Iranian channel reminds the world of the Dresden massacre . I wonder why America keeps wanting to overthrow Iran
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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Crap. So we're screwed. Because the "international press" is corrupt, as are supposedly democratic politicians.
Conscience is internal. If it's the bad press they fear, it's not internal.
Because you have a very naive understanding of politics. They wouldn't get to that position if they weren't sociopaths, at least, the chances would be close to nil and they wouldn't get anything done. DeSantis? Sociopath. He'd order the death of half the human population if it would get him into office. And thank God for it, because he'd be a sure loser otherwise.
Different politicians calculate their interests differently, but for none of them is "civilian casualties" per se a consideration. Perhaps the bad press is, and Nixon cared less about bad press than Carter.
I think it makes perfect sense. Having the capability to quickly get a nuke gets them all the benefits without the associated costs of being even more of an international pariah. I do think they made a mistake, but now it's difficult for them to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
That's Lebanon.
And you're using $300,000 missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones. Seems pretty cost-effective to me.
Please, let's not pretend that the corrupt West cares about 'civilians' as anything more than propaganda. They sure as hell didn't care about Azerbaijan butchering Armenians, as you acknowledged.
Press is absolutely internal to the nation state.
Idk how you can interact with a significant number of people and actually believe this. I guess this must be a very russian way of thinking designed to normalize acceptance of its own leaders behaving that way.
They have nothing until they detonate a test like Pakistan or North Korea did, and at that point they have everything they want, as proven by North Korea and Libya, as soon as you reach the finish line, no one will touch you. They might be waiting until they can get a number of nukes, though, not just 1, because if they only have 1 or 2 they are vulnerable to Israel suddenly bombing the shit out of them with Saudi assistance in response to their test.
Hezbollah has been deployed as military units in Syria from the early days of the civil war. They are the major conduit of Iran's aid to Assad, since they're an Iranian proxy.
Sometimes. Russia also fires some very expensive cruise missiles in the mix, it isn't all Iranian drones. Ukraine also using some very low cost interceptors like German Gepards. Even not being cost effective though doesn't matter, since the West has a combined GDP over 20x that of Russia.
But in the longer term you are right. Modern air defenses are not optimized against extremely cheap missiles like the Shahed 136/Geran-2. Russia is doubling down on the mass production of the Shahed 136 in Yelabuga. Presumably Russia will be able to produce thousands of missiles per month and saturate defenses, eventually.
But the attacker always loses these wars of economic attrition against any prepared defender.
Shooting down the Shahed 136 with missiles is a non-starter because you can't make a missile cheap enough since the Shahed's extremely low requirements mean it can be far cheaper than any interceptor. Guns are also non-starters because their short range means you need far too many of them to cover an area as large as Ukraine. They might work for targets getting shot at a lot like Zaporizhzhia, but you can't provide comprehensive coverage. Using aircraft is also a non-starter since the cost from accidents and wear and tear alone are too high. You could use cheaper prop planes like COIN aircraft, but at that point there's a better solution:
The answer is obvious: you kill the Shahed 136 with smaller, cheaper drones. The drone interceptors do not need to be expended, either. They can simply hover above the Shahed and fire a payload of shotgun shells into it, or attach a satchel charge to it. They could also ram it, but since the Shahed is so slow and flies so straight, you don't need to waste your drone to bring it down.
But this system does not yet exist, and it should be developed immediately. Plenty of drones already exist, but you'd need a drone command point which is networked into the air defense network, and which can control a dozen or more drones at a time to cover a wide area of 20-30km. You can have smaller, cheaper shorter range drones pre-positioned on likely approach routes to blunt saturation attacks.
I don't think Russia will get production up in time to make any significant difference, but I hope our military leaders have enough brains to recognize that they need a new weapon to defeat enemy drones in general, and it needs to be tested and deployed sooner not later.
It's not internal to the individual. If you do not do something to avoid bad press, you have an external and not an internal motivation, so you're definitely not moral.
Every leader acts in this way. Yes, understanding geopolitics in any way makes it rather difficult to interact with normies who just believe what the TV tells them. The fact that Westerners are brainwashed into believing that their sociopathic leaders are the GOOD GUYS is a testimony to Western propaganda, and not anything else.
I see you have still not read The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution. Try it, I think you will like it.
Of course it matters. Who was it who said that he lost all respect for Napoleon once he realized how difficult it is to fight with a coalition? Every government has its own priorities, and even your government cannot control its puppets in Europe 100%, because they fear that if they let their people starve and freeze too much, they're going to have a bad time.
You forget that Russia's economy is many times larger than that of that corrupt puppet shithole non-country. And the West's blood money will eventually lessen or cease. Like Obama said: Russia cares more about Ukraine than the US and will therefore always maintain escalatory dominance.
The Shaheds cost something like $10,000. I'll be impresed if you can get a drone cheaper than that one which is also capable of taking it out.
Eh, you said 'cheap', which means that Raytheon isn't going to profit from it. That means that it's not happening. The whole point of these wars is to steer taxpayer money into the pockets of Raytheon and other merchants of death, as well as kickbacks and bribes for politicians, like literal Raytheon employee Lloyd Austin.
Your belief that every politician is a sociopath is utterly without evidence, and is instead solely rooted in your own ideology. I reject ideology, and I require concrete proof and evidence. I have been watching politics a lot longer than you have, and have seen more evidence than you have, none of which supports your claim that every politician is a sociopath. Maybe SOME are, but in western democracies, these people are generally rejected by the voters. It is uniquely a Russian thing to think that politicians ought to behave like sociopaths. Not even Chinese think that way.
I've already read that book and it 100% agrees with me, but even if it did not, I would still be right. The opinion of 2 america academics is not superior to mine. Your appeal to authority fallacy is rejected. If you have a point to make, or an argument to make, you need to make it honestly, not be a little shithead and point to a book and say I'm wrong like a tranny on reddit.
Also since you're a jackass and we both know your little gambit here was to cite a book you knew I hadn't read to declare victory based on the implication that the secret to why I'm wrong is hidden in said book, and you won't reveal what it is, instead you'll only point me to the book, and since you know I won't read it, you get to declare victory, allow me to point out forthrightly that your little tactic is bad faith, is wrong on the merits, and makes you a piece of shit for even trying it. If you think that book proves me wrong, you must actually articulate why using the arguments and evidence you learned from the book, instead of pointing at the book and saying I'm wrong. Again, just because some academics in the US have an opinion, doesn't make their opinion the gospel Truth.
And while I will never do this again, and will instead become hostile and "mean" to you if you pull this shit in the future, I pulled up a pdf of this stupid book in about 30 seconds and skimmed it. I can read very quickly. My job, after all, is to read through thousands of pages of case law to pull out a few choice sentences to use in my arguments. I found nothing in the book that in any way refutes the point I was making, which is that Iran has "nothing until they detonate a test like Pakistan or North Korea did, and at that point they have everything they want, as proven by North Korea and Libya, as soon as you reach the finish line, no one will touch you." Iran is only mentioned at pages 24, 103, 128. Don't come at me.
Why are you citing to relatively recent (2020) obscure books on geopolitics? Are you a university student or were you one recently? That book you cited looks like assigned reading for a class.
The West isn't fighting. It's just giving Ukraine free shit. Turns out you don't need to carefully coordinate that for it to work.
Yet 20x smaller than the Western countries supplying Ukraine.
Except that has been proven false now, hasn't it? Western aid to Ukraine has massively increased in the last few months. It hasn't decreased, as Russia and its fans had hoped.
And it doesn't matter if "Russia cares more than the US" because Ukraine cares a lot more than Russia, and since the West has GDPs more than 20x the size of Russia, the West doesn't need to care as much as Russia, the West can care only 5% as much as Russia does and still win. All the West needs to do is keep giving Ukraine ammo, which is among the cheapest of the aid given. Ukrainian manpower will do the rest.
High end weapon systems, while nice for Ukraine to have, are not necessary to stop Russia. The only way Russia could win is if, like the Winter War, Ukraine runs out of ammo. That will never happen. Ammo resupply would be the last thing to go from aid, and artillery ammo is very cheap at scale.
False. They cost $20,000 to $50,000 each to make, and Russia has to pay a lot more than that to Iran since Iran wants a profit margin.
They could be destroyed with a small re-usable commercial DJI drone that costs a few thousand dollars with some modifications, under the command of an air defense network.
A racing drone with a half dozen shotgun shells strapped to it, pointed down similar to a WW2 Schräge Musik, could be programmed to quickly fly above the Shahed 136, detonate the shotgun shells into the flimsy Shahed 136, and fly home. The Shahed 136 can't be made to be survivable. Even a single shotgun shell would likely kill it, since it would take out the engine or cause a fuel leak or just ruin the aerodynamics, all of which would cause it to crash. Doing this with a manually controlled operator wouldn't be easy, but if the drone interceptor is controlled by a computer, just as drones often are, it would be child's play.
You could also have a much more sophisticated hunter killer drone that costs $50k-100k capable of fully autonomous non-networked intercepts under manual control, which could use thermal optics to "lock on" to a Shahed 136 at long range then fly to it and kill it with some rifle caliber shots.
The reason the Shahed 136 is ultimately an easily countered weapon is that it is extremely slow, flies low, must fly in a straight line, and must leave the protection of Russian SAM and jamming systems. So cheap drones will eventually be knocking them down at the cost of only maybe $20 in ammunition per intercept.
Raytheon can sell the control stations for millions of dollars, but the individual drone interceptors can be very cheap and the cost per intercept can be very low.
US defense contractors are more than happy to work on lasers for the Navy, knowing that the cost per intercept for a laser is pennies. They can make their profit on the system itself, not the "ammo".
While the US engages in a lot of waste in military spending, it is not impossible or unheard of to develop and field efficient systems.
It's the most attested statement in human history. They would not be successful politicians if they weren't...
Not ought, do. 'Voters' don't matter, as like Machiavelli said, the prince should appear to be good without actually being so. I'm not sure how you can miss this.
So no different than usual?
This is a weird way to respond to a book recommendation. If you recommended me a book, I'd consider reading it, because your interests generally align with mine. This one I'd told about you before, but it seems that you haven't read it.
No one cares about nuclear weapons. In fact, having a small nuclear capability may encourage (as you admitted, I believe) a first disarming strike.
Because I found it interesting, and it contradicts a widely held belief - the idiocy that nuclear weapons are not going to be used. There are many common sense rejections of that claim, e.g. that Russia, US and China have all made massive investments in nukes, but this goes into a bit more detail, and I enjoyed it.
Not exactly free when it's exchanging it for the life's blood of its young men. And you do need to coordinate it, because everyone would want to free ride on helping the US empire rather than be commanded to send more of his money for imperial purposes.
Oh, so you admit that this is a war between NATO and Russia? Good to know.
I'm fine with it. I'd like for Russia to smash NATO as a whole, rather than eke out a victory against an isolated Ukraine. In the long term, things will be as Obama predicted.
Doesn't matter, since its GDP is vastly lower, and the people who use Ukraine as their puppet care less than Russia.
It's not 'waste' to fill the pockets of contractors, it's the entire purpose of military spending.