There’s a lot of things I’m furious at Biden for. But them slow-walking and doing fucking NOTHING to stop the fascists is right at the top of the list

bro come on bro they just made like 17 mistakes in rapid succession bro come on bro pls

What a fucking chode, holy christ

I was under the impression that the major hurdle was still the engines on this thing, and that they were essentially multiple generations behind western offerings in terms of range, power, and efficiency. They’re still using Russian engines for a ton of their military aircraft.

Woah, crazy, all of the sea people fall under the system of Halakha? TIL

That was an absolutely fucking admirable sight to behold. So fucking happy they didn’t cave, and told the regime to eat shit and fuck off.

Everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine… We’re all fine here now. Thank you. How are you?

I bet orangeboi was upset by that development

I’m aware they downed a handful of drones. I’m also aware that piloted aircraft have pilots, and drones do not.

My point stands that this requires a more robust, thorough , and systematic response. Because I’m pretty sure part of the subtext from the Russian side is an attempt to test the capability and readiness of Poland’s IADS in a plausibly deniable fashion. And Russia should not be given the benefit of the doubt in this manner - these should be treated as probing attacks on a NATO member, and reacted to as such. Yes, that means article 5.

Why don’t they just shoot down things that come from Belarus and Russia? Turkey did that with an Su-24 one time, and then Russia stopped fucking around with them.

I agree completely. Biden’s lead-in to the invasion was, to be frank, a brilliantly adept usage and dissemination of intelligence.

And then he, on the advice of the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned, unforgivably Kissinger-esque, and idiotically geopolitically myopic Jake Sullivan, slow walked fucking everything after that point, because they were too busy pissing their pants at the ghost of USSR past to realize that Russia is a shadow of its former self, and relies on blustering and sword-rattling as primary geopolitical tactics, but doesn’t actually have the capacity to back any of it up.

One might even go so far as to say that it’s their geopolitical mother tongue.

No - this is about credible defense policy. As such, all that needs to be done is to adhere to the lines, and then actually and promptly follow through. Have a clear and credible path of escalation:

• notify Russia that any aircraft, drones, or missiles that cross from Russian or Belarusian airspace into any NATO airspace will be shot down, without warning
• shoot down, without warning, any aircraft, drones, or missiles that cross from Russian or Belarusian airspace into any NATO airspace
• notify Russia that any additional intrusions will be viewed as attacks, and that any subsequent intrusions will have their launch points or airbases rendered mission-ineffective
• render any airbases or launch points that are the origin of subsequent intrusions mission-ineffective

This is a level of realpolitik that the Russians will absolutely understand.

Yep. Pretty fucking insane that they’ve effectively gotten away with that whole episode scott-free

It’s a direct result of relying almost entirely on the US Military as the “find out” part. That was a fine policy when there wasn’t much to do, but turns out that it’s not a great idea when US domestic politics become incredibly polarized and unpredictable, and whiplash wildly depending on which party gains power. The fact that this wasn’t used as rationale to improve European defense over the last decade or so - specifically, after the 2016 election - is utterly insane to me. Now, everyone’s scrambling around and panicking about how to defend stuff without the US - that is, assuming they’ve even admitted that US isolationism is a thing that’s not going away, which is its own unique flavor of insane myopicism.

Hey, remember when Turkey unflinchingly smoked an Su-24 that entered their airspace, and then Russian shit flying into Turkish airspace was no longer a problem that Turkey had to deal with?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

The solution is easy. You just need to have the stones to react to the situation as the Russians themselves would. That’s the geopolitical calculus they respond to. This pussy-footing around “avoiding escalation” encourages them to engage in encroaching brinksmanship. If NATO were to collectively say “here’s the line, don’t fucking cross it”, and then frag anything that crossed the line, Russia would very quickly stop crossing the line.

K

Then Russian troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for western troops

Your move

The problem of course is that it’s impossible for the target country to tell what flavor (kinetic, conventional, tactical nuke, strategic nuke) the warhead is until it impacts. And thus standard strategic ICBM doctrine for anyone who has ICBMs and/or SLBMs is “assume it’s the biggest nuke”, which of course triggers second-strike doctrine (“you launched on me, so I’m going to fucking glass your whole country”).

RTFA

Holy fuck. That’s one hell of a mask-off moment. And it shows in the astounded reactions of the interviewer in the transcript.

Uh, yeah, that’s a kinda large part of their whole strategic calculus, seeing as they’re all geopolitical adversaries of the US