Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen

[Zoraptor]

Since it's a bit more important than the waffle in the other post, plus the quote system is being a particular pig today and won't trim or even delete anything without borking formatting...

 

U.S officials now pretty much sure it was the Syrian government: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/u-s-has-blood-samples-show-nerve-agent-syria-gas-n865431

They really need to pick nerve agent or chlorine. Sarin is unstable and despite being called nerve gas it's a liquid at STP, and you spend a lot of effort purifying and stabilising it when weaponising- combine it with chlorine liquid which it is miscible in and which is very reactive and generates nucleophiles readily and you'll get no sarin pretty quickly (or maybe no chlorine, depends on relative amounts and purity). There's simply no plus to combining the two and a lot of negatives. Chlorine can be used as an accentuator with some CW, eg phosgene, but phospgene is both literally made from chlorine, and literally is dichloroformaldehyde.

 

There's only footage of one alleged container so the contents would have mixed.

 

The troubles with that container are multiple though. (1) it's gone through 20cm (?) of at least somewhat reinforced concrete since you can see the rebar and is basically undamaged. Going through the concrete in itself isn't necessarily a problem since it would be Traveling and several hundred kg heavy as well but with (3) it's an insurmountable one. Going through a concrete roof undamaged and (2) being stopped by an- undamaged- bed is extraordinarily unlikely given comparative stress thresholds and (3) you can see multiple examples of other alleged gas cylinder improvised bombs and they all show obvious, sometimes massive damage to the cylinder. Note also one of them covered in concrete debris, there (4) isn't anywhere near enough concrete debris for the hole made to be recent. And (5) contrary to common belief, chlorine does not leave a green residue despite itself being green, it bleaches. That can be confirmed by the many industrial accidents involving chlorine. The green staining looks far more like algae from a wet mattress due to having a hole in the roof for some time- the picture with the hole in the roof also shows there's wall mould in places, another symptom. Difficult to be sure of that given the resolution and lack of any wide angle picture though.

 

(Having done organic chemistry it's a bit baffling how terrible a lot of the evidence is. The French say that hexamine is diagnostic for syrian sarin, but hexamine is regularly used in rocket fuel, explosives and other solid fuels so it's all over the place in warzones)

 

Edit: Russian ships leaving port doesn't mean much, the Tartous base is tiny. When the Kuznetsov and Pyotr Veliky were there they were anchored a fair way out to sea as there was nowhere near enough space. You don't want to be caught in port during an attack, but it doesn't mean that an attack is at all imminent. If it's today it would likely be in the next few hours though.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Zoraptor

[injurai]

Cold War 2: Atomic Boogaloo

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So Trump is going to drag us into WW3 and is looking back to the TPP. So much for anti-establishment.

[Katphood]

im on team Russia

 

 

1-0 for me.

[Agiel]

 

The story comes from the Russian Ministry of Defence, RT is just quoting it. If RT quotes the Russian Government or RFE/RL/VOA quotes the US one their status as propaganda arms reinforces it being the government's position. If they do it as an opinion piece or similar using disposable sources- alphabet soup think tanks, typically- then it's deniable and low value. That's true for both propaganda arms.

 

 

 

 

 

And the articles were quoting someone who was in a _leadership position_ of the _Russian military_, which means he should be very much acquainted with tactics, doctrines, and the technical capabilities of the service he was in. This is insider knowledge we're talking about here, not an analyst throwing darts with post-its on it.

 

 

 

You're still treating GPS like it's a terrestrial system where you can just __ to counter jamming when you can't, because the basic physics that gives GPS its advantages are the same basic physics that gives it its disadvantages. Countermeasures are designed for level playing fields not 1000000000000000 fold power differences. If you have something the size of a truck vs something the size of a truck having an 'EM battle' over frequencies some dozens of km apart from either you have a range of anti jamming options available; if you have one a few km away and the other 20,000km away it's nowhere near a fair fight.

 

Signal power level is irrelevant for anti-jamming measures because jamming is _directional_. One of the more rudimentary means of defeating jamming is to simply ignore the direction the jamming signal is coming from, per James J. Kelly:

 

 

 

"

Upon detection of jamming interference, part of the antenna pattern can be turned down, so the noise from that particular direction does not interfere with the rest of the system. That is called nulling the signal.

 

"A null means that I will not look in the direction in space that the jammer is coming from," Kelly said. The electronics protect the receiver by eliminating the interference signal. One problem with this nulling technique, however, is that "as you eliminate jammers, you eliminate your ability to receive signals from the GPS satellites," he said. "You could have a nulling system that kills off the jammers, but you no longer have enough satellites available for you to navigate."

 

The distributed nature of the satellites makes this possible. The receiver logic goes "Okay, I can't 'hear' the correct signal coming from this direction but that's okay; I have plenty of other satellites I can use to find out where I am." It's also one of the reasons Russia put its jammers on cell phone towers; it maximises the number of directions a jamming signal can potentially come from, which is where beamforming comes in:

 

 

 

The RF front end converts input signals to an intermediate frequency, after which these signals are passed to the system’s beamformer for analog to digital conversion. The beamformer generates multiple independent outputs to the GPS receiver, and it is able to provide a separate steering solution for each output beam. The output beams can be steered to a particular satellite. The beamformer reduces interference before it passes data to the GPS receiver. This digital beamformer is integrated into an application-specific integrated circuit, which provides considerable size and weight reduction.  The GPS back end is completely digital, as the RF section is removed and digital data is provided directly at baseband. This receiver could be located remotely from the RF front end and beamformer, if necessary.

 

 

In this instance defeating the jamming measure is more a matter processing power, which is dependent on the size allowances of the platform it is on (probably why thus far GPS-jamming has only been effective against tiny RQ-11s and not on anything in the MQ-1 class). 

 

 

 

They go fine. Difference being; in one case you wouldn't expect evidence, in the other you would. You can't reasonably prove they crashed into water, but can prove that they hit where they said, if they showed the pictures.

 

Well, quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

 

You are seriously using the "dog ate my homework excuse." If the accusation is that the presented images are misleading then the burden of proof lay with the Russian MoD to provide even more credible images of a structure that was supposedly hit but is intact, time-stamped with the morning paper of the following day with a GPS reading down to the meter and prominent and recognisable structures or other features in the background to make geolocation possible. They have not done so, so by your standards they are even more guilty of misleading by omitting details that would have disproved their case.

 

Also, the "they fell into the ocean" excuse doesn't work when the goal of GPS jamming, as stated in my last post, is to make the missiles less accurate, not make them fall out of the sky.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Agiel

[Sarex]

1-0 for me.

 

So your logic is what, the ships should stay in port like sitting ducks and wait for the attack?

[Malcador]

Not quite sure the US is going to deliberately bomb a Russian ship.   Hm, I wonder if the interception of a Tomahawk counts as an act of war.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Malcador

[Bartimaeus]

Reports are saying that Trump is set on imminently firing both Attorney General Sessions and his deputy Rosenstein in an attempt to derail the Mueller investigation.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[Katphood]

 

1-0 for me.

 

So your logic is what, the ships should stay in port like sitting ducks and wait for the attack?

 

 

The Russians said they would respond to any attack. I don't know how they are going to be ready for an attack when they are moving 11 of their ships to 'safety'. 

 

Bottom line: Russia is moving its troops/equipment to a safe position so it doesn't have to confront the U.S. 

[Bartimaeus]

Trump also pardoned Scooter Libby, who was previously convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury...by a special counsel. We're getting the message loud and clear, Trump. Corruption is king, it would seem. Whatever they found through Cohen must've truly been terrible - the conversation went from Mueller and Trump planning to sit down for a deposition to Trump tearing that meeting up, calling Mueller's investigation an attack on the American people, pardoning a previous obstructer of justice, and reportedly setting him on creating his own Saturday Night Massacre.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Bottom line: Russia is moving its troops/equipment to a safe position so it doesn't have to confront the U.S.

 

If you say so.

[Drowsy Emperor]

They're moving troops away so that there are no 'accidents', like with the Turkish attack on their plane. 

 

If the base is hit, they will still retaliate. It makes no sense to leave your men and assets there like sitting ducks. 

 

The chances of the base getting hit by a single, or even a few projectiles are fairly low given that the S400 stationed nearby

 

Should the Russians want to confront the bombing raid, the ships will be of little use anyway - it's the air defence that will do it, or not at all.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Elerond]

Ships are most effective when they are on open sea and not docked in port, so moving/mobilizing those ship maybe just cautionary measure but it would not be out of real of possibilities that Russia has mobilized them in order to make them ready to try counter possible missile attacks.

[Sarex]

LOL Edited April 13, 2018 by Sarex

[Drowsy Emperor]

Yes, I saw that. 

 

Thinking and explaining is anathema to major media outlets.

[Malcador]

Hm, seems they were pretty damn slow in cutting him off.

[Sarex]

One thing I find funny is seeing people pointing to post/comments as Russian shills/trolls when they say that they don't agree with the western medias narrative. Then you see a post, that is a length of a novel, "corroborating and proving" how it's true and even worse than the news painted it out to be and they always start with "I don't usually do this but...".

 

You guys are drinking too much of your own kool-aid, even though you have seen how many times they have lied to you. At least here, in the evil part of Europe, we learned not to trust the news no matter which side it comes from. I guess you guys will learn it too when you feel it on your own skin, but then it's too late isn't it.

[Hurlshort]

Putin apparently won the most recent election by over 75%, so I'd hardly say the West is alone in misplacing trust.

[Sarex]

Putin apparently won the most recent election by over 75%, so I'd hardly say the West is alone in misplacing trust.

 

Why? In the eyes of the Russians, Putin is a man who took a country, that lost the cold war and was made a play thing of the west, from the brink and made it in to a power that the rest of the world can't ignore. When the US tried playing their hand in Ukraine, he stopped them, took Crimea and no one could do a thing about it.They levied sanction on Russia and the news outlets were blaring 24/7 how the Russian economy would collapse by the end of the year, it didn't. The west tried to collapse the Syrian government like it did with so many countries before it, he got involved and stopped it. People like a strong leader and he fits the bill.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Sarex

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, Putin wins because Russia now is still so much better than Russia was in the 90s with the overt western influence that it's scarcely believable, and people blame Yeltsin and the west for the bankruptcy and weakness; and, most of all, taking advantage of Russia's weakness to humiliate. Probably needs a reminder that Yeltsin the utter disaster only got a 2nd term at all because of massive direct- not devastating Pepe memes class, billions of dollars class- US intervention in the election.
 

One thing I find funny is seeing people pointing to post/comments as Russian shills/trolls when they say that they don't agree with the western medias narrative. Then you see a post, that is a length of a novel, "corroborating and proving" how it's true and even worse than the news painted it out to be and they always start with "I don't usually do this but...".

 
Funny thing about that, back when reddit (yeah guys, I know) was doing public aggregation reports one place really stood out amongst the Torontos New Yorks, Londons etc: Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Report then got deleted, of course.
 

Not quite sure the US is going to deliberately bomb a Russian ship.   Hm, I wonder if the interception of a Tomahawk counts as an act of war.

 
Shooting missiles is not an act of war, though it could be a pretext for one. But then sneezing on an ambassador could be a pretext for war.

 

Bottom line: Russia is moving its troops/equipment to a safe position so it doesn't have to confront the U.S.

 
No, if anything moving its ships make a confrontation more likely. Getting your fleet caught in port is a massive no no in a war; see Pearl Harbour, Mers el Kebir/ Algiers etc, Port Arthur, Alexandria (Aboukir), Taranto, since you present a single target able to be targeted by a single coordinated strike, cannot manoeuver and are a sitting duck.
 

The chances of the base getting hit by a single, or even a few projectiles are fairly low given that the S400 stationed nearby
 
Should the Russians want to confront the bombing raid, the ships will be of little use anyway - it's the air defence that will do it, or not at all.

 
Tartous is a decent distance from Hmeimem (about 40km), and you'd far prefer to use pantsirs on CMs which have a shorter range. If you're using S400s to shoot tomahawks they aren't fully ready to shoot planes which is their primary job. As for the ship utility, depends on the ship and role. They can work very well as pickets and the like to augment radar, and of course if you've got ship launched tomahawks they also potentially give a quicker and heavier response than a plane would. Pyotr Veliky (not present in Syria) has 20 SAM systems fitted including 12 S300s so it would be significant for air defence as well, but a frigate or especially a cargo ship not so much.
 

LOL

 
Reminds me, I found the video the stills of the 'chemical weapon gas cylinder' came from and it's not exactly more convincing. Video's perfectly SFW, unlike many of the others
 

 
About the only thing it shows 'positively' is that there's enough concrete debris shown and the greening is unlikely to be algae, but the latter is because the hole in the ceiling is shown to be ~5m away from where the cylinder came to rest, undamaged, on the undamaged bed, and would require a truly weird trajectory of about 30 degrees from horizontal, after being dropped by a chopper and going through concrete. I'd be pretty confident in saying that at least was outright staged, so much so that I cannot see any way it can be defended as accurate. For some reason we don't get that video shown on news reports though, just 'trust us, we got the good oil' from Macron etc.

[Malcador]

One thing I find funny is seeing people pointing to post/comments as Russian shills/trolls when they say that they don't agree with the western medias narrative. Then you see a post, that is a length of a novel, "corroborating and proving" how it's true and even worse than the news painted it out to be and they always start with "I don't usually do this but...".

 

You guys are drinking too much of your own kool-aid, even though you have seen how many times they have lied to you. At least here, in the evil part of Europe, we learned not to trust the news no matter which side it comes from. I guess you guys will learn it too when you feel it on your own skin, but then it's too late isn't it.

Well, how can it be too late? Do they suddenly start telling you the truth once you disbelieve them all the time?

 

One of the ships being sent by the US is the Donald Cook, remember reading the Russians knocking that entire ship offline a while back

Edited April 13, 2018 by Malcador

[Drowsy Emperor]

Whatever opinion one has on Putin, he has a demonstrable track record of success and is rewarded with one of the highest, genuine, levels of public support by a populace.

 

Domestic propaganda would only take him so far, if what he was preaching is the stark opposite of the reality the average voter lives in. Sure, a clever politician can fudge it for a while, but Lincoln's saying in this case applies perfectly -  and Putin has been in power for way too long to 'keep fooling everyone all the time'.

 

I don't think these last few years of persistent conflict, particularly since the Trump election, actually revolve around the Russia-West relationship (which is ultimately, worst case scenario, a MAD situation and therefore pointless to even contemplate) nearly as much as they are a reflection of internal Western issues. It's particularly obvious in the U.S. where the domestic power struggle is totally wrapped up in 'Russia' talk, while actually being a contest for the political orthodoxy (who are the 'true' Americans). Russia as such is not even an active factor, just a way to slander political opponents and demonstrate 'strength' or lack thereof. 

 

In the EU, there are other problems. Internal cohesion is at an all time low (well, one of the all time lows) and there's literally nothing to rally around. Old talks of 'one Europe' aren't winning any voters - in fact the opposite narrative is gaining ground slowly but consistently, and there's a real need to give a reason for the project to be taken to whatever the 'next level' is (there were some ideas launched recently), in spite of a lack of popular support for such a thing. Russia was supposed to be the raison d'etre of joint European defence, foreign policy - but it's not materializing, despite best efforts by the media to play up the threat on a daily basis.   

 

So, Russia is going to be the media punching bag for the foreseeable future, because these problems aren't going away any time soon - while not doing much, except trying to influence some of its remaining allies and intervene in a limited way, and that only if it absolutely has to.

 

It's not Russia that's credibly threatening the supremacy of the West, it's the West itself.  And some natural developments regarding the relative position of U.S. and E.U. economies, vis-a-vis a quickly developing 'rest' of the world. 

Edited April 13, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Zoraptor]

Well, quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Well yeah- but, the assertion is that 59 tomahawks struck, so I don't have to prove that 59 didn't since I'm not making the assertion, I can freely dismiss any hits not shown. I'm not unreasonable and I wouldn't bother arguing, if the evidence released merely disproved the Russian version. But they didn't even do that, and that begs the question why. As for Russians providing proof, they don't have to, and have good reason not to- secrecy of any countermeasures plus Trump being insecure about his grands mains turning out to be rather more petits. If someone told him the Russians had crashed his beautiful new SMART missiles and were crowing about it he'd probably order an outright war. They still provided some evidence though, via video tour and photogallery which clearly showed multiple undamaged shelters, aircraft and buildings, as well as damage, at a time it was still being claimed that the base had been destroyed. You'd need to come up with a good reason for the shelters especially not being targeted, or why some were and others weren't.

 

Just because you believe tomahawks are infallible doesn't make them so and doesn't reverse the burden of proof onto anyone else but the US.

 

null defence

 

 

is already defeasible both theoretically and practically. If you have mobile sources like planes it's pretty trivial to brute force, and if spoofing is involved it won't do anything.

 

beamforming

 

 

is a 'magic' defence, there's nowhere near enough known about it to prove or refute effectiveness, and it still relies on antenna(e) and the GPS signal. I also note:

 

Naylor states that G-STAR currently is effective against a wide range of GPS jamming environments [..] New missiles typically feature a tight package composed of an anti-jam device, antenna and GPS receiver. This makes them more adaptable for beamforming anti-jammers, Kelly asserted.

 

So, if it isn't effective against all jamming environments you can pretty much guarantee it would be Russian (or Chinese) military systems it isn't effective against, and the countermeasures are only on newer missiles as well. Hmm. Hope an old batch of tomahawks weren't used.

 

In any case, per your aphorism, the onus is on the asserter to prove that 59 tomahawks arrived, me providing a reason as to why they didn't is wholly optional on my part.

[Malcador]

58 strikes this time. I guess people will think him hard now.

[Zoraptor]

Probably time for a separate thread then so people can get back to talking about Trump flip flopping on TPP and shouting at Comey in peace.