I watched Rick’s video the other day and agree with everything he said. I did add a comment (among 11k others 🙂 ) that another factor is that the current generation and Millennials listen to music mainly on their phones with those tiny, horrible speakers or maybe some plastic earbuds. I doubt many spring for some high quality, yet still compressed buds like from Bose. As a result they hear nothing but the very compressed middle range; and the music is being produced by computer to match that exactly. ie they never experience that combination of lows 140Hz down with the highs from 8kHz and up in a visceral fashion sitting in a quiet living room.
Home audiophile systems even from 50 years ago did an amazing job with sound reproduction. Now, it’s true the current soundbar/sub/satellite systems also do a good job, but most of the young people only use those for TV shows, not for just sitting and listening to music. And if they did, using current music as a source, all they would get is the mechanical, autotuned middle.
I liked Rick’s point that it’s just too easy and cheap to download/listen to almost everything online, as opposed to the old days when one had to acquire albums one at a time and at some expense.
We cherished our music back then. We paid our money, listened carefully to the whole albums, discussed them with friends. We partly defined our identities by our choices in music.
We had skin in the game.
Now kids have tattoos. 🙂
A couple of years back another channel, I think called “thoughty2” had a similar video and he went into everything Rick said, but also pointed out how all the record labels only use 2 primary songwriters and tend to keep using the same hooks and chord progressions that people are familiar with. Volume is controlled by added or removing tracks, not by using actual dynamics… and so on and so forth.
I just went looking and I remembered the channel name 😉 Rick’s new video came up 3rd in my search too, since it’s the same topic.
X-pression posts by a wealthy Democrat Funder and a MSNBC well-connected journalist from Friday say that a meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, Obama is going on today. The purpose of the meeting is to arrange for Biden’s replacement as the next Presidential Candidate in the Party.
Yes, the Oligarch’s gotta protect their exposures.
There’s nothing which prevents the producers of music from eschewing this technology.
==
IMO, music is getting worse due the decay of the sensibilities of both producers and consumers. Everything wherein aesthetics is at issue is getting worse and has been for some time (with occasional bright, shining exceptions).
T J:
Caroming off your link, I found this intriguing article on the procedural challenges possible to prevent Biden from being removed from the ballot in some states:
________________________________________________
The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the Democratic ticket would not allow anyone else to replace him: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death.
In Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year or ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’
If Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election Georgia his name will remain on the ballot but no votes will be counted.
In Texas, the two party’s nominees have until the 74th day before the election to withdraw from the ballot. Some states, like South Carolina, do not allow candidates to withdraw for political reasons.
Somehow I imagine Democrats can get around such obstacles if they push hard enough, and lord, how they can push, but it will be fun watching.
I suspect the federal courts will sweep those three state’s artificial limits away in this case.
I liked this guy better than the Englishman who made similar points a month or two back. He seems more down to earth, especially if, like me, you don’t know that much about music.
Budgetary concerns probably do prevent producers from doing without the new technologies. The session musicians who were so important in the post-WWII era are now too expensive for the shrinking music industry. AI is taking over everywhere else. Soon it will be writing our music.
Yes, huxley. I’ve been following this at the Heritage Foundation.
But R states, especially in swing state like Nevada and Georgia typically have governors who are squishes and reject hard-balling. Appeals to being “fair” and the “unfairness” of keeping their party disabled will work. Always has.
Thus, the emergency State Capital Special Session to change it will occur. And counter arguments are not easy to convince people otherwise.
Furthermore, in states like Wisconsin, where the State Supreme Court has gone over to the Dark Side (ie, D), the same process will happen via Court action, if not through the lawmakers.
So, unfortunately, what the Heritage folk propose is a non-starter.
But thanks for bringing thse salient technicalities into the discussion. You’re ALWAYS worth reading!
I found his comment don’t watch YouTube funnily ironic, especially with the like and subscribe at the end.
00:00 — Opening Words
00:47 — What Am I Talking About?
03:19 — The Emergence Of Autonomy
07:15 — Human Out Of The Loop Operation
13:33 — Tactical Advantages And Application
22:25 — Pressures For Deployment
32:04 — A Path Towards Regulation?
45:36 — Channel Update
We should have listened to him a year ago.
==
We should not listen to him now.
Orban is Vlad’s man in Budapest, so take him for what he is (in foreign affairs).
Things are still grim for Ukraine this summer, but Vladdy’s latest, greatest, faint (or front) in the north has failed.
And we should have listened to Col. McGreggor and Scott Ritter, and FJB?
I have mentioned before that I record the sky 24×7. So far we have gone through 6 8T drives. We often don’t know until curating the recordings what we have. The area is a convergent zone and lots of clouds are created here. We call it the cloud factory.
what often happens is in the second round, the left party, the wef faction consolidates it’s vote, and the right just stick their fingers up their posterior,
now in italy, a relatively minor party, melonis was able to get past the high bar, so maybe the time has come, with serge klausfeld, and alain finkelkraut endorsing the national Alliance,
”Ukraine Can’t Win War Against Russia: Hungary’s Orban”
He provides no evidence of such a claim. He merely asserts it.
At the time of his assertion Russia had over 150,000 men killed, had at least another 200,000 men seriously wounded, had about 1/4 of their Black Sea fleet sunk (including their flagship), had almost another 1/4 of it damaged enough to take out of action, and had lost over 3,000 tanks, 4,000 artillery pieces, and 5,000 armored personnel carriers. For comparison, Russia started this latest invasion with only 2,800 operational tanks and 3,100 operational artillery pieces in their entire army, which means that the only reason Russia has any tanks or artillery at all is because they’re taking massive numbers of them out of Soviet-era storage and sending them to the front.
That can’t go on forever. Soviet-era stockpiles are huge but not infinite. They will run out in a few more years. It is Russia up against the clock in this war, which is why Russian allies in the West like Orban, Ritter, and McGregor are banging the drum so loudly for a ceasefire. It is no different than the Hamas allies in the West doing the same thing for Gaza.
And note that since the Trumpers in Congress got overruled and America resumed arms shipments to Ukraine, the Ukraine has stopped Russia’s summer offensive in the north and begun to turn it back. They have also been systematically destroying Russia’s vaunted air defense system in Crimea, occupied Ukraine, **and Russia.**
You are correct about one thing though: since then it has only gotten worse — for Russia. I think that’s a good thing.
mkent –
I’m hearing troubling things about who Ukraine is conscripting now. I don’t trust most of what I hear about Ukraine regarding either side, so I take the info with a grain of salt. But if true, Ukraine might be sufferung manpower issues even with the lop-sided casualty numbers.
On another note, Putin’s trip to Pyongyang reportedly got him a promise of North Korean troops for use in Ukraine. That’s definitely odd news.
mkent, what do you make of this video, especially the second half? It’s a 40 second clip. I wonder if it’s fake– though I did find this Yahoo! news story that includes a paraphrase of his message.
Kyiv is planning to arrange a second global peace summit before the end of 2024. Kyiv hopes to develop a new joint peace plan based on Zelensky’s 10-point peace proposal, although is open to opinions from other countries.
“We don’t have much time. We have a lot of injured, killed, both military and civilians. So we do not want this war to last for years. Therefore, we have to prepare this plan and put it on the table at the second peace summit,” Zelensky said.
Here’s a video of Zelensky talking before the G7 summit and just a couple of days ago.
“Soviet-era stockpiles are huge but not infinite. They will run out in a few more years. It is Russia up against the clock in this war, which is why Russian allies in the West like Orban, Ritter, and McGregor are banging the drum so loudly for a ceasefire. It is no different than the Hamas allies in the West doing the same thing for Gaza.” mkent
Couple of things.
How many years do you think Russia can maintain this war?
Do you think Ukraine has the manpower to maintain the war for that long.
You’re mischaracterizing Orban when you say he is “banging the drum loudly for a ceasefire.”
It is completely different than those who want a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war and those who are seeking a ceasefire on the behalf of Hamas. I’ll explain it if you can’t figure it out on your own.
Brain E:
Sometimes the bad guys win, and sometimes the bad guys are helped in their winning by “good guys” who don’t hinder the “bad guys.”
Trump SHOULD back out of the next debate (September, IIRC), out of concern for Biden’s health, says this brief poster.
He can just use ads from this recent debate to campaign on, and it he wants, he can suggest a debate during optimal cognisant times (but I think this is going too far with needling him and his disability).
”Ukraine might be sufferung manpower issues even with the lop-sided casualty numbers.”
Ukraine *is* suffering manpower issues and probably will for the rest of the summer. First of all, Russia has dumped *a lot* of troops into Ukraine. They invaded in 2022 with about 80,000 active troops and 40,000 in reserve. They now have an estimated 600,000 troops either in Ukraine or just across the border in staging areas — five times as many as they started with and 75% of their total ground forces. In countering this increase, Ukraine has been slow to increase conscription.
American weapons and ammunition deliveries dropped off a cliff about a year ago — right when Ukraine’s summer offensive had just gotten started — and Ukraine was reluctant to take the controversial and expensive step to increase conscription when they didn’t have the weapons to supply the new troops. And frankly, men were reluctant to get drafted and sent to the front to be shot at if they couldn’t shoot back.
With the new aid package passing Congress a few months ago, weapons are once again reaching the front lines. In addition, Ukraine passed its new conscription law about the same time the aid bill passed, and it will provide another 500,000 men for the Ukrainian armed forces by the end of the year. As a result, Russian advances have already slowed in the east and reversed in the north, so this summer should be the low point for Ukrainian manpower.
”On another note, Putin’s trip to Pyongyang reportedly got him a promise of North Korean troops for use in Ukraine.”
I heard that too. It is concerning.
”How many years do you think Russia can maintain this war?”
As things are going right now, another 4-6 years. It could be less if Ukraine gets *enough* F-16s to make a difference (a half dozen won’t do it) and can use them properly.
”Do you think Ukraine has the manpower to maintain the war for that long.”
As things stand right now, yes. I think this will get settled by who runs out of equipment first, not men. We in the West worry about human life, but the Russians don’t think that way. They seem to be determined to continue the war until they run out of tanks and artillery. Ukraine has the advantage here in that the West can far outsupply Russia, if it chooses to. My fear is that it will choose not to.
“provide another 500,000 men for the Ukrainian armed forces by the end of the year”
According to the NY Times: “Mr. Zelensky’s decision to draft men starting at age 25 risks further diminishing this small generation of Ukrainians. And many of the limited pool of 25- and 26-year-old men — about 467,000, according to a 2022 government estimate — are already serving in the military, living in occupied areas or outside Ukraine.”
From the AP:”The new laws, which will also do away with some draft exemptions and create an online registry for recruits, might add around 50,000 troops to the military, said Oksana Zabolotna, an analyst with the Center for United Actions, a government watchdog in Kyiv.”
So estimates are 50,000– not 500,000.
It’s my understanding Ukraine has been promised 85 F-16. According to some military analysts, expect that about half will be able to fly at any time. Everyone is downplaying the effects the jet will have. Just like the Abrams and Challengers– they are good weapons but not “game changers”.
Meanwhile North Korea is providing 500,000 152mm shells. The war will grind on the old fashioned way. the US is hoping to increase production of 155 artillery shells to 90,000/month by 2025. We currently make 16,000/month. I think Europe is trying to increase production to the 100,00/month as well.
Nothing is a game changer.
North Korean ordnance and military personnel are top notch and Vlad doesn’t even have to tap the immensely partriotic young men of Saint Petersburg or Moscow.
Meat waves are tight.
om, the idea that mkent thinks lowering the age of conscription 2 years was going to add 500,000 men to the Ukraine military is concerning. Is this ambiguity– the difference between the total number in the age cohort vs. those who could be conscripted just part of the propaganda?
I’ve also read that Macron offered to train Ukraine military in Ukraine rather than France (where they would be safer from attacks during training) is the fear that once conscripts got to France they would ask for asylum from France which would complicate things. Yes, this is conjecture, but it does make sense.
”…the idea that mkent thinks lowering the age of conscription 2 years was going to add 500,000 men to the Ukraine military is concerning.”
The 500,000 won’t all be 25 and 26 year olds. That’s the total number who will eventually be drafted from all age groups.
”Just like the Abrams and Challengers– they are good weapons but not ‘game changers’.”
They will make a big difference *if* they can be used properly. They will allow the HARMs we have given Ukraine to be used as actual anti-radiation missiles and not just as high-speed cruise missiles, which should have a significant effect on Russian radars, jammers, air defense, and electronic warfare capability. That will make Ukrainian JDAMs, SDBs, and GMLRSs much more effective. It should also push Russian strike aircraft out of glide-bomb range of the front.
The trick is using them properly. Using them properly takes about two years of training and should start with fresh pilots. Russia uses MiGs and Sukhois very differently than the West uses fighter jets, and Ukraine currently uses Russian equipment and Russian tactics. Ukraine understandably doesn’t want to wait two years, so they are using existing pilots with an abbreviated training program. That historically hasn’t worked very well.
Worse, the F-16 is about the last Western plane you want to fly using Russian tactics. While an F-15 can fly missing a wing, the F-16 can’t take hardly any damage at all before the aircraft is lost. The F/A-18 is a much better damage-tolerant multi-role aircraft, but we won’t let Australia give Ukraine their old Hornets. So Ukraine is going to do the best they can using the equipment they get.
So, no, it won’t be a game-changer. But it should help.
the Russians or the Ukrainians at different times supplied the boosters for the missiles that the North Koreans have been launching, in so far as the Kim Dynast is more an extention of Xi rather than Putin, but they do buy his oil, which was reputedly what we were trying to avoid,
Brain E:
Vladdy is very careful not to extend his butchery into the cohort of military aged males residing in Saint Petersburg or Moscow. They don’t want to be 200s (KIA) or 300s (WIA) for the glory of the SMO. At least that’s what I’ve read and heard.
om, sounds like the US during Vietnam. Go to college and get a deferment. Didn’t matter if you studied basket weaving. Nixon finally changed it as it was for unfair to the lower working class that couldn’t afford college.
Uh, nope. Lots of men in the US were not in abject poverty and lured by extravagant monetary promises ($$$$) to fight the NVA and Viet Cong in Vietnam. There was the draft, by 1972 it was a lottery. The major cities were not exempted.
No, the US experience in Vietnam was not anologous to Vladimar’s vanity war on Ukraine. Not by a long shot.
Try better.
Were you there? It wasn’t by city, but by class. Joe Worker- drafted. Middle class Bob- deferment.
I registered for the draft and it was a lottery when I graduated from HS in 1972.
So no I wasn’t in the US armed forces, just an Army brat. One brother served in the USAF in the Carter years. Others did not at all.
Try harder and try not to twist US history to enable Vladdy’s POV. What isolationists stoop to.
om, you’re the one who said Russia gave certain citizens a pass– which is what the US was doing from 65 to the lottery.
You then changed the subject to giving signing bonuses.
If you can’t understand that in both cases a certain class was favored over another– whether it was by zip code or income.
This is irrelevant to the conflict in Ukraine.
As to giving incentives– here’s a rather perverse incentive. Ukraine has a death benefit of nearly $400,000 for those KIA.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Latest post, inspired by the new artillery-ammunition plant in Texas:
Turks and Chinese, Help us Make the Ammunition
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/71147.html
I watched Rick’s video the other day and agree with everything he said. I did add a comment (among 11k others 🙂 ) that another factor is that the current generation and Millennials listen to music mainly on their phones with those tiny, horrible speakers or maybe some plastic earbuds. I doubt many spring for some high quality, yet still compressed buds like from Bose. As a result they hear nothing but the very compressed middle range; and the music is being produced by computer to match that exactly. ie they never experience that combination of lows 140Hz down with the highs from 8kHz and up in a visceral fashion sitting in a quiet living room.
Home audiophile systems even from 50 years ago did an amazing job with sound reproduction. Now, it’s true the current soundbar/sub/satellite systems also do a good job, but most of the young people only use those for TV shows, not for just sitting and listening to music. And if they did, using current music as a source, all they would get is the mechanical, autotuned middle.
I liked Rick’s point that it’s just too easy and cheap to download/listen to almost everything online, as opposed to the old days when one had to acquire albums one at a time and at some expense.
We cherished our music back then. We paid our money, listened carefully to the whole albums, discussed them with friends. We partly defined our identities by our choices in music.
We had skin in the game.
Now kids have tattoos. 🙂
A couple of years back another channel, I think called “thoughty2” had a similar video and he went into everything Rick said, but also pointed out how all the record labels only use 2 primary songwriters and tend to keep using the same hooks and chord progressions that people are familiar with. Volume is controlled by added or removing tracks, not by using actual dynamics… and so on and so forth.
I just went looking and I remembered the channel name 😉 Rick’s new video came up 3rd in my search too, since it’s the same topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII
X-pression posts by a wealthy Democrat Funder and a MSNBC well-connected journalist from Friday say that a meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, Obama is going on today. The purpose of the meeting is to arrange for Biden’s replacement as the next Presidential Candidate in the Party.
Monica Showalter has the narrative and sourced:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/now_for_the_sitdown_obama_klain_and_biden_meet_to_discuss_replacement_kamala_becomes_fredo_report.html
Yes, the Oligarch’s gotta protect their exposures.
There’s nothing which prevents the producers of music from eschewing this technology.
==
IMO, music is getting worse due the decay of the sensibilities of both producers and consumers. Everything wherein aesthetics is at issue is getting worse and has been for some time (with occasional bright, shining exceptions).
T J:
Caroming off your link, I found this intriguing article on the procedural challenges possible to prevent Biden from being removed from the ballot in some states:
________________________________________________
The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the Democratic ticket would not allow anyone else to replace him: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death.
In Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year or ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’
If Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election Georgia his name will remain on the ballot but no votes will be counted.
In Texas, the two party’s nominees have until the 74th day before the election to withdraw from the ballot. Some states, like South Carolina, do not allow candidates to withdraw for political reasons.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13556445/joe-biden-legal-counter-fight-election-dropout.html
________________________________________________
Somehow I imagine Democrats can get around such obstacles if they push hard enough, and lord, how they can push, but it will be fun watching.
I suspect the federal courts will sweep those three state’s artificial limits away in this case.
I liked this guy better than the Englishman who made similar points a month or two back. He seems more down to earth, especially if, like me, you don’t know that much about music.
Budgetary concerns probably do prevent producers from doing without the new technologies. The session musicians who were so important in the post-WWII era are now too expensive for the shrinking music industry. AI is taking over everywhere else. Soon it will be writing our music.
Yes, huxley. I’ve been following this at the Heritage Foundation.
But R states, especially in swing state like Nevada and Georgia typically have governors who are squishes and reject hard-balling. Appeals to being “fair” and the “unfairness” of keeping their party disabled will work. Always has.
Thus, the emergency State Capital Special Session to change it will occur. And counter arguments are not easy to convince people otherwise.
Furthermore, in states like Wisconsin, where the State Supreme Court has gone over to the Dark Side (ie, D), the same process will happen via Court action, if not through the lawmakers.
So, unfortunately, what the Heritage folk propose is a non-starter.
But thanks for bringing thse salient technicalities into the discussion. You’re ALWAYS worth reading!
I found his comment don’t watch YouTube funnily ironic, especially with the like and subscribe at the end.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sy9gogh8a
Open Thread Sunday – Warfare stuff:
Fully Autonomous Weapon Systems – The technology, capability and controversy of robots at war – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tou8ahLZvP4
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/06/30/claim-climate-change-is-causing-wonky-vegetables-in-europe/
We should have listened to him a year ago.
It’s only gotten worse.
Ukraine Can’t Win War Against Russia: Hungary’s Orban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8JI-eYQylg&t=187s
https://x.com/omriceren/status/1807419301160157256
We should have listened to him a year ago.
==
We should not listen to him now.
Orban is Vlad’s man in Budapest, so take him for what he is (in foreign affairs).
Things are still grim for Ukraine this summer, but Vladdy’s latest, greatest, faint (or front) in the north has failed.
And we should have listened to Col. McGreggor and Scott Ritter, and FJB?
I have mentioned before that I record the sky 24×7. So far we have gone through 6 8T drives. We often don’t know until curating the recordings what we have. The area is a convergent zone and lots of clouds are created here. We call it the cloud factory.
Here are some cool clouds from June 21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_5cEVT7N0E
om, did you listen to the clip? This was just a small portion of a longer interview.
He doesn’t sound like a Putin stooge, as you probably would characterize him.
Some times the bad guys win.
Seeing as he has taken in a large number of immigrants from ukraine
But the eu wants hm to take many more saracen nominally syrians and fine him a million dollars a say
Le Pen’s National Rally party in first place in the first round of French voting. Macron’s party in third place.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13585615/Far-right-National-Rally-win-round-elections-France-Macrons-alliance-forced-third.html
what often happens is in the second round, the left party, the wef faction consolidates it’s vote, and the right just stick their fingers up their posterior,
now in italy, a relatively minor party, melonis was able to get past the high bar, so maybe the time has come, with serge klausfeld, and alain finkelkraut endorsing the national Alliance,
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/06/30/u-s-military-bases-europe-placed-on-heightened-security-alert/
Chases Eagles, those were nice. Thanks.
”Ukraine Can’t Win War Against Russia: Hungary’s Orban”
He provides no evidence of such a claim. He merely asserts it.
At the time of his assertion Russia had over 150,000 men killed, had at least another 200,000 men seriously wounded, had about 1/4 of their Black Sea fleet sunk (including their flagship), had almost another 1/4 of it damaged enough to take out of action, and had lost over 3,000 tanks, 4,000 artillery pieces, and 5,000 armored personnel carriers. For comparison, Russia started this latest invasion with only 2,800 operational tanks and 3,100 operational artillery pieces in their entire army, which means that the only reason Russia has any tanks or artillery at all is because they’re taking massive numbers of them out of Soviet-era storage and sending them to the front.
That can’t go on forever. Soviet-era stockpiles are huge but not infinite. They will run out in a few more years. It is Russia up against the clock in this war, which is why Russian allies in the West like Orban, Ritter, and McGregor are banging the drum so loudly for a ceasefire. It is no different than the Hamas allies in the West doing the same thing for Gaza.
And note that since the Trumpers in Congress got overruled and America resumed arms shipments to Ukraine, the Ukraine has stopped Russia’s summer offensive in the north and begun to turn it back. They have also been systematically destroying Russia’s vaunted air defense system in Crimea, occupied Ukraine, **and Russia.**
You are correct about one thing though: since then it has only gotten worse — for Russia. I think that’s a good thing.
mkent –
I’m hearing troubling things about who Ukraine is conscripting now. I don’t trust most of what I hear about Ukraine regarding either side, so I take the info with a grain of salt. But if true, Ukraine might be sufferung manpower issues even with the lop-sided casualty numbers.
On another note, Putin’s trip to Pyongyang reportedly got him a promise of North Korean troops for use in Ukraine. That’s definitely odd news.
mkent, what do you make of this video, especially the second half? It’s a 40 second clip. I wonder if it’s fake– though I did find this Yahoo! news story that includes a paraphrase of his message.
Here’s a video of Zelensky talking before the G7 summit and just a couple of days ago.
Zelensky Reversal: Too many Wounded & Dead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba-A-kY9cCg
“Soviet-era stockpiles are huge but not infinite. They will run out in a few more years. It is Russia up against the clock in this war, which is why Russian allies in the West like Orban, Ritter, and McGregor are banging the drum so loudly for a ceasefire. It is no different than the Hamas allies in the West doing the same thing for Gaza.” mkent
Couple of things.
How many years do you think Russia can maintain this war?
Do you think Ukraine has the manpower to maintain the war for that long.
You’re mischaracterizing Orban when you say he is “banging the drum loudly for a ceasefire.”
It is completely different than those who want a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war and those who are seeking a ceasefire on the behalf of Hamas. I’ll explain it if you can’t figure it out on your own.
Brain E:
Sometimes the bad guys win, and sometimes the bad guys are helped in their winning by “good guys” who don’t hinder the “bad guys.”
Trump SHOULD back out of the next debate (September, IIRC), out of concern for Biden’s health, says this brief poster.
He can just use ads from this recent debate to campaign on, and it he wants, he can suggest a debate during optimal cognisant times (but I think this is going too far with needling him and his disability).
Food for thought. https://substack.com/@francisturner/note/c-60553412
H/T Sarah Hoyt
”Ukraine might be sufferung manpower issues even with the lop-sided casualty numbers.”
Ukraine *is* suffering manpower issues and probably will for the rest of the summer. First of all, Russia has dumped *a lot* of troops into Ukraine. They invaded in 2022 with about 80,000 active troops and 40,000 in reserve. They now have an estimated 600,000 troops either in Ukraine or just across the border in staging areas — five times as many as they started with and 75% of their total ground forces. In countering this increase, Ukraine has been slow to increase conscription.
American weapons and ammunition deliveries dropped off a cliff about a year ago — right when Ukraine’s summer offensive had just gotten started — and Ukraine was reluctant to take the controversial and expensive step to increase conscription when they didn’t have the weapons to supply the new troops. And frankly, men were reluctant to get drafted and sent to the front to be shot at if they couldn’t shoot back.
With the new aid package passing Congress a few months ago, weapons are once again reaching the front lines. In addition, Ukraine passed its new conscription law about the same time the aid bill passed, and it will provide another 500,000 men for the Ukrainian armed forces by the end of the year. As a result, Russian advances have already slowed in the east and reversed in the north, so this summer should be the low point for Ukrainian manpower.
”On another note, Putin’s trip to Pyongyang reportedly got him a promise of North Korean troops for use in Ukraine.”
I heard that too. It is concerning.
”How many years do you think Russia can maintain this war?”
As things are going right now, another 4-6 years. It could be less if Ukraine gets *enough* F-16s to make a difference (a half dozen won’t do it) and can use them properly.
”Do you think Ukraine has the manpower to maintain the war for that long.”
As things stand right now, yes. I think this will get settled by who runs out of equipment first, not men. We in the West worry about human life, but the Russians don’t think that way. They seem to be determined to continue the war until they run out of tanks and artillery. Ukraine has the advantage here in that the West can far outsupply Russia, if it chooses to. My fear is that it will choose not to.
“provide another 500,000 men for the Ukrainian armed forces by the end of the year”
So estimates are 50,000– not 500,000.
It’s my understanding Ukraine has been promised 85 F-16. According to some military analysts, expect that about half will be able to fly at any time. Everyone is downplaying the effects the jet will have. Just like the Abrams and Challengers– they are good weapons but not “game changers”.
Meanwhile North Korea is providing 500,000 152mm shells. The war will grind on the old fashioned way. the US is hoping to increase production of 155 artillery shells to 90,000/month by 2025. We currently make 16,000/month. I think Europe is trying to increase production to the 100,00/month as well.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-conscription-mobilization-251058a942a253f3eaec2c53373adf03
Nothing is a game changer.
North Korean ordnance and military personnel are top notch and Vlad doesn’t even have to tap the immensely partriotic young men of Saint Petersburg or Moscow.
Meat waves are tight.
om, the idea that mkent thinks lowering the age of conscription 2 years was going to add 500,000 men to the Ukraine military is concerning. Is this ambiguity– the difference between the total number in the age cohort vs. those who could be conscripted just part of the propaganda?
I’ve also read that Macron offered to train Ukraine military in Ukraine rather than France (where they would be safer from attacks during training) is the fear that once conscripts got to France they would ask for asylum from France which would complicate things. Yes, this is conjecture, but it does make sense.
”…the idea that mkent thinks lowering the age of conscription 2 years was going to add 500,000 men to the Ukraine military is concerning.”
The 500,000 won’t all be 25 and 26 year olds. That’s the total number who will eventually be drafted from all age groups.
”Just like the Abrams and Challengers– they are good weapons but not ‘game changers’.”
They will make a big difference *if* they can be used properly. They will allow the HARMs we have given Ukraine to be used as actual anti-radiation missiles and not just as high-speed cruise missiles, which should have a significant effect on Russian radars, jammers, air defense, and electronic warfare capability. That will make Ukrainian JDAMs, SDBs, and GMLRSs much more effective. It should also push Russian strike aircraft out of glide-bomb range of the front.
The trick is using them properly. Using them properly takes about two years of training and should start with fresh pilots. Russia uses MiGs and Sukhois very differently than the West uses fighter jets, and Ukraine currently uses Russian equipment and Russian tactics. Ukraine understandably doesn’t want to wait two years, so they are using existing pilots with an abbreviated training program. That historically hasn’t worked very well.
Worse, the F-16 is about the last Western plane you want to fly using Russian tactics. While an F-15 can fly missing a wing, the F-16 can’t take hardly any damage at all before the aircraft is lost. The F/A-18 is a much better damage-tolerant multi-role aircraft, but we won’t let Australia give Ukraine their old Hornets. So Ukraine is going to do the best they can using the equipment they get.
So, no, it won’t be a game-changer. But it should help.
the Russians or the Ukrainians at different times supplied the boosters for the missiles that the North Koreans have been launching, in so far as the Kim Dynast is more an extention of Xi rather than Putin, but they do buy his oil, which was reputedly what we were trying to avoid,
Brain E:
Vladdy is very careful not to extend his butchery into the cohort of military aged males residing in Saint Petersburg or Moscow. They don’t want to be 200s (KIA) or 300s (WIA) for the glory of the SMO. At least that’s what I’ve read and heard.
om, sounds like the US during Vietnam. Go to college and get a deferment. Didn’t matter if you studied basket weaving. Nixon finally changed it as it was for unfair to the lower working class that couldn’t afford college.
Uh, nope. Lots of men in the US were not in abject poverty and lured by extravagant monetary promises ($$$$) to fight the NVA and Viet Cong in Vietnam. There was the draft, by 1972 it was a lottery. The major cities were not exempted.
No, the US experience in Vietnam was not anologous to Vladimar’s vanity war on Ukraine. Not by a long shot.
Try better.
Were you there? It wasn’t by city, but by class. Joe Worker- drafted. Middle class Bob- deferment.
I registered for the draft and it was a lottery when I graduated from HS in 1972.
So no I wasn’t in the US armed forces, just an Army brat. One brother served in the USAF in the Carter years. Others did not at all.
Try harder and try not to twist US history to enable Vladdy’s POV. What isolationists stoop to.
om, you’re the one who said Russia gave certain citizens a pass– which is what the US was doing from 65 to the lottery.
You then changed the subject to giving signing bonuses.
If you can’t understand that in both cases a certain class was favored over another– whether it was by zip code or income.
This is irrelevant to the conflict in Ukraine.
As to giving incentives– here’s a rather perverse incentive. Ukraine has a death benefit of nearly $400,000 for those KIA.