That used to be the Soviets’ strategy. Probe the entire line and pile it on where it seems weak.
Careful. Western forces use the same tactics if they feel it will provide shack and awe. Been done a few times.
Shelling schools, apartment buildings and hospitals?
Firing cruise missiles at civilian electricity infrastructure?
I think Western countries will be OK not doing any of this.
Name a few then. Preferably in the last thirty years.
It is an accepted method by the U.S. military. But not always used. No need to go back too far. A few countries have had their infrastructure, including electric, water supply systems, civilian communications, and distribution systems, destroyed on purpose.
Did you read the Wikipedia article you linked to? Nothing there says attacking civilian infrastructure is an accepted US military method.
“Future War”? None of us expected that from this war! Actually getting this was just a welcome present from incompetent Russians. Literally everyone else I saw was talking about “Highway of Death 2.0” the whole time.
To be fair, I’m not entirely sure how to distinguish—or if it’s possible to distinguish—the Invasion of Iraq from the Invasion of Ukraine, either. Apart from the latter being a pathetic failure in addition to a large scale war crime, that is. Perhaps US troops were, on an individual level, better behaved for the most part. Not sure how citing the invasion of Iraq makes Putin look better, though…
I don’t think so. They’d have to reposition an awful lot of satellites to get constant coverage in LEO. I’m not sure the U.S. even has enough. That’s why they still have high altitude surveillance planes like the Global Hawk, RQ-170, the ScanEagle, and whatever classified recon air assets they have.
Between all of them, they can probably get close to complete coverage. Those rear-area command posts Russia set up sure got found and smashed quickly. And a lot of Generals and other senior officers have died quickly when they made their presence obvious. Credit Ukrainian special forces for spotting as well, along woth Ukrainian snipers for bagging officers.
Ammo dumps and such can wait for satellite imagery. The moving stuff probably requires air assets, and since a lot of behind-the-lines moving stuff has been destroyed, they probably have it.
You can mobilize shock troops, but you can’t quickly rebuild the hardware they need. Russia is clearly running low on everything from trucks to tanks to artillery shells. They are having to beg North Korea for artillery ammo, and the old Soviet dumb warheads they’ll get are no match for Excaliber rounds, or have the range and accuracy of HIMARS.
Russia has always lacked for NCO officers (the Soviets built a doctrine that didn’t include them because they didn’t trust them to not turn their soldiers against their leaders). So high ranking officers run everything. And they have lost a lot of their best officers already, because once they pop their heads up in Ukraine they don’t seem to live long.
Now that will be an interesting test of those country’s commitment to Russia and the other countries now that Russia looks weak. How much of that coalition was held together by fear rather than mutual interest? Belarus has balked at helping Russia in Ukraine.
Except it is not exactly Tu quoque, right? In this conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine isn’t attacking schools and civilians.
I don’t get why the only pro-Russian arguments have nothing to do with Ukraine, but instead focus on other countries and other wars.
IME, most tu quoque retorts are nonsense.
Yah, you’d need something that can easily change orbit and stay up there for years at a time. Maybe a couple of them.
It becomes an exercise in pedantry. You cannot draw sharp lines in fog. The civilians are nominally collaborating with the military, providing them material and moral support in return for defense against those other guys. In that sense, there are few distnctly non-military targets.
Hospitals and care facilities are extremely low on the threat list. On the other hand, newspapers and libraries provide moral support (propaganda), and when the aggressor’s goal is to teach these people that “they belong to us” and should not consider themselves a different ethnicity, even schools could be seen as a legitimate target, lest those children grow up hating us.
Ultimately, the Geneva Conventions are of questionable value. War needs to be ugly, violent, disgraceful and repulsive so that we do everything we can to avoid it and vehemently repudiate those who engage in it. Adding a set of rules does too much to legitimize it and any who make use of it.
MmmmHorseshit. “'War needs to be ugly so we don’t engage in it” is moronic nonsense. War will occur whenever one side decides to wage it, and that side will not care if it’s ugly or not.
Back on this planet, the US military does not deliberately attack known civilian targets. For two reasons: 1) It’s counter productive and rises the population against you, since you are attacking them directly. 2) It rarely gains you anything of value.
By example: Blowing up a hospital has never been seen as a good idea. The people you are killing are already out of the fight, having been wounded to the point of needing a hospital, and now everyone within 10Km (at least) hates you as a baby killing barbarian.
None of this works the way you think it does.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
MmmmHorseshit. Remember the Snowden affair? There was material he got to Assange et al that was highly classified because it showed American troops visiting pointless violence and mayhem upon Iraqi civilians. Soldiers get wound up, stressed out and impulsive. Not exercising due restraint and just shooting at anything that you think might be a military target is no different at all from deliberate attack on civilians.
‘It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.’ – Robert E. Lee (13 December 1862)
I guess it depends on what “the US military” is to you more: the generals who make the macro decisions, or the soldiers who carry them out.
Hear, hear!