I didnt know anything about it so thanks for sharing

I read the article but I probably need to watch the move because the article mentions POW and not young boys rounded up from Germany as you said in this post. And they did  use certain methods, like distancing, that woudnt be seen as safe today but the article for me is more about the overall success of the project 

Anyway interesting story, I must watch the movie

 

 

Yeah. Interesting movie. The article does (the part I quoted) point out the reason the rounded up Germans weren't classified as POW's, because then they didn't qualify for the protections offered to POW's according to whatever laws governs that. This was of course complete BS, but the Danes didn't care what they got sent, because in 1945 German lives were not only considered expendable, they were very enthusiastic about expending them, regardless of the pretext.

 

Edit: Duh, it doesn't specify the reason, that was my assumption. It just mentions that they were reclassified to not be considered POW's

[pmp10]

The NATO summit is delivering drama.
US is unhappy with Zelensky being openly unhappy with the summit.

He even publicly tweeted that Ukraine's NATO membership is used as a bargaining chip for negotiations with Russia.

[Malcador]

7 hours ago, pmp10 said:

The NATO summit is delivering drama.
US is unhappy with Zelensky being openly unhappy with the summit.

He even publicly tweeted that Ukraine's NATO membership is used as a bargaining chip for negotiations with Russia.

Guess he's trying to leverage the Western public with all this foot stamping.

Okay, this was funny - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/12/uk-defence-secretary-ben-wallace-suggests-ukraine-could-say-thank-you

"Wallace revealed at the briefing that he had travelled to Ukraine last year to be presented with a shopping list of weapons. “You know, we’re not Amazon,” he said. “I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list.”

Edited July 12, 2023 by Malcador

[Keyrock]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

"Wallace revealed at the briefing that he had travelled to Ukraine last year to be presented with a shopping list of weapons. “You know, we’re not Amazon,” he said. “I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list.”

Were they Amazon they would have delivered the weapons by drone. Come to think of it, maybe that's what that Kremlin drone "attack" was, an errant Amazon delivery drone 

[Mamoulian War]

RU Lieutenant General Deputy Commandern of Southern Military District has been slain in Berdyansk by Storm Shadow strike on a hotel used for accomodation of RU officer. It is rumoured, that he was not the only top cargo 200 in that hotel.

 

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/07/12/7411020/

 

edit: Tsokov.

 

 

[xzar_monty]

I was somewhat amused by the wording: Tsokov "died heroically" during the attack. I wonder how that differs from simply dying, given that it's a missile strike on a hotel, which doesn't really imply a battle to display heroism in.

In January 1936, Ernest Hemingway wrote a piece called Wings Always Over Africa for Esquire magazine. This is part of what he wrote:

"An Italian soldier can be so fired up by propaganda that he will go to battle wanting only to die for Il Duce and convinced that it is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep and, hit in the buttocks, the fleshy part of the thigh, or the calf of the leg, all comparatively painless wounds, he is capable of uttering the most noble sentiments and of saying, 'Duce I salute you Duce! I am happy to die for you, O Duce!'

But hit in the belly, or if the bullet breaks a bone, or if it happens to hit a nerve he will say, 'Oh mamma mia!' and the Duce will be far from his thoughts. Malaria and dysentery are even less capable of arousing patriotic fervour and jaundice, as I recall it, which gives a man the sensation of having been kicked in the vicinity of the interstitial glands, produces almost no patriotic fervour at all."

Indeed, even war poetry developed rather drastically from Rupert Brooke's The Soldier to Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, with the former coming straight from the "died heroically" line of thought and the latter rather less so. But apparently the "died heroically" line is still going strong.

[Zoraptor]

Eh, Hemingway's great for a pithy comment but he was incorrect factually there*, but it's not a great fit as it turned out the Italians were infamous for not being willing to actually fight for Il Duce (or anyone else's imperial ambitions, hence them losing to Ethiopia 40 years earlier) under pretty much any circumstances; though they were a lot better when fighting for Italy proper. I also doubt the average Brit/ Frenchman or whoever was particularly keen on doing it all for old blightly/ la belle France while ejecting their intestinal lining from cholera for that matter...

Mostly though, everyone dies heroically in war, according to their side, it's a basic tenet of propaganda that you join up to be a hero not a zero- and to be fair, most families probably want to believe that rather than the general reality that they got killed unpleasantly by something they never saw fired by someone they'd never seen (or historically, fried their organs from malaria or similar).

*Indeed it was only ~a year later Musso's supposedly most fervent supporters managed to lose the Battle of Guadalajara to an army that won precisely zero other large battles in the entirety of the Spanish Civil War. See also Italian-Greek War (up until German intervention), Operation Compass (4x as many Italians captured as British total strength) and perhaps even worse, the east African campaign where a quarter of a million Italians surrendered (vs ~1000 allied combat deaths, with most troops involved being Ethiopian and other Africans).

A few formations fought very well and some to practically the last man- in particular the Ariete Division saved most of what was left of Rommel's army at Alamein2 by refusing to surrender when surrounded, an act which earned them especial praise from him. But they were very much the exception.

[Mamoulian War]

If you are wondering, what happens, if you have guts to not lie to Gerasimov

 

 

[Mamoulian War]

During all of the kerfuffle around NATO summit, it have been pretty much lost, at least around here, that France will provide their SCALP/EG missiles to Ukraine (the same missile as Storm Shadow). I read somewhere, that unlike Storm Shadow, which has shorter and longer range variants (UA got the shorter range variant), these are manufactured only with the maximum range of 550km. Is this information correct, can’t find anything about them in a language, which I understand.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

During all of the kerfuffle around NATO summit, it have been pretty much lost, at least around here, that France will provide their SCALP/EG missiles to Ukraine (the same missile as Storm Shadow). I read somewhere, that unlike Storm Shadow, which has shorter and longer range variants (UA got the shorter range variant), these are manufactured only with the maximum range of 550km. Is this information correct, can’t find anything about them in a language, which I understand.

You mean you actually took seriously the whole " big rift in NATO around the support for Ukraine " rhetoric 

 

Bidens speech was  exactly what I expected. It was the normal firebrand  belief in NATO  and continued support with words   like  unwavering.  The  crowd loved him 

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-deliver-key-speech-high-stakes-nato-summit/story?id=101166108

 

[BruceVC]

11 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I was somewhat amused by the wording: Tsokov "died heroically" during the attack. I wonder how that differs from simply dying, given that it's a missile strike on a hotel, which doesn't really imply a battle to display heroism in.

In January 1936, Ernest Hemingway wrote a piece called Wings Always Over Africa for Esquire magazine. This is part of what he wrote:

"An Italian soldier can be so fired up by propaganda that he will go to battle wanting only to die for Il Duce and convinced that it is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep and, hit in the buttocks, the fleshy part of the thigh, or the calf of the leg, all comparatively painless wounds, he is capable of uttering the most noble sentiments and of saying, 'Duce I salute you Duce! I am happy to die for you, O Duce!'

But hit in the belly, or if the bullet breaks a bone, or if it happens to hit a nerve he will say, 'Oh mamma mia!' and the Duce will be far from his thoughts. Malaria and dysentery are even less capable of arousing patriotic fervour and jaundice, as I recall it, which gives a man the sensation of having been kicked in the vicinity of the interstitial glands, produces almost no patriotic fervour at all."

Indeed, even war poetry developed rather drastically from Rupert Brooke's The Soldier to Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, with the former coming straight from the "died heroically" line of thought and the latter rather less so. But apparently the "died heroically" line is still going strong.

I  love Wilfred Owen. you know he was killed 1 week before WW1 ended. It was tragic 

My best poem of his is The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

"When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one "