2022/01/22

(temporary) no blog post today

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There's no blog post prepared for today. Don't worry, I'm fine.

Feel free to discuss something in the comments.


S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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15 comments:

  1. How's your book project progressing?

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    Replies
    1. Honestly, not at all. Private stuff happens and I am likely a horribly undisciplined book author.

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    2. Welcome to the club, a good data storage helps to pick up where one left years ago.

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    3. The problem is that if I don't write it in one go, I will later pick up what I wrote, dislike it, rewrite it .. and lose the drive before I wrote much new.

      It would be a helluva lot easier to convert the naval affairs topic 'magnus opum' series into a self-published book. The rewriting would be manageable because the whole thing is pretty much complete with almost nothing new to add.

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    4. Good example, many writers develop small stories that they patch together over time. Bacevich would be an example in your field. Maybe you get some ideas for blogging your book first slowly and when you're finished, rewrite it, add some additional material and compile it all in one go from existing texts.

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  2. Is there any chance the current Ukraine Drama will get horribly mishandled and leads to shooting between NATO troops and their Russian counterpart.

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    1. There's a clown in Downing Street No 10 and a POTUS with record-low job approval in a country full of war-horny press people.
      I'm not young enough to have a good-enough opinion of mankind to say no.

      There will be no nuclear war over it and I am almost certain there won't even be much of a hot war escalation of the ongoing skirmishing in East Ukraine.

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  3. What's the Russian's game with Ukraine? To screw some concessions from NATO? To position Ukraine as a buffer state and Russian dependency? To occupy Donbas?

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    1. "What's the Russian's game with Ukraine? To screw some concessions from NATO? To position Ukraine as a buffer state and Russian dependency? To occupy Donbas?"

      Russia is economically a medium power little bit stronger than Italy. To occupy a poorer neighbour is in best case an economic drain, in worst case (insurgency) an economic desaster.

      My feeling is that Russia expected some concessions or even a change of government in Ukraine and now have cornered themselves. They could go for an occupation to look strong or end the stunt and look weak.

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    2. Russias economy looks far worse than it really is. Because of sanctions the ruble is extremely undervalued. If you go by Purchasing Power Parity they're like the 6th largest economy in the world. Putting it closer to Germany. This is also what results in shit like India being 6th when it should be 3rd

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    3. "Russias economy looks far worse than it really is. If you go by Purchasing Power Parity they're like the 6th largest economy in the world."

      If you have to compete outside your home country often PPP is not longer be a useful concept, suddenly "hard" purchase power counts, esp. if your opponent can field it. And BTW even in PPP Russia is quite small in comparison to the EU or USA.

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  4. Do you think that road training (1 semi-tractor pulling multiple semi-trailers)could have military utility in reducing the number of truck drivers needed?

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    1. It's undesirable for multiple reasons.
      Platooning could work
      https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2020/10/future-road-logistics.html
      but military road marches should be done with 50...100 m spacing for many good reasons that won't disappear anytime soon. Hence my often-repeated preference for high capacity (15+ ton 8x8) vehicles.

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    2. Road training is expanding capacity rather than decreasing distance between vehicles. It's just hitching more than 1 trailer per truck.

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    3. You cannot drive around a full width road cratering with multiple trailers.

      multiple trailers = one grenade/bomb/mine destroys/stops as much material as one hit on two not well-spaced regular vehicles

      It's also harder to unload multiple trailers, especially when they would normally unload to the aft (PLS/MULTI/DROPS, offloading engineering vehicles like excavators, offloading logistics vehicles like forklifts).

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