Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Russia’s Very Russian Problems" video.

From the perspective of an outsider looking in, nearly everyone I talked to had no problem with the job being difficult or uncomfortable. People get sick of weak leadership and feeling unappreciated. The system knows it needs to retain good people but does nothing to address it. It's the meme of the guy shoving the stick in his own bicycle spokes.
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@sevenproxies4255 The Pentagon Wars, the book that inspired the movie, was written by a delusional guy who misundestood every decision done without his input as corruption and asscovering. For example, his complaint that Bradley targets had fuel replaced by water to make them look better after a hit/clothes on uniforms being damp. The truth is that everyone knows fuel catches fire when hit. They were looking for vaporific effects/aluminum burning after a hit, and burning fuel would mess with the results and cause further damage to the hull. Burton threw a fit over a very reasonable attempt at isolating variables.
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@kokofan50 The best and brightest office clerks? The problem with a "secret base" is that you can't run a base with just spooks. You need people who spend their day at the desk typing whatever on the computer and taking photocopies, run the mess hall, etc. There's probably contractors who fix the AC and the roofs. I don't even know if in these bases the office floors get swept by privates or if cleaning is contracted out too. So right there you have a ton of personnel who are just 20 year olds who have no background in cloak and dagger stuff other than "don't use military computers to torrent stuff or the Russians will hack us". Now let's face it, the intelligence people are probably just looking at drone footage all day and not being secret squirrel spies either. The problem was not geolocation (as they had reasons to keep phones on) but how the bases were exposed through an unforseen effect. The fitness app creating user heatmaps and the people on the base running alongside the building walls created a near perfect outline exposing the base layout. That's it. If you wanted to know where the base was, you'd have looked into a catalog of blurred/blacked out locations on satellite imagery. Done, you geolocated the base by knowing where you're not allowed to look, no need for bad phone opsec. The embarassment here was that the base layout and activity was exposed. If they had instead ran alongside the inside perimeter of the base, we'd have learned nothing new except knowing which base had more runners.
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@mostlydead3261 Their rulers exist not in a vacuum, but at least in a glass dome. They know their leaders are corrupt assholes, but they have been told we are worse. Their mentality is that if they overlook the corruption, they'll be protected from the outside. And right now the outside of the dome is trying to "cancel" an entire nation by banning them from internet services, the global economy, sporting events, etc. Even a Russian who might be aware that the invasion was clearly aggressive rather than defensive, has now to consider that he needs a strongman leader, he needs his leader to have nukes, and he needs his nation to be feared. Now consider that many were told that the war was defensive, and it wasn't even a war but a "special mission". Holding normal everyday people in the hopes they break the cycle is insane.
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The Russian equivalent to the A-10 is the Su-25.
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This is the West. We just flip the R and N letters and use their D as an A. Russian enough for govt work.
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A-10s are extremely vulnerable to air defenses. Something else would have to hit the convoy first, and the A-10s would only come later to mop up what's left.
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@will24655 it doesn't take SAS or Navy SEALs to wreck the lead vehicle to make them all stop, fire Javelins at whatever has a turret and optics on top, and then fire whatever unguided tube launched AT weapon at the rest. Or better, it doesn't take special operations for a drone to drop a spicy present on top of them.
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This is only partially correct. Identifying Russian v Ukrainian forces from the air is too difficult and requires precise coordination, meaning that the chances for friendly fire from air support is very likely. On the other hand, Ukrainian defenses knowing that most aircraft in the air are Russian means they can shoot without hesitation. This has actually lead to some friendly fire, but it exposes how Russia can't get by on hesitation. Russia's relatively small stockpile of PGMs lead to them not comitting enough of them, which makes pinpoint strikes difficult as they need to do dumb drops. A steady advance over a country should need air support. In this case, the invading force stands to lose more by resorting to air power.
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@ashyclaret That collateral comes from intelligence failures and targets knowing that they are being watched so acompanying themselves with humans shields - forcing the US to resort to the "plus" system where targets are ranked by importance by how many civilian casualties they're prepared to accept to kill that target. If the US killed targets with unguided rocket artillery... "collateral" wouldn't even be the word to use.
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Wouldn't that be the radar coolant? Non-rocket assist takeoff boosters in aviation are usually water+methanol mixes as the mist of water injection causes evaporative cooling, increasing engine performance. You wouldn't want to drink the methanol.
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