gravitas_deficiency

SPAA is going to come back in a big way in the coming years. The effectiveness of these things in Ukraine is crazy.

I don’t think the Gepards support the round type, but some of the new precision-fused airburst rounds (the fuses are wirelessly individually set as it passes through the muzzle, AFTER round velocity is measured a dozen or so cm back (!!!) for maximum burst precision) are crazy. It’s like flak, but it knows EXACTLY where it needs to pop to frag the target, instead of “1000m +/- 100m”.

And then there’s directed energy, which is also going to get interesting.

Yeah - you fight with what you have. If what you have isn’t exactly what you need, you fuck around with it until it is. Battlefield exigencies trump “you’re doing it wrong”/“that’s not what it’s for”. If you’re in a life and death situation, and you really fucking need a hammer, and all you have is an iPad… well, the iPad becomes a hammer.

Well actually, I believe he did just unblock long-range strikes into Russian territory.

But in terms of our national policy not trying to play the fucking nanny in the war: I think that’s not changing until Harris gets in. Biden is SUPER ossified in how he thinks of Russia.

Le specs of le missile:

• 10kg frag warhead
• 25km+ range (air launched number, I think)
• peak speed ~M3
• 50g maneuverability
• ~£200k a pop

That’s surprisingly economical for that level or capability, if I’m honest.

That, or it’s a mistranslation/inaccurate description. Maybe they’re playing around with drone-launched javelins, which would honestly be pretty fucking rad.

What fucking idiot greenlit that to be included in the festival in the first place? The fact that it needed to be protested and removed from the program is absurd.

A little direct action seems in order

Lmao cry more, shitass. Catch us if you can.

You can’t.

They’re not cheap, but they’re WAY cheaper to fly per hour than most other modern strike fighters by a pretty large margin. Also, one of their primary design criteria was to be a QRF/frontline/austere deployment aircraft - that is, one of the requirements was “you can pull this fucker out onto a straight stretch of highway, gas it up, slap missiles on, and start fragging hostile air right away”. That’s precisely the sort of system Ukraine would seriously benefit from.

Don’t get me wrong - the Vipers they’re using now are great, extremely flexible, and genuinely the bar-none best two-circle gunfighter ever built, but they are fragile as hell, and their support footprint is WAY larger.

Considering they have a vested interest in the ships, you know, not being attacked and damaged or destroyed, it’d be fantastic if Egypt (as well as any other regional forces with an interest in protecting these trade routes and grain shipments) parked a couple of their extremely capable FREMM frigates in the Black Sea between Ukrainian territorial waters and the Bosphorus Strait to guard the lanes against Russian fuckery.

Erdogan would probably get pissy about that though.

Good

Well, unless and until the government turns outright fascist (no, it’s not there yet, don’t be hyperbolic or try to false-equivalence this), how about we don’t?