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impressive, very nice... let's see the Hohenstaufens' HRE
the best kind of medieval border-gore is when the same guy owns territories that aren't contiguous, just everything being exclaves within exclaves on top of other exclaves 
https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1780850610864267756
The US Army cancelled the XM1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system last month. ... The only way I can describe it at this point is total organizational failure. We're now on our third failed program to replace the M109 155mm self-propelled howitzer, and as usual for the US Army the interim solution - the M109A7, basically dropping the existing M109A6 Paladin turret onto a Bradley chassis - is going to end up as the permanent fix.
Let's walk through the history of this generational procurement failure. The M109 has been the US Army's 155mm self-propelled howitzer since before Vietnam, with the original short-barreled version (rather resembling a Russian 2S3) upgraded to sport what was then a very modern 39-caliber* cannon shortly after that war with the M109A1. Further upgrades followed, culminating in the M109A6, a modern weapon of the late Cold War era that was in some way groundbreaking but in some other ways quite dated. It had a lot of new electronics... and a manually-loaded cannon from the 1970s. When the Paladin entered service in the early 1990s the then-Soviet Union had already introduced the 2S19 in 1989 (featuring an autoloading 47-caliber 152mm cannon), and the Germans were hard at work on the PzH 2000 (with a semi-autoloading 52-caliber 155mm cannon). Both of these competing systems could fire three times the rounds of the Paladin at considerably longer ranges.
It wouldn't be an issue because the Army was working on a replacement already - the XM2001 Crusader, a thoroughly modern self-propelled gun with a 52-caliber 155mm cannon and an automatic transloader vehicle. It was the ultimate cannon to defend the Fulda Gap against the Red Tide... which was problematic at the time because that threat didn't exist any more and doubly so after 9/11. So like many Cold War legacy programs it was cancelled by Donald Rumsfeld during his apocalyptic tenure as George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense.
Not to worry, the Army had a backup plan! Enter Future Combat Systems, a program that happened because the Army brass saw the Air Force make the F-35 too big to fail and thought that was a good procurement model. The XM1203 Non-Line of Sight Cannon (NLOS-C), developed as one of the FCS "family" of tracked combat vehicles, sporting a lightweight 39-caliber 155mm cannon with a high-speed autoloader and minimal crew requirements. It would have been the ideal cannon for the lightweight expeditionary Army of the post-Cold War era... and then Iraq happened. The bad part of Iraq where we were losing a hundred guys killed every month with no end in sight. After the Republicans were routed in the 2006 elections and Rumsfeld shown the door his successor, Robert Gates, axed the entire program as yet another Rumsfeld-era boondoggle with no value to win the War on Terror.
This left the Army's fleet of increasingly-worn out M109A6s soldiering on into the 2010s, and replacement vehicles were needed. Enter the M109A7 - basically a program to drop the existing M109A6 turret onto a suitably adapted Bradley chassis to ease maintenance and recapitalize the fleet. The M109A7 didn't offer any actual new capability, but it would keep the Field Artillery in business until a new cannon could be brought into service, because it was now the late 2010s and most serious armies on the planet had moved on to autoloading long-barrel systems.
Enter ERCA, the US Army's plan to leapfrog the competition with a fantastically long 58-caliber 155mm cannon... mounted on the same Bradley-derived chassis of the M109A7. If you take a short survey of modern tracked, armored, long-barrel SPGs - 2S19, 2S35, K9, PzH 2000, etc. - you'll notice that they're all quite heavy, with most of them built on a tank chassis or a specialized heavy artillery chassis. That capability isn't free. The Army was trying to stuff an even longer autoloading cannon onto an IFV chassis, and ran into easily-predictable issues with weight and then - once they cut capability to fix it - into equally predictable issues with bore wear given the extreme ranges they were trying to drive this cannon to (70+ kilometers for a gun about 10% longer than cannons maxxing out at half that). So that program got cancelled last month for what were basically technical feasibility issues.
In any event the US Army's current plan seems to be to go to war with the M109A7 and, if the performance of similar 39-caliber systems in Ukraine is any indication, lose the counter-battery fight and get a lot of artillerymen killed manning obsolescent guns.
It's very strange they are in a literal war for survival but are not drafting 18yr olds. What's the deal? Doesn't make sense.
I love how it never occurs to these dweebs that maybe it simply isn't actually a "war for survival". There's someone in the thread going on about how the Soviets had an even lower conscription age during WW2, and like... yeah, it was fucking WW2! And if you believe this is any way comparable to the Nazi invasion of the USSR, then your analysis of the war is so devoid of any connection to reality that you might as well be talking about a fictional conflict.
the Soviet ending for Yuri's Revenge is absolutely amazing
Soviet troops parading down Wall Street, as the stock market closed forever... the new golden age of space exploration... who knows what the future may hold, as communism leaves the boundaries of our planet, and expands across the solar system
god is with you captain bolsonaro
Y'know, somehow, I feel like the guy who's been hit by like a dozen consecutive plagues doesn't actually have God's favor? I dunno, just a vibe I'm getting.
the price is reich 
the UK would have to have a child monarch
I want to see a modern regency council so bad, can you imagine 
and 
and whoever else (I don't know any anglo politicians 
) trying to do old-timey palace intrigues
British wunderwaffe not doing so well after encountering mud (archived)
from the fucking Sun of all places (although most of the article is fawning about it, not sure how these bits slipped through, like it's literally an article titled "UP FOR THE CHALLENGE" and then halfway through it's like "yeah, it sinks in mud and breaks down all the time and we can't even get the spare parts")
But Kayfarick said the downside was the Challenger’s size and weight. At 64 tons it is roughly the same as a German Leopard 2 and a US Abrams M1A2 — but 20 tons heavier than a Russian T-80 and with a 30 per cent lower power-to-weight ratio. Despite its 26litre V12 diesel engine producing a whopping 1,200 horsepower, the crews in Ukraine said the Challenger 2 struggled with mobility. The squadron’s chief engineer, who uses the call sign Chol, said: “There are pluses and minuses with everything, and the minus is its mobility — its ability to manoeuvre across ground. “They keep getting stuck in the mud because it is so heavy.”
note that the ones in British service with all of the armor upgrades installed are 75 tons, so uh, that doesn't bode well
The crew invited The Sun to clamber aboard and we sat on the turret as the Challenger 2 roared over the countryside and its gun circled round the clock. But we soon saw what the soldiers meant about mobility when it sank into a bog. Kayfarick blasted the rookie crew for going too slowly though a gully, though they said they only went slowly for fear of bucking us off.
...
But the Challenger squadron revealed to The Sun that only seven of the 14 tanks donated in March 2023 are still fighting fit. Besides the one which was destroyed by a Lancet suicide drone in September — luckily the crew survived and the tank’s burnt-out hull was recovered — another was assigned to a training unit elsewhere in Ukraine. Two others were damaged in battle but have since been repaired, including one that had its barrel replaced.
But a bigger problem is reliability. Five have broken down and Kayfarick said spare parts from Britain sometimes take months to arrive and he had a shortage of skilled mechanics to keep the hardware fighting fit. He said: “It takes a long time to get spares. The logistics are very complex, at this end and your end.” And he revealed that a chronic shortage of fresh soldiers on the front lines meant trained tank crew had been removed from their vehicles in order to dig trenches for the infantry. Kayfarick said rubber pads on the tanks’ tracks and the wheels kept on wearing out. He said: “The parts in the turret and the parts of precision aiming are also not so long-lasting. They have been breaking from the start.”
the start of the article (which I've skipped in the quotes here) is all about how amazingly precise the cannon is, except it turns out the parts needed for that break really fast, nice
...
Kayfarick said the Challenger 2 did not have the right type of ammunition for attacking infantry. ... He added that he feared commanders had failed to grasp that Nato tanks were built for different roles from Soviet ones. He said: “Soviet tanks are battle machines built for multiple tasks. British and Nato tanks are mostly about sniping — tank versus tank.” Kayfarick and his crews were in the UK last winter training with British tank crews. But he said Ukraine’s top brass were torn between “the completely different approach of the Soviet school and the Nato school of fighting.” He said: “The main problem for Challenger 2s on the battle ground is a commander who doesn’t understand what it was designed for, what are its pros and cons.”
love to make a tank that costs over 4 million bucks and yet is also a highly specialized delicate little thing that can only ever do one job
the power of American war planning (archived: part 1, part 2)
Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine
pretty long article, so only some choice bits:
spoiler
Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:
● Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.
● U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.
● U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.
● Many in Ukraine and the West underestimated Russia’s ability to rebound from battlefield disasters and exploit its perennial strengths: manpower, mines and a willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries can countenance.
ah, so we're back to the good old Nazi excuse of "they just won through superior numbers"
The year began with Western resolve at its peak, Ukrainian forces highly confident and President Volodymyr Zelensky predicting a decisive victory. But now, there is uncertainty on all fronts. Morale in Ukraine is waning. International attention has been diverted to the Middle East. Even among Ukraine’s supporters, there is growing political reluctance to contribute more to a precarious cause. At almost every point along the front, expectations and results have diverged as Ukraine has shifted to a slow-moving dismounted slog that has retaken only slivers of territory.
The campaign’s inconclusive and discouraging early months pose sobering questions for Kyiv’s Western backers about the future, as Zelensky — supported by an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians — vows to fight until Ukraine restores the borders established in its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. “That’s going to take years and a lot of blood,” a British security official said, if it’s even possible. “Is Ukraine up for that? What are the manpower implications? The economic implications? Implications for Western support?”
In a conference call in the late fall of 2022, after Kyiv had won back territory in the north and south, Austin spoke with Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, and asked him what he would need for a spring offensive. Zaluzhny responded that he required 1,000 armored vehicles and nine new brigades, trained in Germany and ready for battle. “I took a big gulp,” Austin said later, according to an official with knowledge of the call. “That’s near-impossible,” he told colleagues.
During one visit to Wiesbaden, Milley spoke with Ukrainian special operations troops — who were working with American Green Berets — in the hope of inspiring them ahead of operations in enemy-controlled areas. “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night,” Milley said, according to an official with knowledge of the event. “You gotta get back there, and create a campaign behind the lines.”
??? dude just infiltrate a gajilion special forces behind enemy lines lmao, like what the fuck are American military "thinkers" even smoking?
Ukrainian officials hoped the offensive could re-create the success of the fall of 2022, when they recovered parts of the Kharkiv region in the northeast and the city of Kherson in the south in a campaign that surprised even Ukraine’s biggest backers. Again, their focus would be in more than one place.
recreate the success of the time the enemy just retreated because they were in a bad position and barely fought us at all
The exercises also predicted a difficult and bloody fight, with losses of soldiers and equipment as high as 30 to 40 percent, according to U.S. officials. ... War-gaming “doesn’t work,” the [senior Ukrainian military official] said in retrospect, in part because of the new technology that was transforming the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers were fighting a war unlike anything NATO forces had experienced: a large conventional conflict, with World World I-style trenches overlaid by omnipresent drones and other futuristic tools — and without the air superiority the U.S. military has had in every modern conflict it has fought. “All these methods … you can take them neatly and throw them away, you know?” the senior Ukrainian said of the war-game scenarios. “And throw them away because it doesn’t work like that now.”
A far bigger problem was the supply of 155mm shells, which would enable Ukraine to compete with Russia’s vast artillery arsenal. The Pentagon calculated that Kyiv needed 90,000 or more a month. While U.S. production was increasing, it was barely more than a tenth of that.
“The plan that they executed was entirely feasible with the force that they had, on the timeline that we planned out,” a senior U.S. military official said.
it's not our fault we have no idea what the fuck we're doing, the plan was perfect, those damn slavs just couldn't execute it correctly
to be fair, actual historical Roman clothing was pretty colorful, but yeah, the pop-history understanding of Rome doesn't necessarily emphasize that
create a thriving Palestinian civil society
with what resources exactly? Israel literally just steals Palestinian tax money, what the fuck are the Palestinians supposed to build their society with, hopes and dreams?
Tervell
joined 4 years ago
We're a site of barely a thousand users, and I remember it used to be a lot less, more like 500-600 daily, I assume after federation there was some growth. And of course only a small portion of those users post regularly, which is pretty normal for social-media-esque websites.
So there's just too many over-specialized comms, that the userbase isn't really large enough to support. Like, we probably don't need to have /c/games, /c/ttrpg, /c/tabletop & /c/gamedev as all separate things.