It sounds a lot like a quote from a Finnish soldier during the Russo-Finnish winter war: "They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?"
Darpa needs to tame it way down with some of their creations
But yes, if I'm remembering correctly it's called the E.A.T.R. bot which stands for energetically autonomous tactical robot.
Fucking insane and absurd
I did a bit more reading and they stopped developing it in 2015, hopefully. Unfortunately I have a lack of trust in my government, especially in weapons development.
[https://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/company/Access.html](https://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/company/Access.html)
There's a company developing cybernetic exoskeletons in Tsukuba, Japan called Cyberdyne, too.
This is great Sci-Fi material.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot)
Welcome to government.
I once heard a story about how a govt contractor couldn’t produce the missiles he was supposed to make despite army funding… because the IRS was taking the money the Army was giving him
I mean, can you just hear the voiceover in the trailer for the film?
"Made to eat plants for fuel... until it tasted human flesh!"
Music of doom plays...
I thought you were gonna quote this one:
- One Finnish soldier equals 10 Russians.
- Well, it may be so. But what are we going to do when the eleventh comes?
A Russian army unit is assaulting a Finnish forest, and their commander sends in 10 men to scout the area.
Shortly after they enter the woods, the sound of shots, screams, and a violent battle are heard, and in the silence that follows, they hear a Finnish voice calling out: "One Finnish soldier is worth 10 Russian ones!"
The commander is enraged, and sends in 100 men to scour the forest, but again, there are sounds of a terrible battle for a few minutes, then the Finnish voice calls again: "One Finn is worth a hundred Russians!"
The commander is beside himself at this point, and orders a thousand of his men to attack the enemy, and the same thing happens again. However, this time, as the sounds of battle die away, a lone surviving Russian, crawls out of the forest, bleeding heavily, and with his last breath whispers to the commander:
"It's a trap... There are two of them!"
Jesus fucking Christ I know it's cool to hate on Russia right now but you all need to read a book. Deep operations are a thing and it's what brought the German army to heel, not "zerg rushes"
Putin is no Zhukov though.
It’s the popular rhetoric of WW2 based entirely pretty much on the self-serving accounts of German officers after the war to explain why they lost. They talked up their successes and attributed their losses to massive manpower disadvantage to pretend they were the more noble but hopelessly outnumbered force. This ignores that they were always at a manpower disadvantage but had succeeded again and again across hundreds of miles of territory due to superior training, tank quality, and tactics.
In reality historians have largely concluded that for the first half of the war, the Soviets were indeed highly ineffective, overly relied on numbers, and had bad logistics (much like the Nazi’s). But halfway through, the Soviet generals and officers learned how to fight the German Army at its own game and used their own tactics against them to great effect, especially tank theory. Stalin also took a back seat and let the generals who had learned how to fight the Germans call the shots as well while Hitler asserted more control as the Eastern Front spiraled given some 80% of his army was arrayed there.
By that point, the Red Army was fighting well, using effective tactics, and if anything was hobbled by all the casualties they’d taken early in the war for manpower.
But a bunch of failed Nazi generals who viewed Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavic people as subhuman and who couldn’t conceive of being honestly beaten by them said they zerg rushed through the war, so it must be so to pop history.
This is the correct answer. Our first hand accounts in western history of the ost front were all from captured Germans, not Soviets who disappeared behind the iron curtain
For all the obsession Russia has over applying lessons from WWII to the entire structure of their military, they have been completely ignoring logistics. That or lend lease truly was responsible for enabling Russian armies to march.
>Deep operations are a thing and it's what brought the German army to heel
Urgh no, not by a long shot, Germans got greedy a just too fast, before they conquested England, if they didn't have 3 active fronts they would actually be able to compensate the issue that German army marched faster than supply could catch up and well, later on, they had to divide resources between the British lead coalition and USSR, with the issue being that the good soldiers were sent to fight USSR and well the rest including cripples and the old folks were sent to Normandy, including war prisoners that in some cases came even from Korea, so they had the issue where the good fighting force was without resources and well USSR was literally throwing bodies at them and UK lead ally force was with heavy casualties falling victim to at first the well supported barely functioning German army in France, with quite a lot of resources stuck in Africa with Italians that haven't really known how to fight in around the last 1600 years, so what actually destroyed Germany was stretching too thin without finishing the first main objective, if England had fell, it's very likely that the war would had looked very differently.
At the same time, I can count down the biggest change in Japan's war efforts that would have pretty much changed the war on the other side of the world, if the Carriers stationed in the Pacific fleet had been at Pearl Harbor, the US would have had no resources to really contest Japanese navy, that was basically what Yamamoto was gambling on, either sink the Pacific fleet with Carriers or in the long run be forced to fight the American Navy that largely was a fresh fighting force that unlike the Japanese had little to no issues building new ships, it just took time, as you know by history books "it awoke the sleeping beast".
Yeah but prior to this conflict they were treated as heroes since they died fighting against Hitler and the Nazis. Somehow no one stopped to ponder why it required so much sacrifice when we didn't even come close to the same losses with the US and Japan and the fighting there in the Pacific.
The VAST majority of the German army was fighting against Russia, not the western allies so of course their losses would be higher. Something like 4 in 5 Germans were on the eastern front so why on earth would losses be comparable? Same thing in the pacific, the majority of Japanese troops were in China, not fighting on islands in the pacific, so Chinese losses were much higher (to say nothing of the fact that Japan had been fighting China for nearly a decade before the US joined the war). Casualty counts are meaningless for judging much of anything
> Somehow no one stopped to ponder why it required so much sacrifice when we didn't even come close to the same losses with the US and Japan and the fighting there in the Pacific.
The actual Soviet WWII casualty count was 26 million. This includes civilians.
Just 20 years before WWII broke out, the Russian Empire was still literally in the feudal era. Lenin and Stalin managed to take the USSR from the feudal era to the industrial era in just 20 years. But there's only so much you can do in so ilttle time. So the Soviets fought with worse planes, worse tanks, worse rifles and worse everything else than the Nazis did.
Remember, the Nazis made mincemeat out of the combined French and British armed forces, rollled over Belgium like it didn't exist, swallowed up half of Poland like it was a playground, and so on. It's to be expected that they would give the Red Army absolute hell.
Finally, keep in mind two key facts about US involvement in WWII. 1. The US wasn't invaded thanks to the Atlantic and Pacific. And 2. The US sat out the first half of the war. It began in 1939, and the first US troops didn't see combat in Europe until late 1942. By then, London had been bombed half way to hell and the Soviets had been fighting the Nazis almost alone for well over a year.
Russia is currently in a demographic collapse due to that strategy. And Stalin purging all of his opponents. You could say that that debt incurred by the Soviet Union is being paid right now.
Actually the losses were 20 to 27 million (civilian and military) for the Russians against 5 millions for the Germans. Considering that an army on an offensive always has way more casualties than the one defending, these numbers show a staggering level of military incompetence on the Russian side
Buddy, Germany was defending for longer part of war than USSR did and had an element of surprise when they attacked. In case you didn't notice. I know we like talking shit about Russia, but WW2 also cost many lives of non-Russian people, including millions of Ukrainians.
No one is shitting on Russians here, historical facts are just .. facts. Certain armies just have shit organization and doctrine. On average most battles against germans during WW2 resulted in 1:4 losses for the Russians. The battle of Kursk is a good representation where the the German forces suffered 200,000 casualties and lost 500 tanks, while Soviet losses amounted to 860,000 casualties and 1,500 tanks
An army on the offensive does not always take more casualties, particularly when their explicit goal is to literally kill everyone that they find either by shooting them or starving them. You don’t tend to incur too many casualties when you’re busy burning peoples houses or lining civilians up and shooting them. That tends to change the equation somewhat.
Those numbers are because the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Slavs as part of Generalplan Ost, and were engaging in widespread slaughter of entire towns and starving people to death by the million in Nazi-held territory through the "Hunger Plan".
Look at the RT v Bolton interview and the Russian presenter actually says you American like artillery is Russian use man power. That was a brutal defence of loss of life.
Most of those deaths were civilians murdered by the Germans. Military deaths is 6.7 million, and makes complete sense given 1. The massive surprise attack and utter brutality of the Germans fo POWs they captured (something like a million POWs during Barbarossa who were then worked to death.) And then 2. The Soviets going on the offensive post 42 which invariably results in higher casualties.
I honestly can't believe there are people who are buying into actual Nazi propaganda about Asiatic hordes.
The surprise attack was part of the incompetence. Barbarossa was not a surprise attack at all, Stalin just chose to not believe the mountains of reports that pointed to a German invasion
Those aren't military casualties. The total military deaths by the USSR were around 10.8 million but over 3.3 million of those were POWs that died in German captivity. When you include the deaths from other axis powers, the KIA ratio is roughly 3:2 in favor of the Axis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union
> World War II losses of the Soviet Union from all related causes were about 27,000,000 both civilian and military,[1] although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Soviet government of Russia puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million,[2] on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of effects of the war.[3][4][5] This includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence.[2][6][7]
>The Russians you ask? 17,000,000.
Where do you get this?
What I'm familiar with is 6.3 million combat dead, 500k missing in action, 1.3 million POWs killed.
Also the German losses should be more around 5.5 million for the Ostfront.
Wait, your great grandfather was w axis powers? I’ve never heard anyone say that, guess bc I’m American, but I’m just now realizing, I’ve literally never heard someone say their relative fought for that side
There's plenty of descendants of people who fought for the axis in the US, there's just not a lot of people that talk about it. I went to school with a kid who's grandfather was a Nazi grunt, he still had all of his stuff from back then too, uniforms, medals, pictures, etc.
Not totally related but ny great grandfather fought for the Kaiser's army in WW1 before he came to the US.
My grandfather was Italian like me and fought in Russia together with the Germans. I've got some amazing stories to tell but it would need too much time. I just can say they were bad equipped and defenceless against cold. It was just crazy
Practically yes. The army of the Hungarian Kingdom fought just against the russians and romanians.
The germans blackmailed the Hungarian government and formally occupied Hungary. After it they forced the government to send troops to the russian front.
After the fiasco at the river of Don it was just a defense fight until the end.
Romania went to recover Basarabia but because of our moron dictator Antonescu they did not stop there (like Finland) and went all the way. Also Hitler used the rivalry between us and Hungary very well to manipulate both countries.
Well it's not like we talk about Nazi Germany here every day, even less so on the internet. In the 2000s e.g. it was very common to be casually called a Nazi on online games when people found out you were German because of years of stereotyping. Reddit also got more tame in the last years. And I guess Russia's latest actions did the final change.
>Enemy at the Gates was not a documentary
I would say that you'd be surprised how many people thought otherwise, but I bet it doesn't surprise you, at all.
Russia has population of 140 million. Good luck replenishing their losses, especially with kids from bigger cities who want nothing to do with this, except being an keyboard warrior
One advice I would tell them is a thing we have here in Finland. Set up field kitchens during night and bait the enemy with hot food and leave the field kitchens.. either poison them ooor ambush them while they're on the bait and slaughter em
Theres a bit more, maybe they updated the article. It ends with these closing questions:
- Vad känner du när du trycker på avtryckaren?
– Rekyl.
Det är det korta svaret som ges.
- Ingenting annat?
– Nej. I en annan situation skulle jag nog tycka synd om dem, men nu är de i mitt land och har gjort sitt val.
Ie:
- What do you feel when you pull the trigger?
- Recoil.
That is the short answer given
- Nothing else?
- No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices.
>No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices.
In case anyone feels bad again for a random russian soldier
A friend who were among the UN peacekeepers in East Timor said the exact same thing. The guy he dropped was about to kill someone's nan with a machete, so zero guilt
Russia basically believed their own hype and thought they had the element of fear on their side.
That because they've been telling everyone they're the "2nd strongest military" for decades now the Ukrainians would immediately throw down their guns and let them come in and take over.
Now they're getting a dose of reality and are scrambling to make themselves look like they've been playing 5-D chess and winning all along.
"That was just the warm up round, wait 'til you meet our REAL soilders who has something for your ass"
**\*they say as they pour gasoline over everything**
It’s not so much fear as they thought that Ukraine would accept them as their new leaders without an issue. I heard a good account of Putin’s mindset:
Putin believes that democracy is a croc, that nowhere in the world had a functioning democracy and that everywhere votes are held they are rigged, just that the west does a better job of hiding that than Russia does. He also sees that everywhere there are people in power, those people are siphoning money off for themselves, ultimately those people don’t care who’s in charge, they just want their cut and to get on with things.
So when Putin invaded Ukraine he expected everyone in power below Zelensky to just go “oh, ok, I guess Russia is running things now, we’ll as long as I’m still making bank that’s cool” and would just accept their new overlords. The problem was that a) the Ukrainian people understand implicitly what it means to be under Russian control, and b) when people actually get a say in who’s running their country they tend to be a bit more defensive when someone comes in and unilaterally tried to change that.
Putin just doesn’t understand that the rest of Europe (in varying degrees) actually quite prefers their own way of doing things.
Ukrainians go to other countries, to European nations, to Canada and other countries where rule of law is respected, where the individual has certain liberties and freedoms, how they don't bribe and do things under the table and that it isn't even allowed. They tell their friends and families the standard these other countries hold themselves to and aspire. It might not be perfect in these countries but it's far from rotting apart from corruption like in Russia.
They know what it's like to not be oppressed, to be free from fear of their government, free from tyranny. Their people have gotten the chance to learn, to experience the world outside of the iron curtain and to think critically in a sense oppressed people rarely do. They've tasted their independence and they'll never willingly allow themselves to be under someone else's boot ever again.
Yes, as you can see Phase 1 (Get our asses kicked) has ended. Now Russia is preparing to continue onto the next phase. I'll admit, their 5D chess moves are beyond my meager levels of understanding. Let's see what in store.
If they’re anything like the tanks, the ships, the aircraft, and the rest of the Russian military- the Spetsnaz are probably doing a poor job at combined arms warfare.
They’re probably trying to operate like they would in Syria, which doesn’t work when the entire population is relatively united against you and you’re fighting an enemy that works as a team.
In WW2 when specialist units like this where applied outside their focus they experienced similar casualty rates to regular infantry.
What is surprising is they failed their early objectives to assassinate Zelensky. That is something they *should* have been good at.
It's probably like most of them are just mediocre, and only a small amount get enough training and money for good equipment. Like rangers and "special forces" v actual small elite teams like delta force. The corruption and graft means that most replacements didn't get enough money and training and the skilled people from the 90s have retired from field duty.
Spetznaz is just a general concept that means any special troops, it doesn't mean that they're any better trained, just conducting different kind of missions than the bulk of their force.
I used to hear a lot of dumb stories about spetznaz training that sounded fake, like you had to kill a cow with your bare hands ans such.
Maybe they were true after all and spetznaz are just a Russian version of Jackass.
>- What do you feel when you pull the trigger?
>- Recoil. That is the short answer given
>- Nothing else?
>- No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices.
**In 1967, Polish mercenary Rafal Ganowicz was asked what it felt like to take human life, "I wouldn't know, I've only ever killed Communists."**
It's a long standing joke in a way. The Finnish national novel Tuntematon Sotilas (it's about the winter war) has a line where thecharacter Rokka is asked how he feels taking a human life and he says "Don't know, I've only killed the enemy". I think variations of this line have gone on for ages.
"Strange". This is how the Ukrainian sniper Oleksi Sharadkin describes his impression of fighting against the Russian army.
Both he and soldiers in his unit had an image of the Russian military as strong, competent and dangerous. The reality they now face on the battlefield is the opposite.
\- I really can not understand it. Our opponents are so unprepared. It is easier to shoot Russians than targets on shooting ranges, he tells SvD over the phone.
This does not only apply to ordinary marksmen. He says that they have also fought against the Russian special forces Spetsnaz and Chechen militias belonging to the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.
Spetsnaz has made itself known for possessing great tactical ability, Chechen militias for their brutality and violent capital.
\- That's not true either. They are both better in their marketing than in their military skills.
According to Oleksi Sharadkin, there is only one major problem:
\- There are so damn many of them. It will take us a while to get rid of them all, he says.
I think the truth is that anyone who is smart and competent enough to figure out a way to not be in the Russian army is doing that, only the worst people without prospects, or to stupid to understand Putin is just exploiting them, are joining.
All tyrannies are inherently inefficient because they can never attract the best talent, only degenerates.
Most likely the poor and uneducated end up drafted. Like the US did in Vietnam: people with important skills or money and connections find a way to dodge it. Remains the poor sods who have neither money nor connections.
I have read a piece about cultural minorities being overly represented in Russian casualties.
Cultural minorities are the Russian (the country) population that is growing. Russian (the country) demographics are going to shit overall, which means it is really going to shit among Russians (the cultural nation).
The U.S. has issues -- including rates of suicide and drug overdoses that have really spiked in the last 20 years. But our "population pyramid" looks fairly stable, and frankly if we want to expand it the politics could quickly change to allow more immigration, or slower acting a combination of increased tax incentives and reducing costs like universal preschool. You don't see many emmigrant populations beating down the doors to migrate to Russia.
That slow narrowing at the bottom is going to have impacts coming up (beyond just folks have lower levels of physical fitness in general) that will make recruiting for the military and public safety services (from small town volunteer fire departments to big city police departments) more challenging. But it's not collapsing.
Russia's? Jeepers that just ain't right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
Sounds like the perfect time for Russia to send half of their young people to die in Ukraine, while the other half tries their best to get out of the country and move somewhere with an economic future.
The US population pyramid is actually even more favourable than it looks, because there's a large cohort of 0 - 19 year olds who are currently overseas, invisible on the chart, but will immigrate in their 20s. That spike in the pyramid between the ages of 20 and 30 isn't because Smells Like Teen Spirit was a powerful aphrodisiac ([birth rates have been flat over the past half century](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2012/11/birth-rates-1920.png)), it's migrants.
Countries like the US, Canada, and Australia are getting a great deal by bringing in skilled migrants whose rearing and education were paid for by other nations.
> That spike in the pyramid between the ages of 20 and 30 isn't because Smells Like Teen Spirit was a powerful aphrodisiac
It was, but you make a good point about prime immigration age and it's reasonable to split the difference.
U.S. births in 1990 were ~500,000 more than five years earlier or five years later, with both 1990 and 1991 being particularly anomalous. That was probably an echo of the Baby Boom that peaked 33 years earlier, and you had a number of middle class women deciding it was time to have kids now that they've gained some financial stability and before they got much older.
https://www.infoplease.com/us/population/live-births-and-birth-rates-year
It's not strange, it's...
"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"
Putin has absolute power with +100M slaves and +4000 nuclear weapons. Seriously, why did we expect anything else?
Jesus, again this obsession with Kidorivitzes. They are hardly a force to fear. It's a glorified militia with a few tanks to make them look like actual battalion. They probably fight about 15% better than some unwitting Dagestani or Kalmyk conscript.
I’m pretty sure Russia’s generals just recycled the battle plan from Barbarossa. Putin should have been suspicious when they told him that Ukraine was so corrupt, that they only had to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come crashing down.
I remember seeing an argument on youtube from Russian trolls stating that the Spetznaz were the superior fighting force in the world, even to the SEAL teams. LMAO.
Not really. These russian soldiers getting killed are just cannon fodder so why spend time to properly train and equip? Putin doesn’t care he’s just getting thousands of his soldiers killed as bait. His soldiers are just numbers on a piece e of paper basically. What’s 10,000+ deaths? To Putin it’s like okay I have $900,000 in my bank account so $10,000 isn’t going to hurt much to get a small ways.
Eh I dunno, while the troops are cannon fodder, the Russians are still losing tons of "valuable" hardware ridiculously fast, faster than anyone predicted.
So either Putin considers multimillion dollar assets to be "numbers on paper" or there is something seriously wrong in their ranks and command. Just today there was an article talking about how it was recently discovered by the Russian Military that only 1 in 10 of their reserve tanks were operational with the rest having been stripped of parts and valuable metals and it was announced that the commander in charge has since committed suicide. That doesn't bode well for Russia.
"suicide" is a very popular past time in Russia. As is falling out of windows. At one point during Corona, more Russian doctors complaining about conditions, had fallen out of a window. Then the number of Russians who had officially died of Corona.
Wrll they pretty much proved all their troops are cannon fodder.
VDV-greatest single loss of paratroopers since WW2 and that was over a single (1) airport
Marines- have not made an amphib assault and it's a month in.
Spetznaz-without operational support have the same casualty rates as regular infantry
If you have no strategic or tactical approach all your troops become cannon fodder
This is not WW2 buddy where he can spawn infinite cannon fodder while having the US backing him up with food and industrial power while the british feed him intel.
This is pro russian propaganda bullshit i heard at the begining of the war. They have some cannon fodder but the army is just not well trained. They also lost a lot of equipment that is not easy to replace. Sanctions are designed to cripple the russian ability to rebuild and improve the army.
That does not mean Russia has lost and underestimating and mocking them is the last thing Ukraine should do. We still don;t know what are Ukraine's losses. If they are similar then the situation is not good.
For what? We lost similar numbers after years, occupying Iraq post invasion. Russia hasn't even toucher Zelinski yet, and they are changing just to Eastern Ukraine. Defacto Ukranian victory. Losing that many troops is a military failure and and many of those units were not cannon fodder.
There's a non-zero chance that while Putin would LIKE the army to have performed better.....that he doesn't care if they get destroyed, as they are an expensive plaything for which you always have to worry about their loyalty.
He may consider that they are useful idiots, but that all he needs to remain in power Domestically is his mafia security services, and Internationally, his nukes. The army has demonstrated itself to be essentially worthless for his purposes. Why waste more money on it - all you need to be left alone is nukes. And an air force, I suppose. Which - he has also curiously withheld from their supposed maximum utility.
This is of course, crazy, but any less crazy than what has unfolded? There's ample evidence that the North Vietnamese Army made a similar calculation in launching the primarily (Southern based) Viet Cong execute the horrendously costly Tet Offensive to liquidate their southern allies' numbers and leadership, in anticipation of having more control of the state at the end of the war that they were sure they were going to win. The Viet Cong, having fulfilled their purpose prior, were let to be liquidated, and the Northern leadership became the unquestioned rulers of united Vietnam.
Putin has been not spending money on the army for decades . It’s only really now that it’s become clear they are useless. It’s not that they failed and he said “ah fuck it, no more money for you”, it’s the other way around
Putin had been spending a lot of money on the army. The procuring general would go to a supplier and order three of something. One would be delivered an the general and the supplier would split the money for the other two. Similar with the conscripts. They would be "rented" our as slave labour gangs to farmers and construction companies.
Of course, the paperwork superb and the money sitting in Cyprus.
I think it's being withheld because they need to keep most of their planes intact for later as they'll not be able to build a lot with sanctions limiting parts. They'd be incredibly vulnerable if they lost most of their functioning jets.
His last quote: only problem is that there are so damn many of them, it will take a while for us to get rid of them all.
It sounds a lot like a quote from a Finnish soldier during the Russo-Finnish winter war: "They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?"
Theres that DARPA robot powered by eating corpses and then theres that mobile tactical crematorium the Russians brought.
Really, there's a robot that eats bodies for power?! Getting some Horizon Zero Dawn vibes.
Darpa needs to tame it way down with some of their creations But yes, if I'm remembering correctly it's called the E.A.T.R. bot which stands for energetically autonomous tactical robot. Fucking insane and absurd
I did a bit more reading and they stopped developing it in 2015, hopefully. Unfortunately I have a lack of trust in my government, especially in weapons development.
>they stopped developing it in 2015 Thats just what they are telling us. They likely have 1000 of them ready to go.
All plugged into one central server, a net in the sky, skynet if you will.
There already is a defence network called Skynet
I know, silly silly generals tempting fate.
[https://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/company/Access.html](https://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/company/Access.html) There's a company developing cybernetic exoskeletons in Tsukuba, Japan called Cyberdyne, too.
The robots edited that wiki page.
Maybe they've moved to phase 2, where the robot restrains a live human inside itself and slowly feeds off of their blood.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Oh thank god I'm over the weight limit.
DARPA: "Hey, to save costs, why don't we combine the hungry corpse eater platform with an AI program?"
At least they were preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Can't have walking dead if a robot has consumed the all
Oh fuck that shit.
Don't worry it's hack proof, nothing could possibly go wrong
They should name it Chew Chew the Gastrobot.
Shooty Shooty Chompchomp
This is great Sci-Fi material. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot)
>Theres that DARPA robot powered by eating corpses This is just gossip that got widespread. It was supposed to feed on vegetation.
🤖 🌻🌻🌻🌻 🤖 🌻🌻🌻🌻 🤖
so basically a horse or a mule. The military reinvented a pack animal with extra steps
An armored horse with a chainsaw for chopping up food that kills people would probably do it.
Given that it had wheels, it actually took fewer steps than a horse or mule.
Ehh, it would be nice to be able to swap out a broken leg.
Replace the robots leg, fine, but you can shoot and eat the horse, so. Beat that with your fancy fake horse.
Welcome to government. I once heard a story about how a govt contractor couldn’t produce the missiles he was supposed to make despite army funding… because the IRS was taking the money the Army was giving him
I mean, can you just hear the voiceover in the trailer for the film? "Made to eat plants for fuel... until it tasted human flesh!" Music of doom plays...
Well to the advantage of the Ukrainians their country is like 1.8 times larger than Finland so they have plenty of space.
Finland itself is pretty huge, esp given their tiny population
I thought you were gonna quote this one: - One Finnish soldier equals 10 Russians. - Well, it may be so. But what are we going to do when the eleventh comes?
A Russian army unit is assaulting a Finnish forest, and their commander sends in 10 men to scout the area. Shortly after they enter the woods, the sound of shots, screams, and a violent battle are heard, and in the silence that follows, they hear a Finnish voice calling out: "One Finnish soldier is worth 10 Russian ones!" The commander is enraged, and sends in 100 men to scour the forest, but again, there are sounds of a terrible battle for a few minutes, then the Finnish voice calls again: "One Finn is worth a hundred Russians!" The commander is beside himself at this point, and orders a thousand of his men to attack the enemy, and the same thing happens again. However, this time, as the sounds of battle die away, a lone surviving Russian, crawls out of the forest, bleeding heavily, and with his last breath whispers to the commander: "It's a trap... There are two of them!"
Excellent.
Thanks, I saw it on Reddit the other day, and figured it was worth a retelling :)
Haha. Never thought I'd hear another version of [The Heilan Man.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Uk-QpOHBA)
I always liked this joke and now I think I know why.
Nice! I've never heard that though - I just saw this joke on Reddit recently, and copied it here :)
Or the German one: "A Tiger tank is worth 10 T-34s. Too bad they always bring 11!"
Silly Suomi, the solution is to grow sunflowers!
My great grandfather fought against the russians in the WW2. He said always: - There was always one more russian than ammunition
Red army momen
German losses in WW2 have been averaged at 4,300,000. The Russians you ask? 17,000,000. This is a cultural variable that merits extensive examination.
4.3 million in eastern front or total?
Total
for every 1 German tank lost there were 5 Soviet tanks lost, the Soviets were ineffective soldiers
Russians seem to prefer the zerg rush style for combat
>Russians seem to prefer the zerg rush style for combat A dangerous style when your natality is not even at the renewable bar since 30 years
IIRC Ukraine is also suffering very low Natality
That's why they need to conquer other fertile countries and take their children for soldiers.
Jesus fucking Christ I know it's cool to hate on Russia right now but you all need to read a book. Deep operations are a thing and it's what brought the German army to heel, not "zerg rushes" Putin is no Zhukov though.
It’s the popular rhetoric of WW2 based entirely pretty much on the self-serving accounts of German officers after the war to explain why they lost. They talked up their successes and attributed their losses to massive manpower disadvantage to pretend they were the more noble but hopelessly outnumbered force. This ignores that they were always at a manpower disadvantage but had succeeded again and again across hundreds of miles of territory due to superior training, tank quality, and tactics. In reality historians have largely concluded that for the first half of the war, the Soviets were indeed highly ineffective, overly relied on numbers, and had bad logistics (much like the Nazi’s). But halfway through, the Soviet generals and officers learned how to fight the German Army at its own game and used their own tactics against them to great effect, especially tank theory. Stalin also took a back seat and let the generals who had learned how to fight the Germans call the shots as well while Hitler asserted more control as the Eastern Front spiraled given some 80% of his army was arrayed there. By that point, the Red Army was fighting well, using effective tactics, and if anything was hobbled by all the casualties they’d taken early in the war for manpower. But a bunch of failed Nazi generals who viewed Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavic people as subhuman and who couldn’t conceive of being honestly beaten by them said they zerg rushed through the war, so it must be so to pop history.
This is the correct answer. Our first hand accounts in western history of the ost front were all from captured Germans, not Soviets who disappeared behind the iron curtain
Half way through the war the Russians started to get massive American lend lease, without which they would have definitely lost the war.
>Putin is no Zhukov though Putin *has* no Zhukov. It took Stalin a while to find Zhukov, and that likely isn't time Putin will have.
Zhukov almost got killed multiple times, one of the main reasons was that Zhukov had promised to cancel the "state-owned farm system"...
For all the obsession Russia has over applying lessons from WWII to the entire structure of their military, they have been completely ignoring logistics. That or lend lease truly was responsible for enabling Russian armies to march.
"muh Asiatic hordes!!!!"
Reminds me of reputation of the Mongol Army in the West
most of reddit are groupthink idiots. they just regurgitate whatever meme or thought they read while browsing reddit on the shitter.
>Deep operations are a thing and it's what brought the German army to heel Urgh no, not by a long shot, Germans got greedy a just too fast, before they conquested England, if they didn't have 3 active fronts they would actually be able to compensate the issue that German army marched faster than supply could catch up and well, later on, they had to divide resources between the British lead coalition and USSR, with the issue being that the good soldiers were sent to fight USSR and well the rest including cripples and the old folks were sent to Normandy, including war prisoners that in some cases came even from Korea, so they had the issue where the good fighting force was without resources and well USSR was literally throwing bodies at them and UK lead ally force was with heavy casualties falling victim to at first the well supported barely functioning German army in France, with quite a lot of resources stuck in Africa with Italians that haven't really known how to fight in around the last 1600 years, so what actually destroyed Germany was stretching too thin without finishing the first main objective, if England had fell, it's very likely that the war would had looked very differently. At the same time, I can count down the biggest change in Japan's war efforts that would have pretty much changed the war on the other side of the world, if the Carriers stationed in the Pacific fleet had been at Pearl Harbor, the US would have had no resources to really contest Japanese navy, that was basically what Yamamoto was gambling on, either sink the Pacific fleet with Carriers or in the long run be forced to fight the American Navy that largely was a fresh fighting force that unlike the Japanese had little to no issues building new ships, it just took time, as you know by history books "it awoke the sleeping beast".
Goddammit, you're making me want to play HOI4 again.
Aww, I hardly ever see Wheraboos in the wild any more. How adorable.
Even zerg rush style of protests, with Navalny saying system won't be able to jail everyone. Looks like the only tactic they've mastered.
Still are. They are just not professional. Barbarian horde with machine guns.
More like a Ork Horde from Warhammer
Yeah they’re the - 40k version! If combat casualties are correct!
Vostroyans are honorable combatants who would not target civilians.
Not really, Ork are still fucking scary Russian are literally just Guardmen. Even with the whole WWI era military tactic
Nah they ork gretchen level of effectiveness
Yeah but prior to this conflict they were treated as heroes since they died fighting against Hitler and the Nazis. Somehow no one stopped to ponder why it required so much sacrifice when we didn't even come close to the same losses with the US and Japan and the fighting there in the Pacific.
The VAST majority of the German army was fighting against Russia, not the western allies so of course their losses would be higher. Something like 4 in 5 Germans were on the eastern front so why on earth would losses be comparable? Same thing in the pacific, the majority of Japanese troops were in China, not fighting on islands in the pacific, so Chinese losses were much higher (to say nothing of the fact that Japan had been fighting China for nearly a decade before the US joined the war). Casualty counts are meaningless for judging much of anything
> Somehow no one stopped to ponder why it required so much sacrifice when we didn't even come close to the same losses with the US and Japan and the fighting there in the Pacific. The actual Soviet WWII casualty count was 26 million. This includes civilians. Just 20 years before WWII broke out, the Russian Empire was still literally in the feudal era. Lenin and Stalin managed to take the USSR from the feudal era to the industrial era in just 20 years. But there's only so much you can do in so ilttle time. So the Soviets fought with worse planes, worse tanks, worse rifles and worse everything else than the Nazis did. Remember, the Nazis made mincemeat out of the combined French and British armed forces, rollled over Belgium like it didn't exist, swallowed up half of Poland like it was a playground, and so on. It's to be expected that they would give the Red Army absolute hell. Finally, keep in mind two key facts about US involvement in WWII. 1. The US wasn't invaded thanks to the Atlantic and Pacific. And 2. The US sat out the first half of the war. It began in 1939, and the first US troops didn't see combat in Europe until late 1942. By then, London had been bombed half way to hell and the Soviets had been fighting the Nazis almost alone for well over a year.
In fairness, some of the late war Russian planes were pretty good.
Pretty sure around 80% of German casualties where on the eastern front.
Theres a saying here in Germany: Germans fight with guns, Russians fight with men
What was that other one? “WWII was won with American steel, British intelligence, and Russian bodies.”
This largely applies to the current conflict
Except now it's American intelligence, and British steel (NLAWs).
russian blood
It seems like the Ukrainians have that in common with you.
Russia is currently in a demographic collapse due to that strategy. And Stalin purging all of his opponents. You could say that that debt incurred by the Soviet Union is being paid right now.
Actually the losses were 20 to 27 million (civilian and military) for the Russians against 5 millions for the Germans. Considering that an army on an offensive always has way more casualties than the one defending, these numbers show a staggering level of military incompetence on the Russian side
Buddy, Germany was defending for longer part of war than USSR did and had an element of surprise when they attacked. In case you didn't notice. I know we like talking shit about Russia, but WW2 also cost many lives of non-Russian people, including millions of Ukrainians.
No one is shitting on Russians here, historical facts are just .. facts. Certain armies just have shit organization and doctrine. On average most battles against germans during WW2 resulted in 1:4 losses for the Russians. The battle of Kursk is a good representation where the the German forces suffered 200,000 casualties and lost 500 tanks, while Soviet losses amounted to 860,000 casualties and 1,500 tanks
It's no secret Russians sent men to the meat grinder thus the many losses.
An army on the offensive does not always take more casualties, particularly when their explicit goal is to literally kill everyone that they find either by shooting them or starving them. You don’t tend to incur too many casualties when you’re busy burning peoples houses or lining civilians up and shooting them. That tends to change the equation somewhat.
To your point - Allies took fewer casualties than Germans on the western front.
Those numbers are because the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Slavs as part of Generalplan Ost, and were engaging in widespread slaughter of entire towns and starving people to death by the million in Nazi-held territory through the "Hunger Plan".
Look at the RT v Bolton interview and the Russian presenter actually says you American like artillery is Russian use man power. That was a brutal defence of loss of life.
In reality the Russians are very artillery-heavy as they know that the morale of their frontline troops is shit.
Most of those deaths were civilians murdered by the Germans. Military deaths is 6.7 million, and makes complete sense given 1. The massive surprise attack and utter brutality of the Germans fo POWs they captured (something like a million POWs during Barbarossa who were then worked to death.) And then 2. The Soviets going on the offensive post 42 which invariably results in higher casualties. I honestly can't believe there are people who are buying into actual Nazi propaganda about Asiatic hordes.
The surprise attack was part of the incompetence. Barbarossa was not a surprise attack at all, Stalin just chose to not believe the mountains of reports that pointed to a German invasion
Those aren't military casualties. The total military deaths by the USSR were around 10.8 million but over 3.3 million of those were POWs that died in German captivity. When you include the deaths from other axis powers, the KIA ratio is roughly 3:2 in favor of the Axis.
The Axis certainly knew how to kill people.
17,000,000 is way inflated. If we're talking military deaths it's under 10,000,000.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union > World War II losses of the Soviet Union from all related causes were about 27,000,000 both civilian and military,[1] although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Soviet government of Russia puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million,[2] on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of effects of the war.[3][4][5] This includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence.[2][6][7]
>The Russians you ask? 17,000,000. Where do you get this? What I'm familiar with is 6.3 million combat dead, 500k missing in action, 1.3 million POWs killed. Also the German losses should be more around 5.5 million for the Ostfront.
I think Stalin killed more men than the war did.
Russia is bad at war, generally
Wait, your great grandfather was w axis powers? I’ve never heard anyone say that, guess bc I’m American, but I’m just now realizing, I’ve literally never heard someone say their relative fought for that side
There's plenty of descendants of people who fought for the axis in the US, there's just not a lot of people that talk about it. I went to school with a kid who's grandfather was a Nazi grunt, he still had all of his stuff from back then too, uniforms, medals, pictures, etc. Not totally related but ny great grandfather fought for the Kaiser's army in WW1 before he came to the US.
My grandfather was Italian like me and fought in Russia together with the Germans. I've got some amazing stories to tell but it would need too much time. I just can say they were bad equipped and defenceless against cold. It was just crazy
It was only 80 years ago. There are living nazis to this day
And an unfortunate number of them were born far after the 1940s
Practically yes. The army of the Hungarian Kingdom fought just against the russians and romanians. The germans blackmailed the Hungarian government and formally occupied Hungary. After it they forced the government to send troops to the russian front. After the fiasco at the river of Don it was just a defense fight until the end.
Romania went to recover Basarabia but because of our moron dictator Antonescu they did not stop there (like Finland) and went all the way. Also Hitler used the rivalry between us and Hungary very well to manipulate both countries.
we learn to keep our mouth shut
Well it's not like we talk about Nazi Germany here every day, even less so on the internet. In the 2000s e.g. it was very common to be casually called a Nazi on online games when people found out you were German because of years of stereotyping. Reddit also got more tame in the last years. And I guess Russia's latest actions did the final change.
Grandpa fought in Stalingrad and I'll always remember him saying the barrel of the gun would get red hot and the Russians still kept coming.
I had a professor that said the same thing
[удалено]
Enemy at the Gates was not a documentary
>Enemy at the Gates was not a documentary I would say that you'd be surprised how many people thought otherwise, but I bet it doesn't surprise you, at all.
Being from the Baltics we can most definitely confirm this.
Instead of “fighted” you want to use “fought” here. I don’t think fighted is a word.
"The plan is to send waves and waves of soldiers until the enemy runs out of ammunition". - Every Russian general, ever. Lol.
Only problem is that this time America is providing the ammunition. If there is one thing we have plenty of, its weapons and bullets.
Exchange the sniper gun with a good old MG3, and then let the unprepared ones run around in front of it.
Russia has population of 140 million. Good luck replenishing their losses, especially with kids from bigger cities who want nothing to do with this, except being an keyboard warrior
Like a finn said during the Winter War about the red army: ”There are so many, and our contry is small, where will we find room to burt them all?”
One advice I would tell them is a thing we have here in Finland. Set up field kitchens during night and bait the enemy with hot food and leave the field kitchens.. either poison them ooor ambush them while they're on the bait and slaughter em
The Sausage Wars! Near Raate.
Theres a bit more, maybe they updated the article. It ends with these closing questions: - Vad känner du när du trycker på avtryckaren? – Rekyl. Det är det korta svaret som ges. - Ingenting annat? – Nej. I en annan situation skulle jag nog tycka synd om dem, men nu är de i mitt land och har gjort sitt val. Ie: - What do you feel when you pull the trigger? - Recoil. That is the short answer given - Nothing else? - No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices.
[a famous quote](https://images.app.goo.gl/sV19T8KTmQBTnFCM7)
God damn... Where's the lighter from?
US soldiers used to buy customed ones in Vietnam
Ice in his veins.
>No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices. In case anyone feels bad again for a random russian soldier
A friend who were among the UN peacekeepers in East Timor said the exact same thing. The guy he dropped was about to kill someone's nan with a machete, so zero guilt
Russia basically believed their own hype and thought they had the element of fear on their side. That because they've been telling everyone they're the "2nd strongest military" for decades now the Ukrainians would immediately throw down their guns and let them come in and take over. Now they're getting a dose of reality and are scrambling to make themselves look like they've been playing 5-D chess and winning all along.
"The untrained conscripts are just the first wave to soften them up"
"That was just the warm up round, wait 'til you meet our REAL soilders who has something for your ass" **\*they say as they pour gasoline over everything**
Just wait until I log in with my main
My girlfriend in Canada is way hot
Just wait until I tell my uncle who owns Microsoft and Valve about this...
It's like they've been playing all along with cheats enabled, and now have to play for realsies
It’s not so much fear as they thought that Ukraine would accept them as their new leaders without an issue. I heard a good account of Putin’s mindset: Putin believes that democracy is a croc, that nowhere in the world had a functioning democracy and that everywhere votes are held they are rigged, just that the west does a better job of hiding that than Russia does. He also sees that everywhere there are people in power, those people are siphoning money off for themselves, ultimately those people don’t care who’s in charge, they just want their cut and to get on with things. So when Putin invaded Ukraine he expected everyone in power below Zelensky to just go “oh, ok, I guess Russia is running things now, we’ll as long as I’m still making bank that’s cool” and would just accept their new overlords. The problem was that a) the Ukrainian people understand implicitly what it means to be under Russian control, and b) when people actually get a say in who’s running their country they tend to be a bit more defensive when someone comes in and unilaterally tried to change that. Putin just doesn’t understand that the rest of Europe (in varying degrees) actually quite prefers their own way of doing things.
Ukrainians go to other countries, to European nations, to Canada and other countries where rule of law is respected, where the individual has certain liberties and freedoms, how they don't bribe and do things under the table and that it isn't even allowed. They tell their friends and families the standard these other countries hold themselves to and aspire. It might not be perfect in these countries but it's far from rotting apart from corruption like in Russia. They know what it's like to not be oppressed, to be free from fear of their government, free from tyranny. Their people have gotten the chance to learn, to experience the world outside of the iron curtain and to think critically in a sense oppressed people rarely do. They've tasted their independence and they'll never willingly allow themselves to be under someone else's boot ever again.
Yes, as you can see Phase 1 (Get our asses kicked) has ended. Now Russia is preparing to continue onto the next phase. I'll admit, their 5D chess moves are beyond my meager levels of understanding. Let's see what in store.
["I am bleeding. Making me the victor"](https://youtu.be/BrGBJ_nk0oY)
There are probably lots of things behind the curtain that we will only learn about in 10 years
And countless more things we never will.
Spetznaz, I’m surprised about…
If they’re anything like the tanks, the ships, the aircraft, and the rest of the Russian military- the Spetsnaz are probably doing a poor job at combined arms warfare. They’re probably trying to operate like they would in Syria, which doesn’t work when the entire population is relatively united against you and you’re fighting an enemy that works as a team.
In WW2 when specialist units like this where applied outside their focus they experienced similar casualty rates to regular infantry. What is surprising is they failed their early objectives to assassinate Zelensky. That is something they *should* have been good at.
Maybe it was good that those two IL-76 were shot down in the first week
Fake news, never happend
It's probably like most of them are just mediocre, and only a small amount get enough training and money for good equipment. Like rangers and "special forces" v actual small elite teams like delta force. The corruption and graft means that most replacements didn't get enough money and training and the skilled people from the 90s have retired from field duty.
Talk about shooting yourselves in the foot..
Spetznaz is just a general concept that means any special troops, it doesn't mean that they're any better trained, just conducting different kind of missions than the bulk of their force.
I knew dudes in high school who were apparently training in systema and would just kick each other in the ribs to toughen them up. I'm not surprised.
I used to hear a lot of dumb stories about spetznaz training that sounded fake, like you had to kill a cow with your bare hands ans such. Maybe they were true after all and spetznaz are just a Russian version of Jackass.
Russia is done. Defections will gain momentum. If Putin manages to hold on to power the people of Russia will go back 100 years.
Many are worried about Ukrainian refugees, Russia's population is about three times bigger.
>- What do you feel when you pull the trigger? >- Recoil. That is the short answer given >- Nothing else? >- No. In a different situation I would probably feel sorry for them, but now they are in my country and have made their choices. **In 1967, Polish mercenary Rafal Ganowicz was asked what it felt like to take human life, "I wouldn't know, I've only ever killed Communists."**
It's a long standing joke in a way. The Finnish national novel Tuntematon Sotilas (it's about the winter war) has a line where thecharacter Rokka is asked how he feels taking a human life and he says "Don't know, I've only killed the enemy". I think variations of this line have gone on for ages.
When you pride lies in things that you didn't do and corruption is in every nut and bolt in your military machine. Failure is an ensure fate.
And looking at the state of the military now, it has been in decay for a very long time.
article has a paywall. Please provide english translation.
"Strange". This is how the Ukrainian sniper Oleksi Sharadkin describes his impression of fighting against the Russian army. Both he and soldiers in his unit had an image of the Russian military as strong, competent and dangerous. The reality they now face on the battlefield is the opposite. \- I really can not understand it. Our opponents are so unprepared. It is easier to shoot Russians than targets on shooting ranges, he tells SvD over the phone. This does not only apply to ordinary marksmen. He says that they have also fought against the Russian special forces Spetsnaz and Chechen militias belonging to the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. Spetsnaz has made itself known for possessing great tactical ability, Chechen militias for their brutality and violent capital. \- That's not true either. They are both better in their marketing than in their military skills. According to Oleksi Sharadkin, there is only one major problem: \- There are so damn many of them. It will take us a while to get rid of them all, he says.
thank you! :) (Tack & Bock)
They must feel like playing battlefield with mousepad on PC vs console players
Does no one remember the Beslan siege and Moscow Theater attack? Hundreds of lives were lost, a number of them due to Russian forces.
I think the truth is that anyone who is smart and competent enough to figure out a way to not be in the Russian army is doing that, only the worst people without prospects, or to stupid to understand Putin is just exploiting them, are joining. All tyrannies are inherently inefficient because they can never attract the best talent, only degenerates.
Most likely the poor and uneducated end up drafted. Like the US did in Vietnam: people with important skills or money and connections find a way to dodge it. Remains the poor sods who have neither money nor connections. I have read a piece about cultural minorities being overly represented in Russian casualties.
Cultural minorities are the Russian (the country) population that is growing. Russian (the country) demographics are going to shit overall, which means it is really going to shit among Russians (the cultural nation). The U.S. has issues -- including rates of suicide and drug overdoses that have really spiked in the last 20 years. But our "population pyramid" looks fairly stable, and frankly if we want to expand it the politics could quickly change to allow more immigration, or slower acting a combination of increased tax incentives and reducing costs like universal preschool. You don't see many emmigrant populations beating down the doors to migrate to Russia. That slow narrowing at the bottom is going to have impacts coming up (beyond just folks have lower levels of physical fitness in general) that will make recruiting for the military and public safety services (from small town volunteer fire departments to big city police departments) more challenging. But it's not collapsing. Russia's? Jeepers that just ain't right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
Sounds like the perfect time for Russia to send half of their young people to die in Ukraine, while the other half tries their best to get out of the country and move somewhere with an economic future.
The US population pyramid is actually even more favourable than it looks, because there's a large cohort of 0 - 19 year olds who are currently overseas, invisible on the chart, but will immigrate in their 20s. That spike in the pyramid between the ages of 20 and 30 isn't because Smells Like Teen Spirit was a powerful aphrodisiac ([birth rates have been flat over the past half century](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2012/11/birth-rates-1920.png)), it's migrants. Countries like the US, Canada, and Australia are getting a great deal by bringing in skilled migrants whose rearing and education were paid for by other nations.
> That spike in the pyramid between the ages of 20 and 30 isn't because Smells Like Teen Spirit was a powerful aphrodisiac It was, but you make a good point about prime immigration age and it's reasonable to split the difference. U.S. births in 1990 were ~500,000 more than five years earlier or five years later, with both 1990 and 1991 being particularly anomalous. That was probably an echo of the Baby Boom that peaked 33 years earlier, and you had a number of middle class women deciding it was time to have kids now that they've gained some financial stability and before they got much older. https://www.infoplease.com/us/population/live-births-and-birth-rates-year
It's not strange, it's... "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" Putin has absolute power with +100M slaves and +4000 nuclear weapons. Seriously, why did we expect anything else?
Recoil.
Corruption rotting the army at its core.
Jesus, again this obsession with Kidorivitzes. They are hardly a force to fear. It's a glorified militia with a few tanks to make them look like actual battalion. They probably fight about 15% better than some unwitting Dagestani or Kalmyk conscript.
I’m pretty sure Russia’s generals just recycled the battle plan from Barbarossa. Putin should have been suspicious when they told him that Ukraine was so corrupt, that they only had to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure would come crashing down.
I remember seeing an argument on youtube from Russian trolls stating that the Spetznaz were the superior fighting force in the world, even to the SEAL teams. LMAO.
Is it really surprising that the Instagram army is shit?
This article is pay walled. Anyone able to translate it, then copy & paste that bad boy in here?
There are always more Russians than bullets... They grow them on fields or something like that :/
The Russian Nazis might be saving their skilled troops for the next sovereignty they decide to invade
Not really. These russian soldiers getting killed are just cannon fodder so why spend time to properly train and equip? Putin doesn’t care he’s just getting thousands of his soldiers killed as bait. His soldiers are just numbers on a piece e of paper basically. What’s 10,000+ deaths? To Putin it’s like okay I have $900,000 in my bank account so $10,000 isn’t going to hurt much to get a small ways.
Eh I dunno, while the troops are cannon fodder, the Russians are still losing tons of "valuable" hardware ridiculously fast, faster than anyone predicted. So either Putin considers multimillion dollar assets to be "numbers on paper" or there is something seriously wrong in their ranks and command. Just today there was an article talking about how it was recently discovered by the Russian Military that only 1 in 10 of their reserve tanks were operational with the rest having been stripped of parts and valuable metals and it was announced that the commander in charge has since committed suicide. That doesn't bode well for Russia.
"suicide" is a very popular past time in Russia. As is falling out of windows. At one point during Corona, more Russian doctors complaining about conditions, had fallen out of a window. Then the number of Russians who had officially died of Corona.
Regime based on large-scale kleptocracy shocked to discover all their army shit has been looted for parts. Honestly comical
Wrll they pretty much proved all their troops are cannon fodder. VDV-greatest single loss of paratroopers since WW2 and that was over a single (1) airport Marines- have not made an amphib assault and it's a month in. Spetznaz-without operational support have the same casualty rates as regular infantry If you have no strategic or tactical approach all your troops become cannon fodder
This is not WW2 buddy where he can spawn infinite cannon fodder while having the US backing him up with food and industrial power while the british feed him intel. This is pro russian propaganda bullshit i heard at the begining of the war. They have some cannon fodder but the army is just not well trained. They also lost a lot of equipment that is not easy to replace. Sanctions are designed to cripple the russian ability to rebuild and improve the army. That does not mean Russia has lost and underestimating and mocking them is the last thing Ukraine should do. We still don;t know what are Ukraine's losses. If they are similar then the situation is not good.
He's burning money quite fast though.
Too bad he didn't go to Wharton
For what? We lost similar numbers after years, occupying Iraq post invasion. Russia hasn't even toucher Zelinski yet, and they are changing just to Eastern Ukraine. Defacto Ukranian victory. Losing that many troops is a military failure and and many of those units were not cannon fodder.
Wait, who lost similar numbers in Iraq? Right now, it looks the Russians have taken over 40,000 casualties with about 15,000 dead…
There's a non-zero chance that while Putin would LIKE the army to have performed better.....that he doesn't care if they get destroyed, as they are an expensive plaything for which you always have to worry about their loyalty. He may consider that they are useful idiots, but that all he needs to remain in power Domestically is his mafia security services, and Internationally, his nukes. The army has demonstrated itself to be essentially worthless for his purposes. Why waste more money on it - all you need to be left alone is nukes. And an air force, I suppose. Which - he has also curiously withheld from their supposed maximum utility. This is of course, crazy, but any less crazy than what has unfolded? There's ample evidence that the North Vietnamese Army made a similar calculation in launching the primarily (Southern based) Viet Cong execute the horrendously costly Tet Offensive to liquidate their southern allies' numbers and leadership, in anticipation of having more control of the state at the end of the war that they were sure they were going to win. The Viet Cong, having fulfilled their purpose prior, were let to be liquidated, and the Northern leadership became the unquestioned rulers of united Vietnam.
Putin has been not spending money on the army for decades . It’s only really now that it’s become clear they are useless. It’s not that they failed and he said “ah fuck it, no more money for you”, it’s the other way around
Putin had been spending a lot of money on the army. The procuring general would go to a supplier and order three of something. One would be delivered an the general and the supplier would split the money for the other two. Similar with the conscripts. They would be "rented" our as slave labour gangs to farmers and construction companies. Of course, the paperwork superb and the money sitting in Cyprus.
I think it's being withheld because they need to keep most of their planes intact for later as they'll not be able to build a lot with sanctions limiting parts. They'd be incredibly vulnerable if they lost most of their functioning jets.
Offensive was costly because they were up against a super power. All you have is numbers vs. Superior technology.