Was just watching Jack Ryan Season 3 and seeing the display of force and their movements causes some interesting dissonance given what we know now.
Could be worse OP, could be a movie about the North Koreans successfully invading America, you know, North Korea, a country that barely has a navy and who’s Air Force is mostly old Migs from several decades ago, a country who starts threatening their neighbors whenever their food supply runs low because their chubby leader eats too much while the rest of the country is at famine levels of hunger.
At least the original version of the movie was against the Russians while they were a super power.
The remake was originally going to feature a Chinese invasion, but they wanted it to still release and sell in China, so they made North Korea the bad guy instead.
It never did release in China.
Same sort of reasoning for NK being the baddie in the game Homefront. North Korea just isn’t a credible threat when it comes to invasion. Helped if you imagined it was the Chinese
Daily reminder that kowtowing to CCP is never a good choice, not even in business.
a country that barely has a navy
North Korea has the largest submarine fleet of any nation. Of course most of those are old diesel subs, but the point still stands.
We’ve seen what the Russian military has been like in Ukraine, if you think most of those subs aren’t rusting piles of garbage then you’re probably drinking that tankie Kool aid. They’ve probably had to cannibalize the majority of them just to keep what few they have running, because it’s not like they just idly make parts for 1950’s era subs, especially not for a country that barely has enough money to feed themselves and spends most of that on their nuclear program.
Also they’re loud ass diesel subs, every modern navy will know exactly where they are and how many they have easily, and it’s not like 1950’s weaponry is going to make up the difference.
This being said, Russia also isn’t as weak as we like to think. Given how the war has ground to a standstill, it’s not unlikely it’ll become yet another frozen conflict. And that’s after arming the Ukrainians with large amounts of advanced weaponry.
We’ve become so used to the idea we’d have air supremacy in any potential war, we thought the Ukrainians would be able to push their way through the front, forgetting that the Ukrainians aren’t able to take out artillery or mines beforehand.
The Russians have also adapted quite quickly. At the beginning of the war, the Ukrainians were having huge successes with drones. Now the Russians are downing 10,000 drones a month:
To be clear, Russia is an existential threat to Europe. If they turn this conflict into a stalemate, they will have won territory that doesn’t belong to them and it’s almost certain they’ll rebuild, rearm and do it again. Just like happened with Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine in 2014.
But underestimating the Russians is not in NATO members’ interests. No one ever won a war underestimating the enemy, better to give Ukraine more than they need, than just barely enough to make incremental advances under the assumption Russia won’t do a second wave of conscription and/or doesn’t have (or isn’t building up) reserves for a (counter) counter-offensive.
And given how Ukraine has struggled, even with advanced weaponry, it’s clearly high time for Europe to re-arm so that Russia doesn’t mistakenly think we’re weak.
Russia is in a standstill, after losing major ground constantly for a year, against a country 1/3 Ruzzia’s population, Ukraine also had next to no standing army prior to the invasion, meaning they had next to no professional soldiers prior to their being invaded by Ruzzia, and Ruzzia is invading them in conjunction with two of their allied powers, Belarus and Chechnya, all while the west slow rolls the supply and training of Ukraine, think about that for a sec.
Also this enemy that they’re in a standstill with has been so effective that one of Ruzzia’s key armies, Wagner, chose to rebel over continuing to get fed to the meat grinder. Ruzzia is literally down to recruiting 16 and 60 yr olds right now.
All of the propaganda by both Ruzzia and the West all made it seem like Ruzzia should have easily rolled over Ukraine prior to the realities of this war. However this war exposed Ruzzia as a broken down, corrupt paper tiger with a delusional dictator at the helm.
they had next to no professional soldiers prior to their being invaded by Ruzzia
Incorrect.
After Russia invaded in 2014, Ukraine heavily invested in its military. NATO has also been helping them train for years now. Wall Street Journal
This is also why Russia faced far stiffer resistance in 2022 than they did in 2014.
two of their allied powers, Belarus and Chechnya
Belarus’s involvement is very limited. They’re mainly allowing the Russians to fire missiles from their territory. Wikipedia
Chechnya isn’t a country or ‘power’. It’s the Russian equivalent of Alabama.
Wagner, chose to rebel over continuing to get fed to the meat grinder
It would be a mistake to think people like Prigozhin want to end the war. Russian ultra-nationalists want to intensify and escalate the war, not stop it.
Ruzzia is literally down to recruiting 16 and 60 yr olds right now.
18-30. The Guardian
An actual world super power would have rolled over Ukraine in a week. The fact that they’ve beat the Russians back for an entire year is not only totally bad-ass and heroic, but it also exposed the Russian Army for the weakling it is. The only reason Russia is still considered a world super power is because of their stockpile of Soviet era nukes. If Russia can’t take Ukraine, they have zero chance against countries like China or the US, and especially not the combined forces of the United Nations?
The really advanced US tanks and jets haven’t entered the fight yet, and we’ve seen big gains in the last week with Russia losing 3 towns in the south, all the gains they made in the north over the last month taken back, and more groups crossing the Dnipro river. It’s been a slow acceleration wearing through Russian reserves, but there’s still a way to go before winter slows things down.
The real advanced weapons enter the fight next spring.
Hey there!
Looks like you had a moderate, down to earth take on the Russia-Ukraine war.
That’s a down vote.
But seriously thanks for not attending to the feedback loop of propaganda and childish dick stroking.
I do get it though. Most of us want Ukraine to win. We ignore the information that we don’t like. It’s human.
But it’s not helpful, especially when the reality sinks in that this war isn’t easy, and thousands of young men are dying.
99% of what I see regarding this topic is either straight up war propaganda or people who are unabashedly unafraid to let others know that they are totally ignorant of post WW2 geo politics.
Anything other than “DAE just love Ukraine and that charismatic Zelensky! 😍😍” gets down voted to oblivion. Its classic Red Scare 1980’s bullshit lol. Even now I’m sure most who read this are scrambling for the down vote button because they think I’m some sort of Russian shill/supporter simply based off the fact that I’m not fellating the West’s efforts.
You’re not wrong but you’re not a victim either. People disagree on message boards, people are dumbasses, that’s what we get for hanging out here.
Few old diesel shitters that will be suppressed immediately. Quality over quantity, especially after a military superpower like the US
Old diesel subs? Sure.
But back in 2005 a now thirty year old Gotland-class diesel sub embarassed the USS Reagan in war games.
Since then, plenty of countries have designed newer and better diesel subs, and battery tech has obviously improved.
There’s a massive difference between an acoustically-optimized, AIP-capable Swedish submarine built thirty years ago, and what the North Koreans have which is basically none of those.
Also, while the Reagan itself was pretty new at the time, the Nimitz class was already a 30-year old design when that war game happened, and is now almost 60 years old as a class.
According to the documentary Down Periscope, a nuclear sub is no match for a diesel sub with a misfit crew.
The US Navy wouldn’t last a week
What a terrible demotion for Kelsey Grammer, from Starfleet to submarines.
Diesel subs have some advantages over others, some distinct disadvantages too, but a few advantages
What advantages? If memory serves correctly, they’d need a captain with a penis tattoo that says “welcome aboard” and a radar guy who can imitate whales. I’m not sure that’s so common.
At least as recently as 2005, diesel subs were the quieter option. There was that somewhat notorious story of the Swedish one that beat an American carrier group in a wargame because the Americans just couldn’t find it. I’m sure there have been developments in the equipment and methods since then - it was 18 years ago, after all - but it’s still notable enough that the Americans leased the sub from Sweden for a couple of years to practice against it.
That said, the Swedish sub in question was packed with cutting-edge (at the time) stealth features. I suspect North Korea’s fleet is not.
Lol people hold on to that wargame so tightly as some Pinnacle of triumph over western armed forces, but the reality of the situation was that the sub commander in question went rogue and did something they weren’t supposed to do in order to win. Also at the end of the day it’s a fucking wargame, it’s practice, and nobody really cares how well you do in practice because it’s all about how you perform in the big game.
Also as you noted the Americans did what we always do when situations like this happen, we game planned for never letting it happen again, this was an embarrassment for the US Navy, and you can bet it’s something they’re constantly working on never letting happen again, these are serious professionals who’s lives revolve around continuously planning ways to win against any situation while losing as few of their people as possible.
It sounds like the wargame did exactly what it was supposed to, people learned. All this talk of “embarrassment” is silly.
as recently as 2005
You do realize that’s almost 20 years ago. That’s like saying “well you realize in 1985…” Back in 2005.
(The 2000s have been a blur for me time wise too)
I did specifically say “it was 18 years ago after all”
If I’m not mistaken, that was a Gotland Class. Built in the early 90s, so over 30 years old.
France has at least one diesel submarine that’s decades more modern.
Thanks for the serious answer even when I was making a stupid joke/reference.
As I replied to someone else, that is very interesting.
My thoughts: It does seem extremely limited for its advantage though. The electric mode is basically a stealth option, but once they fire or do anything else then should be findable and that electric mode probably won’t last THAT long if they were being hunted actively.
diesel submarines can be quieter than nuclear subs when operating in electric mode, although their range is limited.
Thanks for answering seriously even when I didn’t.
Interesting that they are quieter! I never would’ve guessed that. Thanks for sharing.
I think the old ones are loud, but newer ones can be really quiet. IRC Sweden had one that did well in war games. Gotland class. France also has really modern ones.
Basically they chugachugachugachuga, then go into battery mode and dissappear off sonar. Range is low obviously. Batteries don’t last that long.
Don’t think the Russians have those though. Their navy has been a joke for over a century.
Range is infinitesimal comparatively. A nuclear submarine can operate continuously under water for 6 months. An old diesel sub needs to resurface after something like 12-18 hours.
Name one advantage that diesel subs have over modern nuclear subs? Lol
Diesel subs are loud AF from my understanding, and loud subs are dead subs according to my understanding of modern day submersible warfare.
They are loud when they recharge, they are slow compared to nuclear subs and they carry much less armaments.
On the other hand, when they are on battery power modern diesels can be much quieter than nuclear subs, they are much cheaper and smaller so ideal for operations in coastal waters. Which is why many (also western countries) rely on them for coastal defense.
Economics wise: You can trade 3 diesel subs against a nuclear subs or a large warship and still come out ahead cost/effort wise.
How long do you think 1950’s era batteries last? Like in what world do you think “a 1950’s diesel on battery power surely outclasses a modem nuclear sub”? GTFO with that bullshit, lol.
A sub on battery power is essentially in free fall depending on their ballast situation, they’re not going anywhere because they would have to turn their loud ass engines on to go somewhere, which would then alert the entire modern navy they would be up against.
Which is why many (also western countries) rely on them for coastal defense.
No the countries that still use those just don’t have enough money to maintain a nuclear sub fleet for what’s essentially their coast guard, it’s cost efficiency not “better”.
All of your points are just deep stretches in vain attempts to be the “well ackschully!” Guy, or to be the contrarian throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
the countries that still use those just don’t have enough money to maintain a nuclear sub fleet
IRC the French have at least one diesel sub, the SMX-Ocean Range 30,000km.
They also have modern battery tech, the money and the tech to maintain/build nuclear subs. They have existing nuclear subs. The SMX-Ocean is actually quite modern. 2017 I think. Certainly more modern than most existing nuclear subs.
it’s cost efficiency not “better”.
Here’s an article which explains why modern diesel subs can be quieter than nuclear subs:
https://navalpost.com/nuclear-submarines-diesel-electric-submarines-noise-level/
they are slow compared to nuclear subs
I googled. 20 knots for the SMX-Ocean. 25 for France’s nuclear subs. Not a huge difference.
IRC the French have at least one diesel sub, the SMX-Ocean Range 30,000km.
Wait so you honestly think they’re going 30,000 km on battery power?
Do you not get that submarine combustion engines are just like car combustion engines? You generate power through the engines and that power is stored on battery to power the electrical systems and serve as a backup, battery power is not going to power the whole entire sub and magically move the sub quietly through the water, that’s not how these things work, that’s how nuclear subs work.
My point is, you’re not going to be able to move your sub at all on battery power, at some point you will have to turn on those loud ass engines in order to move your sub, which will absolutely alert every modern sub to your location.
Batteries are one of the easiest components to swap out…
Dude, if someone here is “well akshually” that is surely you. When people talk about people on the internet that are annoying to meet - that’s you.
But apart from that. You are simply mistaken in a lot of things or are projecting so hard you may as well have an HDMI input.
Nobody said 50s era or even modern diesel subs or their other non nuclear equivalents are “better” than a nuclear sub in all ways but in some situations, e.g. coastal defense and operation sin shallow water, they may be better suited to the mission than a nuclear sub that is 4 times as large.
In addition there are economical considerations. If I can buy 4 diesels for the price of a nuke sub it may be better for me to have 4 diesels who can lie in wait at 4 places at once.
The question is mission fit of the asset. A ship will sink all the same whether it was sunk by a 2 billion USD Nuke sub or by a diesel on the way to the wrecker that had a really really lucky day.
There’s also the video game series, Homefront, where a unified Korea under northern rule invaded the US and occupies it.
I get your point, I really do, but Homefront was also about the economic collapse of the American system caused by its own corruption.
I always got the idea that Korea wasn’t incredibly overpowered united, but America was already broken and a step away from being conquered already and the first army to invade happened to be Korea. The rest of the world just wanted to see what would happen.
Kind of like having Russia invade Ukraine only to have it’s nose beaten in and globally embarrassed. Doesn’t mean Ukraine is going to invade and conquer, just that a global super power can be defeated by a smaller united nation after decades of corruption.
At least that’s the idea that got me through the game. It was honestly just a COD reskin of a game and wasn’t actually that good in retrospect
I knew nothing about the game because it did not interest me, but that’s some interesting world-building.
You didn’t miss anything that most other triple A games covered. If they focused more on story instead of shoehorning a terrible multiplayer pvp it could have been decent
At least the original version of the movie was against the Russians
You’re forgetting the real beef behind that invasion: Nicaragua.
Every time this movie comes up, I feel obligated to point out that despite being under occupation by
ChinaNorth Korea - Subway is somehow still open with uniformed staff and a well stocked sandwich bar, all while having dine-in customers for convenient ad placement..Ad placement that, get this: goes as far to even have the characters use the official ‘Sandwich Artist’ job title while robbing them ಠ_ಠ
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I thought it was a North Korean movie for propaganda reasons, turns out it’s an American movie 😭
Wasn’t russia also a part of the remake? I vaguely remember that movie and can’t recall much other than a mustang with a m134 or some goofy shit like that.
Rewatching Stargate and international cooperation feels so strange and bereft somehow. A kinder path.
I often times wonder if an extraterrestrial threat would be a unifying factor or if people would still be selfish unless it affected them. The pandemic was the closest we’ve seen to a world level threat recently and it just increased selfishness IMO (at least in the US)
I thought Marvel’s Secret Invasion had an interesting quote on this that I’ll paraphrase: nothing makes humans stronger than uniting against a common enemy, but as soon as that enemy is gone, they always devolve into tribal bickering again. It’ll be a miracle if we ever reach Star Trek levels of global unification and peace.
Don’t forget that Star Trek universe went through an apocalyptic phase before reaching their post scarcity society. I’m quite optimistic that we’ll reach Star Trek levels of peace, but reaching that state without having 90% of the population annihilated in some kind of a World War or some other catastrophe? That’s what I’m kinda pessimistic about.
Never mind Star Trek, at the rate we’re going we’ll be lucky to get The Expanse.
I mean, we’ve already surpassed The Expanse in some ways (at least the first couple books).
Something that struck me was in Caliban’s War they were relying heavily on mirrors to focus sunlight for growing crops out at Jupiter. I guess the authors just didn’t foresee LED technology advancing as rapidly as it did.
Leviathan Wakes was published in June 2011. Caliban’s War was published in June 2012.
The L-prize “60W” category winner was announced in August 2011 (it was Philips). It didn’t become commercially-available until April 2012, but even then, it was like $50 – far from affordable for most people. Now you can get equivalent or better bulbs for less than 1/10th of that.
but as soon as that enemy is gone, they always devolve into tribal bickering again.
The EU.
The aliens would just hack the internet and flood it with bots more advanced than ChatGPT faking support to surrender to the alien overlord, then sit their asses watching humanity fought among themselves.
IMO I don’t think humanity would unite. Some people would force their families to surrender to the aliens because they fear for their own lives, others would try to bargain with them for technology. Others would help the aliens simply because they hate humanity. We really can’t count on anything to unite us, and I don’t even think uniting the species should be our common goal. People are too individualistic and diverse for that, and unity would take away what it means to be human.
If aliens can reach us, they aren’t a threat. They either kill us without any issue or they don’t want to. There is no fighting back against it.
I do think it’d be interesting to see what happens if we do discovery alien life, particularly of the intelligent variety. So many religions are based on the assumption humans are the only intelligent life, and that earth is that place that can support it. Do they mostly all collapse, or do they evolve? Do people finally recognize the stupidity? It’d be fun to see.
Which religion has the assumption that we are the only intelligent life? The ones I have studied didn’t seem to believe that only human intelligence is around. They had demons and angles and gods.
It’s at least heavily implied in many. It implies that he created everything and all living things on it only talks about creatures being created on earth. If the book is accurate (it’s clearly not, but let’s assume) and if it’s divinely inspired, it should be aware of cresting life elsewhere also. It also calls stars/glalaxies/nebulas/whatever “lights in the dome of the sky” so not exactly a great start for it.
It being weird or wrong hasn’t stopped it really before though, but it would probably create some kind of shift, especially if it’s intelligent. In that case, are they deserving the same status as man? Are they children of God also? Why do they look different?
Christians don’t even care what the Bible says let alone what it implies.
That’s not necessarily true. If aliens do visit us, they might not be able to wipe us out at all. There’s really no way to say that other races would be capable of wiping us out, because they might not understand the concept of war in the first place.
They’re either capable of wiping us out or they aren’t a threat. Either way, not a threat.
If we’re comparing to human history, the Aztecs weren’t singlehandedly defeated by the Spanish. The conquistadors had plenty of assistance of other nations that wanted to see the Aztecs gone. We all know what happened afterwards, but even if you went back in time you wouldn’t convince a single Tlaxcala warrior that their newfound awesome ally against their sworn enemy was actually the “bad guy” - until much later, that is.
So, if the aliens started an attack against whoever the superpower happens to be, they would have plenty of assistance as well. It’s human nature.
Meh I would have sided with the Spainards as well. It can’t be fun having to hand over hunks of your population each year to be given to the sun god.
Depends on so many factors. Sometimes the external enemy doesn’t unite people at all. Sometimes it becomes a race of who can suck up to them so when the war is over they can run things. Traitors and collaboration.
Also I am betting if there was a threat it would be over in hours. As they hit us with a million nukes while our governments spend the last few minutes wondering why we pointed out best gear at each other instead of up.
Or heck they could be creative and just block out our sun for a decade and use bunker busting bombs looking for infrared to kill off the stranglers. That way they have a nice non-nuclear wasteland to work with.
Nah, if that’s the goal they’ll just use Neutrino Bombs (look them up, they’re crazy what they’re designed to do)
I saw a discussion about this once and they argued that they didn’t have the range leaving all the rural people still around. Plus the humans who are in nuclear proof bunkers/submarines have nukes to get revenge when you land.
Blocking the sun works better. You can’t just hide from the earth freezing. Even if you survive somehow you are giving away your location via infared. Also, you could still have some functional ecosystem left with the plants and animals that can withstand a true hibernation and the deep sea life.
Ozymandias, is it you?
It’s also surreal (for a different reason), to hear lines like
Why attack Russia? Aren’t they our friends now?
from Terminator 2.
On the other hand, the Simpsons did a not-so-funny-now with this:
Still pretty funny.
Seeing more than one tank on the red square feels surreal now
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Modern Warfare 2/3 where Russia not only manages to successfully invade the US, but brings it to it’s knees.
Even if you set aside the fact that the US has the world’s most powerful military and a heavily armed civilian population, geographically it would be virtually impossible to invade from another continent.
But fiction is fiction. And the Modern warfare trilogy was outstanding.
I think the Swiss population might be more heavily armed in the sense of “percent of people with a military-grade weapon”
“Number of military-grade weapons per person” is almost certainly the US, but guns being primarily fetish items / personality markers in the US means the distribution is very top heavy.
Getting into a random house and found guns to loot was the most realistic part of the Russian invasion plot in MW2.
Stargate thinks the Russians could get a gate up and running lmao
They did screw it up completely and needed to be saved though so that part was accurate.
Well how else do you justify maintaining defense spending at 5x the next biggest military? You need a boogeyman to keep the nation spending like WW2 never ended.
Now I’m hearing there isn’t enough money for Medicare or social security…
I was just thinking that as I was reading this post. Yeah, so they’re not “right behind the US” in overall ability and preparedness, and NOW they’re drained financially and their populations morale is at a low point with the drafts and the prisoner-units, who else do we have all these guns for then? Who will be the next boogeyman, and have we already laid the groundwork to say it’s China?
Y’all seem to be forgetting the “axis of evil” — the justification conservatives used to double military industrial complex spending, the last time they faced cost cutting…
Only a fool would disregard the formidable economic powerhouses of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea!
TL;DR they have successfully manufactured boogeymen as needed. Realistic adversaries are unnecessary.
Its the ametican way
It’s important to have a powerful enemy, otherwise why would the US pay for an $800 billion per year military?
now US need to tell that cuba or mexico is the powerful enemy idk
Lol Cuba can’t even afford bullets for military training.
if they pretend to have training, it’s enough to be more powerful than russia lol
“To preserve our empire” is the honest subtextual answer.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Removed by mod
That wasn’t Russia, it was the Soviet Union.
Also it was very stupid, ineffective and had allies.
The USSR that was massively propped up and kept in the fight thanks to the absurd volume of war materiel being pumped in by Britain and America?
A general disregard for numbers of casualties, an almost complete lack of maintenance capability for heavy vehicles, and unimaginative tactics relying primarily on overwhelming numbers and firepower might have ground down the resource starved Nazis, but it would have been a very different story against the Allies.
The Russians didn’t defeat the Nazis, they stopped their advance. While this was critical for the eventual defeat of the Nazis, it is not the same thing. The Nazis were defending against advances from Allied forces along 3 flanks, while stopped-dead against the 4th in Russia. The Russians also lost 1.5 million people in the battle for Lennongrad and were almost out of supplies. The wouldn’t budge because it was their absolute last stand. By the end of that battle Russian soldiers were reporting to the lines without weapons or boots, and picking up both from the guy in front of them when he was killed. It was a horrific nightmare of a situation. It was a critical victory against the Nazis, but not their ultimate defeat. The Nazis were defeated when the western forces advanced on Berlin and Hitler killed himself rather than be captured.
I would like to make one correction. Berlin didn’t fall because the Western forces captured it, but it was in fact the Red Army that got there first. This of course doesn’t change the fact that the Soviets never would have managed it by themselves, but this is the reason why claiming “the Soviets defeated the Nazis” is technically true.
Getting there first means you get credit for winning the whole war?
They were on the winning side, so they did win the whole war. But as I said, they didn’t do it alone nor would they ever have been able to win without all the help they received from everyone else fighting the Nazis at the same time. I don’t think current events should be a reason to see history differently. The Soviets were a powerful war machine during WWII and their contribution played a huge role in the outcome of that war.
These are the rules, finders keepers.
Thanks for the correction.
The Russia that did almost loose to the Nazis and only won because of bad weather and gigantic help?
I watched Red Dawn the other day.
Y’all were some paranoid mfs in the 80s.
The “they want to invade us” aspect feels more real than ever. The “they credibly threatened our independence” aspect feels less real than ever.
Russia under Putin is somehow both a worse neighbor and a less credible threat on the world stage.
Agreed, russia has proven themselves more dangerous, and more laughable at the same time. Their ability to underhandedly destroy us from within is far stronger than we ever were allowed to believe. Their ability to mount an actual attack, is far more laughable than we thought.
Though I do suppose the real scary part of it is. The potential death throws kind of attack. Putin’s immaturity, narcissism etc… is far scarier than we have ever understood. Russia quite frankly is the superpower that I could easily see hit the point of “If I can’t run the world, I’ll destroy it so you can’t have it”, and quite simply we’ve never seen or understood the potential of Nuke vs Anti-Nuke warfare.
I was in the Air Force in the late 70s. Worked in the flight surgeon’s office, so if anything went down on the flight line, we were there.
If you wanna see Kegels In Action, watch what happens when many many gallons of JP-4 gets spilled on nukes inside a B-52D on the alert pad.
Fun times!
By far the funniest part of that movie was fucking Nicaragua’s involvement, not the Soviets’. Shit worked, too - I knew many conservatives back in the '80s who genuinely thought Nicaragua was a threat to invade us.
Also prety dumb with our own geography. Starting an invasuon via colorodo
I’m old enough to remember when movies like ‘Firefox’ and ‘The Hunt For Red October’ first came out.
The US was always miles ahead of the Soviets. It was so bad that during the Reagan Era the Right had to come up with a new metric that let the Reds look tougher than they were. “Throw weight” was the measure of how big a load an ICBM could carry. Because the Russians had inferior tech, they had to build bigger missiles. Kind of how a 1700’s musket had a higher caliber than an M-16. It was actually a symbol of soviet inferiority, but you’ll hear people talking about it to this day.
I recently saw the Rambo movies for the first time, and yeah I laughed about how they portrayed the russians.
Really goes to show that perception management is an effective strategy as long as thats all you do.
Yeah, but isn’t that American propaganda?
We needed a bbg to justify our actions. I’m not saying it was out of nowhere, but the scale of the thing certainly played well for certain politicians.
And here come all the angry tankies
Just how powerful was soviet Russia in its heyday compared to today? Without allies, was it ever a true threat?
Yes. Yes it was. The USSR has very little in common with kleptocracy Russia. My wife was raised under their educational system and she was studying organic chemistry in the eight grade. Today she is one of the top people in her field (easily top ten) and she says that most of her career she’s mostly leaned on her early education. Especially math and science.
It is wild to see this. It’s amazing how quickly things change.
Yeah, Russia was incredibly powerful in its heyday, both in global influence and military power. Think about how people are worried about climate change now, then double it. That was the threat of nuclear war that kept people awake at night for decades.
After the time of the collapse we found out how empty a lot of their power was. How much of their achievements were less an unstoppable train and more of a rocket that couldn’t be refueled. They had power but they never figured out how to make it sustainable.
How much of their achievements were less an unstoppable train and more of a rocket that couldn’t be refueled.
Love the analogy. I’m aware they were and still are a threat from a nuclear perspective. I was just more curious about their ability to successfully mount a tactical battle strategy, logistics to supply said strategy, etc.
To a degree that was shown in the hot parts of the Cold War like the Vietnam War or the Congo Crisis where they provided logistical support. Like the US, or more accurately as a counter to them, they fiddled with countries for years to get outcomes that benefited the USSR ideology.
You could argue that it’s easier to shake up someone else than lead a full invasion force, but the US has learned that lesson too and followed that same play book. Invasion is harder than giving someone the tools to destroy themselves.
Remember that the USSR included not just Russians but Ukrainians.
Yes, but Ukraine was not the military power it is today from my understanding.
IIRC, the Soviets placed their primary artillery school and tank factories in Ukraine. As a percentage of the USSR’s military base, the Ukrainians were well above average.
Ukraine’s military power was equal to that of the USSR when Ukraine was part of the USSR.
In its heyday under Peter / Catherine the Great, depending on who you ask, Russia was a true world superpower. Richest royals, biggest population, massive food supply.
In the 50s and 60s, if the nuclear deterrent hadn’t existed they could have taken over most of Europe through a combination of capture of democracy and invasion.
Even after than, Russian hard-science education was extremely good (biology they got screwed by ideology).
On the other hand, it does make the player character in certain Modern Warfare/Battlefield single player campaigns mowing down Russian mooks by the dozens seem a bit more realistic 😅
