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[Devastator]

As for Bakhmut, I'm not terribly worried.  They retreated cleanly from Severodonetsk, and that was a harder job.  Assuming it ends up ever actually being captured/doesn't take another couple months.  Assuming this isn't some sort of trap.

[Duuvian]

More worried the Putinists in the US congress are being given air instead of being told to shut the fuck up and sit down.

[Madman198237]

Any NATO strike would likely utilize anti-radiation missile that target radars and demolish air defense capabilities. Although I wonder how effective that would be considering the cat and mouse game we see in Ukraine.

If NATO were to get directly involved, the first Russia would know about it would be when the low-observability cruise missiles and stealth bombers simultaneously hit every meaningful air-defense system Russia has in the area of operations.

NATO anti-radiation missiles have done superb work in Ukraine, despite being restricted to a portion of their capabilities (everything publicly available plus a lot of common sense suggests that the HARMs are not integrated into Mig targeting systems, and are being used in a "program on the ground, fly to the right general area, and fire" mode. NATO aircraft would be able to operate in a true hunter-killer mode that would be far more effective. That's why Russia has fighters as well as SAMs.

I mean, they're not *that* restricted. All you have to do with a HARM is fly until your RWR starts screaming at you, throw the HARM towards the source, turn around and run like hell. I doubt if even the most modern HARMs have any more advanced uses than that; if you want different types of targeting you use a different type of missile.

[EuchreJack]

More worried the Putinists in the US congress are being given air instead of being told to shut the fuck up and sit down.

Agreed.
I should probably move this to AmeriPol, but it makes more sense to address it here.

A few articles that I found:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/24/mike-pence-ex-trump-vp-slams-gop-putin-apologists-in-ukraine-speech.html
https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-the-republicans-lifting-up-putin-are-the-same-ones-trying-to-destroy-democracy
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/politics/2024-rift-ukraine-trump-desantis-haley/index.html
https://accountability.gop/ukraine-quotes/

To summarize: It's mostly the 10% Trumpists with the loudest voices and largest bank accounts that are Putinists.
It's not so much that they're a majority of the party but rather they have the most influence. 
How many Pro-Ukraine Pro-Republican news outlets exists?
Like seriously, if anyone knows of any, please let me know

I've mostly had to sort through the BBC, CBS, and CNN.

...I'm still bewildered that Mike Pence, with all the accusations made about him when he started out with Trump, is the Guardian of Democracy on the Right.
It's sort of like when Gotham figures out that Batman is a good guy.

[Duuvian]

DeSantis is mouthing Putinist bullshit too, and the Rparty is trying to force a loyalty pledge on candidates. He's also cleverly building towards a campaign that on it's face is anti-corporate (but really only pro-DeSantis corporatist), capitalizing on the ground laid for decades that the moderate democrats refuse to take while taking shady primary money to do the opposite (not to mention astroturf, or influence campaign, or public scare or...) that ends up with incompetent socialites at the local level that fuck up and get tossed, usually for someone to their right who then usually fuck up in a more unforced manner and get tossed where it starts again except "moderate" is slightly more right leaning. You are correct though that's clearly an Ameripol issue.

Also thanks for the links EJ. It's a good reminder that the confidence about this issue I have in the people you mentioned has borne out to this point. There will be great pressure on them at some point. I urge them to remain unbowed.

EDIT: To clarify DeSantis started out the war at a position of "quiet". Then he switched to saying some anti-Putin things, possibly to differentiate from Trump. However I've read a few articles recently that seem to suggest a shifting closer towards the Putinist camp as a (fail) way to go after Biden. Perhaps I am mistaken or perhaps this will change.

Spoiler: Be warned, this is from an opinion piece from the NYT, view with suspicion of motive (click to show/hide)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/opinion/desantis-ukraine-shimmy.html
The second view, embraced by the populist wing, is that the United States has no vital national interests in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson has said he doesn’t really care what Vladimir Putin does in Ukraine. Donald Trump has suggested that the war will last longer if the United States continues to send aid.

DeSantis has magically cast himself in between these two positions. In the past, DeSantis was tougher on Russia than Trump was. In 2017, he noted that Putin “wants to reconstitute the Russian Empire,” and chided Trump for being too soft on Putin, saying that “you’re better off dealing with Putin by being strong.” If Putin thinks he can gain an inch, DeSantis argued, “he’s apt to take a mile.”

But this week DeSantis went on “Fox & Friends,” where great statesmen have always gone to unfurl their foreign policy doctrines, and he feinted in a Trump-like direction.

He said the war wouldn’t have happened if Joe Biden weren’t so weak. He said he didn’t want to give the Ukrainians a “blank check” (as if anyone does). He said Biden should be more concerned with securing the border at home and less concerned with borders far away. He minimized the threat Putin poses to the West, adding, “I don’t think it’s in our interests to be getting into a proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea.”

[Lord Shonus]

I mean, they're not *that* restricted. All you have to do with a HARM is fly until your RWR starts screaming at you, throw the HARM towards the source, turn around and run like hell. I doubt if even the most modern HARMs have any more advanced uses than that; if you want different types of targeting you use a different type of missile.

No, that's not how it works. HARMs doesn't just fly toward "whatever the loud radar is", it is programmed to seek out a specific kind of radar. What Ukraine's doing right now is basically "Intelligence says there's an SA-20 in grid square A32, program a missile and go take it out". Which is very useful, but limited. A US Wild Weasel flight could be assigned to things like "the squadron is conducting search and destroy operations east of Bakhmut, your job is to suppress any air defenses that crop up". This is possible because a F-16 configured for Wild Weasel operations has more sophisticated passive sensors (via the HARM Targeting Pod) to identify AA threats, and has a computer capable of programming the HARM in-flight to say "go after the SA-20 on THIS bearing". Retrofitting those capabilities into a Mig is basically impossible because nobody's put much effort into setting it up - very few countries have used both NATO and Soviet aircraft, and the vast majority of the ones that did were phasing out the Soviet planes as quickly as the NATO aircraft came online.

[lemon10]

More worried the Putinists in the US congress are being given air instead of being told to shut the fuck up and sit down.

Ehh, I'm not worried for now.
This isn't the Republicans VS Democrats. If it was I would be worried due to the political incompetence of the Democrats in general.
No, its (some) Republicans VS the Military Industrial Complex. And I sure as hell know who I'm betting on in a "[Ununified political party]" VS Major Corporate Interests, and it ain't the party.

Things might change of course if a republican becomes president; but as long as said republican isn't Trump they will almost certainly have better things to do then pick fights with the army.

[Lord Shonus]

It isn't even the MIC - they don't particularly care, because the West would be rearming no matter what happened to Ukraine. Not to mention that the reputation of Russian weaponry is in the toilet right now and that's going to make a lot of countries buy American instead.

No, fundamentally the obstacle for Russian-aligned Republicans is the American people - supporting Ukraine is incredibly popular. A significant percentage of people not happy with the level of support consider it to be insufficient, while the percentage of people who think we're doing too much is only slightly above a rounding error.

Though it was very funny to see a general call Matt Gaetz a dumbass to his face.

[Duuvian]

Though it was very funny to see a general call Matt Gaetz a dumbass to his face.

LOL I missed that one

[Lord Shonus]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1630621020393553943?s=20

Ok, it wasn't a general, it was Defense Undersecretary Kahl

The specific quote (there's video of the exchange in the linked tweet) was "As a general matter I don't take Beijing's propaganda at face value".

[Starver]

If you take Russia as being Russia, and add in the complacency that comes with a now long-running conflict, low morale etc.....it's not too surprising.

I read that as "add in the conspiracy" for a moment.

And I had also already considered the possibilities that the Russians had found a Ukrainian drone in some warehouse or other in over-run territories, and transported it (or let it transport itself with "oops, missed it" instructions to those it overflew) to be deliberately crashed[1] as a further casus belli, at least for internal consumption. Although what I saw of the official(ish) Ukraine response makes it quite clear they're also not too upset about it.


But it's something I'd do, given the opportunity and the right reasons. Really not too wild an idea, I think.


[1] Or, alternately, one shot down in the Russian-grabbed land/borderlands but slightly on the Russian side. Its bits carefully taken to the fake crash-site.

[Duuvian]

Wise advice on propaganda in general as well

[jipehog]

NATO anti-radiation missiles have done superb work in Ukraine, despite being restricted to a portion of their capabilities (everything publicly available plus a lot of common sense suggests that the HARMs are not integrated into Mig targeting systems, and are being used in a "program on the ground, fly to the right general area, and fire" mode. NATO aircraft would be able to operate in a true hunter-killer mode that would be far more effective. That's why Russia has fighters as well as SAMs.

Can you elaborate on that?

[Lord Shonus]

NATO anti-radiation missiles have done superb work in Ukraine, despite being restricted to a portion of their capabilities (everything publicly available plus a lot of common sense suggests that the HARMs are not integrated into Mig targeting systems, and are being used in a "program on the ground, fly to the right general area, and fire" mode. NATO aircraft would be able to operate in a true hunter-killer mode that would be far more effective. That's why Russia has fighters as well as SAMs.

Can you elaborate on that?

Basically, everything publicly available says that there's no real integration between the AGM-88 missiles (AKA High Speed Anti Radiation Missile, or HARM) that have been supplied to Ukraine and the onboard computers of their fighters - the systems are too incompatible. So all they can really do is preprogrammed missions based on intelligence. A US fighter can fly around, pick up all radar systems in the area, decide precisely which ones need destroying (to clear a path for a strike, for example) on the fly, and engage accordingly.

It is nearly certain that the JDAM kits they're supposed to be getting will be similarly limited. NATO and Soviet computers just don't speak the same language.

[Grim Portent]

In simplistic terms, HARMs are told to hit a given radio profile, usually the sort from radar to my understanding. You take them to the general area and let them do their thing on their own. If there's multiple similar targets in an area you can't really control which one gets hit.

If you have NATO aircraft with the right hardware, you can be much more specific about a target.

It's a lot like the difference between heat-seaking (radio seeking in this case) missiles and lock-on style homing missiles in a video game. One goes towards any target that's close enough, the other goes after a specific target. AGM-88 HARMs, the missile generally being referred to, can be either depending on what you fire it from.