Russians are employing this dastardly new technology called “mines” which no army on earth has encountered before, least of all those of the NATO members like France, Germany and the UK.
The 300 Spartans were also better trained. Still got merxied by Xerxes.
One thing that never seems to get brought up in discussion of the battle of Thermopylae is that the Spartans also brought ~900 conscripted helots to fight for them (according to Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus estimated it closer to 1000). They were still totally outnumbered (combined forces of the city states was somewhere between 5,200-7,700 men compared to the 120,000 that fought for Persia).
But the bulk of Sparta’s army being untrained slaves conscripted into fighting somewhat degrades the idea of this elite fighting force™ that works like 300 like to pretend they were.
Oh yeah that movie is hot fascist garbage.
There’s so much emphasis on how the Spartans are the dangerous, tough, manly men, the only force that can save the West™ from the removed other.
My favourite scene for this is when Leonidas yells at the Greeks for not being professional soldiers, 'cos IRL some 400 of those would’ve been from Thebes, which not only also had a professional military, it had a larger and better trained one, and would already have defeated Sparta in battle multiple times by this point.
sparta had one of the best propaganda campaigns that sprang forth after the humiliating loss of a king and his elite guard at thermopylae.
the fucking thing is STILL working
My favourite scene for this is when Leonidas yells at the Greeks for not being professional soldiers, 'cos IRL some 400 of those would’ve been from Thebes, which not only also had a professional military, it had a larger and better trained one, and would already have defeated Sparta in battle multiple times by this point.
Ahhh so the Americans looking down on the Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Taliban despite losing to them is actually glorious Western Culture ™ inherited from the Greeks.
Essentially. And Thebes would later humiliate Sparta so thoroughly in a series of events bordering on slapstick that Thebes became the dominant power for a time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1x9np5fys8
Thebes had the secret weapon, which was higher than average amount of gay sex which made the soldiers bond with each other and fight harder.
The longevity of this propaganda is truly astonishing, and it’s not surprising that a group of people as fucked as the Spartans are such a well-known reference point of supposed heroism in the West’s increasingly fascistic culture.
There is no actual historical evidence that the Spartans were militarily superior to anyone else. They were militarily insignificant by the time the actual myth about them had emerged after the war against Persia through their propaganda. For instance their military capacities would later be laughable compared to the Macedonians, let alone the Romans. But the time of the Roman invasion of Greece they became little more than a tourist attraction. As someone else here has noted, they would soon be out-classed by Thebes and their notable general Epaminondas. The Thebans were also notable during this period for their elite warriors made up 150 pairs of lovers: The Sacred Band. The Thebans would later be outclassed by the Macedonians.
Beyond not being better fighters - which doesn’t matter on the individual level really because what actually matters isn’t how fancy you can swing a sword but things like discipline, organization, morale, stamina, courage, etc., training, etc (another reason why the idea that GoT is realistic is laughable to say the least) - Sparta didn’t show any real tradition of tactical or strategic brilliance.
Actually, Thermopylae was a disproof of the Spartan strategy that they should try oppose the Persians on land and then hold the Isthmus. But the Spartans then tried to insist that they should try that AGAIN, opposing them similarly along the Pelopponese. The Athenians knew that this was wrong, and that they could far better face them at sea and by retreating from the mainland. The Athenians actually had to trick the Spartans into following their plan, hence the battle at Salamis.
Honestly the Spartans contributed little if anything to human culture.
Also reminder that the the Spartan elite would annually declare war on their own helots every autumn, giving them the right to ritually murder them at whim, and this was probably a right of passage for the young men.
There is no actual historical evidence that the Spartans were militarily superior to anyone else
except winning the pelopenesian war & dominating the greek states for decades. they were just a random city that accidentally won the largest war of classical greek history? you can say their reputation is inflated but they obviously were top of the class in military matters during their (brief) heyday
how fancy you can swing a sword but things like discipline, organization, morale, stamina, courage, etc., training, etc
the sources for the spartans make clear the emphasis for their military program was not in producing people good at ‘swinging a sword’, but well-drilled and disciplined units. lots of myths are spun about thermopylae but you can’t say the spartans there lacked those characteristics.
nor was thermopylae ‘proof’ of a bad strategy, the greek alliance hadn’t set out to defeat the persian army in detail with that small force, it was a delaying action that very likely aided the preparations of the cities to the south and contributed to the final victory–which was not borne solely from Athenian naval victory: they also defeated the persians on land.
i’m with you for the (attested) picture of sparta being a horrific society, but you don’t need to create a parallel myth of spartan insignificance to prove that.
You seem to have misread my point about individual fighting. I am not suggesting the Spartans though you could Jedi your way through war. They were very aware that the opposite is the case and so are known to have banned wrestling competitions and such, as distractions from proper military training. I was simply pointing out the invalidity of the idea that they were individually superior super soldiers - a part of the myth - and that this would have been irrelevant anyhow.
You seem to have misunderstood my other point. We are not talking about whether they could effectively wage war in their social context. Obviously they could. So could everyone else. They were notable in the group. We are discussing a myth which has long permeated throughout Western culture of the Spartans as this Herculean race of warriors unparalleled in the arts of war, whereas there is no evidence for this.
During the Archaic period they showed no superiority whatsoever. Their power increased during this period, but this is almost certainly simply due to the fact that they were more populous, having more citizens than the neighboring poleis. They were one of the largest cities in ancient Greece. No sources tell thus anything about any peculiar form of military excellence compared to any other group of people. Ancient stories from the time in fact tell of Argos, not Sparta, as were the best warriors were from. In a later battle with the Argives in 550BC they would come out equally badly. Nor do the Spartan poems/songs we have from this time suggest their eminence. The end point of this period includes Thermopylae. Herodotus was born a few years before the battle. He gushes about them, because he lived in a climate of their propaganda. But he does not actually produce any evidence in his descriptions of the battle that show any kind of actual superiority. Operationally, they fight like everyone else. All they did was try take advantage of terrain, like every other army in history with two neurons to rub together. Again, it was, tactically, a crushing defeat. We know the accounts are propagandized because the Spartans did not make up the majority of the fighters there, thought they led it, yet we almost only hear about them, including in the generation after the battle. It is only after Thermopylae that they build up their legendary reputation. They surrendered at the battle of Sphakteria (425 BC).
It is only after Thermopylae and the Persian war that the Spartan develop some very limited tactics that give them some edge, perhaps, but this was balanced by many other factors. Their basic institutions remained like those of the other Hellenes. They were never militarized from birth to be supersoldiers. No source ever tells us or demonstrates their individual superiority as warriors or generals. The had no proper light infantry, and their cavalry was worthless (see Xenophon, Hellenika 6.4.10-11). They were regularly soundly defeated when battles relied on these other factors. The only edge they had was in their phalanx tactics. They were disciplined with decent officers, communications, commands and manoever, physically fit and effective at formation drill, which other states didn’t do and was significant. This allowed them to win pitched hoplite battles, until the defeats by Thebes at Tegyra, Leuktra and Second Mantineia, but this is a basic form of warfare and speaks rather to how unsophicated archaic and classical greek warfare was. But their only significance was in the Greek Pelopponese, and was they faced militaries with far more sophicated militaries they didn’t stand a chance.
For a brief period of time - and only after Thermopylae - they were better at a a very limited form of pitched hoplite warfare due to their emphasis on training and discipline. But they showed no significant advances in any other areas. Actually, precisely their overeliance on this form of warfare, due to their social class structure (which didn’t really allow for light infantry and effective cavalry), lead to their military abilities being very limited and falling behind other powers. While their superiority amongst local Greek states in this sense was clear, it was overall marginal in my opinion when we include other factors like military diversity, strategy, and economic power. The dominance at this specific form of warfare lasted, say, 150 years. Their actual political domination of Greece far less time, say 30 years.
Critical support to @[email protected] in comrades protracted people’s war against the myth of Sparta.
man i do not need to haggle over the particular meanings you had in your head, your comment was at best unclear or simply incorrect, judging by how much you’ve backpedaled the original points here—sometimes you can just take and L and admit it,
but don’t talk down to me like i don’t know how to read, i know what “no actual historical evidence that the Spartans were militarily superior to anyone else” means, and nothing you wrote previously or subsequently supports it. it’s a damn tired shtick to act like anyone who disputes what you say just doesn’t ‘get it’
What meanings in my head? What? You are the one who has given a totally arbitrary definition of military superiority of ‘just winning lol’, when that not what anyone else means when they are talking about the quality of a military. It’s not haggling over what is in my head. I’m not talking down to you. I was actually trying to be chill and discuss a historical question in detail, and you’re getting annoyed by the detail, because you think it’s condescending? Like sorry if you think that they you need to grow up. This is how these discussions work. If you say something which someone thinks is wrong and they cite extensive evidence and sources, then it’s not on them if that annoys you. This is called clarification and explanation. If you think there is backpedaling then yeh, you’ve misread. What do you want? People not to tell you you’ve misread when you have? Does everyone just get to decide what everyone else means in their heads? If you’re not down to do any of that then don’t post an aggressive, sassy comment about a minor academic question where you show you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Either respond properly with arguments and evidence and respectfully, instead of making up detached-from-reality accusations, or don’t respond in the first place.
You final comment is literal nonsense. I’ve explained exhaustively how they were not systematically or institutionally superior. All the current experts in these field think you’re wrong. I’m not just saying that if someone disagrees with me then they ‘dont get it’. Where did I say that?Again, just read what I wrote. It says or implies that no-where. I’m saying that specifically you didn’t correctly understand some points (which is fine, happens to everyone), made clear why and then gave extensive argument for why I think your position on the academic issue was wrong. Your opinion happens to contradict the current collective expert opinion that has upended the field in the last few decades.
So, frankly, I don’t know what L’s your chatting about, and honestly you’re just making obvious arrogance and the fact that you don’t know what you talking about.
Kindly don’t respond to me again. Don’t want to waste the oxygen.
Iirc Spartan dominance only lasted around 200 years. I will give them credit for resisting Christianity the longest of any pagan group in the Roman empire though. But early Christianity before Roman adoption was actually kinda based, so points reduced again.
Thebes is cooler anyways, gay lovers kill protofascists is a nice story
There was a decent amount of hold outs all across Greece well past Roman adoption. It took a lot longer for Christianity to become the dominant and then only religion in the empire, and most converts were after Constantine made it legal(but not dominant) but before it was enforced.
more like 30 years, lol. they weren’t very dominant even on the morea peninsula until the persian war, but rose in prominence through that war & the following peloponnesian war.
thing is that the persian wars & the peloponnesian wars weren’t small or short conflicts, so the victors can’t be seen as nobodies even if the accomplishment didn’t secure them a political legacy
Thermopylae was a major victory for the Persians. Again, Thermopylae, whether an attempt to delay or not, was a crushing strategic defeat.Their initial strategy was to hold the pass against the Persians successfully, not to get surrounded and be massacred. Plain and simply strategic disaster. It allowed the Persians to continue down the peninsular. They were barely delayed. There is little to no evidence it actually inspired the Greeks, and it almost certainly in fact demoralized them and inspired the Persians, which when you think about it is not at all surprising. The Athenians had to flee Athens and let it burn. Attica was conquered. In what way did a couple days delay change any of this? The last stand wasn’t even what allowed the tactical retreat. The knew from their scouts the night before that the Persians had surrounded them, and the rest then disengaged without the Spartans last stand making a difference. In any case the group was small, and so was not decisive in the future.
At Plateia, the Spartans would even try to get out of the main position in the battle line, offering it to the Athenians, who a generation before had beaten the Persians at Marathon, which also contradicts the idea that at the time they felt themselves militarily superior. They were probably also aware that in this open space their would suffer at the hands of the Persian archers and cavalry.
On the Salamis point: Herodotus directly refutes the point by noting the Athenians tricking them. The Athenians knew that they would have a better chance at Salamis, rather than in open waters which is what the Spartans wanted. The Spartans wanted to retreat to the Isthmus, to repeat Thermopylae essentially.
The Peloponnesian war is a whole other can of worms, because we are talking about a generation later. At the outset, as Thucydides makes clear, the Athenians appeared to have the clear advantage due to their navy and economic superiority. Sparta had no navy and was economically backwards in comparison, with no public treasury. Furthermore, Sparta’s citizen population was declining steadily in a trend that would never reverse. The Spartan’s used their dominance of the Peloponnese to form militias from other poleis as the bulk of their force against the Athenian alliance, giving them a land army larger than the Athenians. We can call this entire group ‘the Spartan forces’ if one likes, but that just seems misleading.
In the early stages of the war, they proved how ineffective they were. They had one strategy: marching a larger land army up to Attica and hoping the Athenians would be stupid enough to face them on the open field. They came, they burnt some farms, then they went home when campaigning season was over. At the same time the Athenians easily dominated the seas. The Athenians won at Sphakteria in 425 BC., and lost at Delion in 424 BC and Amphipolis in 422 BC. The Spartan’s more effectively sent a force to Thrace to threaten Athenian economic interests. The Peace of Nikias, 421 BC left Athens as well of as at the outset of the war. Sparta had achieved no main war objectives. They were vulnerable in the middle of the war due to their treaty with Argos expiring, who declared war on Sparta soon after. The Spartans at this point were desperate for a treaty.
The Athenians were showing a clear overall superiority in the war, up to this point. The Spartans were simply unable to beat them soundly and achieve any serious objectives. In fact they were begging for a treaty to get their capture men back. They could only beat them once the Athenians stupidly, in their hubris, took on the catastrophic expedition to Sicily, where they lost half their fleet and thousands of their veteran soldiers. The Spartans then allied with the Persians, because the Persians correctly perceived Athens as the bigger geopolitical threat.
In other words, Sparta’s victory was due to a singe majorly stupid but lucky strategic error by the Athenians, tactical mistakes of the commander, all indicating hubristic overconfidence due to their superior position, combined with support for Sparta from Persia (the greatest power in that part of the world at that time). But it in no way demonstrates that the Spartans were better at war in any systematic or institutional sense. Once they had won well then of course they could dominate for 30 years. War is the continuation of politics by other means, and how effective you are is based on your general, systematic, institutional capacity to engage in violent, coercive action that will allow you to achieve your political aims. Sparta did get the latter, but by luck, frankly.
Peloponnesian war is a whole other can of worms
the can of worms most relevant to impressions of spartan superiority, because they won. if the Spartans were so disadvantaged in all of these myriad ways you’re talking about–and war is so intimately a production of the polictical and social forces of a state as you state–how did they win? how can it be just luck that produces success or failure if who makes the decisions, who fights, who does diplomacy, etc. are the products of the totality of sociopolitical circumstances in a state?
why is the lucky mistake that precipitates spartan victory against all odds ten years(!) before their victorious conclusion of the conflict–with brutal terms levied against their rivals
Calm down. Again, you haven’t read what I wrote. Your mixing up different periods. It’s a different can of worms because if you want to actually understand Sparta’s military you have to understand it in context, historically. Sparta’s military changed over time. Again: there is literally no evidence from the time of Thermopylae that the Spartans were militarily superior. The only indication we have is that they were, later, slightly, marginally better at drilling and moving in formation than most other Greeks, but this only came later and did not given them overwhelming superiority in phalanx warfare, and did not make up for their gaping inadequacies in cavalry, light infantry, the navy, and having and economic base to do any of those things. The other Greeks states they competed against were not particularly militarily impressive by historical standards either until the post-Phillip II Macedonian military. Economic organization is a part of warfare. There are many components to military effectiveness and the Spartans only had a minor, marginal, historically unimportant one which doesn’t explain their brief dominance over the local weak Hellenic poleis of the Peloponnese. I’ve spelled this out in my comments above. We were talking about Thermopylae on the one hand. I explained clearly why I think you were wrong. If you want to read serious historical analysis on it then go ahead.
I’m not sure what you’re not understanding. You are literally just saying that because they won this war, hence they were superior militarily. What do you think you are even arguing here? This just becomes a kind of tautological trivialism. You’re literally just doing vulgar materialism as a form of hand-waving metaphysics. You don’t just wave your hand and say ‘war and so victory are the product of these forces’ and then someone leap to the conclusion that this tells you that Sparta military was greatly significant from a military pov. No one is arguing whether they won. By your logic, if Mount Etna has irrupted and wiped out the Athenians, and the Spartan’s had been superstitious (a social factor) and escaped, then they would have been superior. Absurd.
It’s been explained clearly and carefully all of the ways in which they were militarily backward and how they won the Peloponnesian war not out of any institutional superiority, but out of luck and Persian intervention. The discussion is about whether Sparta’s military reputation and significance was a myth. It very, very largely was. No-one studies any of those aspects of military strategy, tactics, operations, combined arms, or military development. You put words into my mouth and said that I said that Sparta was ‘insignificant’, which, apart from the vagueness of what you even mean here, if you’d actually read what I wrote, is clearly not the case. Again, the point it just that their military importance and significance has been massively overinflated, overstated, mystically glorified when in fact they were not better at war than anyone else on average. If you’re going to put words in my mouth and not respond properly to anything, then frankly, I’m completely justified in responding by making that clear.
You’re wrong, and the current group of experts disagree with you. If you want this clarified I recommend you go read serious studies of Sparta released in the last few decades which have revolutionized our understanding of them, above all Stephen Hodkinson.
I have been polite and explained yourself, and you are suddenly getting aggressive like a teenager. If you are going to get angry and show your ignorance because you can’t bothered to read what I said, not respond to any points, then disengage and kindly fuck off. You’re trying to start an internet argument with some Marxist on the internet (who thought it was just a friendly discussion about history, but more the fool me) about Sparta of all things.
While I agree (not that it matters, I know fuck all of serious history for the time period) with your analysis, and appreciate the insight, I struggle to see how @[email protected] was in any way antagonistic in loves reply here. You tell love to calm down, but love don’t seem agitated to me, and honestly that’s kinda rude to tell someone to calm down. Dolores was disagreeing with you, but where was love rude or behaving “like a teenager”?
love hasn’t acted like that in this thread specifically, but in the comments below things did get a bit heated tbf
The only things Spartans were trained better at was catching and killing slaves. Their prowess is ahistoric propaganda.
…Wait that actually makes them a very good comparison to NATO.
good point!Grubby mud people they were
Pretty weird how 300 portrays Persia as a slaver tyranny and the Spartans as live free or die hard chads, but in reality Spartans fought with helots (slave conscripts) and Persia had much fewer slaves in comparison. The east must always be evil, project all our western sins on the east.
Listen to this quote on this period of Iranian history:
On the whole, in the Achaemenid empire, there was only small number of slaves in relation to the number of free persons and slave labor was in no position to supplant free labor. The basis of agriculture was the labor of free farmers and tenants and in handicrafts the labor of free artisans, whose occupation was usually inherited within the family, likewise predominated. In these countries of the empire, slavery had already undergone important changes by the time of the emergence of the Persian state. Debt slavery was no longer common. The practice of pledging one’s person for debt, not to mention self-sale, had totally disappeared by the Persian period. In the case of nonpayment of a debt by the appointed deadline, the creditor could turn the children of the debtor into slaves. A creditor could arrest an insolvent debtor and confine him to debtor’s prison. However, the creditor could not sell a debtor into slavery to a third party. Usually the debtor paid off the loan by free work for the creditor, thereby retaining his freedom.
So they had slaves, as did many empires of the time, but relatively few and mostly debtors working off debt to their creditor directly and not a massive system of war slaves like Sparta had.
a lot of western ideals of human rights and democracy are based on the Persians anyway
Zac Snyder and his consequences…
Listen to this quote on this period of Iranian history:
where is it from
Real talk, this person is deeply disturbed, and they need to grow up
NATO is forcing completely absurd tactics and strategies on the Ukrainians that has cost tens of thousands of lives, and this is why we need to support Ukraine even more with more NATO training and wonderweapons!The Ukrainians are much better trained than the Russians! It’s just the fact that the Russians are cheating by having a MIC of their own
no more half measures walter
Don’t forget, they’re also saying that Russia is using human wave attacks which also isn’t fair.
Their Human Wave Attacks
Our BraveCivilian PopulationSoldiersWhich We Forcibly ConscriptedFighting To The Last With Naught But A Molotov And An Old Rifle“When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who follows picks up the rifle and sells it to an Italian fascist”
No federation, but aren’t mines a war crime because they outlast the war and hurt civilians?
Most of the world agreed to ban mines in the Ottowa Convention, but as usual the countries that really matter (US, Russia, China, etc.) didn’t sign it and aren’t bound by it.
Meanwhile, I’m just here thinking “Wait, people think it’s not happening quickly?”
I mean, I haven’t looked at any maps in a hot minute, but each time I check, it seems Ukraine controls more territory? People get that it’s a real war right? “Quick” is relative.
Right now it’s about a wash, as Ukriane keeps giving up territory in the North and gaining territory in the South, all of it incredibly small.
Each time I look more Ukrainians are dead and they’re still at the perimeter of the first of several defensive lines out in place specifically to slowly wear out the Ukrainian army and it’s NATO supply.
I’ve had fun times looking at the maps of one Lib commentator move steadily backwards over the last week. On Thursday it was two thirds of the way to Tokmak, On Friday the Ukranians had taken Verbove and were marching through Ichankove. Today they’ve declared total victory over the town they declared taken 6 days ago.
Haha that’s incredible. Do you think they realize, or is it just pure
?I think they have to realise, but their posts are all “Ukrainians increase their advance over the evil Russians at (place 2 km north of yesterday)”
Hilarious
People have been brainwormed by the rapid pace of the Iraq war et al where the US took out the air defence the night before landing and steamrolled everything but the republican guard, which they just dumped several kilotonnes of conventional explosive on instead. Once you have S300/400s that prevent deep air penetration things slow down fast.
NATO tactics assume air superiority.
I keep harping on this point again and again because I really cannot get across how fucking stupid it is: YOU DO NOT ASSUME AIR SUPREMACY OVER ANOTHER NATION’S AIRSPACE, YOU FUCKING INCOMPETENT IDIOTS. YOU CANNOT PROJECT AIR POWER 500 MILES DEEP INTO A NATION WITH A COMPREHENSIVE AIR DEFENSE NETWORK, RADARS, AND SAM SITES. YOUR STEALTH TECHNOLOGY IS NOT INVINCIBLE, AND YOUR SHITTY OVERPRICED BULLSHIT F-35 WILL GET SHOT DOWN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND THIS IS WHY YOU REFUSE TO DEPLOY THEM ON ACTUAL FRONTLINES.
Then again, since NATO keeps doubling-down on this idea it just means they’re more likely to get fucking annihilated anytime they fight a near-peer in conventional warfare, so critical support to the failson Wunderwaffen generals I guess?
The assumption is nonsense but completely consistent with NATO transforming itself from a force designed to fight a peer military to a glorified colonial gendarmarie following the collapse of the USSR. They drank their own Kool Aid about the end of history and are paying for it now.
YOUR STEALTH TECHNOLOGY IS NOT INVINCIBLE, AND YOUR SHITTY OVERPRICED BULLSHIT F-35 WILL GET SHOT DOWN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
I absolutely need a variant of the “Sorry, We Didn’t Know It Was Invisible” poster but for an F-35.
Lol, what us this referencing?
During NATO’s “intervention” in the Balkans, they sent what was at the time the world’s most advanced and only existing model of stealth fighter, the F-117, to bomb some shit.
Serbian air defence shot one of them down, and not even by accident, they just straight up saw the “stealth fighter” on radar and smacked it with a missile. Later they put out this balling propaganda poster dunking on the Americans.
fantastic, thank you
Go look on Reddit, you’ll see the same people who hem and haw that NATO is purely defensive gloating about bombing runs
NATO has an offensive doctrine (despite of what they claim to be), so it will always need air superiority to invade another country.
The USSR (Stalin) did the right thing by immediately investing into air defense technology starting from 1945, because they figured out instantly how the Western capitalist countries (and what would eventually form NATO) would behave.
One of my favorite Stalin trivia bits is that he wrote a personal note to a factory berating them for not making enough Ilyushin fighters.
You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.
Verbage like a disappointed dad lol
I think it says a lot about the countries NATO has been fighting that something like “assume air superiority” isn’t laughed out of the room. It’s because they are mostly in the business of destroying third world nations and haven’t fought wars nearly so much as campaigns to exterminate resistance.
It’s a fundamental flaw in the fascistic thinking of the West. Assuming superiority. “We are the civilized, evolved supreme people, and they are primitive subhumans.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760
There are no mines, it’s all just shovels. The Ukrainian forces step on the shovels and get hit in the face. Russian shovel technology is too advanced for NATOists to overcome.
Accidentally implying the Russians are ubermensch who can overcome guns with shovels to bolster morale.
Once your soldiers fight better with plowshares than swords, you have truly mastered warfare
While you wasted your time with NATO tactics, I mastered the spade.
The russians don’t have hypersonic missiles, they’re just really good at throwing shovels super hard and super far and super fast
Just crawl on your belly over the mines and they’ll be added to your inventory
One thing that I think doesn’t get discussed that much is that military aid from NATO allies is great and all but providing tanks to Ukraine (for example) on the face of it, sounds pretty swell but unless troops are trained to operate that particular tank then they will be unable to be efficient and coordinated on the battlefield.
This varies depending on what is being provided. Obviously, for a gun, there’s less of a learning curve than a missile battery or a helicopter which is of a significantly different design to what the Ukrainian military is experienced in operating in the theatre of war.
But there’s a narrative that has developed in the mainstream audience in the west that you just plop down some additional tanks or what have you and it’ll just *work*. But this is war, not some strategy game, and the average person doesn’t seem to have any grasp of the realities on the ground.
But when I play HOI IV I can just click the button and upgrade the equipment? I think it’s you that doesn’t get how works
Volkssturm tactics have been used by Ukraine since day one. They don’t give a good goddamn if the “tank crew” can do their job or not.
I’m sorry but no amount of training on the Ukrainian side is going to make up for Russia producing 2.5 million shells a year, that’s just the maths
They’ve been taught to duck tho
If you train them hard enough they turn into Neo from the matrix and can dodge bullets or stop them by pure force of will
I love soviet tactics, its literally finding out countering western overcomplicated and extremely expensive wunderwaffen with the cheapest shit
super advanced jets? outfly these 9 missiles that we can replace instantly
Long distance stealth bombers? Attach rocket boosters to a plane that scares the US for decades
Its hilarious
Yeah modern war has shown that expensive shit just gets blown up. Billion dollar jet blown up by million dollar missile. Launcher for those missiles blown up by thousand dollar bomb drone.
Oh you’re doing some weird thing where you amass all your force in one point in order to cause a breakthrough, which you then push as far as you can? We make deep battle lines and disrupt your logistical capabilities.
Oh you’ve got super fancy tanks? Have you heard of landmines?
Create a whole naval doctrine centered around carrier’s and their defence? Hypersonic cruise missile that blows it up in one hit, rendering almost 80 years of NATO doctrine fucking useless. Hell, even the DPRK doesn’t but somehow america doesn’t.
Super complicated top of the line tank hailed the world over (leopards), gets owned by dudes with soviet t72s and t90s
Super complicated top of the line tank hailed the world over (leopards), gets owned by dudes with soviet t72s and t90s.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Tigers in WWII got owned by the T-34.
People talk a lot about its design, but first off: transmission broke. Secondly the German cats might’ve been designed well (I disagree on a lot of forms) but if they can’t be produced, and they can’t be utilised effectively in the war that they are created for, then their design isn’t actually good. Design isn’t just a questionbof “who can think up the coolest thing?” It’s also - and much more so - a question of “what is realistically possible?”
Saying Soviet design was “worse” because it was simpler or not as fancy is silly. Soviet design was better, because while it might not have as many fancy doodads, it was actually able to be produced, used, maintained and repaired. What good is your tank if it never even shows up on the battlefield?
It’s the same with the F16s Ukraine is allegedly receiving. This supposed wonderjet can’t handle dirt on the landing field, it can’t deal that well with rain, and it requires very specialised crew. I dunno if it’s stats are better or whatever, but it doesn’t matter if it can’t even take off.
And this attitude is so typical for the west!
“Our leopards will crush the enemy”
they might’ve, if they didn’t run headfirst into landmines before anything else happened.
Our bastions in Afghanistan are filled with high-tech, they will crush any engagement with the Taleban ".
they might, if they weren’t perpetually undermanned by people too tired to stand because a child with a rifle kept the base on high alert all night.
Our chinooks are able to transport troops anywhere.
They might be, if you had any troops to transport.I forgot we had
around lolPeople also tend to forget that the T-34 was operational in 1941 but the Tiger didn’t appear on the battlefield until about a year and a half later.
There are plenty of Nazi war diaries of German troops pissing and shitting themselves when they found that their anti-tank weapons couldn’t hurt T-34s or KVs in 1941.
also they made about 50,000 t-34s and just over 1000 tigers
There are plenty of Nazi war diaries of German troops pissing and shitting themselves when they found that their anti-tank weapons couldn’t hurt T-34s or KVs in 1941.
although not to be a downer, this is mitigated by the fact that t34s were very rare at that point (as the soviets were smack dab in the middle of rearmament). They mostly encountered the weaker BT-7’s and T-36 and T38. It took until a year or two until they were really fucked. The Soviets were the only side that truly knew how to win that war, their main tank could go at very high speeds while 1v1ing the tiger tank. Germans were fucked by 43.
🤓 the vmf didnt operate hypersonic missiles
Oh you’ve got super fancy tanks? Have you heard of landmines?
Also a guy in a ditch with a timed satchel explosive, iirc that was a great number of tank deaths in ww2, they would attach it in the perfect spot under a tank and have guys camp out in a hidden trench for days
super advanced jets? outfly these 9 missiles that we can replace instantly
Not just the super expensive jets, but pilots that take years and hundreds of actual flight hours to train to be minimally competent.
Meanwhile, some random faceless operator casually presses the launch button from hundreds of miles away (Soviet/Russian Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) are highly networked) and your Top Gun Maverick is dead.
Even a “mainstream” western source disproves their points lmao —> https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-troops-abandoning-us-tactics-111955873.html
I still want to know what level of brainworms would lead to them to smugly making a point, defeating that point extensively and then arriving to the conclusion that their point was absolutely correct. Its like their subconsciousness was trying to correct them mid post to no avail.
I think it’s just because they have an idealist view of what “better trained” is that doesn’t account for that, if you aren’t trained for what you are actually doing, you aren’t better trained.
Training must always be considered relative to conditions, like evolutionary fitness. We can say that humans are “more evolved” than the Leedsichthys (a prehistoric fish) because they have a longer evolutionary history, but that doesn’t mean shit if a human and a revived Leedsichthys are in a diving competition.
Likewise, the portion of training Ukrainian soldiers got that depends on assumed air superiority is literally less relevant than Home Ec cooking classes they might have taken.
I’ve been seeing this a lot from the libs who’ve been wandering in here the past few days lol
What’s a mine? Like a mineshaft?
Like that movie, Enemy Mine
Only it’s a explosive device instead of a hopeful sci-fi tale starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gosset Jr.
Landmine. Explosive thingy you step on that then kills or cripples you. Something very common that has been around for ages. Several nations have issues with mines left behind after wars long gone by. As a result several armies have experience with handling warfare in heavily mined areas.
Please don’t be a whoosh
To clarify, I was poking fun at it being mysterious. Because they ARE so common. Sorry if it came off as too legitimate of a comment.
Hahaha it was definitely a woosh for me, but no worries! I often have a hard time parsing sarcastic tone on text (Neurodivergency or English as a second language? Who can tell? Why not both?) I generally err on the side of just assuming sincerety, that way the worst case is someone tells me woosh - and hey maybe somebody else weren’t sarcastic, but thought the same.
All good! I thought about finding a better way to word the whoosh part because it felt like I was being aggressive, but I really meant it as more of an internal dialogue “oh no! I hope they didn’t get whooshed”
I decided I couldn’t find a better way so I just ran with it.
No worries, it didn’t feel aggressive at all ♥️
NATO tactics assume air superiority
Ah good thing no enemies of NATO know this and have invested a ton of resources into SAM technology!
No, no, no. Air superiority is when your planes are more expensive. You see, the more pricey the plane the more superior the air. Missiles are cheap, and thus can’t contribute to air superiority.
NOOOOOOOO THE PANTHER AND TIGER TANKS ARE SUPERIOR
Hehe T-34 go brrrr
