Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "Binkov's Battlegrounds" channel.

  1. Gotta love the military revolution of the 21st century.
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  2. Everyone came back here huh?
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  3. What has Happened in Ukraine is that Ukraine has already been mobilizing for 6 months while Russia hasn't had any mobilization in the meantime. Thus, the original force that invaded, has seen very little reinforcement and so those units who have been grinded down to nothing basically no longer exist. The losses on the Russian side have also been greater and so without significant reinforcement they've been taking less sustainable losses than Ukraine. This is what has led to the current situation where Ukraine has numerical superiority in manpower (even if really nothing else).
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  4. I'm not sure it's a force multiplier itself so much as it is denying ENEMY force multipliers making them much more even.
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  5. Well uh... I remember that analysts tend to look for signs in production when it comes to preparation for war. This kind of sounds like they're gearing up for it.
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  6. Turks are industrialized. Very fun. And with that, instead of trying to compete with the super majors, they're going with the option that has outsized returns on investment compared to other more traditional designs as an alternative to the established options.
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  7. Cheap Rotary powered cruise missiles like these are incredibly interesting with the lack of complexity and fact that it can be made with even just a simple Rotary engine. Saves on rocket fuel and systems required for guiding rockets. Even if slow the lack of expense while still filling in the capability is definitely something that more middle powers should be looking into as the potential to match capabilities are fairly decent.
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  8. 12:03 Well that's been proven correct
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  9. Not really. And they just got out their 5th gen. Whatever they're making, it just started and won't be relevant for at least 2 decades. And both gen 6 programs from GCAP and NGAD have been around for over a decade
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  10. That in itself is kind of unrealistic and you can apply the same idea back to the US "What kind of secret technology are they working on?" and it's really silly for these comparisons. It's not something we know, not something we can know, and so all of these come with the asterisks of "Yeah from the information we have this is the scenario"
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  11. There's a rule when it comes to headlines in the form of questions: the Answer is always "no". The exception is when immediately in it says "yes"
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  12. They sell a lot of raw materials and war materiel. They export a LOT. And unless you're in the US, you've got two options for oil: middle east or Russia. And Russia is actually the more stable of the two areas. It's also that it's subsidized by the Russian government because Russia has spent centuries being invaded and so stockpiles a lot of equipment. And in the industrial age it's done a particular lot of stockpiling given they've stockpiled everything that's usable from the past 150 years because the ultimate Russian fear is being one again invaded and forced to trade hundreds of thousands to millions of lives just to stay alive. Now they've got nukes but that's last resort. So Russia's ultimate aim is to expand and hold all avenues of advance into the Russian heartland and will do whatever it takes to have the military necessary for that.
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  13. Honestly if Russia didn't push Germany back within the first year or less you could probably see American lend-lease motorizing the Russian force as having old or modern trucks doesn't matter too much for logistics or troop transport.
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  14. The other apart about that is that the US is the reigning naval power and China has never had practice launching a naval invasion. And naval invasions are incredibly difficult logistically. It's a massive undertaking requiring complete and total domination of a sea. It's Also worth noting that it's much farther away than the English Channel and straights of dover as well as completely impassible for many months of the year. The invasion of Taiwan will be the greatest logistical undertaking in history. Something China has never proved competent at. It also requires YEARS to achieve naval dominance might I add. And they aren't going to have that. It's also important to understand that heavy equipment is almost impossible to attempt to get onto shore without being destroyed. The Allies of the second world War had complete dominance of the air and sea facing against unprepared not even reserve forces made up of the injured and others not suited for fighting on the real war in the east with a sudden invasion that still had a high chance of failure. Oh, and their heavy equipment was in Another location because they were expecting it in said area. While missiles can to an extent make up for the lack of heavy equipment, landing craft are still incredibly vunerable and any sort of prepared defenses will have a field day with them as it's almost literally shooting fish in a barrel. The invasion will be a hell on earth comparable to no man's land of the first world War and will have to throw hundreds of thousands to take and wear down Taiwan through pure attrition with Taiwan always having the numerical superiority because there's only so many people you can pack into landers. And they have the defender's advantage. It's going to be a huge debacle unlike anything we've ever seen unless Taiwan is caught so completely off-guard as to border on incompetence.
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  15.  @cameronspence4977  Sure, but even precision weapons can only make up for so much of it. It's a defender's advantage nonetheless and the entirety of the Chinese strategy will have to be "We have more things to throw at you than you have to throw back at us" and the precision network is both vunerable and of limited effectiveness. It's missiles are going to be more of a "To whom it may concern" honestly than a direct recipient just because of logistical issues. It's also worth noting that the Taiwanese military does have a lot of its stuff stored in mountains and behind that wall away from the missiles which is part of why I said it will be limited effectiveness. You also have the fact that regardless of everything, it's still going to be prepared defenses of a naval invasion which will be the biggest issue it will face. Honestly China doesn't have landing craft and I haven't really heard it do much to really fix that problem. So it's going to be even WORSE on that front as they're going to be using civilian boats which are incredibly more vunerable. The best conclusion is that the battle will be won by attrition and if the mainland can properly settle on the beaches for more than like 3 days without being destroyed which is why I say it's going to basically be no-man's land. Between the mainland missiles and island artillery it'll just be the trenches but this time there's boats. Who wins is really up for debate as the question is if Taiwan can hold out for the like month in which it can be invaded and if it can rebuild after (don't think it can really rebuild) and if support for the CCP and invasion sour as tens to hundreds of thousands die in a huge debacle of the worst PR nightmare ever that not even the CCP can hide once the island isn't taken after said month.
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  16.  @npc2480  First off China's submarines are incredibly noisy and easy to spot and thus very ineffective. Second off for as great as the missile threat is, they rely on a very complex kill chain which can be disrupted via electronic warfare, along with the fact that the US doesn't even NEED to send carrier battle groups because the missiles I'm fairly certain don't reach the other side of the island and they can use that as a staging point or keep out of range and stay in the air to deny Chinese air superiority. And finally if it was so easy to take Taiwan by just bombing it into submission, Chinese could've taken it years ago. Extensive bombing will almost always have limited effect do to factors such as accuracy and that people and militaries almost always find ways to hide from said bombs allowing them to survive. Helps when your island is all mountains too and you can store your heavy equipment inside.
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  17.  @llbshane2120  I'll be honest, the opinion of China is so low right now in the US it might actually be willing to go for limited war to defend Taiwan. The only real question is if everyone involved will be sane enough to forgo another total war as wars have almost never been that except for the Punic Wars and the European Wars Between the Great Powers. There's also something specific I mentioned earlier: that said invasion would be a debacle. This is important because if Taiwan can hold out through the invasion window, the CCP has a lot of explaining to do to its people. The CCP has bought the loyalty of its people through very specific continued economic success. It has also had years of propaganda saying that Taiwan WANTS to be part of the mainland. If it shows that and the CCP can't have a successful initial invasion, there is a lot of explaining to do. Especially with its own population crisis.
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  18. Can't change the fact that it's at a snail's pace and that it's long and grindy relying heavily on artillery and civilian obliteration
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  19.  @emilianolaurenzi464  Except... that's not what's happening. While the idea that boots on the ground would be eliminated has one that's always been floated, it's also always been proven false and here was always going to as well. Much like with the tank, there's nothing that can replace the infantry because there's nothing else that does the job of the infantry. They hold territory and they're the only ones that can do so. Anyone who actually knew anything about militaries at all knew this wouldn't change. Secondly while Russia has EXTENSIVE artillery reserves, the quality and ability to maintain it is an open question. We've had repeated confirmation over the course of this war that Russian equipment isn't actually all that great. And even more interesting: they're reliant on western electronics for all of their modern weapons systems. Those have now been cut off and it's why their tank production facilities have shut down. What they're left with is primarily a lot static stuff and dumb fire munitions. However, Russia in having stockpiled 150 years worth of war materiel and still being an industrial power can mostly sustain a lot of that stuff. But they're still losing men and their weapon effectiveness continues to go down as more equipment is destroyed and they reach deeper into their reserves. One comment put it very well "Russia is a large and modern force, but the large stuff is old and modern stuff few" and we're seeing that here as much of the modern stuff just kind of goes away over time due to constant battle. What's being sent to Ukraine is a lot of the modern stuff that allows them to also keep that stuff intact longer as it's mostly self-propelled heavy equipment. Also firing deep into Russian logistics which is actually genius (they've been blowing up munitions depots deep behind the front in the dead of night when the Russians can't really attack). It's also mostly still in transit the heavy equipment Ukraine is using and still low. It's unlikely to be a match for Russia proper but it's still doing quite well with hampering the Russian attack on the front which is exactly what's desired. Also no, Russia is not trying to avoid civilian casualties. Beginning of the war they actually did look to be going that route, but then they got returned to Belarus and were forced to consolidate in the East in order to try to make their pushes. They've resorted to civilian obliteration which systematically destroys any and all infrastructure and gets populations to self-select in either being civilians who leave or fighters that remain. It sounds like they're trying to avoid civilian casualties from that statement, but no they're just not trying to outright kill civilians because they're not cartoonist monsters or looking to genocide a population. Anyway it saves the time of trying to get fighters out from hiding among the civilians (whether willing or unwilling on the part of the civilians) and denies a lot of cover reducing everything to rubble and open ground. However, it also takes a lot of munitions and starts to wear out the barrels on the artillery. Also while a collapse of the defenses in the southeast might increase the speed of advance... it also might not. We've already seen what we thought have been key cities been taken and honestly not a real change in the pace of the Russian offensive. On top of that we've seen the Ukrainians be able to conduct successful counter-offensives in the northeast. Fundamentally this is a war of two industrialized powers. And it's starting to get grindy and attritional. This is in many ways starting to resemble The Great War. World War ONE. And if we've learned anything from those wars it's that industrialized states can endure a LOT of punishment during wars. And this doesn't actually lead credence to the idea that as things move forward the Ukrainians lose confidence. In fact you only have to look at the Soviet Union for that one as they used the fear of death to feed more men into the grinder. Such conclusions aren't foregone here. Honestly, the biggest and most important player here in terms of confidence is actually the West. If they don't feel confident they'll likely start reducing the shipments Ukraine is depending on. And honestly given the number of men involved in this conflict that's a much more decisive factor when it comes to the war on attritonal grounds. And finally, this is actually the time most suited to an offensive and actually pushing. It's summer. No more mud and no more biting cold. This is optimal conditions for an offensive and they're still going at a snail's pace. That's a testament to the Ukrainian defense and Russian weakness in Ukraine that they're unable to really push very quickly despite the ideal conditions. Once summer ends the other big deciding time for this war will likely be in the winter as the problems which hit the rest of the world from Russian and Ukranian wheat and fertilizer going offline finally arrive.
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  20.  @dabo5078 ??? What is this about total population? I said MOBILIZED. As in how many soldiers they managed to get to fight. The Chinese only mobilized about 1.5% of their population and 2.8% of you count for the entire 8 year period and everyone who served. The US in 3 years mobilized 12.9% of its population for only 4 years. Also lol it doesn't matter if you have more total factories if they aren't producing as much. 5 factories which make 2 planes per week will still be less than 2 factories making 3 planes per week. Also doesn't take into account size or efficiency. Also the US could bomb it while the Chinese can't because the Chinese can't reach North America but the US can reach damn near anywhere.
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  21. ​@loke6664 Well I'm not sure the UK's needs are that different from that of the US given that they're both expeditionary powers with enemies overseas and thus limiting logistics and repair. Which is the central limitation on American tanks
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  22. Pretty ironic that the USA initially took the Philippines for the sake of proximity to China, and roughly 80 years after releasing it, coming back for power projection toward China
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  23. I'm excited for the day the Franco-German alliance ends and then so does the EU
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  24.  @everypitchcounts4875  You know, I was referencing NGAD (FA-XX is also NGAD) but I completely forgot about B-26, and I haven't even heard of project mayhem.
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  25. How do the Chechns and Kazakhs fair in Russian?
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  26. Issue is Australia hasn't really been in a position to need it since the world wars. Cold War was still off on 4 other continents getting nowhere near it. Peacetime breeds complacency. And now for the first time a power is starting to actually threaten it since the Japanese back in that conflict (thankfully this time they're on the same side). So it's finally time to start the process of rearmament.
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  27. Nope. Yeah sounds biased but actually it would be the western allies. You know who ACTUALLY had the numbers? The USA. The Soviet army was on the brink of destruction back in 1942. And while the UK and France were war weary, the US was fresh, untouched, and logically and industrially more capable than the USSR. You can see that in production figures. The T-34 was the most produced tank of all time and started production in 1940. It was only about 10k above the M4 Sherman who was who had started production 2 years later and was being switched as the US army started to voluntarily shrink itself. Keep that up for another 2 or 3 years and you can see the gap widen much much more. The US tank crews also almost never died and so taking out a tank was almost a non-issue and could be easily replaced. There's also the huge gap in air power the US enjoyed and invested in. The red army was an armored force, the US army an air force. If anyone was in place to take the Soviet Union on, it was the USA in 1945. The US also never had the logistical issues that the nazis and soviets had thanks to its hardy trucks that actually gave the USSR any logistical capability at all. Honestly the US could've pretty easily bled dry the soviets in a war and the soviets would've been fairly easy pickings at that time to just be completely capitulated and forced into unconditional surrender. Not to mention the force projection the allies enjoyed to potentially launch strikes on the Soviet industrial base which was not possible for the US. The Soviets were a miraculous story of getting back up from the brink of death and taking down their enemy. The US however was a fresh new fighter, with all of the strength of both fighters combined, and completely ready to take on what was a military largely on its last legs. 34 million Soviets served in the great patriotic war and about 16 million died. The US mobilized 11 million, with over half as support troops, and less than half a million dead. With... roughly similar total populations I might add. That was not a game the soviets could hope to win. If war did break out, they'd be done for.
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  28. Though even then there's a lot of give in the Missile and artillery department
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  29. ​ @stipebalenovic6497 IIRC he's Russian and actually came out as such. Also reflected in the name: "Binkov"
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  30. That was only for F-35 with F-22 not doing anything near that. Not to mention that the reason for F-35's expense being kinda stupid as a production and development process. They tried it, failed massively. Now, look at the proposed budget for B-26 and remember that it came in under that.
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  31. Basically he missed the addition of Belarus giving access
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  32. Remember that both of these countries are not at a total war footing, and that for them they likely could go for that as both see this as a battle for survival. Basically, we could probably see something like WW1 come out of this. Though I'll admit there's a potential for them to simply not have the mobilization systems required in order to pull that off. Tanks are incredibly helpful for breakthroughs, but this can only be done after enough attrition occurs.
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  33. The US has 2 6th Gen programs
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  34. @The136th  That's literally the opposite of what's true. It's so opposite, they'd be unable to do any normal building if it were true
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  35. @widodoakrom3938  That aligns exactly with what I've said, at least for China's timeline. 6 Gen fighters are planned for the 2030s
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  36.  @drd105  So if one looked significantly enough like those groups they could potentially gain Intel no?
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  37.  @drd105  Even if they were potentially a Chechn or Kazakh?
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  38.  @drd105  got it
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  39. Someone didn't watch the video. But the point is that it's not likely to be a game changer since the problems in the Russian army are systemic and not in anything to do with capabilities. The drones are pretty great actually.
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  40. Russia built itself as a defensive force ready to go toe to toe with the west in one final invasion the scale of the Great Patriotic War once again. For that, they built their army around contract soldiers who do the complex stuff, and conscripts who can be quickly mobilized to fill the ranks and thus have very quickly an army of millions with which to defend the land. However, that's not the war they found themselves in and in fact that's not the army you have if you're trying to be a world power. Those need armies of highly motivated and well equipped units which come usually from very well paid contract soldiers. They also were on offense but it was a preemptive offense to close the border so that they'd have a smaller front and more space with which to resist that final invasion on a country they didn't even think registered as a power. Due to this, they didn't even try to retool for that goal and so that's the cause of the situation they're in now.
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  41.  @scaleyback217  What about what I said was nationalistic in any capacity? The reality of the situation was that the US was producing on its own double the numbers of the axis combined and was the largest economy in the world. It was supporting the Soviets with 45% of all their trucks and even sending Sherman's to the USSR under lend-lease. The USSR also industrialized a belt the size of Britain. Population of the USA was just under 140 million and the USSR 190 million. Also I missed some numbers on my tank count. The M4 Sherman was produced to about 50 thousand in 1942-1945. The T-34 was 30 thousand and the T-34-85 35 thousand produced in 1941-1945 for a combined total of about 65 thousand. If you do the math on that the USA and USSR were producing roughly equivalent numbers of tanks per year (with slight edge to USA at 16.67 thousand per year vs 16.25 thousand to the USSR). I also forgot to do my due diligence with 3% crew mortality rate as that is across the whole war and not when the tank was destroyed. In that they were very similar at 24.6% of Sherman crews and 28% of T-34 crews. But where the US really dominated was the air war where it produced over 300 thousand planes compared to just over 150 thousand Soviet planes. And the USA was making 100% of its own trucks and expanding its navy. And then lend-leasing to everyone else. The point here is that the UUSA was much more industrially capable than the USSR and it shows in production figures. Also had to master logistics out of necessity and was completely motorized. They were everything the Germans wanted to be but couldn't: masters of logistics, masters of industry, and a much more comparable population to the USSR.
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  42.  @Matt-mt2vi  Post-Modernism will be around for quite a while. Remember that people still think Marx was correct and will attempt to find ways to bring in the communist utopia. But the idea are currently being disliked more and more by the populace. It's also definitely worth mentioning how FDR unintentionally made worse the Great Depression in the USA with his new deal programs and has lasting effects on the current state of affairs. Still not as bad as Wilson though.
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  43.  @Matt-mt2vi  For me the reason I said the US was fresh was that for them despite being war weary on the home front, they had been untouched and their battle casualties miniscule in comparison to the rest of the participants. So on the important scales of how much the population had to deal with, it was very little. The reason I mentioned the US however was because they were the back bone of the Allies and compared to the soviets in production much higher. This comparison was to show that even alone the US was far more industrially capable with a very split industrial effort than the Soviets able to match and surpass them in near everything. In war, economies are everything. And when your economy is so incredibly large as to outclass your enemy on all fronts and you're not even fighting alone, that's pretty good indication that the fight is not really one that could be lost by actual casualties.
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  44. Does Japan even NEED to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941? Now as part of the Axis would the Russians still not trade with the Japanese to provide all of those raw materials? The entire point of that attack was to secure the islands for materials production that the US owned and or defended so they needed to go to Pearl Harbor and sink the ships so that it would stop the US response and keep them from defending their islands.
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  45.  @Crashed131963  I never said it wouldn't
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  46. @Free Lobsters That's incorrect. There are many countries which are net exporters of food or can quickly shift to that with little effort and become self sufficient. The US is one of those. I'm not entirely sure about China and Taiwan however as I know they they import most of the things they use but I'm unsure if they import their food as well. It's also not necessarily true that the one who starts it loses influence as really it'll just be the person who loses who loses influence as is the nature of war. Also another thing, if China can't get a quick victory the thing which hasn't gotten mentioned so far is that China won't be able to import anything. They don't have the land routes established yet and some counties are starting to be hostile to the idea. But the maritime empire who carries the weight of the global trade network, the US, is on the side of Taiwan. If Taiwan can hold for the period in which invasion is possible, the US really only has to keep things from going into China and starve out China while still getting shipments to Taiwan via the other side of the island.
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  47. @Free Lobsters I'd like to emphasize how this whole thing is not about the larger conflict between US and China but the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Also, while eyes are on who is the aggressor, it doesn't matter as long as you win as whoever wins comes out with more power and the ability to get concessions out of the other side. The global trade network also really really relies on the US navy. So if they want to they can keep up everything for everyone else but just blockade China no big deal. And so the rest of the world just kind of watches as China goes into anarchy from the lack of everything while Everyone else just sees a fair few items out of stock that came from China and maybe a slight rise in food but the food is still okay so no REAL issues. The US feeling the impact the least because it can just do everything itself.
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  48. @Free Lobsters The issue with land routes is that they're currently severely undeveloped and really just not in a state to be workable yet. Also goes through very VERY weak allies who are liable to just make a deal with the US. China currently is still very heavily reliant on maritime trade which is why I brought it up in the first place. But once again, this is about Chinese Taiwan invasion. You can say whatever you want about many being mainlanders, China has decades of propaganda about taking back Taiwan and is a matter of national pride with them often saying they'll do it. And China will if they believe they can. Taiwan is also a close ally of the US as a result of its animosity toward the mainland. The US will not be an aggressor in the war against China unless something is basically life threatening. They also don't really have anywhere to invade from so likely won't be boots on the ground so much as a blockade of their trade.
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  49. ​@tkmmkt6569 They don't necessarily make it out to be, but yes they're incredibly important. The efficiency gains in the engines aren't that important, it's the ability to be efficient in both subsonic and supersonic flight which allows for incredibly long ranges and isn't possible with current engines (this means they can take off on their own but can travel very long distances since they're not using afterburners to travel supersonic). The increases in stealth are correct in that they're not actually super high, but they're still multiple times better (unless you're the US Airforce getting at least 100x better for some reason). Finally, the drone wingmen allow for offloading of capabilities and for one airframe to essentially be an entire squadron of fighters, greatly increasing ability. However, that can't be managed in the single-seat 5th Gen aircraft. Thus, a new airframe is needed. And if they're going to make a new airframe anyway, might as well just do Gen 6 since that's already on the horizon. It's kind of like why the US changed cartridges and didn't go back to .308. They could've, but the reason for the change was weight decreases. So they had to change the casing (most of the cartridge) to achieve that, might as well change the bullet since they needed something new anyway.
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  50. ​ @threestars7561 I don't think that's true given that we hooked them up to pretty normal trucks already. Look at Task and Purpose's video on that one.
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  51.  @infinityquasar  That is... retarded. It's not been very rapid at all as this is optimal circumstances. The civilians now consider themselves Ukrainian thanks to the invasion. And finally, Ukraine doesn't have the ordinance to engage in civilian obliteration. That's a Russian tactic perfected in Grozny.
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  52. The big battleships did do combat. However the seas were basically dominated as the central powers were land powers first and foremost, and the German navy in jail. There's not a lot of focus on the WW1 naval war, because there wasn't a lot of WW1 naval combat. The 6th generation planes are very much the heart and brains of a system of systems. The planes themselves don't do the work. The drones do.
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  53. 0:13 He broke a little lol
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  54. Oh yeah which is why I don't think the Chinese will build up the capacity for a successful invasion. It's 3 years later and that thought still holds true. Normandy was a practical miracle, on top of a dedicated misinformation campaign to have tanks and actual troops at a different landing site, with a distracted army using a contingent of troops not even fit for garrison duty. That's why they were on the Atlantic wall in the first place: someone needed to do it but it was so unlikely that it was basically a rest area. And then the Allies invaded.
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  55. ​ @ronsmith3523 So we pulled our troops out and were surprised when upon resistance no longer being present that they could sweep?
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  56. I can see ramping up aircraft production, but the US actually kind of dominates aircraft production. Oh and 4x the population who has historically not been very good at mobilizing their population for war. I'm also curious as to how they'll keep everything fueled since they import 59% of their oil. The US imports more but also primarily exports their oil as well as has strong allied import locations which can't be interfered with (Canada and Mexico). This is compared to the only possible access China having through Russia. Which can likely be bombed all things considered. Btw on that mobilization metric: if the Chinese and Americans were to mobilize in similar ratios as in the second world War the US military would be twice the size of China's military in total numbers.
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  57.  @dabo5078  Yes I'm talking about the mobilization rate because that's a very important factor in war (btw worth noting that by that point the nationalists had united all of the warlords within a few years of the invasion and even then still couldn't mobilize more) and on top of that I'm using it because both countries fought so you can use the conflict and is the closest metric we have. Could that change? Possibly. However culturally the Chinese are fairly opposed to the military with China historically having mostly mercenary armies and WWII attitudes being "Why aren't they doing better when we're paying them so much?" and the Confucian value being that "good steel isn't used for nails" in relation to the military. Also yes why am I bringing it up mobilization rates? Because that's a percentage of the population and thus unaffected by actual population but I made those estimates with modern populations. Also no the reason why China is still cheaper is not because of actual volume but because that the labor pool is so massive as to keep wages low and thus in comparison to the US labor which commands a much higher price. And it's just unlikely to manage to produce more especially since the American factories can still be tooled up incredibly high. In terms of the ballistic missiles the US has very good defense technology against those and so they're unlikely to really do anything. They're also primarily tooled toward local distrances of around the south China sea. They're also expensive, difficult to replace, and overall really not much of "reaching the US". This is also compared to the US who can literally fly higher, fly more, and can fly nearly undetected. The Chinese Air defense however isn't really up to snuff to taking up the US air power in the higher altitudes. Overall kind of not up to the task.
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  58.  @dabo5078   @da bo  Well no mobilization rates has little to do with how well they can be supplied. While yes that's important, what's more important is getting people to actually fight for you. Even if they're using swords it's still better than nothing. And it's not like I'm using just them as precedent even during the Taiping rebellion the mobilization rate for China was incredibly small. And then in comparison the American Civil War saw a comparable rate to the second world War. Basically the comparison for me is that I'm looking at the long-term trends of the past roughly 200 years to see about how willing each country's population has been to go to war in a comparable high intensity conflict. Your attempt to brush it aside as saying "it's like saying the US wouldn't be able to mobilize because it left Afghanistan or won't help Ukraine" has 0 basis in analyzing how the country fights and reacts to actual conflicts. Afghanistan wasn't a war it was an occupation and the US simply didn't care to end up in a war it didn't care about (which btw is WWII situation is it not?). The Afghanistan war ended within a month. So that's just in no way accurate. And then the US simply didn't care for the war but given a war the US supports (a defensive war for a strategic interest against an enemy the population agrees on despising) you'll likely see the actual mobilization. Also lol no China is still cheap and you compared it to other southeastern neighbors which are all known as cheap labor and thus that argument kind of falls flat. Also the reason India and Bangladesh haven't taken over the industry is that India keeps out foreign investment and so there's been no-one to start up more factories there. Also worth noting that the Chinese usage of all of those materials make sense in the context of providing for the largest population on the planet but also when you consider that they're for thought of future growth which is actually unlikely to occur basically inflating the number higher than it otherwise would because it was only produced what was needed and for a much smaller population. Overall just isn't an apples to apples comparison there. PS American aircraft can fly above all but the newest Chinese Air defense and also operates stealth bombers which would be undetected.
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  59. I'm not sure this is as impressive as it sounds, and I'm not sure about its utility with being geosynchronous. First off: that means it has limited coverage. It's one spot. It's eyes in the sky, but it's effectively region locked. Second off: Even GPS isn't in geosynchronous orbit. And there's a reason for that. The reason is that it's very, very high up to each geosynchronous, and IIRC GPS is semi-geosynchronous. So basically, what this indicates to me is that they're trying to get it as far away as possible. And that they're probably compromising in some other categories in order to do this. I don't think this is so much of an achievement as otherwise indicated. This almost seems to be something that hasn't been done yet because it shouldn't, not because it couldn't.
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  60. Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't think about that since you have to pull off all of those panels for inspection and so have to remove and reapply.
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  61. @jmalcolmg123 Well no. It was cold because the powers didn't directly fight. But yes proxy wars were very hot. And also really a misunderstanding on your part because that insinuates the Anglos and Rus (which aren't all of the Soviets or the Americans) didn't die in the conflict either when Afghanistan 2 (First was British invasion like a century prior) was fought by the Soviets, Vietnam was fought by the Americans, and the Korean War was also fought by the Americans.
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  62.  @oj3458  Well... if you've seen the trend... sequels always tend to be bigger and Bloodier with scale ever increasing. Remember the first actual world War was in the 1700s. And has all gone up from there. Then you remember The Great War and its sequel World War Two. So sadly... that probably won't be the case.
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  63. So we come back to the original idea: it's attrition followed by manuever as an unbalance must be established to create a manuever period
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  64. Probably should've discussed more on the reserve components given state national guards and army reserve given that they're in real terms meant to be equal to us military proper
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