Discussion of Military, real or fictional

[The Old Hack 2,448]

27 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Why should he? He had Stargates built into them.

Not Stargates. Stargåtes. These are off brand imitations with a silly modified A to get around the trademark.

They are an endless hassle to maintain and every week or so you get invaded by creatures from the beyond or crap like that. All in all they are more trouble than they are worth.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

An expensive victory can still be a victory. The Kursk offensive failed and cost Germany so much they could no longer muster a serious counteroffensive on the East Front for the rest of the war. Russia could replace its losses; Germany couldn't.

No doubt, and I don't think they expected to need to be able to pull that off with Ukraine, they expected a one or two week cake walk, but attrition is working against them this time, due to Western sanctions of Russia, top quality aid from everywhere, and Ukrainian determination. Ukraine's infrastructure is not shabby; they make their own stuff as well, and it is also top notch. And Russia has an internal credibility problem, even more so than the US did during the Vietnam conflict.

The worst thing about this is Putin is in a bad situation, and he has nukes. A rational Putin will not use them. The real Putin may get desperate enough. It will probably be the end of him, but if he sees himself as the rat in the corner, he might take the world down with him.

 

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I suspect these were the worst possible officers to lose as they were courageous ones leading their men into the teeth of terrible opposition.

Russia is experiencing some of this through many of their more capable people fleeing Russia.

 

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

For some reason this name gives me a terrible mental image of a defending American force led by Archie Bunker.

Kelly's Heros - It's like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World set in WW II. Carroll O'Conner (Archie Bunker) plays General Colt, in charge of the troops and clueless about what is going on.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

They are an endless hassle to maintain and every week or so you get invaded by creatures from the beyond or crap like that. All in all they are more trouble than they are worth.

Again, the Pyramids were not designed for physical transport.  The Gates were in low elevation temples that would "accidentally" flood or be burried by dunes when they became inconvenient.

Hollywood likes to put these things in Pyramids because they think that's the only way modern audiences will believe a story is in Egypt. 

Sigh.

We did have buildings with flat roofs.

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

And isn't that weird "Å" a Viking relic? 

 

[mlooney 3,417]

18 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Gotta love 'Our Lady of the hand held anti tank weapons'.

Is 'Orc Army' some acronym, or is it referencing stereotypical orcs? Depending on your fantasy milieu, it seems a bit unfair to the Orcs to be compared to Russia.

Orc is a fairly standard thing for Ukrainians to call Russian army types. 

[ijuin 572]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And isn't that weird "Å" a Viking relic? 

 

The character is actually the Alteran glyph for Tau’ri, or Terra. (The Alterans, or Ancients, were the ones who invented the Stargates, and their language was apparently the ancestor of early Latin.)

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

The Alterans, or Ancients, were the ones who invented the Stargates, and their language was apparently the ancestor of early Latin.

The Ancients were the race of aliens that came to earth 300,000 years ago and took humans and humanoids as worker/slave races scattered around Know Space.  That's why, when Terra discovered Jump Drives they found humans already in the stars.  

[ijuin 572]

No, that was the Gou’ald, who impersonated gods. The Ancients were the genetic precursors of humans.

[mlooney 3,417]

4 minutes ago, ijuin said:

No, that was the Gou’ald, who impersonated gods. The Ancients were the genetic precursors of humans.

You need to re-read your "Traveller" lore.  :-)  Of course Traveller backstory is the correct future history, even when parts of it are prehistoric on Terra.

[mlooney 3,417]

Russian tank identification guide for Ukrainian AFV

For those that don't get the meta joke the tank labeled as "M1 Abrams" is in fact a Leopard 2.
Also for those that don't follow the Ukrainian war daily, Russia has claimed it's destroyed multiple Leopards and has released a video of one being destroyed by a helicopter fired anti tank guided missile. The thermal image is of the tractor in the lower right. Leopard 2 have not been used in combat by Ukraine at this time

[ijuin 572]

44 minutes ago, mlooney said:

You need to re-read your "Traveller" lore.  :-)  Of course Traveller backstory is the correct future history, even when parts of it are prehistoric on Terra.

I don’t know Traveller. We were discussing the glyph used in the “Stargate” series logo, so I was referencing Stargate canon.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

30 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Also for those that don't follow the Ukrainian war daily, Russia has claimed it's destroyed multiple Leopards and has released a video of one being destroyed by a helicopter fired anti tank guided missile. The thermal image is of the tractor in the lower right.

To be fair to the Russians, these tractors are brutal. They have towed any number of abandoned and captured vehicles to Ukrainian repair shops for repair and conversion to Ukrainian use.

 

5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And isn't that weird "Å" a Viking relic? 

Actually it is comparatively recent, at least in Denmark. We used to write it using two As in a row, but people got tired of it and introduced the Å in 1948.

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

The character is actually the Alteran glyph for Tau’ri, or Terra. (The Alterans, or Ancients, were the ones who invented the Stargates, and their language was apparently the ancestor of early Latin.)

I wish science fiction writers of that kind of series would study at least a little linguistics. The history of Latin evolution is eminently traceable through the Indo-European language tree all the way back to Sanskrit. If they had been arsed to at least make their language the ancestor of Sanskrit it would have been 1) much more believable and 2) way cooler, insinuating that ALL Indo-European languages could trace their ancestry back to the Alterans.

[ijuin 572]

1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

 

I wish science fiction writers of that kind of series would study at least a little linguistics. The history of Latin evolution is eminently traceable through the Indo-European language tree all the way back to Sanskrit. If they had been arsed to at least make their language the ancestor of Sanskrit it would have been 1) much more believable and 2) way cooler, insinuating that ALL Indo-European languages could trace their ancestry back to the Alterans.

True, but the writers wanted the vocabulary to identifiably resemble known Latin words, so that’s where it ended up. You’re right that it would have worked out story-wise for Alteran to have been the original Proto-Indo-European instead.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

Just now, ijuin said:

True, but the writers wanted the vocabulary to identifiably resemble known Latin words, so that’s where it ended up.

Lazy and scientifically _extremely_ implausible. Then again they had enough self-awareness to parody themselves. After all, this was the show that featured the line "The singularity is about to explode."

[mlooney 3,417]

If you want an off the wall language that your aliens are the ancestor of, may I suggest Navajo or Hopi.  Neither is really related to any other language, to include each other, which is a bit weird considering that they have almost overlapping lands. 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

Russian tank identification guide for Ukrainian AFV

For those that don't get the meta joke the tank labeled as "M1 Abrams" is in fact a Leopard 2.
Also for those that don't follow the Ukrainian war daily, Russia has claimed it's destroyed multiple Leopards and has released a video of one being destroyed by a helicopter fired anti tank guided missile. The thermal image is of the tractor in the lower right. Leopard 2 have not been used in combat by Ukraine at this time

While the graphic is funny, it is sad that the Russians are targeting civilian vehicles.Come on, a school bus?

[Darth Fluffy 302]

Poignant

[ijuin 572]

5 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Lazy and scientifically _extremely_ implausible. Then again they had enough self-awareness to parody themselves. After all, this was the show that featured the line "The singularity is about to explode."

True, but the goal was for the words to be already recognizable to the audience without translation, resulting in words such as “Potentia” for “energy source”.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Poignant

Mrs. Prof's father went ashore with the second wave at Omaha beach that day. Unarmed, as a medic. He made it all the way to Germany, methinks. I'd have to ask again, but she's gone to bed. Let her sleep.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

My dad was in the Army Air Corps in WW II, and he performed a valuable service, but he was not near combat. He was essentially a remote air traffic controller.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

21 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

My dad was in the Army Air Corps in WW II, and he performed a valuable service, but he was not near combat. He was essentially a remote air traffic controller.

What he did was nonetheless still necessary and important for winning the war. He was part of the effort that freed my homeland from Nazi control and so allowed me to live free. I thank him for his service.

[Don Edwards 548]

My dad's job during WWII was aircraft quality control across multiple factories. He was not only exempted from the draft, he was kicked out (and sent back to flying his private plane over the western US and Canada making sure airplane parts from factory A connected properly with parts from factory B ) all four times he enlisted.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

My grandfather was in the Army Air Force and spent the war in Alaska and the Aleutian islands.  As far as he was concerned the weather was as big of an enemy as the Imperial Japanese were. 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

My grandfather was in the Army Air Force and spent the war in Alaska and the Aleutian islands.  As far as he was concerned the weather was as big of an enemy as the Imperial Japanese were. 

Army Air Corps; it wasn't the Air Force until after the war. Japan actually invaded the US during the war. They invaded some Aleutian Island or other. I suppose holding it was its own comeuppance.

I've met several folks who were stationed at Shemya. My career field could have sent me there. The base has tunnels between buildings. Allegedly, the wind can be so intense that stuff like rocks that should not get blown around gets blown around. 

There is a tradition that if you get stationed at Shemya, you take a rock with you when you leave for a new duty station. The hope is that eventually the island will disappear.

[ijuin 572]

My father was stationed at Shemya in 1970. It’s literally as remote as you can be while still being within the United States.