*Breaks the law

*Is convicted

*Refuses to pay fines

*Stops receiving funds

*shockedpikachu.jpg

At this point I really can’t understand what is driving Orban anymore. He obviously must have known this would happen, and is likely doing it on purpose so that he can point at the EU as the “bad guy” back home, but like… what does he gain from this? Isn’t it better to just get a shitload of free money from the EU that you can funnel to your friends and family than to not do that? If he legitimately dislikes the EU he can just leave.

Maybe he’s just sticking around as long as he can grab cash? It kind of seems like he’s going for the “see how far you can push it before you’re kicked out” play. Essentially trying to find out how much of an obstructing, law-breaking, corrupt asshole he has to be before the rest of the EU finally has enough and kicks him out, at which point he can peace out to some safe-haven (I’ve heard there are spare rooms in some of Putins palaces).

Well it’ll still be climate change, just a more abrupt one.

Looking up “historic” election victories for the German far-right

I think it’s horrible to see what the Taliban government is doing to oppress the people of Afghanistan. I’m also surprised that so few people of Afghanistan showed any real will to prevent Taliban from taking power. They had 20 years to prepare, with ample support and loads of equipment from NATO and others, and when the foreign forces left they just … capitulated.

It’s baffling to me that seemingly nobody was willing to fight to prevent this. Thousands of people were at the airport during the last evacuations, and I vividly remember videos of people holding on to cargo planes that were taking off in an effort to get out of the country. Lots of people clearly knew it was going to get bad, but seemingly nobody was willing to fight to prevent it. I honestly have a hard time understanding how that happened.

Let them use the ATACMS too.

The currently most viable counter to artillery in Ukraine today appears to be either fpv drones, which have relatively short range and limited payloads, or counter-battery radar + artillery, which exposes your artillery by putting it in range of enemy artillery.

Ukraine typically has more accurate artillery than Russia, and seems to win more artillery duels, but of course still has an issue because of Russias huge volume of guns.

Targeting the drone operators is definitely something both sides do- they were considered priority targets last time I heard someone mention it. The issue, as someone else pointed out, is locating and hitting a small, highly mobile person or group that can operate from behind cover and concealment. That turns out to be pretty hard. Just consider that an infantryman’s primary survival strategy is “stay hidden when you can, covered when you can, and move as fast as possible when exposed”, and that drone operators are doing exactly that, while also not needing to stick their head out to be effective.

The issue with cruise missiles and bombers as a response to artillery fire is the response time and air defences.

A cruise missile launched from well within Russia takes long enough to reach the target that mobile artillery has sufficient time to get out. You also need a significant amount of missiles if you want to get any through the air defences.

Bombers struggle to get in range for conventional bombs without being shot down. They also have the issue of response time.

Cruise missiles and bombers are more suited to rather stationary targets, like a command Center, FOB, strongpoint or trench system.

I’ve been missing an alternative to Facebook that I can use for non-anonymous planning of events and communication in hobby groups etc. and I had never heard of any of the “Facebook-type” federated stuff before!

Now I just need to convince a bunch of people that this is viable to use without being the annoying guy…

Long range artillery has pretty hard limits, and once you approach the 100km range, time to target becomes a real issue, even for missiles that can be shot down.

Modern anti-air hat a range of several hundred km, and has been combat tested. More short-range systems (< 50 km) are in use (with huge success) every day in Ukraine. Of course bombers have also improved, but I wouldn’t put money on the bombers having improved relative to the AA.

Ps. I’m not the person downvoting you, I think you make a decent point, I just disagree :)

I specified “a reasonable distance from shore” because an important part of the point of a carrier is exactly that it can stay easily 100 km from shore and still strike far inland. If a carrier is in range of shore-based torpedoes, they’ve likely messed up long ago.

As for bombers: They’re historically the major threat to carriers, but I don’t see any modern developments that make modern bombers any more of a threat to modern carriers than WW2 era bombers were to WW2 era carriers.

Saying they were always more trouble than they were worth is a bit of a miss though: They completely dominated for a period, to the point where entire columns would be redirected or kept in port if intelligence arrived saying that a certain battleship had left port and was on the hunt.

As for the “modern” aircraft carrier: I think it will remain viable until we see a fundamental paradigm shift in how naval warfare is conducted. A carrier is at the centre of a carrier strike group, and is probably one of the most well protected places on the planet at any time, and can move at over 40 knots. I have a hard time imagining what could locate and take out an alert carrier in reasonable distance from shore, other than another carrier group.