I don’t know the answers. I knew about the boneyard when I was stationed on that base back in the '70’s and I remember walking around on the field closest to the road and peering into everything.
The museum is still there and every time we drive by it we look for the boneyard expansion. We never fail to see another area packed full of moldering planes and jets.
Oh, no doubt that a lot of those planes are just straight up decommissioned because they reached the end of their useful service life and the desert is a good place to store them (on the off chance they have anything useful yet to give up). I’m only commenting on the seemingly ritualistic mutilation of some of the planes. Because it turns out it… kind of was ritualistic mutilation. Meant to be seen from above, as it were.
Again, this is just what I have heard, but the US government is making good money storing all of those planes. Many of them are commercial vessels, you can still see the emblems. However, this is way too much of a hijack for this thread. I’m sorry for the digression.
Certainly new ground attacks are now underway. The Russians are eager to regain the initiative. From what I am reading, Mariupol is about to fall. The people there have no real option to surrender as they know what will happen to them if they do.
I expect there to be more news coming out of this war today and all this week.
With the caveat that I really don’t know what’s going on with this guy, and never heard of him before today, and have done only a brief google on him - looks like he’s got intelligence skills and knowledge of asymmetric warfare, in addition to experience in training SERE and POW survival skills. He may not be a front-line fighter but it seems he has skills and knowledge that could be useful to Ukraine.
Or maybe he is front line. Or they’re portraying him as such to hide what he’s really doing.
Or he’s dressed as such to make a stronger impression. It looks more impressive than to just see him in fatigues. I’m not against it-it’s smart thinking, and I’d want as much armor on as I could wear anyway. And I do believe he’s there now. Brave man.
Another one:
Mariupol has been “about to fall” for a month or more now. I don’t doubt that is will at some point, but who knows when?
Probably fuel tanks?
That’s making me twitchy. First, the red pins aren’t evenly spaced. Second, Moskva is (was) a cruiser, so three pins sink her. There shouldn’t be what looks like space for a fourth pin aft.
The UK has a new Lord Haw-Haw. For Russian media, he interviewed a captured British man who has a Ukrainian fiancée and who joined the Ukrainian military in 2018.
Here he is:
Since it appears that this war is now going to go on for a long time, then the U.S. could send Ukraine a lot of those weapons that were previously ruled out because “it would take the Ukrainians too long to be trained and they need stuff that can be learned and used immediately.”
TIL that “brothel reviewer” is a thing.
Gives “Yelp review” a whole new meaning.
On a hijack-why was this thread opened in MPSIMS in particular? On the other hand, I’m not sure where else would be more appropriate. Politics? I’m not faulting the OP for starting it here, just curious.
Probably to keep it apolitical.
That makes sense, unfortunately.
I mean there are a bunch of Ukraine/Russia threads all over the boards. This particular thread is supposed to be news and fact based only so we can keep up without all the political sniping that is bound to happen.
Gotcha.
Western media is much easier to discount as Western fake news propaganda, then your own flesh and blood coming home broken with horror stories of corruption, lies and atrocities.
Far better that he either died heroically as a martyr fighting the Ukrainian Nazi’s to protect his glorious homeland, or is still out there fighting the good fight, but can’t write home because it could endanger his security.
Breaking News goes in MPSIMS. We currently have 154 threads on the Ukraine Invasion already. I’m sure one will fit your political needs quite well.