Do they mean the russian airborne assault which immediately broke the back of russian rotarywing capability because it failed on so many different levels at once?

To be clear I massively disagree with the Venezeula military operation, but as a military helicopter assault operation it was devastatingly successful. As deeply sad as it makes me as a turn of geopolitical events, I can’t help but feeling in a small way amused at how shocked people were about the speed and decisiveness with which the Venezeula helicopter assault operation happened, and how it made all of the broader more general forms of resistance irrelevant in that span of a couple of high intensity hours right around the immediate seat of power in Venezuela.

People seem to almost think “Well the only reason the Venezeula helicopter assault worked was because no one expected they would actually do it and it happened so fast!” to which my reply is that is specifically the point of helicopters, to tactically transgress somewhere unexpected with such speed that even if a theoretical defense was possible the enemy did not think it was likely enough in that place and context to actually have everything set up and ready to go to stop the helicopter assault.

People had a similar reaction of disbelief to the Ukrainian helicopter hot insertion near Pokrovosk with a blackhawk. The reaction was "this would never work in that spot again, there are too many drones! Look if those russian drones which caught the blackhawk on video had been ready they could have blown the blackhawk up easy!’ to which the obvious answer is again, yes it would not work in the same way in the same place again, that is NOT the point of helicopters. The point was nobody was ready for the helicopter until the helicopter was already gone.

Contrast this to the russian helicopter assault which failed strategically and tactically, resulted in high rates of aircraft loss and operationally consigned russian helicopters to backline duties for the russian war machine.

https://www.heliopsmag.com/antares/articles/reports-of-the-death-of-the-helicopter-appear-to-have-been-exaggerated/

https://warontherocks.com/2023/08/the-battle-of-hostomel-airport-a-key-moment-in-russias-defeat-in-kyiv/

The Russians commenced their attack on February 24th with pre-assault strikes across the city, the airbase, and the infiltration corridor. Two 3M14 Kalibr cruise missiles struck Hostomel airport around 6 or 7 a.m. but proved ineffective. One missed the barracks and instead cratered a nearby parade field; the second missed a nearby residential building. The Russian aerospace forces, however, were effective at suppressing some Ukrainian air defenses. Other elements targeted Ukrainian command and control, leaving the Ukrainian air force to contest the sky that morning.

The Russian Aerospace Forces created a corridor for the air assault by successfully jamming some Ukrainian radars and damaging or suppressing two major air defense sites responsible for screening the Dnipro River north of the city. With Ukrainian air defenses weakened, Russian helicopters crossed the Belarusian border and entered Ukrainian airspace at approximately 9:30 a.m. They conducted a low-level, “nap of the earth” infiltration along the Dnipro River to avoid any Ukrainian radars that might have remained operational. They remained undetected until they neared the dam at the Kyiv hydroelectric powerplant just north of Kyiv around 10:30 a.m. After being spotted, Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles downed two of the lead helicopters near the dam. A damaged Ka-52 crash-landed near the river’s shore while a destroyed Mi-24 crashed into the river. Trailing helicopters fired their flares and avoided further losses.

Around 11 a.m., the attack formation neared Hostomel airport. As they approached, the attack helicopters broke to the north — to engage targets on the airfield — and the transport helicopters broke to the south — planning to land and secure the airfield’s barracks and facilities. The Ukrainian Commander, Maj. Vitalii Rudenko, was unaware of approaching helicopters until he heard the chopping of the helicopters’ rotor blades. Minutes later, the sounds of the rotors were drowned out by the sounds of rockets and machine gun fire from the attack helicopters.

But the Russians faced stiffer resistance than they expected. Rudenko had deployed his small force to defend the airfield earlier in the morning. Roughly 20 Ukrainian National Guard soldiers defended the radar at the northern end of the airfield with the ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns while the rest — which included a couple of squads of National Guard reinforcements that had been sent to help defend the airfield earlier in the morning — defended the airfield from battle positions at the airfield’s south. The Ukrainian military had also moved large trucks and other vehicles onto the airfield to make it unserviceable for fixed-wing aircraft until after the vehicles had been moved.

Russia should be embarassed to even show imagery of helicopters in their propaganda, they shit the bed hard with rotarywing military power, one might say they shit the bed about as hard as you can in that realm.

thats fine except MY WALLET DAMN I LEFT IT TOO

Yeah I mean am I surprised Maine is too high off libertarian nonsense to understand how to be genuinely progressive? No… but they found a way to make it work here and I support that. How do you argue against this? You can’t.

The rules are the rules! We are just going to keep saying that every time you bring up a serious problem with the rules!

Org Mode shall set you free

Cool so when they demanded I put my thoughts there and I was worried about getting shut down halfway through I was right. They would have absolutely locked the thread once they were starting to look bad. Goes to show how hollow all of this is for them.

huh? I don’t remember the airplane looking like that

wait no THIS is an airplane I think?

oh no!

too bad!!

damn there goes your tiny little violin

Feature not a bug!

But not nearly smart enough to be CIA.

You do not need to be smart or competent to be in the CIA.

On average I genuinely believe normal community fedi admins are far more competent than the people the CIA tends to hire and hang out with.

For one, CIA picked people are too bigoted and unquestioning of structurally encoded racism to even remotely keep a community stable.

Yeah I guess it is more like the equivalent of hitting the precise spot in the boneyard where a mothballed US jet is parked.

Destroying museum pieces mostly…

Ha, those damn Millenials all they do is play video games they don’t have any practical life skills. Who cares what they think? Why don’t we just fuck them over and get rid of the social safety net we had so we can be filthy rich and have a lavish retirement? What are they going to do about it anyway?

Oh fuck run run run run run run AHHHHHHHHH how do they already know how to fly these so well!?!?!???

Now would be a great time for the world to donate a bunch of solar and battery equipment!

Lynx says hi

awesome!

Watership Down 2: The Bunpire Strikes Back

I mean, the French sure have their issues, but I wouldn’t say they can’t make a proper armored vehicle. They know how to do that as well as pretty much anybody in the world, they also understand artillery better than almost anybody in the world, Exhibit A. being the Caesar SPG.

extends spy glass

Hey I mean Poland apparently built a pretty good tank out of the T-72, it definitely has aspects to it that make it globally relevant but at the end of the day… especially when drones come into the picture, no not having a proper reverse gear I think actually does completely undermine the point in having a main battle tank in the first place. I would rather have all of that logistics in other supplies than a russian tank, they are worse than useless without a fast reverse gear since they cannot fulfill the battlefield role of a main battle tank at a basic tactical level in my opinion.

You can use a russian tank as a combat engineering tool to destroy enemy machine gun nests that have already been surrounded, but you cannot use them as main battle tanks. It is the equivalent of trying to use an airplane with only one wing as a bomber. It needs two wings to fly…

Or… it is like having a Queen on a chess board that can only move towards the enemy side of the board, it almost entirely eliminates the point of having your Queen in the first place, and it certainly makes your Queen into a disposable one time use asset. Yes technically your Queen still is very offensively powerful but it is more accurately described as a guided munition than an actual piece in the same way russian tanks aren’t really main battle tanks.

Comparatively an Abrams is like a proper Queen chess piece, it ideally exists the entire game moving back and forth across your forward assaults, exploiting and creating opportunities and punishing the hubris of the enemy.

There is a story of an Iraqi Abrams playing a crucial lynchpin role in defending a ridiculous number of assaults on a town by overwhelming numbers of fighters, and the Iraqi crew just got good enough that they tactically demolished them one after another. You can’t develop that kind of extreme tactical proficiency over your enemy in an inherently disposable asset such as a russian tank, especially since the crew is considered disposable as well which is psychotic.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/13/the-beast-of-hit-abrams-tank-plays-role-iraqi-fight-against-isis.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/1hnlx9m/iraqi_9th_armored_division_abrams_tank_still/

RENK of France has made a superior powerpack with proper reverse gears, this makes a T-72 into a real tank or at least begins the process.

The aforementioned powerpack provides the maximum road speed of 60-70 km/h and a backing up at a speed of 4-33 km/h. The clutch and transmission brake control valve linkage has been replaced by a steering wheel, while the control system has retained both pedals. These nodes and components drastically increase the cross-country capability of T-72 and T-90 tanks. The required to replace the engine compartment is significantly reduced. It takes about 45 minutes to install the [Powerpack 350S] unit. At present, the replacement of the existing T-72 engines compartments requires about 3 days," the source said.

He added that the Powerpack 350S had already been integrated with the Polish-originated PT-91M Twardy MBTs and PT-91M-based armoured recovery vehicles (ARV) of the Malaysian Armed Forces.

According to the official specifications, the Powerpack 350S system is intended for T-72, T-90, M-84, and PT-91 MBTs, as well as for the vehicles that have a combat weight of 40-55 t. It features a powershift transmission with eight speeds forward and four speeds reverse, an electronically controlled gearbox that can be used in either manual or fully automatic control mode, a generator drive, an air compressor drive, and a fan drive with fully digital speed control. The transmission of Powerpack 350S has a dry weight of 1,800 kg, while the DI16 engine has a dry weight of 1,340 kg.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/archives/archives-land-defense/land-defense-2016/renk-france-to-promote-new-transmission-for-t-72-t-90-mbts-71711161

shrugs I will take incompetent management over drunk, incompetent workers and management.