When it comes down to it, this is a hell of a deal for the US. We spend a tiny fraction of our military budget to de-fang Putin and don't have to fire a single shot ourselves.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Better than defanging is real world testing.
What worked as expected, what didn't, how we can make it better etc.
It's not often you get to deploy these weapons.
What will happen to the US defense budget now that we know it's unnecessary?
That was rhetorical by the way, I know it's going to increase.
Not sure about "unnecessary." 5% works for Ukraine but also it has a much smaller land mass. You can't use that 5% to protect the entirety of the US' borders along with every other place we are stationed along with the required ongoing maintenance
I'm not saying the budget isn't ridiculously high, but also saying it's unnecessary as a whole is just incorrect
5% is also us supplying to Ukraine a fraction of their needs, and few of the core costs of a military - like personnel costs, which make up 40% of the US military budget.
The military budget is bloated, just... not nearly to the degree people think.
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Watch the Ukranian drone ops teams taking contracts after this is all done. The Winged Hussars ride again! 🤘🏼💀
There was an article a few days ago about how the soldiers stopped following some of their western training as it wasn't working / appropriate for their situation.
I imagine there will also be some cross training where they update the American soldiers on what worked and didn't work and why.
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Unfortunately, the target audience also wear shirts which say "I'd rather be Russian than democrat"
They may take it as an attack against themselves.
But if you can reframe Ukraine as sticking it to those democrats who don't like military, they might be on board.
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@Wilshire I cannot think of a time in recent history when we have gotten more bang for our military buck than supporting #Ukraine against #Russia .
Not only are we doing the right thing by helping a democratic nation fight an invasion by an expansionist regime, but this aid has helped weaken one of our two main adversaries, and serves as a warning to China.
This is truly one of those win/win situations where the only debate should be the degree of military aid, not whether we support Ukraine.
Besides. Ukraine gave up nukes because we promised to protect them. There's a tremendous cost to going back on our word for soooo many reasons.
We didn't promise to protect them. But Russia and the US both promised not to invade.
Of course, we should still help them because it's the right thing to do AND is harmful to our average.
But I do think the worst thing about this war from a geopolitics standpoint is Russia going back on its word. They've essentially proven that no nation should ever give up their nukes.
no nation should ever give up their nukes
No nation within invasion distance of Russia, anyway.
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We need an attack ad: "Why are some republicans afraid of russia?"
They are not afraid of Russia they are enthralled by Russia. They serve Putin because they are indebted to him.
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I hope it works, but I have so little faith in Republican voters anymore.
Actually I think this is one of the keys to freeing the minority of the country that insists on being stupid as shit. They love trump but loyalty to the military runs far deeper. Find me a right leaning fuck who doesn't at least pay lip service to the military. Of course they don't actually support them, but it's a potent motivator that they at least feel like they're doing so.
So not unlike when you have to work certain angles to get a toddler to take a bath or go to bed, so must steps be taken to try and pry these people out of their death cult spiral. The alternative is to likely be dragged down with them.
They love trump but loyalty to the military runs far deeper.
Does it, though
They think the military is woke now. The only loyalty is to trump. Everything else peripheral
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Does this include giving them old equipment which they'd have to dispose of anyway? Because that's not exactly "spending". Some even say that it saves money because they have no disposal cost.
Hopefully Ukraine keeps “disposing” all of our ammunition in the general direction of the invaders.
That stuff has a limited shel(l)f life anyways.
Don’t forget that the old gear has to be replaced. That’s good American jobs right there.
It was going to be replaced regardless of Ukraine, that's the point. It was to be junked anyway.
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Thats assuming the republicans and tankies WANT Putin's army destroyed. To them, this sounds like what a normal person would hear if we said: "We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm the IRA and 50% of Britain's army has been destroyed."
Now hold on, is funding the IRA on the table?
Yes, but only $6,500 per person, and it is only tax deductible if you don't give it to a guy named Roth.
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I fucking hate computer generated voices, the cadence is always fucking weird. This one is far too fast, and the pause between words is too short.
It's just weird.
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Give em 20%
Nobody answered me. Is there PROOF of the 50% claim here?
How can I view non-biased information about the war?
It's hard to say, that it's prooved. Probably even the US Ministry of Defence has no totaly exact lists.
But there are good estimations based on reports and leaked footage.
For example oryx has a list with destroyed vehicles and equipment based on photographic or videographic evidence. The real numbers are probably significantly higher.
After this list the russian army lost more than 2000 tanks. Ukrainian sources says that the Invasion started with more than 3000 tanks.
Ca. 1000 of the 2000 lost tanks were T-72 (the most common tank in the russian army). According to estimations russia has 2000 T-72 in active service and maybe 10.000 or more as reserves. The reserves are mostly remnants of the soviet Union and old models that are never modernized. Satellite pictures show that a big part of this reserves are stored in open depots with no weather protection. Maybe russia could make some of this vehicles usable, it will cost Billions to repair and modernize them.
So, no there is no proof, that the ukrainian army destroyed 50% of the russian forces. But there are proofs that russia lost a significant part of its active forces (probably something close to this claim) and that they definitly lost much more value than the americans, the europeans, ect. invested in the ukrainian army.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/tanks-russia-how-many-putin-military-ukraine-leopard-2-abrams-2108097
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If you could reason with them they wouldn’t be republicans.
We should stop trying to convince them with logic, and start paying off the far right talking heads to change their talking points. If fox and newsmax pundits, and the shitty far right members of congress (like bimbobert and MTG and minor-lover matt gaetz) did an about face overnight, so would the entire republican base.
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