The Old Hack

I feel Minister of War Sukhomlinov in particular deserves (dis)honourable mention here. He was in charge of Russian logistics at the opening of WW1. He... did not do a particularly good job of it. (He'd have fit bang alongside Putin's chiefs of logistics, mind you.) Russia the country? Absolutely. Russia the nation? Not so much. All Kutusov did was to keep retreating and leaving mostly burned and unusable land behind him on his way. Even Russia could (barely) manage to feed an army that was headed towards its own supply sources.

I started to think about some military matters that I feel do not belong in the politics thread and am therefore creating a new thread for it. Recently I started to think about the use of conscripted troops versus volunteers, training and equipment (or absence thereof), and situations they are deployed in. (Disclaimer: I myself was a volunteer and I personally find the use of conscripts highly problematic. Still, I can see that there are times where grim necessity may compel their use.) All else being equal, volunteers tend to be superior to conscripts. But there are situations where conscripts may function quite serviceably. This happens if: They are well motivated, for example if deployed in defence of their homeland. They receive a decent amount of training. They receive equipment and munitions that are if not necessarily modern at least capable of keeping up. They are not used beyond what may be reasonably expected of them. (Holding a pre-prepared defensive line is good. Frontal assaults, not so much.) This is all of course subject to change. Conscripts may also battle harden, for example, and as time passes, they may gain in capabilities and receive better training. And taking time to build their morale is never a bad idea. Unfortunately not all leaders have the foresight to use conscripts in such a way. In a certain war I do not think I need to name one side has found itself being driven out from areas it seized in the opening months of the conflict. It has suffered painful losses in equipment and experienced troops and the morale of its troops is... not good. The Great Leader of this side has determined that the correct response is to engage in, shall we say, a leveé en masse, in which a large number of civilians is conscripted into fighting. Few of these have had any active military experience for years, some of them have never been trained. They are being shipped to the front line in a haphazard way, their organization is poor, they have a desperate shortage of NCOs and what equipment they do have available is old if not obsolescent. (I must point out that 'obsolescent' is not quite the same as 'obsolete.' An aging bolt rifle might fairly be considered obsolescent. A muzzle-loading smoothbore musket? Probably obsolete.) The scenario they are headed for is not a happy one. They are facing a smaller but much better motivated and trained army largely consisting of volunteers, one with half a year of battle hardening to bolster it. Its leadership is superior and they are riding high on a wave of recent victories. They are pushing their opposition back and have momentum on their side. I am having trouble seeing any scenario in which the conscript forces, large numbers notwithstanding, is headed for anything but disaster. If their leaders do have the foresight to have them prepare a defensive line and attempt to hold it, that might help. Some. I can see only two hopes for these hapless conscripts. One, the weather might provide it with some cover; autumn rains might turn the fighting zone into a morass of mud and temporarily slow or halt fighting. This might buy them time to train and get at least some improved weaponry. Two, there could be agreement on an armistice or a peace. The latter is hard to see happening but I do not wish to rule it out. I'm interested in hearing the opinions of other posters, if you can either spot any mistakes I have made or if you can add anything. Discussion of different scenarios in which conscripts are employed would be very welcome. Lastly, this is a general thread for discussion of matters military, be they real life, speculative fiction, wargames and computer games. Go nuts. Humor is also welcome. Thank you all for your attention. ~tOH.

Putin: I remain a strategic genius.

Maybe the officer's right hand was busy flipping the Commander-in-Chief the bird.

It apparently went all the way up the ranks. One officer saluted the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces with his left hand. His left hand. I do not believe this is SOP.

The Moderator: By popular request, I am relaunching the political discussion thread. Once again, however, I must stress that it will be very strictly monitored. Adherence to the forum courtesy rules will be enforced with especial care here. This is a particularly contentious topic and no flames, personal attacks, scandalmongering nor slurs of any kind will be permitted. People have a great range of opinions and while it is hard to remain calm and civil at times we should nevertheless strive for that to the best of our ability. Use of particularly offensive terms about other posters (including but not limited to 'RWNJ', 'SJW', 'Nazi' and others) will result in immediate warning points. We had some good and beneficial discussions on the old thread and largely managed to remain civil and respectful. I hope we can accomplish the same here. Remember: do not post here in the heat of anger and always keep in mind that your fellow posters are people, too. Last point: as in the old thread, when I do post here it will be in my capacity as moderator only. It will be easier for me to moderate here if I do not allow myself to become personally involved. While I do have a political bias, I will do my best to not let it affect me. And remember that as always, you have a right of appeal to the admins if I make a decision you disagree so much with that you find it unacceptable. The Old Hack

The crowd seemed pretty dispirited too if that video I just left in the Politics thread is any indication.

Speaking of balloons. Trump's triumphalistic parade just went down like a lead balloon. In fact, maybe a better word would be 'fiascolistic.' Sparse crowds, lack of enthusiasm, poorly disciplined marching -- not laying that one at the feet of the hapless soldiers, they weren't even trained for it -- though some of it might have been malicious compliance. I hope it was. A viral clip from the fiascorade: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1R5q7hbv7qI

I thought cope cages were what Putin apologists live in.

One of the channels I follow regularly suggested this was likely the case. Covering everything with a fine teeth comb is extremely resource intensive. This train thing is even worse because bases could at least hypothetically be set up with a defense grid that would make it harder for drone attacks to penetrate. (Something better than covering the wings of the planes with old tires anyway.) A train on the other hand is harder to create a tight defence for. Speaking of the tires, some friends of mine got into an argument about what kinds of tires would do best. They seemed divided between Goodyear and Firestone. I was not convinced that the brand would have made much of a difference.

Presumably he believes he can just mow them down.

I thought Nut was one of your goddesses? https://egyptianmuseum.org/deities-nut

...I do not even know where to BEGIN with Hegseth. He is utterly unfit for his position in every possible way. During any other administration having ONE security breach of the kind he has had would have been career ending. He has so far had two that we know of. He is deeply unserious and should never even have been considered for the job. Then again they put RFK in charge of health services, so what do I know.

Good God! I am glad you weren't hurt.

I would say another big part was named Robert McNamara. I don't know, he might have been a good businessman. But a military genius he wasn't. What possessed the man to draft mentally retarded young men and thrust them into a war they were incapable of understanding, much less fighting?

I am sure that won't matter much. I mean, who needs to be able to see what you and the enemy are doing? Anyway if it is that bad, I am sure they can find a PE-8 in storage somewhere to use as a substitute until they can build a new one. To be fair, the Russians don't really have much in the way of credibility left anyway. I am sure that is not causing any morale issues.

Seems like Putin just had a bad day. An Ukrainian surprise drone attack just smashed a lot of Russian strategic bombing planes, reducing their strategic bombing capacity by 25% or possibly as much as 33%. It seems they have also destroyed the Russian equivalent of an AWACS. An AWACS is cheap, fast and easy to replace, right?

On the plus side, the demented orange howler baboon has just earned himself a new nickname. TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out.

Deeply satisfying video featuring a WW2 veteran who knows what he is talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4ZjhOukwU

In deflagrante delicto, so to speak?

Heracleia, getting drunk like you wouldn't believe. I still feel twinges from the blinding hangover I woke up with three days later.

So, at the end of last week the deranged orange howler baboon threw a hissy fit because Greenland made a thirty year deal with a French company for mining rights to some of the minerals that he wanted. A deal he could have had just by asking politely for it at any point before he started talking about his hostile takeover of Greenland. As a result of said hissy fit, he announced a fifty percent tariff on all of EU starting June 1st. The EU responded by saying that unless he returned to his original deadline of July 9th, there would be no further trade talks. He immediately folded and cancelled his sudden tariff change. That man is absolutely the weakest, pettiest, most cowardly and incompetent bungling imbecile to ever disgrace the Oval Office. And that is before mentioning his ham-handed disregard of the Constitution and the rights of the People of the United States. I fear for all my friends and family there, not to mention all LGBTQI* people in the US.

As an aside I have been told that nuclear devices do not either detonate or explode; instead they initiate (or are initiated, I am not sure which). If explosions are generally chemically generated expanding clouds of gases, this makes sense to me. Matter to energy conversion does not involve chemical reactions and could with some justice be called considerably more drastic than the most volatile kinds of rocket fuel. (Look up the Me 163, the Komet WW2 rocket plane, and read about its fuel if you are interested. It had a tendency to explode if mishandled even slightly. And it demanded extremely careful handling.)

That pilot ought to be grateful that he just encountered a white-winged scoter. Imagine if he'd run into Darkwing Duck. Well, I suppose the plane would still have managed to land with nobody hurt as long as it was piloted by Launchpad McQuack.

Oooh. It transformed? 'Transformer Rabbits' sounds like an interesting new franchise. Optimus Carrot leads the Rabbots against the evil Megatron and the Foxicons!