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How has Israel reacted to the Libyan situation?
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Feb 21, 2011 19:46
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MrQwerty posted:Intervening in this ends any chance of the middle eastern revolutions staying viable, confirms everything every dictator has said about foreign influence being the real cause of the demonstrations, engenders even worse crackdowns in the surviving dictatorships, mires the United States in another Imperialist adventure and overall is the wrong thing to do. With the West out, there's two major military powers left in the world that could conceivably intervene, and neither Israel nor Russia is loved around those parts of the world. I don't see how anyone can do anything without it turning into an even worse mess. Even if UN had any military power (and it doesn't), security council is an instrument designed to prevent massacres, not stop them. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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Feb 21, 2011 23:24
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The Brown Menace posted:Also why would they abandon their posts? To help the revolutionaries? After the dust settles, being in a military uniform might be bad for your health.
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Feb 21, 2011 23:42
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Boner Slam posted:So yes, the EU certainly could intervene. But will they? Should they? I dunno. I'd like to remind that most of North Africa was a colony for one or another European power at some point. There's no love for us Europeans in that area either: there wouldn't be the whole mess with Israel if not for Great Britain, for example. United States and Soviet Union waged proxy wars for forty years in the same area, so they're not really viable either. Who's left? China?
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Feb 21, 2011 23:45
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I heard someone claim the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt agrees to a democratic government, provided the new legislation is not at odds with sharia. Is this true? I can't find first-hand sources for or against.
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Feb 23, 2011 17:20
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A lot of that number are due to hospitals running out of medication or electricity, elderly people and so on. Ie. the weakest people who die the easiest if there's a problem in the care-taking chain. It's safe to estimate somewhere between 3 to 6 times as many people are in need of some sort of treatment or medication (burns, lacerations etc.) as have actually been killed this far.
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Feb 23, 2011 17:45
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Pureauthor posted:I guess we can theorize maybe some of the pilots are missing on purpose? Not necessarily on purpose, but I bet they don't have a huge incentive to actually hit anything. From the pilots point of view getting there and dropping the bombs on first pass wherever is the safest bet. Least chance of getting hit by ground fire, least chance of getting shot as traitor when they return, least chance of getting shot by the rebels if they happen to win the war. The equipment is also old, must be in pretty rough shape and quality of pilots is probably dubious so even if they wanted, hitting anything meaningful would be a crapshoot.
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Mar 3, 2011 13:22
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ToiletPost posted:How long is the route, do you have enough energy? you have a camera, good. but how you're going to transmit that data back (assuming the drone will never return). your best bet will probably be a satellite, do you have any?. Apples and oranges, really. Hezbollah has several ways of making sure the data gets back: sympathizers, flight patterns, timing flights with commercial aircraft etc. Israel has many checks before they can open fire on an unidentified flying object. The risks are simply too great. Additionally they're relatively small and can fly low to avoid detection if that is deemed necessary. There's no need for high altitude flying over Israel since the locals aren't likely to blast it with assault rifles. If the drone is not remote controlled (and it doesn't need to be) you can just program the flight path in. At the most basic level you need a compass and a clock. Risk of crashing becomes greater but drones are cheap. US military wants realtime video feed and an operator at the helm to react at surprises. That raises the price of Predators considerably. A quick note about Predator pricing: it's custom built and the manufacturer wants to both cover the development costs and make a hefty profit. It's also got all sorts of fancy features, including the ability to target and fire Hellfire missiles remotely. Using off-the-shelf parts and sticking with recon only cuts down the cost massively. I've been following the Syrian conflict for a while now. Could someone please brief me who the sides of the conflict are? Are they divided by tribes (as is my guess), geography or some other divisive lines? "Rebels" isn't really useful. To Brown Moses: why are you tracking the use of cluster bombs in particular?
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Oct 13, 2012 14:54
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Brown Moses posted:Cluster bomb were used on very rare occasions, but the recent evidence suggests a significant escalation. A slightly more cynical view might be that they're just running out of ammunition and have resorted to dropping whatever is at hand. Syrian air forces, despite being cream of the military, were never very well armed or maintained. A combination of old stock, poor storage and maintenance, losses due to rebel activity and international embargo must have put a strain on the supplies. Ammunition has a best before-date so you can't store it in vast quantities unless you know you're going to need it soon. If the air forces still had lots of other stock left, why drop cluster munitions on a road you need to resupply friendlies? They must know the percentages.
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Oct 13, 2012 16:50
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Sure looks a lot like MiG-21 tail. Same sort of plane that defected in June. iyaayas01 posted:This is true but it is generally measured in decades... Fair enough, but Syrians have also used their stockpiles many times. Lebanon War in 1982 was the last major conflict in which they extensively used their air forces. Claims about Bekaa Valley conflict, but it's clear the result was a decisive defeat for Syrians. As Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan at the same time (not to mention the ongoing changes in Soviet leadership during 80's) I doubt they felt any urgency about supporting the losers. Fall of Soviet Union meant Syria had to pay good money for their weapons. Given that they're flying ancient planes I doubt stockpiling munitions for a protracted war was high on the priority list. Hob_Gadling fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 20:29
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Sargs posted:That's the tail of an L-39. I stand corrected. I always sucked at plane recognition anyway. Isn't it a bit desperate to fly trainers around enemy AA?
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Oct 14, 2012 00:51
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Mokotow posted:They have lower stall speeds and are more manouverable on low altitudes, Neither of which make any difference against low level AAA. It's all a roll of the dice, either you get hit or not. quote:Also, bigger and faster jets use up a lot more fuel, and since they have more complex systems, they're really hard to maintain, considering the situation the SAA is in. MiG-21 is ancient. It's barely more complicated than WW2 fighters. It might be slightly less fuel efficient, but I don't think that is the major problem here since most of the alleged air force is apparently completely out of action. Has anyone recognized Su-series of planes on the sky? I'm thinking they are scraping the bottom of the barrel by now.
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Oct 14, 2012 01:17
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Brown Moses posted:Unless someone was copying Soviet weapons in the 80s The list of who didn't is probably shorter. China blatantly copied Soviet technology even after Sino-Soviet split. Half the dictatorships in the world ripped off some design ideas or manufactured licensed stuff. AK and RPG variants are omnipresent. While air-delivered cluster bombs are somewhat specialized stuff, they're not too hard to pirate. The required knowhow is only slightly more complex than standard bombs, after all. That said, I think they're originally Soviet-built. It's no secret the armed forces run almost exclusively old Soviet equipment.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:55
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Brown Moses posted:Here's what I was talking about early, Dam Spleeters and CJ Chivers have found videos of SA-7s actually being used in Syria, a big development in the oppositions air war. A couple notes on the article: The missile needs to be fired at fighters from behind due to how the seeking system works. While theoretically you can target and fire at planes from every direction, anything else reduces hitting chances. Their range is also limited with a relatively low ceiling. On the other hand loyalists might decide discretion is the better part of valor and start flying higher, essentially making spotting impossible and bombing extremely inaccurate. The main purpose of MANPADS is to keep enemy aircraft from getting too bold, anyway. Unless rebels manage to catch helicopters napping, taking off or landing, scoring a hit is unlikely at best. Mujahideen did their best to ambush Soviet helos near airfields, as low target airspeeds give the missile best chances to hit. You might want to keep an eye out for activity near airfields.
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Oct 15, 2012 22:23
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Baby Huey Newton posted:People keep strawmanning the opposition as Assad supporters, because it is far easier than confronting the fact that they are supporters of NATO imperialism. I've tried to understand your viewpoint but all I'm getting is noise and no signal. Can you explain in small words why it's NATO imperialism to note that the weapons used in Syria are ex-Soviet?
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Oct 15, 2012 23:00
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Warbadger posted:Not necessarily an issue. I don't think the missiles are gonna change much in the sense that they would be especially effective at actually shooting planes down. Even the improved models are easy enough to evade if pilots take the threat seriously to begin with. They might drop one or two planes, but that's not going to decide the war one way or another. The actual impact is elsewhere. Keep planes out of low altitude and force them to speed up if they're effective; parade them around to keep spirits up either way. As far as I can tell it's not going to be decided by equipment anyway. Belief in cause and élan are more important.
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Oct 16, 2012 01:35
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Brown Moses posted:I've done a new cluster bomb post, with some info on another bomb type that's been introduced I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this sentence doesn't make any sense: quote:You may have read about OFAB high explosive fragmentation bombs on my blog, which are very similar, the main difference being the thickness of the shell, with the OFABs thicker shell causing greater fragmentation compared to the FAB. I'm guessing that information came off Jane's? It's not the thickness of the casing but the design of it that causes increased fragmentation.
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Oct 16, 2012 22:41
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FAB is what you'd call a "general purpose" bomb. Wikipedia puts it pretty well: Wikipedia posted:A general-purpose bomb is an air-dropped bomb intended as a compromise between blast damage, penetration, and fragmentation in explosive effect. OFAB is weighted more towards fragmentation at the expense of other characteristics. When designing a frag bomb you want to make sure the casing fragments into as many suitable-sized metal shards as possible. OFAB solves this by making the inside of the bomb saw-toothed. When the explosive goes, the casing splits along the thin parts, creating the maximum number of fragments possible. It's not as effective against armored targets or buildings but presents a greater threat to people and unarmored vehicles. In practice both bombs are used in the same role. Rebels don't have that many armored vehicles anyway, so makes sense loyalists would go for maximum collateral damage and casualties. e: and the reason the sentence stood out is, you never want to make shell casings thicker than you absolutely need to. You don't want to contain the explosion, you want to release it as much as possible. It's been one of the major military problems since World War 1: how to get the most out of the least? Hob_Gadling fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 23:03
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Canadian Surf Club posted:Does anyone know anything about this? As a generic comment not really related to this, civil wars are the times people really show their worst. Old grudges get dug up and repaid in full. So, the question is this: even if it is true, so what? Neither side are angels. Both sides are guaranteed to do things like that, all the time, as long as the fight carries on. It's one of the basic rules of low-intensity conflicts like Syria that you don't want people to remain neutral: either they're on your side or against you. If that means hanging children of "traitors", calling in artillery strikes by launching mortar fire from a schoolyard or simply giving an ultimatum then that's what gonna happen. If you would like to know more, read books about Yugoslavian uprising against Nazi Germany under Tito. That is some cold poo poo that went down, and the rules haven't changed.
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Oct 20, 2012 02:56
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Torpor posted:BM you should see if you can't go along with the Frontline Team so you can pose with unexploded ordinance yourself. This is the stupidest thing ever and no one should do it. UXO is dangerous, one unlucky moment and exit a roomful of people. Blow it up via controlled detonation or roll over it with tractors, but by God don't parade it around!
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Oct 20, 2012 04:20
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Brown Moses posted:We're going to work on the basic info, then more advanced stuff. Have you tried contacting DENIX and asking for their co-operation? I would imagine they have translated material available. http://www.denix.osd.mil/uxo/index.cfm
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Oct 21, 2012 22:59
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Isn't the Metis one of the more advanced ex Soviet anti tank systems? Yes, it's among the latest and greatest. If the missile is the older model with single HEAT warhead, in theory ERA can defeat it. Metis-M has tandem charge which will punch through anything in Syrian armory. I recall the same missiles being used in 2006 Lebanon War by Hezbollah. Back then Israelis claimed the weapons were sold by Russia and smuggled through Syria. It would be interesting to know if these are sold by Russia directly, stockpiled somewhere by smugglers or brought back from Lebanon.
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Oct 22, 2012 04:07
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Torpor posted:Using a premier anti-tank rocket to shoot a building seems like a waste. Do they have tons to spare or just a more pressing lack of RPGs? Most likely they just wanted to shoot the video for propaganda purposes. One missile won't make much difference either way. If they only had one missile that was probably the best use they could have put it towards.
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Oct 24, 2012 06:17
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That article is quite a cynical read. If the rebels win we're not going to do anything about the ensuing ethnic cleansing. It's however important that the genocide doesn't happen with Western weapons.
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Oct 29, 2012 15:03
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The X-man cometh posted:Are there specific rebel groups in Syria that commit the atrocities? When you're fighting a civil war against establishment, you want to force atrocities even if you don't commit them yourself. A "you're with us or you're against us" mentality is essential for the rebels. The thing is, they can (and have to) be clever about it. Most of the time it's enough to get the locals involved enough to get them in trouble with the government. A massacre later you have a lot of very angry people who want revenge. Sometimes you need to push a little to get people involved. Maybe shoot a couple people, show everyone via video "this is what happens to people who are not with us". Who wants to risk it? Exactly who pulls the trigger is irrelevant, I think. You can't fight a civil war without some horrible poo poo going down. Government may decide fear is the way to get people in line, rebels may decide shooting a couple "traitors" is the way to increase support. Raising support via soup kitchens is not a strategy that works. The rebel videos are getting a lot of attention probably because of the naive narrative that surrounds the whole ordeal. "Heroic rebels are fighting a tyranny". Ethnic cleansing and summary executions don't fit into the fantasy very well.
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Nov 2, 2012 22:17
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Young Freud posted:What do they have to gain by doing this? Depends on who's doing the shooting. It can be a lot of things. If it's government troops I guess they might be trying to force a foreign intervention.
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Nov 12, 2012 19:07
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:How can Mursi be so loving stupid? It baffles me. What do you mean? If he gets what he wants he can slowly cement his status as a dictator. If he doesn't he's still going to remain the president as long as there's no organized violence towards protesters. If there's a downside I don't see it.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:06
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Brown Moses posted:I believe (although I might have imagined or dreamt it) the system requires a lock onto an IR signature before it can be launched, Yes, but that's not especially hard to jerry-rig. The main reasons against using the missiles are, in rough order of importance: 1) RPG, mortar and grenade launcher rounds are lighter to carry around 2) above are way more common so you have more people who know how to use them 3) the warhead is impact-detonated and directional, so you need to hit the target dead on 4) and the warhead can't hurt anything armored or made of concrete 5) simply the fact there are SA-7 in rebel hands restricts air operations
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Nov 30, 2012 21:07
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Charliegrs posted:But if the chemical weapons are stored as binary agents that must be mixed first doesnt that pretty much negate any risk of spreading a poison cloud? Yes. Think of the stupidest person you know: that's the guy handling the storage and transfer of the agents. You want to make sure one idiot doesn't kill everyone. The best way is bringing the chemicals anywhere near each other at the last possible moment. Similarly, if the storage comes under attack you don't want one unlucky bomb to release nerve gas and kill everyone. Manufacturing chemical weapons is easy enough you can do it at home if you're dedicated enough. Delivery and dispersal is the problem. See sarin gas attacks in Japan, 1995.
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Dec 4, 2012 13:06
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Grey Fox posted:Is the best course of action to just stay the hell away from the area? Yes. quote:If so, what kind of distance? Depends on ammunition in question. At least 100 meters for cluster bomblets, 500 meters or more for 155mm artillery shells. Getting this far away may be a problem if you live in a city full of UXO. quote:At the risk of sounding incredibly naive, are there options for safe bomblet disposal in a residential area like that? Yes, but it's still slow and painstaking work. Almost certainly there isn't equipment or training available in the required numbers. For a poor mans bomb disposal they can cover the bomblet with a bucket, put some sandbags on top of the bucket and detonate from a safe distance. As for bombs buried in rubble, they'll need armored bulldozers.
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Dec 18, 2012 02:27
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Muffiner posted:Its the police academy, and the rocket is a Konkurs Or Fagot, both use the same 9P135M launcher.
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Dec 26, 2012 10:07
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fspades posted:If Assad wins he will brutally crack down on any opposition and it will be very ugly, but at least it's very unlikely that there will be sectarian-based genocide. There almost certainly will be some sort of purges. We can debate numbers and targets, but even Assad will have to make some examples to prop up his rule.
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Jun 11, 2013 17:52
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MrMenshevik posted:I don't know all that much about military hardware, but I thought fixed SAM batteries require a radar network to function. How are they using these things? Or do they have some kind of local radar that's good enough? Those missiles are all shoulder launched. Their tracking systems require an external battery pack to work. Military grade batteries are light enough to be worn on belt; jury-rigged car batteries weigh like hell. Thus, "fixed" sites.
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Aug 2, 2013 14:11
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My bad, I misread your post LP97S.
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Aug 2, 2013 15:52
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Sucrose posted:Look, it seems pretty clear-cut to me: If a civilian, walking down the street or whatever, having little if any power and nothing to do with their government/sect/whatever's actions, nonetheless gets deliberately targeted and killed because of the nationality, ethnicity, or sect they belong to, then the act was terrorism and a war-crime. If they were actually involved in a military operation against the enemy that killed them, then it probably wasn't terrorism. It doesn't seem all that ambiguous to me. Suppose that civilian pays tax to the nation in question. Does that mean he supports the war and thus is an enemy? The point of Geneva conventions is not to prevent all civilian casualties but to curb the worst excesses. This means indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets (ie. cities), death squads, what happened in Nanking and Berlin etc. Two key aspects: 1) Intent. The action must be targeted against a military objective with a military purpose in mind. It is the responsibility of the other side to not mix civilians and military, to provide them with air raid shelters and so on. A military leader surrounding himself with his innocent family is still a legit target. Since wars are fought by humans, sometimes mistakes happen. Intent is key to deciding whether the Hellfire missile aimed at a taxi cab was a crime or not. 2) Proportionality. Bombing a wedding to kill an enemy leader is acceptable. Nuking a city to achieve the same goal is not. In both cases innocents die, it's just a matter of numbers. In practice it would seem this number is somewhere around 10:1, ie. it's acceptable to end up with 10 dead civilians per one dead soldier. Most of these civilian casualties come from indirect effects of the war (disruption of infrastructure, diseases, resulting collapse of society). Weapons have become massively more accurate since WW2, so the acceptable casualty number for direct strikes is significantly less than it used to be (f. ex. bombing a munitions factory in 1950s vs doing the same today). Suicide bombing can be either terrorism, war crime or a legit military tactic. It depends on why do you do it, who/what do you target and other circumstances of the strike.
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Jan 14, 2014 11:31
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Zudgemud posted:There is no ethical war, there will never be an ethical war. Essentially this. The problem of civilian casualties will not be solved by making better weapons or more restrictive laws, it will be solved by fighting less wars.
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Jan 14, 2014 21:11
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BabyChoom posted:I ask you again. Is white phosphorus, in your personal opinion, a chemical weapon or not. You ask for naught, for before the rooster crows you shall be denied three times.
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Apr 25, 2014 12:02
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Zudgemud posted:Are these really so cheap and efficient that they beat all the secondhand bombs that must be overflowingly abundant in the world? Explosives spoil. Militaries of the world don't want to buy excess stockpiles of ammunition because it has to be used or destroyed at regular intervals; this alone reduces the amount of second-hand bombs on the market. Iraq probably doesn't have domestic production of bombs anymore, and they're strapped for cash anyway. Barrel bombs hit the key criteria of "easy to manufacture, cheap, effective enough". You can build one with civilian grade explosives and iron scrap. For comparison, the nominal cost of Mk. 82 500-pound bomb (carrying ~90kg of high explosives) is $2000 USD and 25 kg box of dynamite is less than $100.
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May 11, 2014 13:20
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Fabulous Knight posted:Have another map. I'm not sure what the official one is or if this is more accurate than that Paradox one. Heh. What do you think happens if they try Russia?
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Jul 2, 2014 23:15
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Panzeh posted:What's the difference, really, between a barrel bomb and a mk 84? Generally speaking the organization that drops it on people.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:45
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