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We'd never preemptively use the nukes which as you said would be pointless anyway and everyone knows it. Without the threat of Russian nukes we would be waging one of our typical modern wars, consisteing of conventional air strikes and artillery but probably mostly drone strikes. They love their drones. But the nuclear threat is ever present so our hands are tied, and as you know Ukraine is not a member of NATO so we have to wage this stupid proxy war. 

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2 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

…and if Russias military was working they wouldn’t need mercenary groups and conscription.

Nothing wrong with conscription.  Eg Israeli Army is nearly all conscript and it is one of the premier, if not the best fighting force on the planet.  Finland's superb army also uses conscription.  Same for South Korea.

 

You want to be able to fight sustained conventional war, you need conscription.

Australian, British etc have all volunteer armies  but those militaries are too small to fight in any major war.  In fact those armies are promarily desogned for what is basically "colonial" warfare -counter insurgency in low casualty, low intensive fights or short term conventional coalition warfare against third world opponents with really poor militaries.

Only major exception is US which maintains massive conventional overkill capabilities.

Indeed strip US oit and most of rest of west is near defenceless (especially Europe).

 

 

As for mercs,well yes America uses them too (eg Blackwater International).  Wagner et all allow Russia to do things that they wouldn't be allowed to legally do otherwise eg expeditionary warfare in Mali or Central African Republic or recruit convicts and send them into meat grinders ("reconnaissance in force.").

 

Even Russia and other authoritarian regimws have to maintain a veneer of legality.  Indeed even Stalin tried his opponents in kangaroo courts before executing them.

Putin's control is no where near as complete as Stalin or Mao or Hitler so his hands are bound even more.

 

Not defending Russia or saying their military is competent  No it is not competent and has largely been incompetent since 1721 except for a small window in 1943-45.  Even when they win it is not due to any competence but rather overmatch (eg Georgia in 2008) or hitting crippled enemies (Japanese in 1945) or poor logistical choices made by their opponents (eg France in Napoleonic war).

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Nothing wrong with conscription.  Eg Israeli Army is nearly all conscript and it is one of the premier, if not the best fighting force on the planet.  Finland's superb army also uses conscription.  Same for South Korea.

You want to be able to fight sustained conventional war, you need conscription.

Australian, British etc have all volunteer armies  but those militaries are too small to fight in any major war.  In fact those armies are promarily desogned for what is basically "colonial" warfare -counter insurgency in low casualty, low intensive fights or short term conventional coalition warfare against third world opponents with really poor militaries.

Only major exception is US which maintains massive conventional overkill capabilities.

Indeed strip US out and most of rest of west is near defenseless (especially Europe).

As for mercs,well yes America uses them too (eg Blackwater International).  Wagner et all allow Russia to do things that they wouldn't be allowed to legally do otherwise eg expeditionary warfare in Mali or Central African Republic or recruit convicts and send them into meat grinders ("reconnaissance in force.").

Even Russia and other authoritarian regimws have to maintain a veneer of legality.  Indeed even Stalin tried his opponents in kangaroo courts before executing them.

Putin's control is no where near as complete as Stalin or Mao or Hitler so his hands are bound even more.

Not defending Russia or saying their military is competent (no it is not competent and has largely been incompetent since 1721 except for a small window in 1943-45).

Conscription during wartime looks a lot different than it does during peacetime. I've seen a video of them essentially dragging a dude off the street kicking and screaming, and I've heard this happens on both sides, in Russia and in the Ukraine. As a soft western pussy who's had it too easy for too long it was pretty sobering thinking how they could stuff you in the back of an SUV this arvo and boom, the next day you're on the front lines, no training - no nothing. "See if this uniform fits, ok good luck Oleksandr! Oh and remember, desserters will be shot!" Even though I'm all the way on the other side of an ocean and just past the age they're looking for (they're supposedly taking dudes up to 60) it's still a disturbing video. And I hate hearing about all the torture. Those Russian soldiers are some sick fucks.

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24 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

We'd never preemptively use the nukes which as you said would be pointless anyway and everyone knows it. Without the threat of Russian nukes we would be waging one of our typical modern wars, consisteing of conventional air strikes and artillery but probably mostly drone strikes. They love their drones. But the nuclear threat is ever present so our hands are tied, and as you know Ukraine is not a member of NATO so we have to wage this stupid proxy war. 

Large American style drones are useless against a conventional adversaries with modern air defence networks.  Ukraine didn't even want them and they actually stated their Turkish supplied TB2s were useless once Russia got its air defence network working.

 

Predators are good for slapping around people who have no air defences like Taliban 

 

What you probably would see is a mass aerial campaign ala Gulf War 91 - led by stealth bombers and fighters and cruise missiles and initially dedicated to destroying aircraft on the ground, command centres and neutralising SAMs to establish air superiority or even possibly aerial dominance.

 

After Russia air defences are no longer operational comes the pounding of Russian ground forces. 

 

And after they are pulverised you get the ground forces going in using full combined arms* - armour, infantry,artillery,recce, engineering and air forces all coordinating and supporting each other.

 

The only difference between Iraq 91 and non nuclear Russia 2023 is there would be a significant naval component to neutralise Russia's largish and potentially reasonably competent submarine force.

 

*Big failure of Russian lilitary is it just doesn't understand combined arns and doesn't practice it.  Even today they send armour on its own abd infantry on its own.

 

They have strategy documents that talk about combined arms but it is not taught to any great degree.

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23 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Conscription during wartime looks a lot different than it does during peacetime. I've seen a video of them essentially dragging a dude off the street kicking and screaming, and I've heard this happens on both sides, in Russia and in the Ukraine. As a soft western pussy who's had it too easy for too long it was pretty sobering thinking how they could stuff you in the back of an SUV this arvo and boom, the next day you're on the front lines, no training - no nothing. "See if this uniform fits, ok good luck Oleksandr! Oh and remember, desserters will be shot!" Even though I'm all the way on the other side of an ocean and just past the age they're looking for (they're supposedly taking dudes up to 60) it's still a disturbing video. And I hate hearing about all the torture. Those Russian soldiers are some sick fucks.

Even in wartime it depends largely on the culture of the country and the military culture doing conscription.

 

Eg German conscripts in WW2 were rather enthusiastic even in 1945 and the German training system produced decent quality and disciplined combat troops up to 1944.

But the Prussian military culture and good quality German training systems enabled this.

Same applies for Japanese.

 

The Russian training system was always shit, even at their peak in WW2. The Russian military does not have any systems for diffusimg knowledge.  Eg US would pull out effective combat troops and use them to train new guys. 

Doesn't happen in Russia - experienced units were and still are always used until exhausted or destroyed. 

Russian officer and NCO training emphasses obedience over inventiveness and flexibility.

 

It is a brutal military culture even in peacetime.  Brutal hazing that results in death or serious is common.

 

Thus their training system produces garbage regardless of whether it is a conscript or professional kontraktniki.

 

Also note Russian mobilisation was meant to call up people with prior experience.  It fucked up because Russia actually abolished the old Soviet mobilisation system and never replaced it  

----

Conscripts still don't get used for combat duties for most part.  It is too politically sensitive (lesson learned on Chechnya).  

 

In fact this is what fucked up a lot of their initial advances.  Russia units are never staffed at 100%.  They might have 60-70% professionals and 30-40% conscripts.

 

The professionals man the technically complex equipment and the 1 year conscripts are meant to provide most of the infantry.

 

As units were generally not allowed to deploy conscripts and many were even more undermanned than on paper, most units went into combat without any infantry.   Each battle group would have 10-20 tanks, 30 armoured personnel carriers, 10-20 self propelled artillery pieces, airdefence etc BUT NO INFANTRY.

 

That was a recipe for disaster in 1930 let alone 2022.

 

Mobiks and Wagner's prison recruitment campaign solved manpower issues but loss of thousands of vehicles and other equipment means Russia now lacks tanks and artillery needed to have enable infantry to move forward 

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Yeah I figure a US/Russia war would look a lot like the Gulf War but with cooler temps and 30 more years of high tech innovation. These dudes are just spoiling for a chance to test out their new hardware in real life battlefield conditions. But we won't go that full scale war route in this case I don't think, because of the Russian nukes and their fancy air defenses. And that was the point of all the nukes in the first place, they're a deterrent. But I think it would have been much better if we'd never built all this shit that they're now dismantling.

Stupid though to have all this death and destruction when sooner or later maybe this year, maybe next, there will be some kind of peace negotiations and they'll hammer out some kind of a deal to end hosilities that neither side will be comlpetely happy with. They could have sat down together last year and worked out a deal that neither side would be completely happy with. This prolonged war is benefitting neither side.

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I don't think fancy Russian air defences would stand well against US massive fleet of stealth aircraft, stealth cruise missiles and numerous USAF and USN squadrons dedicated to Suppression of Enemy Air Defences.

 

I read somewhere that the current state of the art in radar tech still can't get a targetting solution on an stealth jet and most aircraft mounted one still can't identify a stealth jet from general noise.

 

I literally think Russia's whole military defence rests on nukes 

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Been reading a bit about kamikazes and general concepts of Japanese ritual suicide.  To be honest, I wish we had some of that kind of honour in our society. 

 

Eg my workplace covered up a paedophile for 20 years whilst about 6 years ago several executives were caught being corrupt.

Now no one went to gaol.  Everyone involved simply slunk into the shadows, retired or moved on to other work.  Even the corrupt ones were never charged.

It would have been better if we had some sort of code of conduct and if the state didn't do anything, these people regained their honour by ending their lives. 

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1 hour ago, AlSymerz said:

 

Well, be a leader, not a follower, step up and show us some honour.

 

If I really did do something corrupt or dishonourable like cover up for a peadophile, I'd probably consider taking my life.

I have never acted in  corrupt manner.  I've done my job diligently.  And it's hard given how much engrained corruption and nepotism there is in the Tasmanian health department.

I have reported wrong doings of both my superiors and people below me.  I have stopped doctors claiming holidays as tax payer funded expenses, stopped Tasmanian mental health double dipping on Medicare (basically state government committing fraud) and stopped other wrong doings.

I lose a lot of these because the people we employ at the top are corrupt and dishonourable and protect each other.

I have acted in the best interest of the Crown and the taxpayer.

I also tried leaking information to the media about a complete lack of planning and potential wrong doing about state owned property but they weren't really interested - local newspaper Examiner is in cahoots with the government, whilst the ABC followed the story with me but didn't end up publishing it.

 

Of course you like to protect the rich and elites - you do it every time I mention their wrong doings.  

 

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35 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Who said anything about acting dishonourably? In your own words standing up and being a Kamikaze for society is honourable.

I protect no one. I stand for no one. I side with no one.

The concept of kamikaze was honourable.  It ties in with Japanese concepts of honour and sacrifice which also include seppuku.

 

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I’ve just seen South Australia, trying to introduce laws which restrict people right to protest. Thanks for the first time in my life, I’m actually going to be part of a protest against set restrictions, the right to peaceful protest is one of the cornerstones of modern democracy, after all.

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From what I heard this morning it's not about restricting people protesting it's about trying to stop the violent and stupid protesting similar to what Victoria saw during lockdown. They aren't trying to stop protests, they've just increased the fines from $750 to (a max) of $50K because too many of these serial protesters that do nothing else in life other than follow protests are crowd funded by dickheads on social media and raising $750 is too easy. Even the increased jail time is "potential" time served not mandatory.

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46 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I’ve just seen South Australia, trying to introduce laws which restrict people right to protest. Thanks for the first time in my life, I’m actually going to be part of a protest against set restrictions, the right to peaceful protest is one of the cornerstones of modern democracy, after all.

They've been trying to ban protesting in Tasmania for some time now.  

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4 hours ago, Dead1 said:

They've been trying to ban protesting in Tasmania for some time now.  

I may disagree with certain protests, but if I believe it’s part of democracy, which I do, and a right which should be protected, which once again I do, then I should stand by my beliefs.The role of government is not to silence the people.

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12 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I may disagree with certain protests, but if I believe it’s part of democracy, which I do, and a right which should be protected, which once again I do, then I should stand by my beliefs.The role of government is not to silence the people.

Sadly the role of Tasmanian government has been to support certain vested interests such as forestry industry and now the AFL.  It's very third world in some regards.

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No stadium means no team. So you don’t need to worry about that now the liberals are the minority government. Having said that South Australia spent 600 million, renovating the Adelaide Oval and surrounding precinct, back in 2013/14, with an estimated return of 3 billion back into the state economy through construction jobs, hospitality, and tourism, over the first five years following said renovations. If you turn it into an entertainment precinct, rather than thinking of it, as purely Stadium, it can bring money back into the economy, and sport and recreation is a separate budget from social programs, something which is being overlooked by many people protesting against the idea. Obviously, though I don’t live in Tasmania, so I don’t know whether you would reap the same benefits as South Australia or Western Australia where are you to follow a similar model. 

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Even with it being a entertainment precinct one of the problems is the control the AFL expect to have over it yet they are putting only a small portion of the money into it, (compared to other investors). AFL demand the ground be in a fit state for football 8-10 months of the year, that means concerts/entertainment have to schedule around the AFL not the AFL scheduling around events that make good use of the centre.

 

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1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

an estimated return of 3 billion back into the state economy through construction jobs, hospitality, and tourism, over the first five years

That kind of estimate has been show time and again to be total bullshit. You hire a team of consultants and tell them what conclusion you want. I wonder how much SA paid to have the State of Origin game...

50 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

one of the problems is the control the AFL expect to have over it yet they are putting only a small portion of the money into it,

Fuck the AFL with a rough pointy stick. They have the Tasmanian government by the balls. There will never be the crowds the AFL demands and the government will be subsidising it indefinitely. Entertainment precinct? I don't want to go to any event - other than a football game - that takes place in a fucking stadium.

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Over here sports teams generally contribute very little and often 0 money into the construction of their fancy new 75,000 seat stadiums. They get the host city to foot the bill for anywhere from 50% to 100% of the cost (often by way of issuing municipal bonds) or the team owners will threaten to up and move their teams to another city. 

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1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

No stadium means no team. So you don’t need to worry about that now the liberals are the minority government. Having said that South Australia spent 600 million, renovating the Adelaide Oval and surrounding precinct, back in 2013/14, with an estimated return of 3 billion back into the state economy through construction jobs, hospitality, and tourism, over the first five years following said renovations. If you turn it into an entertainment precinct, rather than thinking of it, as purely Stadium, it can bring money back into the economy, and sport and recreation is a separate budget from social programs, something which is being overlooked by many people protesting against the idea. Obviously, though I don’t live in Tasmania, so I don’t know whether you would reap the same benefits as South Australia or Western Australia where are you to follow a similar model. 

Two Liberals that have resigned have since stated they will not block legislation so stadium is going through..

State funding for stadium is to come out of services such as health and education as we are now required to come up with $300 million in savings which is incidentally planned state contribution to stadium.

 

Also we already have an AFL level stadium in Hobart (Bellerive aka Blundstone Arena) and we already have an "entertainment district" (ie Hobart waterfront)

There is no economic benefit to this and no cost-benefit analysis was ever performed.  It came out that the Minister for Infrastructure probably never even saw the contract before it 

Hobart City Council had 1 brief meeting with government and that's it.

There isn't even any space for car parking nor any plan how to address transport issues arising for it.  Hobart's public transport is nearly non-existent (only 7% of Hobartians use it).

 

Everyone is against it - State Labor, Greens, members of Federal Labor and Federal Liberals, RSL, indigenous groups, Hobart City Council.  Even my AFL mad friends are against it.

 

We have homeless people everywhere and the health system is fucked.  But Rockliff and Albanese did the Caligula thing and goes for a football stadium.

Except they forget the Roman adage also included "giving them bread" and in any case most Tasmanians can't afford to go to football anyway

 

As for increased jobs:

-Construction jobs - meh.  These are short term and generally the state flies in mainland workers to do it.  Net benefit to Tassie is minimal as most of the money goes to mainland!

We have shortages of construction workers anyway to build homes (coz housing people is more important than stupid sports venues).

- Tourism/hospitality - how?  People don't travel to Hobart football games, even Tasmanians don't go there.  Average attendance Blundstone Arena since 2019 is 10,000.  Average last two years is under 6,500.

 

Same for cricket - in fact some international cricket games have had as few as 2,500 attendees.

New stadium doesn't even increase capacity much - Blundstone is 20,000 and proposed new one is 23,000 (yet regardless is mainly empty).

Meanwhile UTAS Stadium in Launceston average attendance is 14,000 for 10 years and still over 10,000 for last 2.

 

Tasmania is a shit place for live sports due to weather and in most cases people aren't that drawn to going to a game when they can watch it from the comfort of their own home.

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And to show how a stadium is probably the worst fucking thing the government can do, a report on how Hobart is the least capital affordable city in Australia.

 

https://sheltertas.org.au/hobart-the-least-affordable-city-in-australia-for-renters-putting-average-income-households-into-rental-stress-and-hurting-pensioners-and-young-people/

 

We're condemning the poor to even more poverty.

 

We need homes, not expensive white elephants to appease a couple of pathetic football fans (aka the Tasmanian Premier and the Australian Prime Minister).

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You've never been more correct, Dead.

Economic benefit - nil.

The Libs who resigned are nut jobs with other agendas but it seem the AFL has them by the balls (or equivalent) too.

Tasmania is a poor state with a small population. You're fucked if you go ahead and probably fucked if you don't as the AFL will have iron-clad contracts (i.e. they have the government by the balls).

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