Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 2)

Well, the civilians are pretty screwed no matter what. Take the city, put it under siege, or just let the Russians keep it; in any case, the civilians will get the worst of it. They at least might have the option of trying to evacuate towards the Ukrainian lines, though, unlike the Russian troops.

BBC journalist comments on what he’s observing in Kherson. He hasn’t seen a large build-up of supplies and men for a major counter offensive. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a build-up. The Ukrainians are very restrictive with information. They haven’t allowed very many journalists in Kherson.

As they should be of course.

The loss of Starlink could have cost Ukraine the war. 1300 terminals went offline Oct 24.

MODDING: This is not an invite to again sidetrack into a Musk debate. There are other threads for it. Do not derail this one.

… and those threads are where?

Following the link I provided, but here:

It was visible as soon as you click the little down arrow to expand the links.

One tactic Russian soldiers use to try and avoid overhead Ukrainian drones dropping bombs on them is to play dead. When bombs are dropped on them anyway, their death throe movements betray that they were faking it. We laughed at the guy running from the drone, but he had the right idea. Should’ve kept running, back to Russia.

New Associated Press article on the massacre of civilians by Russian soldiers at Bucha:

Article spoilered for containing photos of murdered civilians.

The Financial Times describes another murder:

Sorry about the hijack. I thought breaking news was allowed. It was a pretty shocking development for continuing the war.

I won’t mention M again.

The vision of these VIPS making the trip to Kyiv in an old railway car makes me smile.

It’s even better when they come with $400 million.

Refurbish 250 HAWK missiles. I assume they mean upgrade the electronics?

Guardian blog

Just to clarify, your post was fine, you introduced a news items completely relevant to the thread.

My post was due to the fact, that every time the M-name is mentioned in these threads, it turns into a hijack. I was cutting that off ahead of time.

So news items that are relevant to the invasion are fine even concerning Musk, but going off on another Musk debate are not allowed.

Thank you @What_Exit

Could be as simple as inspecting and replacing “expired” solid propellant or explosives. Test and repair electronics (but not necessarily upgrade if they’re already at the newest revision for the version of the weapon). Maybe even repaint and re-mark.

The HAWK is pretty old. It’ll still blow up stuff and keep the Russians running.

From working in a cell phone refurbishing shop, I can say that generally what happens with refurbishing is that they look for any flaws in the product, replace or otherwise repair the parts that are bad, then test it as much as reasonable to ensure that it works as new. If they’ve been sitting around a long time, there’s potential issues that parts of them could degrade I guess. It’s not like they could have been lightly used like the phones I dealt with.

Refurbishing phones also involves updating any software, but it generally means keeping the same hardware, or in some situations using a component from another model type that’s interoperable with it, and was salvaged specifically for use in replacements when another item was scrapped.

Right, which is why Ukraine will conduct an amphibious operation to cross the river at some remote point and then swing around to trap the Russians waiting on that side before seeking to retake Kherson.

That is of course all pure speculation. But the kind where if you’re right, you’re hailed as brilliant, and if you’re wrong, no one remembers. A trick I learned from an intel officer.

Nouriel Roubini (economist, nick-named Dr. Doom) has this technique completely mastered … he successfully predicted 18 of the past 3 recessions …

… but he was one of the few that predicted the 2007 sub-prime crisis and hence gained widespread notoriety

He’s made his money by arresting them and taking half their worth.

Has Ukraine done a full scale amphibious operation during the war? So much going on I can’t think of one. Moving troops is fairly easy, moving vehicles is where the hard part comes in.