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

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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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  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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  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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  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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