Need to modernize the star spangled banner lyrics to reflect that the Patriot missile defense system is in fact still standing
Right. Exactly. And I should add, that the US has mostly themselves to blame for this. The USA has spent the better part of 7 decades treating the world as its colony: near slave labor, stolen minerals, and a garbage dump. Take South Africa, for instance: is there any wonder their citizens distrust or outright hate the US government when the official policy of our country for 50 years was to support Apartheid?
Small sample size, but every white South African I know is at best a fervent religious neo nationalist, and at worst an out and out bigot with 0 respect for anyone else
As you probably know, my partner lived there for a while doing her doctoral research. Not ever white SA is a piece of shit, but a lot are exactly as you describe. There are also plenty of trash black South Africans too (pretty poor treatment of migrant workers from west Africa, for instance). Beautiful country though and I think she liked the people in the region she lived in while she was there.
India is currently the #1 importer of Russian oil/natural gas Coincidentally, India is now a top exporter of oil/natural gas. Sanctions are crushing Russia. A few more and they'll be on their knees.
O say can you see by the dawn's early light how so badly they failed during last night’s mass miss’ling? Patriot defenses stopped the perilous flight of the Russian kinzhals we were told would upend things. On the ground that big flare was debris from the air and despite some burns, the systems still stay there. O say did Vlad’s far-fangled plan yet fail again o’er the wants of Artoo in the home of Ukraine?
EU is being urged to sanction India for buying cheap Russian oil then refining and reselling it to Europe to circumvent the sanctions. We'll have to see if they actually do.
My brother works on boats and had invited a coworker over to my house several years ago. We were hungry and the South African hadn't had it before, so we went to KFC drive-thru. I couldn't understand what he was saying so I pulled forward and rolled down his window. "KFC, how may we help you?" South African - "I'allll hev a HAMburga" I know one person isn't a reflection of all, but the only South Africans I'm aware of are Elon Musk and Hamburger boy. So I don't think very highly of them.
I was thinking the same thing- ukraine needs to pull a mark twain and post something about rumors of its death being greatly exaggerated
Cool article on Putins Black Sea Palace/Bunker https://www.businessinsider.com/rev...tent=referral&utmTerm=topbar&referrer=twitter
Conventionally yeah looks like they're pretty much a non factor against anyone with a pulse at the moment. But they still have a lot of equipment and if this drags long enough, eventually the idiots are going to get killed and the surviving effective commanders might actually manage to accomplish something with that equipment. And really anyone with a nuke is basically uninvadable because you can wipe out a city out of spite. There's a reason regional powers on the borders of the major spheres of influence (Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan, NK) all desperately want at least some of them
All of the countries i listed have them except Iran. Israel officially doesn't but everyone assumes they do.
good points, and i didn't mean my post as a means of saying they're invadable or anything, more pointing out that i'd have to think military and political officials around NATO, etc. would have to think that they could repel any aggression by russia and not cave to any bombastic demands they make in the future given how poorly their military has been shown to be and their tech and weapons have been outclassed by our western tech and weapons. like i said the only card left that i'm aware of would be the nukes but i (perhaps naively) think those would only be used as a last resort by russia. but the other poster (forgot who as i write this) made a good point about 1) the nukes still obviously being a huge factor and 2) the influence campaigns and other means outside of conventional military might that still make them a major threat around the world.
yeah they definitely do. i thought you were saying those countries didn't for some reason and i was super confused
because they're selling oil to india who in turn refines it and sells the gas to europe. so yeah some more sanctions might be helpful.
Apparently Ukraine shot done at least a few of Russia's hypersonic missiles. Russia says hypersonic missile scientists face 'very serious' treason accusations https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...-serious-accusations-treason-case-2023-05-17/
Yea I lol'ed at the news coming out that some of the guys that designed the khinzal were just charged with treason. I'm reading it totally as the patriots did really well against the khinzal- much to the surprise of russia who is now mad about it and feels like these dudes lied about the khinzal
It's like they never thought their super missiles would ever have to go up against modern anti-air defenses. Wild.
“Simulated flameout practice” because you’re one engine problem away from being a $20million lawn dart
How many support personnel (that would require training and expertise specific to that aircraft) would each F-16 (or other equivalent 4th gen NATO fighter) need to make giving them such planes realistic, and how long would such training take?
F-16s only having one engine is a big reason I think there's probably better options available at a similar price point.
There’s a joke in the Air Force is you need a college degree to break a plane, and a GED to fix one. I’m not sure how long it’d take to retrain a Ukrainian SU-27 crew chief to work on an F-16, but there’s a step by step manual (TO) for everything you have to do and check.
In terms of available aircraft / spares, I don’t think so. F18s are twice as expensive and there’s no where near as many of them.
Well, what do the Ukrainians need these planes for? Fighter bombers over Russian held territory? Every Gen 4 or 4.5 plane is going to have trouble operating in that environment? Taking on Su-35s as they're about to launch missiles? That's going to be tough too as you need arrays of radar support and targeting systems and such (I'm no expert on this, but I'm pretty sure it's not as simple as sending your planes at their planes and pressing a button when you get a radar lock). Or do they need planes that can shoot down drones and cruise missiles? Because if they just need planes that can shoot down cruise missiles, give them a squadron of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAI_T-50_Golden_Eagle
Probably a really dumb question - wouldn’t it be better to just offer f-16s to other non nato countries to give their mig/su whatever they have that ukr knows how to operate?
right, but is there really any harm in giving peru some f-16s? It’s not exactly new tech that China and Russia haven’t been studying in person for decades or Indonesia who already has f-16s and su s