Ukraine just won Black Sea Naval battle

[mikbone]

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russias-retreat-from-crimea-makes-a-mockery-of-the-wests-escalation-fears/

It's pretty impressive considering that Ukraine does not have a navy.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/07/19/how-ukrainians-no-navy-defeated-russias-black-sea-fleet.html

Edited July 20, 2024 by mikbone

[NeuroTypical]

Oof.  A bunch of bluetooth children's toys with boomies strapped to them have bested the Russian navy.   I guess this is the real reason why the US keeps pouring the billions into Ukraine.  We wanted a bunch of field tests before a US carrier group faces down five thousand Iranian drones.  Guess that might be up next.

[mirkwood]

2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

We wanted a bunch of field tests before a US carrier group faces down five thousand Iranian drones.  

 

Not a bad strategy.

[Vort]

33 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

Not a bad strategy.

Not from a purely military viewpoint. Good bang for the buck (pun intended). But it's fundamentally dishonest to pretend to be an ally just (or primarily) so that you can get some live field testing data. Plus, it's unwise from a geopolitical viewpoint. We should not want to be the world's policemen. We should be careful with whom we ally. I'm less concerned about allying against a proven bad actor than I am about allying with, well, a proven bad actor. I realize it's not all black-and-white, either good or evil. But that's just another way of saying it's evil.

[NeuroTypical]

When it comes to geopolitics, I've lost all my positive optimism, and I'm left with skepticism and dark practical realism.  From where I'm standing, what the public thinks alliances are for, and what those who form alliances think they're for, are wildly different things.   Geopolitics is the rule of the unsupervised playground.  It's the philosophy of "me against my brother, me and my brother against my family, me and my family against our uncles, my family against the locals, us locals against the government, our government against the world".   Except with geopolitics, it's your military/political/economic might against your neighbor's.  Alliances are merely short-term ways that the kids form gangs for mutual gains against other kids.  The world's leaders' public statements about alliances are pretty much all, almost without exception, fundamentally dishonest.   Every nation is a proven bad actor, from someone's perspective.  I'm ok saying geopolitics is inherently evil.  Lucifer runs it, not God.  You can tell that's the case, because even the most righteous nations must occasionally go do a bunch of intentional killing for good reasons.  They absolutely have to for their own survival.  It'll be that way until Christ returns in His glory, and after the final unpleasantness, all remaining knees bend.

Donald Trump is the most transparently honest leader I've ever heard on the issue, although he's only a tad better.  As our executive bombastic deal-making narcissist in chief, he'll work with Putin to stop the killing and take all the credit for the resulting good, and deny or blame others for the resulting bad.  He'll deal with south-of-the-border nations to stop the illegal immigration, and maybe build his wall with giant gold T's visible from space to secure his legacy.  Not sure if he'll have enough public mandate to deal with Iran, but he'll probably at least aid Israel as it completes it's mission to make itself safe, as it wraps up with Hamas and moves to Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen.  Maybe Trump'll help Israel handle Iran.  Maybe he'll be truly great and succeed in getting the Islamic world to handle Iran.  Probably not, but he's got a chance.

As for the world's policeman, I'm thinking future generations will judge the Pax Americana favorably, as the first empire (or at least hegemony) to do all of it's conquering and subjugating and ruling peacefully, with only a tiny amount conquering or subjugating or ruling.  The last 80 years have seen unprecedented gains for the humans in terms of the world's GDP, advancements in science and medicine and human rights, life expectancy, infant mortality, not to mention the lack of any relatively bad world wars.  Everything's arguable, but I'm mostly aligned with the argument that there'll always be a main power on the stage, and the world has done better with the US being that power, than any other option.  And will continue to do better with US for hopefully another century or two.  

Or maybe I'm wrong about a ton of stuff.  It's hard to tell.  I mean, I sure sound good, but most of my opinions these days are coming from TikTok, so it's only as good as my algorithm.  

Edited July 20, 2024 by NeuroTypical

[Just_A_Guy]

7 hours ago, Vort said:

Not from a purely military viewpoint. Good bang for the buck (pun intended). But it's fundamentally dishonest to pretend to be an ally just (or primarily) so that you can get some live field testing data. Plus, it's unwise from a geopolitical viewpoint. We should not want to be the world's policemen. We should be careful with whom we ally. I'm less concerned about allying against a proven bad actor than I am about allying with, well, a proven bad actor. I realize it's not all black-and-white, either good or evil. But that's just another way of saying it's evil.

While these are fair points, I think that there’s something to be said for the US offering (limited) support on behalf of a western-oriented nation that is being invaded for the crimes of a) being free, b) seeking good relationships with other free nations, and c) having resources (including women and children) that the invader wants.

And in an LDS context it’s worth pointing out that Ukraine has a temple, an out-in-the-open church presence, and a government that lets us operate with a relatively free hand.  Russia doesn’t.  When Russian troops move into a town with an LDS presence, the LDS membership—as one Russian official (in Donetsk, IIRC) put it—“melts away”.

Not that Church interests ought to be the final determinant of international legal issues or jus ad bellum arguments, of course . . . but there are certainly worse determinants being proposed.  
 

Putin‘s forces need to lose; and if they lose in a way that teaches us how not to get our carrier groups neutralized by drones—so much the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Edited July 20, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[NeuroTypical]

On 7/20/2024 at 6:36 AM, NeuroTypical said:

We wanted a bunch of field tests before a US carrier group faces down five thousand Iranian drones.  Guess that might be up next.

Imagine a cheap 50-year-old shipping vessel, with 100 of these stacked on its deck. Even if each drone costs $50k, that’s still 5000 drones for 1/1000th of the cost of a nuclear carrier.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/VERCSbNg32jWkqtB/?mibextid=N9fs7i

Imagine a fleet of 10 cheap carrier ships…

[Carborendum]

3 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Imagine a cheap 50-year-old shipping vessel, with 100 of these stacked on its deck. Even if each drone costs $50k, that’s still 5000 drones for 1/1000th of the cost of a nuclear carrier.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/VERCSbNg32jWkqtB/?mibextid=N9fs7i

Imagine a fleet of 10 cheap carrier ships…

Now imagine an AI using 1000 such drones to annihilate an enemy army.  If each drone carries 20 small missiles, that's basically 20,000 sniper shots.