Ukraine - Russia Conflict

Well, aren't you Mr Cheerful this morning.

I'm Mr. Reality or Mr. Pragmatic. You want cheerful? Go find a Walmart greeter. ;-)

I was in grade school in the 80's and of course everyone assumed WWIII was right around the corner. All of the doomsday/ end of the world/ Red Dawn stuff out there. Just the sort of thing for an Elementary/ Junior High kid to think about...

Like...5th or 6th grade, the topic came up in a class, one of the movies had just released, and being near Jacksonville, FL we all knew or figured how it would end. Of course some kids thought being 20-30 miles away from a base made it okay (at the time J-ville had 5 within 50 miles, Cecil, NAS Jax, NAS Mayport, King's Bay with our boomers, NS Mayport, and the Int'l airport with the Air Guard). Bombs don't destroy something that far away! Ah, youth and optimism.

Our teacher, Mrs. Rodgers, had a mental break from being a teacher and dropped her facade into human being mode. She had a few sentences on fallout and then "all of the trains and interstates and other stuff here" before catching herself a minute later.

That's the first time I really ever thought about infrastructure as a target. Yeah, I was a special kind of kid, but that's for a therapist.

Anyway, a metric shitton of Americans, preppers included who think they can ride it out, are clueless because of infrastructure. What? We think the Chinese and Soviets don't know where our major telecommunication centers are located? Air traffic control? Interstate exchanges? Importance of a bridge we think nothing about? Railroad marshalling yards? Power, water treatment, the effects of an EMP on these locales....and the list goes on?

Sheeeeit. Patriot please.

Americans don't think about targeting lists or priorities. You might think your city is okay, but if the bad guys decide to spend a warhead on your telecom hub instead of one 100 miles away because...reasons, it doesn't matter. Hell, we do it. I know a guy with Masters in Transportation Engineering or some nonsense...the degree you think is what you use to become a manager at UPS or a shipping company, who works for an OGA. He analyses (we haven't spoken in well over a decade) transportation networks and all of their variables: how many vehicles an hour. Weight of the vehicles. Weather effects. Choke points. You name it.

Other nations do this and the knowledge you have to determine an adversary's capabilities is the same knowledge you can use to determine your vulnerabilities. Nuking a port or telecom hub may be a better use of that warhead than nuking a military base. We don't know the numbers.

Sorry for the rant. I'm dealing with a lot of stupid at work today and needed the diversion. Goddamn, I hate contractors. Wait...

Warm regards,
Amazing With People
 
I have been trying to find out if the US still has the Davy Crockett Weapons System in its inventory, but thus far I still can't get a word from anyone though I have sent my request thru 2 Congressmen. This was a system I was a member of back in the 60s to be used against the Russians. Nucks can come in any size or shapes.

Last warhead was deactivated in 1971.

Atomic Annie was done in 1963.
 
In 2005 they said the warheads were retired. There is a difference in being retired and destroyed. That was one of my questions to the Army. Was the Davy Crockett still in their system. Thus far crickets.
The "shelf life" of a warhead was considered to be around 25-30 years...most of the munitions for SADM and Davy Crockett were built in the late 50s and early 60s, so they would have been around the end of their useful life in the 80s and 90s...from what I've been able to find out, they are disassembled at a plant in Texas when they are retired...https://www.globalissues.org/news/2020/06/16/26525
 
The "shelf life" of a warhead was considered to be around 25-30 years...most of the munitions for SADM and Davy Crockett were built in the late 50s and early 60s, so they would have been around the end of their useful life in the 80s and 90s...from what I've been able to find out, they are disassembled at a plant in Texas when they are retired...https://www.globalissues.org/news/2020/06/16/26525
At least you are giving me some info and thanks for it. One of my other questions to them was why were no former Davy Crockett soldiers ever tested for radiation as the spotter rounds were 92% depleted uranium. My understanding is that DU then was stronger than what is used today. Of course I know the answer to that and that is, they don't know who was assigned. Back then there was no school for the system. All personnel were MOS 11C and assigned from different Infantry units like I was. They were then later sent to Vietnam and lost in the shuffle. Nothing in any of my records show that I was assigned to a Davy Crockett unit other than I do have a set of orders that show I was reassigned from one unit to them. When I left, I have a set of orders saying I was leaving HHC 2d Brigade 25th Inf Div.
 
Well...this gets muy interesante.


And the WaPo was able to do some reporting on the forced relocation of people out of Mariupol into Russia.

RIGA, Latvia — The pro-Russian soldiers from the separatist-controlled area of Donbas arrived one day in mid-March.

“They just walked into our shelter and said that women and children must leave it,” recounted a young woman who had been hiding with her family in a suburb of the heavily shelled Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. “We asked if it was possible to stay at all, and they said no, that this is the order. We did not know where they were taking us.”

Most of the men were ordered to stay behind, including those with disabilities, she said. Only those few men who had to take care of big families with small children could leave. The soldiers moved a group of about 90 people to a local school, which still had some of its walls intact, and the next morning put them all on buses bound for an unknown destination.

The young woman and her family were among several thousand residents of Mariupol who Ukrainian officials estimate have been forcibly relocated to Russia through separatist-controlled republics in eastern Ukraine.

She described being taken to what the Russian army called a “filtration camp” — a vast military tent with rows of men in uniforms calling up civilians one by one. Each “temporarily displaced person,” as the soldiers referred to them, was photographed from all sides and fingerprinted. Then the Ukrainians were told to turn over their phones and passwords to another officer, who entered their data into his computer, including their phone contacts. The next step was interrogation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/30/ukraine-mariupol-russia-evacuation-filtration/
 
I assume this is real (maybe not?) but if so...😳

And with a trailer? YGBFSM

Where are our EOD members to chime in? @racing_kitty
No way in Hell I’m doing that with a trailer. If they know what their clearances are between the devices and the undercarriage, then pray to St. Barbara that there’s no kind of vibration-sensitive anti-tamper and go for it. I’ll be there with booze and a post-blast.
 
Back
Top