HonorableTB posted:

There is no diplomacy that can reach a dead end because there has been no good faith diplomatic effort by putin, only issuing impossible demands while an army is on the border ready to invade. That's not diplomacy. That's armed extortion on a nation-state scale.

i say swears online posted:

wonder what happens in ten years when a swarm of drones the size of a cup of coffee can take out an entire bio-identified officer crew

Weka posted:

Finally my catapult based transportation network can shine.

Weka posted:

Finally my catapult based transportation network can shine.

BULBASAUR posted:

my fave bit of cyberpunk world building is that shipping on oceans is impossible because there are swarms of rouge hunter killer submarines leftover from a previous war

BitcoinRockefeller posted:

Which book/series is this from?

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/SilingWu/status/1484914550960971780

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's an event in the Cyberpunk 2077 timeline called the Red Years, which was the result of some hacker ruining the internet. When global communications shut down the AIs on the submarines assumed they were in a state of war, and autonomously began destroying everything that wasn't registered as friendly. So as of the time of the game, over 20 years later, they're still out there making ocean travel impossible.

HonorableTB posted:

There is no diplomacy that can reach a dead end because there has been no good faith diplomatic effort by putin, only issuing impossible demands while an army is on the border ready to invade. That's not diplomacy. That's armed extortion on a nation-state scale.

Milo and POTUS posted:

That's kinda neat and a genre appropriate way to force the story focus on land. It real close to shore or are the littorals still safe?

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It doesn't go into that much detail. Littorals are safe because people still buy and use pleasure craft. Anything out on the open ocean is asking for a death sentence though. Islands can only be supplied from the air.

That last part isn't a minor detail either. Mass freight has shifted to gigantic air barges which use up way more fuel than ocean liners because they have to make lift. So everything across the board is more expensive to ship.

Tankbuster posted:

How do trains go across the ocean dumbass?

Centrist Committee posted:

it’s called a bridge IDIOT!!!

Tankbuster posted:

How do trains go across the ocean dumbass?

goochtit posted:

https://twitter.com/sovietvisuals/status/1157262619650211840

i say swears online posted:

not joining NATO is an impossible demand

i say swears online posted:

not joining NATO is an impossible demand

Danann posted:

goochtit posted:

https://twitter.com/sovietvisuals/status/1157262619650211840

i say swears online posted:

not joining NATO is an impossible demand

Anime Bernie Bro posted:

allowing the ukraine to join nato would be pathological altruism on the part of the west

what do they contribute? they are nothing but a liability which will drag us into war.

HonorableTB posted:

Why does Russia get to determine who joins a defensive alliance they aren't a part of

Doctor Jeep posted:

because it can
or can't, if they refuse

gradenko_2000 posted:

more from "About Face"

HonorableTB posted:

This doesnt make any sense to me. They can do this only if nato allows it

HonorableTB posted:

This doesnt make any sense to me. They can do this only if nato allows it

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-rear end-handed-to-it-in-war-games-2019-3

The US has been getting 'its rear end handed to it' in war games simulating fights against Russia and China

In war games simulating a high-end fight against Russia or China, the US often loses, two experienced military war-gamers have revealed.

"In our games, when we fight Russia and China, 'blue' gets its rear end handed to it," David Ochmanek, a RAND warfare analyst, explained at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Breaking Defense first reported. US forces are typically color-coded blue in these simulations.

"We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary," he said.

At the outset of these conflicts, all five battlefield domains — land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace — are contested, meaning the US could struggle to achieve the superiority it has enjoyed in the past.

In these simulated fights, the "red" aggressor force often obliterates US stealth fighters on the runway, sends US warships to the depths, destroys US bases, and takes out critical US military systems.

"In every case I know of, the F-35 rules the sky when it's in the sky," Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense and an experienced war-gamer, said Thursday. "But it gets killed on the ground in large numbers."

Neither China nor Russia has developed a fifth-generation fighter as capable as the F-35, but even the best aircraft have to land. That leaves them vulnerable to attack.

"Things that sail on the surface of the sea are going to have a hard time," Ochmanek said.

Aircraft carriers, traditional beacons of American military might, are becoming increasingly vulnerable. They may be hard to kill, but they are significantly less difficult to take out of the fight.

Naval experts estimate that US aircraft carriers now need to operate at least 1,000 nautical miles from the Chinese mainland to keep out of range of China's anti-ship missiles, according to USNI News.

"If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein [in Germany]. And that's it," Work explained, according to Breaking Defense. "We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don't have anything to protect our bases. So what difference does it make?" "If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein [in Germany]. And that's it," Work explained, according to Breaking Defense. "We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don't have anything to protect our bases. So what difference does it make?"

Simply put, the US military bases scattered across Europe and the Pacific don't have the anti-air and missile-defense capabilities required to handle the overwhelming volume of fire they would face in a high-end conflict.

In a conflict against a near-peer threat, US communications satellites, command-and-control systems, and wireless networks would be crippled.

"The brain and the nervous system that connects all of these pieces is suppressed, if not shattered," Ochmanek said of this scenario. Work said the Chinese call this type of attack "system destruction warfare."

The Chinese would "attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time," Work said. "On our side, whenever we have an exercise, when the red force really destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise and say, 'let's restart.'"

"These are the things that the war games show over and over and over, so we need a new American way of war without question," Work stressed.

Ochmanek and Work have both seen US war games play out undesirably, and their damning observations reflect the findings of an assessment done from last fall.

"If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan, Americans could face a decisive military defeat," the National Defense Strategy Commission — a bipartisan panel of experts picked by Congress to evaluate the National Defense Strategy — said in a November report.

The report called attention to the erosion of the US's military edge by rival powers, namely Russia and China, which have developed a "suite of advanced capabilities heretofore possessed only by the United States."

The commission concluded the US is "at greater risk than at any time in decades."

Doctor Jeep posted:

I'm reading these excerpts and thinking to myself "thank god they were like this, thank god this guy didn't manage to whip them into shape" lmao

indigi posted:

I’m reading them and thinking “it’s a shame this obvious and total piece of poo poo made it out alive”

Southpaugh posted:

what makes him a piece of poo poo?

Southpaugh posted:

career soldier