https://twitter.com/fredmiracle2/status/1576305635708108805?s=20&t=WjoPHVRLHliTkJjJSGSxsA
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I’m fascinated by how much Putin, like Trump, depends on spectacle when reality isn’t working. Ship state employee for a fake show to support a fake annexation, while at the same time Ukraine is literally, in reality, taking annexed territory.
This type of spectacle of bullshit seems to be the Roger Ailes playbook, represented by things like the Benghazi hearings and everything trump, maybe also North Korea and Chinese pageants, and military parades beloved by dictators. They are like magic shows, where the audience is asked to accept and believe in an alternate reality. They try to fool the world, in the hope that reality isn’t tested, but determined opponents with actual resources can call their bluff. I think Putin in many ways hoped the West was a paper tiger when it’s always been a real tiger.
I think the US probably needs to call a lot more bluffs, but then again “fake it til you make it” is hardly unusual in the US, especially in business and investment contexts. However, US military ideology does seem pretty reality-focused.
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Maybe the only job worse than being a Russian soldier is being a Russian logistics officer.
Idk my picture of a logistics guy is Don Rickles in Kelly’s Heroes where he’s collecting an officer’s whiskey rations after the guy’d been “decapitated by an 88”.
Russian civilians seem to have leeway to criticize Putin from the right.
The Russians in Lyman tried to Leeroy Jenkins through the Ukrainian lines to avoid capture?
Maybe 2/3rds
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1576134930169487360
The situation in Luhansk is changing rapidly. Lyman has fallen already relative to this map, and it sounds like Ukrainian troops are already heading east from there.
maybe they just realized red army isn’t as scary as previously thought
Betting against the use of nuclear weapons is the biggest freeroll in the history of free rolls. How the fuck are you going to collect if they are used?
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From memory, historical estimates are around 1%/yr average. No doubt it’s higher rn but 10% seems way high. Putin has made no recent overt moves other than repeating his threats.
smart money would look if any russian nukes have been tested since at least 1991, and majority before that. spoiler: they haven’t been.
I could be wrong but I don’t see reliability as a big issue. Maybe rats have chewed through a lot of electrical cables or whatever but they have a huge stockpile. They could cobble together some working systems.
Yeah. My understanding of the test ban treaty was that both sides had processes in place to know that their bombs worked.
Also not a nuclear physicist, but the technological issues are way more complex than that. Nuclear weapons are based on isotopes that are perpetually decaying, and need a careful balance of rapid symmetrical compression to gain their full yield. If not maintained you are likely to get a ‘fizzle’, where the weapon activates with some fission but the vast majority of the material is just catapulted away from the bomb - which makes an effective dirty bomb, but not that great for immediately destroying an area.
For earlier designed weapons based on U-238 this is less of an issue, since it has a very long half-life, but a great deal more weapons are plutonium based (short half-lives) and 30 years of not being rebuilt or tested could certainly lead to yield issues. Finally, the strategic weapons are two stage, using hydrogen fusion for the gigantic thermonuclear blast. So that’s additional complexity on top of the fissile reaction.
Launching them from a plane or cruise missile is certainly available in Ukraine, but its not clear if the ICBMs are well taken of either - and large rockets like that are certainly affected by all sorts of problems over time.
As you say, the Soviets, now Russians, counted on having enough weapons on hand to destroy all major targets several times over so even with all these issues it’s still certain nuclear war would be devastating - but on an individual basis, it seems at least possible that many or most of their weapons won’t function with the effectiveness they were designed to.
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Nukes are not hard to maintain. Their delivery systems like ICBM’s might not work as expected but a low yield nuke is just a bunch of plutonium surrounded by shaped explosives. Both last a lot longer than those years of non maintenance. Even if the first one fizzles out they have more than enough to try again and the knowledge to fix any issue they find
I fear I’m in dunning-Kruger territory. But my takeaway from studying nuclear power for a few weeks was that it’s all surprisingly uncomplicated.
I mean. They built bombs in the 1940s.
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otoh ru army is shitty and corrupted from the inside out.