Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Sandboxx" channel.

  1. You start to wonder if the PLA have nukes that work as well. Since the CCP have stopped testing nukes with underground tests since the 1990s, they are allegedly accelerating building nukes again to attempt to stockpile nuclear warheads to or exceeding the level of the United States. The trouble with that is that they are not testing any of the new batch they are building by exploding them underground (this nuclear trigger testing can be seismically detected by the United States thousands of miles away). Seeing that they have demonstrable defects in their missle fuel by substituting the liquid rocket fuel for water, how easy would it be to substitute the dangerous plutonium core in a nuclear bomb by something harmless but relatively cheap and plentiful, like lead? Hence, many of the new nukes may not work as designed.
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  2. The Iraqi's Republican Guard disposition was brigade size, not a smaller battalion. Suprise attacks from small but capable forces can wreck a statically emplaced defence. The Iraqi commander had enough tanks to try and drive around and outflank the Americans, especially shooting at a tank from the rear where it's armour is weakest, but failed to take any but static defence action where he was picked off by superior armour and gunnery. How often did that happen against Tiger tanks in WW2?
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  3. Australia in the 1930s was politically almost tantamount to the Third Reich of the South Seas. Why? Quasi-fascism and right-winged economic squeezing of the Australian population by the Bank of England until blood comes out of the stone (why a left revolution never happened back then was a mystery). This was little to do with the United States back then (except for causing a global depression), but a fair bit of being in debt then to the bloody British Empire. This brand of Fascism back then not only extended to cutting the ribbon to opening the Sydney Harbour Bridge by an actual horse-riding, sabre weilding fascist instead of the State premier, Jack Lang (by a Quisling named De Groot). To the Western Australian government, a notably fascist government by Australian standards until the present day, pointed bored ex-soldiers at emus (a native seed eating bird of a type called a ratite) in order to expend machine gun bullets and brain cells. This was the stupid Emu War. Fortunately, the emus (being quite common and a hardy species) were not wiped out, unlike the unfortunate Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger at about that same time (in Tasmania). This account of the ridiculous Emu War is fair, by a Yank. 😉
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  4. Nor is the US military infinitely powerful, but demonstratively more able to carry out large, complex combined operations (with allies) as it did in Operation Desert Storm 30 years ago. Russia's military-industrial complex (as revealed) severely lags behind smaller, but more properous European countries, such as France. Their ground and air training is substandard; set partially by the paucity of the money allocated from the cash-strapped Russian economy, but also by the complex rigidity of the Russian command; undoubtably by mediocre generals put in place by Putin, who does not want competent leaders challenging his power from the military. This discussion should not distract however, from the horrible toll and war crimes on Ukrainian civilians meted out by the invading Russians, and this will continue for a long time.
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  5. Cost over effectiveness basis is a big one. An F-35 can fly multiple fire missions and destroy dozens of ground targets for the enormous cost of one hypersonic cruise missile destroying one target. Even for the high cost of potentially losing the pilot if the F-35 gets shot down might be taken into account (during wars, particularly long wars, air crew attrition is a huge factor not just in human lives lost, but to trained pilots and crews available to fight an ongoing air war. This was a major factor in the Axis powers losing the air war by 1944).
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