How did all the Western analysts get it so wrong about Russia and Ukraine? If it was obvious to /k/ that armata was a fake, how come noone else picked up on it, for example?
/k/ has been shitting on the armate for years, but I read respected, tenured analysts who's literal job it is to know claiming Russia could build a couple thousand a year.
Should we just pay off our intelligence agents and alaysts and instead just have autists lurk /k/? Wtf is going on?
Two possibilities
1) The world didn’t know Russia was so incompetent.
2) The world did know but decided to keep it hush hush
If the public knew that Russia is incompetent how could congress justified spending a morbillion on the defense budget
This. Now only chinks left. Let's hope they dont get too high on kool aid
China. So it had to be more than muh pentagon muh mic.
>If it was obvious to /k/ that armata was a fake, how come noone else picked up on it, for example?
Because rusdrones all over the internet would call you a butthurt russophobe whenever you made such a claim
Apparent overwhelming strength that turns out to be brittle is a hallmark of totalitarianism. Intelligence also doesn’t like underestimating foes.
It's better to be over than under prepared, but there had to be some amount of grift involved in some of it.
the longer I think about the more I think we just tricked Russia into invading Ukraine so we can test our equipment via a proxy army and have Russia collapse so we can divide the energy sources amongst ourselves.
>we can divide the energy sources amongst ourselves.
The bitter irony is that even the most rapacious Western company cannot rip off the Russian people like Putin and Co. did.
Correct but balkanization could lead to a semi functional group of countries which would reach all the way to China
True. If there was anything that Putin's regime did excel at it was robbing Russians blind.
>the longer I think about the more I think we just tricked Russia into invading Ukraine
>we
The West is not responsible for Russia being moronic. What the frick was Putin doing reading western sources about how wonderful his military is, rather than examining his military himself?
Oh, wait, that way his feefees might get hurt...
>What the frick was Putin doing reading western sources about how wonderful his military is, rather than examining his military himself?
His advisors lied to him. He's not a military expert. He's never even been in the military.
He is a career spook, so he should have known his advisors were lying to his face
homie got old. Your brain slows down as you age.
Is that suppose to mean he knows everything? Even spooks can be wrong.
>He is a career spook
He worked in counter-intelligence, he spent his professional life surrounded by people who wore suits rather than uniforms, what expertise would he have about military logistics?
The expertise to not be a credulous senile moron with unknown unknowns falling out of his spaghetti pockets
>He worked in counter-intelligence
I mean he did his job. The General Staff of Russia is without intelligence.
He was a pencil pushing dweeb.
Qanon-level of conspiracy theory, right there. Just missing the israelites, Illuminati, shape-shifting lizards, blood-drinking, paedophilic, satanic rituals and a basement in a pizza joint for a full bingo card.
Or just a geopolitical in joke turned real
The truth is by backing down in Syria and pulling out of Afghanistan the west looked weak to Russia, after 2 decades of war for nothing they figured the western public wouldn't support going straight into another war.
What they couldn't understand is a lot of us are just happy to be on the defenders side for once, we spend so much time overthrowing states to install puppets it's nice to defend a state for once.
I am certain it also helps that there are no actual American troops' lives at stake.
and the gov't we're supporting actually has the support of the people there, and is competent.
Doesn't hurt that
A. Ukrainians are white
B. Ukrainian men stayed to fight while the refugees were all actually women and children
As to point B, why do Russian shills keep pointing that out? It's like, are they trying to arouse our sympathy all the time?
the whole war is over the fact that Ukie men won't frick them I guess
Repressed homosexuality seems to be a running theme with the Russians, as they always fricking bring gays up, so maybe all the seethe is over the fact that unlike them the Ukies are straight, and they will never have a Gachimuchi to peg them while they're in the army, just fat corrupt bastards.
I guess in a way they got their wish, Ukraine is fricking them, just not in the way they wanted.
It's because of trump. Trump put in an order to pull us-based NATO arms and soldiers out- but only after 2020. Biden won instead, so Putin had to either go immediately after the olympics(cant piss off xi) or don't invade, and if they didn't invade Putin might die before he has another chance at a pro-russian President.he didn't realize zelensky wasn't a greater and actually gives a frick either. So now he's pissed off xi the west and failed in Ukraine lmao.
Thank fricking god that dumbass was voted out in time
>not recognizing a bluff
It amazes how after all this time people still don't recognize that move as a bluff to get other NATO members to pay the agreed upon gdp percentage.
Because the people that bring that up bring it up as a way to shit on Trump, it has nothing to do with reality.
Damn, I'm glad Trump is gone, I used to be with him on the 'US needs to leave NATO' and the fact that 3 of all of the NATO member countries are paying their fricking fair share
big ups to Poland though
Looking at the performance of Russia's military in Ukraine, those NATO members that gutted their militaries after the cold war and were structurally under the 2% NATO norm were actually in the right here (deliberate or not). Even Europe's shoestring militaries could have easily handled any Russian push. The US either massively overestimated Russias capabilities or just used Russia as a scapegoat to justify the massive stream of tax dollars being pumped into its defence industry.
Is it a massive over estimation if all your euro allies disarm leaving you to carry?
Carry what? A senseless invasion of a sandbox, or the joke that is Russia? Just don't invade sandboxes, and leave Russia to her neighbors, the French and the British.
>Is it a massive over estimation if all your euro allies disarm leaving you to carry?
No one disarmed. European NATO member budget cut their militaries over 30 years, but what is left could still easily have mopped up anything that comes rolling in from the east. No US carrying needed.
Ukraines army is winning the war against the previously perceived 2nd strongest military in the world with a very recently trained army, that is using mostly surplus gear that had been in long term storage for decades with ammunition that is nearing shelf-life.
If they actually believed that they're absolutely moronic.
The west is GOOD at war, if the cause is just, and the people fighting are righteous against the invader, the west is absolutely gonna proxy war your shit with full support of its people.
All the previous wars were manufactured reasons and WE invaded, this time Russia invaded and we're backing the defender with only volunteers and material goods, so all of that anti-war shit goes out the window
Why do you say West? The United States was the only one doing shit while Germany and France sat back and milked Russian gas/oil like b***hes.
wtf did you think we were doing in the middle east?
>we just tricked Russia into invading Ukraine
How the frick can you trick Russia into invading another country
You have people on /k/ saying all sorts of things; sometimes it's correct. There were people here saying Russia wasn't going to invade for example.
I'd rather an analyst overestimate that underestimate. Russia overestimated their capabilities and now they're paying the price.
>Russia overestimated their capabilities
This! Even Russia believed their bullshit or else they wouldn't have attacked.
Not just that, they believed NATOs bullshit on how they are superior lol.
May be you have heard about such techniques as MASKIROVKA. But it is the first time when westerners are allowed to see use of PIZDEZH.
Who the hell is Steve Jobs?
Money. You get a lot of government funding if the morons deciding budgets hear their analyst's saying Russia can shit out better tanks faster.
Countries and nations can't operate on their adversary having terrible training and leadership, history has proven time and again that's a very risky gamble. Western countries, ever since WWII have operated on the premise of "Assume your adversary is at least as good as you or better." Which has led to massive investment in technology to bolster the quality of troops.
It's easy to shitpost and talk about things from the sidelines, if you're wrong, who cares? It's just a shitpost. If a country is wrong it costs a lot more than just moving onto another thread.
>How did all the Western analysts get it so wrong
they didn't, the west pursued a doctrine of massive overkill and got it. the west wanted to build a military that would utterly wreck the soviet union within a few miles of crossing the border into germany. they got a military that could - via proxy - utterly wreck the russian military within a few miles of crossing the border into ukraine.
mission accomplished.
Even people who saw Russia's rot couldn't foresee that they were that pants on head moronic to attack with riot police in the first wave against a country they have been raping for 8 years. Even with all its weaknesses, a competent strike with Russias full might should have cleaved Ukraine in two. Lucky for Humans Vatnigs can't even fill up their tanks before attacking a foreign country.
>attack with riot police
It's a smart move if you believe the enemy would just roll over and not put up much of a fight like they did in the past. Remember what they experienced with Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. They thought the same thing would happen again.
Also look at how easily they steamrolled through kazakstan and georgia. Look at their performance in syria. They figured it would be easy just like it always had been up to that point. An intelligence failure that caused every other failure that they dont seem to be able to recouperate from.
>Also look at how easily they steamrolled through kazakstan
I mean there they had government support lol
Russia took Crimea and Eastern Ukraine without much of a fight. Everyone just assumed they'd do it again.
>Eastern Ukraine without much of a fight
2014-2015 war was sort of special olympics tier.
NATO was busy with Afghanistan back then. Now they can throw resources on Ukraine. If Russia attacked before NATO pulled out of Afghanistan they could have taken all of Ukraine. Putin's mistake was letting NATO train and equip Ukraine for years.
Ukraine has Russian-tier military at that point, it was piss-poor and unprepared as frick. But 2014 was a big kick in the guts and a wake up call. Now we can see last 8 years were not wasted.
what?
I don't think we wanted to believe that Russia could be so hopelessly incompetent.
Russia pays those experts. I am not joking.
The only thing they're good at is bribery and corruption.
>If it was obvious to /k/ that armata was a fake, how come noone else picked up on it, for example?
Because we are really smart (excluding vatniks) and the rest of the world is dumb
because the people getting paid top spread fear about russia, want to keep their jobs, and get paid more, simple as anon
>Russia could build a couple thousand a year.
yet not a single production model T-14 exists, they're literally all prototypes, every single one
Yes, but respected experts who get paid by think tanks swore that Russia could. I think one of them even went to the Yank Congress and said so.
I knew the Armata was bullshit when it broke down in the parade. I also considered Russian military being absolutely fricked.
This is why I simply scoffed every time I saw the Armata as #1 tank on all these lists and shit just because Russia said do.
Wasn't it also BTFO in the middle east?
the russian propaganda unit is the best unit in the russian military
even putin believed the propaganda
Western analysts exist to sell western weapons to combat Russian weapons.
This has to do with the Western vs. Eastern styles of power projection and diplomacy.
The Eastern style is very Asiatic in its nature, it tends to brag and boast and put on a show. It's all about public relations and displays of strength, and they go out of their way to demonstrate great power and capabilities to intimidate foes both external as well as domestic.
The West tends to exaggerate the strengths and evil of its enemies instead of focusing on talking up its own strengths. This is because in general, the West does not need to boast about its inherent strength. The West prefers the underdog story, the idea of a bunch of plucky heroes triumphing over a big evil empire, and so always portrays itself as such, diminishing their own actual power in the process. This is why the British prided themselves so much on beating up a rebellion of their own sepoys, why the Americans constantly portray WW2 as anything but a one-sided affair given the US's industrial strength, and why the Japanese, who used to brag about their huge battleships and strong navy, have taken to calling their aircraft carriers "destroyers" and heavy cruisers "patrol ships." The very existence of anime-which was the result of the Japanese embrace of US superhero comics, which are the very essence of underdog hero vs. evil empire or supervillain, is a parallel to this branch of diplomacy. Naturally, so-called military analysts are usually pretty dumb and take all claims at face value, thus overestimating Eastern strength and underestimating Western strength.
>The West prefers the underdog story, the idea of a bunch of plucky heroes triumphing over a big evil empire, and so always portrays itself as such, diminishing their own actual power in the process.
Western entertainment takes this to such an extreme though.
Consider all the "cold war gone hot" entertainment we've had over the past 80 years. How many can you name where the US attacks on Soviet soil, instead of mounting a valiant defence on NATO territory. 3 generations of people have been conditioned to see a positive outcome of WW3 being "the Russians invaded us but after costly fighting we repelled them" instead of "we torched the Kremlin and pvt. Bubba took a shit down the barrel of the Czar-cannon"
No wonder Russian military prowess was so ridiculously overestimated.
This is because the US entertainment industry is mostly ran by israelites, a people who claim to be oppressed and marginalized while controlling everything of any value in the west. Bullshit like this reflects their way of thinking really well.
Well said.
Russians get off on being the "antagonists" of history. They love playing the villain and menacing others. There's never any serious moral or rational justification for what they do.
It's odd because they're fricking shit at war.
If you are responsible for making security decisions for your country you have to err on the side of caution. In this case caution was really far away from reality.
principle of caution is always warranted when thinking of what the enemy can do.
you should always think that the enemy's technology is at least just as good as yours and his capabilities are at least on par with yours.
after all, the russians did manage to reach the outskirts of kiev in the opening days of the war, no one's to say that things would've turned out entirely differently had they attacked two weeks earlier or figured out a way to keep logistics going.
on top of this there were probably a lot of sacrifices being made just for political victories, like the constant push for the cauldron at the expense of huge losses of attrition, or the multiple attempts at keeping snake island when it clearly was an impossible task.
Why not pretend its a real threat to justify more spending, the high rankers do know its a paper tiger but playing it up helps them out secure more funding. Also playing it up allows the other side foolish confidence
>Also playing it up allows the other side foolish confidence
Well that part of your post was accurate
>If it was obvious to /k/ that armata was a fake, how come noone else picked up on it, for example
Don't get those sweet military appropriations contracts by informing your local congresscritter that Russia's latest and greatest is nothing but a wooden mock-up over an old T-72 base.
I think it's a western cultural thing to assume and prepare for the worst case scenario. Take their propaganda at face value. Sure it's probably bullshit, but then again what if it wasn't?
Psudo-Dictator countries release propaganda that is meant for both internal and external consumption. Both geared towards making themselves look strong to the world and jerking off their civilian populace in order to discourage dissent.
And western analysts consume all of it. Of course it has to be said that a lot of "analysts" are paid result makers who exist solely to be the "experts" people point to when they want to convince the budget makers that they definitely need that few extra billion.
And still, it's better that all the wars we fight be Desert Storm with a massive difference in strength than a dirty, drawn out fistfight between two peers.
>it's better that all the wars we fight be Desert Storm with a massive difference in strength than a dirty, drawn out fistfight between two peers
This is why overestimating the opponent is a good thing. It's like the people complaining about overestimating the enemy want more causalities so it'll be a fair fight.
>muh fair fight
Yeah it's weird how people think they can make war less deadly by making weapons less brutal. War is brutal by nature, there's no changing that. Ironically the only way to reduce the overall death and suffering is to fight as hard and dirty as you need to in order to end the war as fast as possible.
I don't think the armata was a key factor in western analysis of Russia's likelihood of success in ukraine. The fact that it hadn't entered mass production was common knowledge, so even if it was a deployable tank and not a parade float it would never have had a significant impact.
And yeah people shat on slavshit equipment before ukraine too, but even then I don't think many would have predicted just how incompetent the russian military would be, even on /k/.
We often discuss Russian incompetence but I just thought those examples were outliers.
>Western analysts
>respected, tenured analysts
Are by definition, working for the MIC. Meanwhile actual military enthusiasts (e.g. /k/ lmao) knew the truth, but selling movies, games and weapons does not care for the truth.
Which western analyst said armata was going to be deployed in numbers?
I'm guessing none because everyone knows they have frick all of them.
What people did think which has been proven wrong is that Russia could send in thousands of cold war tanks without caring about loses.
>which has been proven wrong is that Russia could send in thousands of cold war tanks without caring about loses.
No they were right, they indeed didn't care. What is wrong is that the losses mattered, because they weren't being used to actually achieve victories. Had those thousands of tanks actually been spent to achieve something, it would had been a different story, but they didn't.
>without caring about losses
they can do this, but reality cares about losses
not caring doesn't bring your tank back
>respected, tenured analysts who's literal job it is to know claiming Russia could build a couple thousand a year.
Such as?
as long as russia is worth to analyze you have a job. the terror of a worthwhile opponent just waiting for a moment to strike generates clicks, generates budgets and makes everyone keep their jobs and get raises. its not like WW3 was ever going to happen with the fall of the soviet union. the cause of it will be in asia, but its about generating jobs, hype and higher budgets.
On top of everything the anons have mentioned here, analysts are just bad at considering the intangibles of war that can't be quantified. They struggle to answer questions like how corrupt and broken the institutions that constitute a state are; the morale of a country's soldiers; how the civilian population will respond to being occupied.
The emtire point of tenure is the right to go unopposed in moronation. I don't think many people were optimistic about the Armata for a very long time now
>How did all the Western analysts get it so wrong about Russia and Ukraine?
how else could have the CIA sold Putin on the 3 day plan?
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.
Without the Russian paper tiger, how would the MIC get the necessary pork to pay for their mansions?
The defense industry needs a threat to justify the billions in taxpayer money they siphon every year.
there is china still
the Russian successor state(s) depending on what they do.
and there are other customers aside from the first world that have regional security concerns.
The MIC is not going away, don't you worry, and it's worth mentioning that unlike Russia the companies in the MIC in the West (well, the US) tend to also have a foot in the consumer market as well.
The expert’s job is to justify defense spending increases to the government on behalf of his masters. Why would you ever expect them to say that our enemies aren’t getting more and more dangerous all of the time? It gets them a bigger check if the Russians are dangerous and not moronic. We can’t sell a completely new body armor penetrating rifle and cartridge system to all of NATO if Chang’s body armor is all Wish.com tinfoil shit.
boompin
I skimmed through Breaking the Phalanx twenty years ago, and was impressed, aside from getting naval warfare all wrong. What made Douglas Macgregor such a Russia shill since then? And has the past year proved the other guy from 73 Easting, HR McMaster right?
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/pentagon-fight-over-russia-213316/
I've been a /k/gay since before /k/ existed, been into it for decades. I was one of those cringe military history/tech nerds in high school.
And Russia got me big time. I always thought Putin turned shit around from the shitshow Russia was in the Chechen Wars. I really thought they were at the cutting edge of military tech, doctrine, and training and would dab on the apathetic decadent west. I was a complete doomer about it and expected they'd take Ukraine in a matter of days.
idk how Russia put up such a good smokescreen.
Western analysts were pretty on point about when Russia would invade, and it wasn't just /k/ laughing at the Armata. This truly does go above and beyond what even spooks or /k/ seemed to be expecting. /k/ isn't full of gigabrained geniuses that are better than the five eyes, it's full of people who are good at sniffing out the bullshit both sides put out. Everyone just underestimated the amount Russia was bullshitting and forget what truly horrendous leadership can do.
>Capitalist system hypes up an enemy to make shitloads of cash off its own military industrial complex rather than apprais them correctly
Not shocking. What is shocking is how easily Russia was drawn in on the hype Hollywood has given them over the years as a badass formidable villain. The west really helped in giving them a big head about themselves.
The Soviets were the threat. NATO just maintained its former posture on post fall Russia. Better safe than sorry.
>armata was a fake
it's not fake and it's quite advance, however Russia simply can't afford to build them in mass or can't source the high tech components from the west
The reality is that even IF the Armata was real and the published specs were spot on, it would still get one shot'd by the Javelin.
you can bet your ass their turrets would eject into space just like their T72's are.
guys i went to pol for a few minutes and i couldnt believe the meltdown they have over there.
is everybody on pol a russian FSB shill on a VPN or did all of them lose their fricking minds?
Russbawe showing everyone they truly are the Black folk of the north goes against pols schizo narrative of russia being the saviors of the white race.
a lot of resources go into manipulating PrepHole and other social media.
you'd assume nobody cares about this shit hole but remember /misc/ spawned Qanon which may be single best return on investment for an intelligence operation.
The tell i got was when they invaded in the warmer/monson season, and they continued to get their vehicles stuck. Also a big tell was when the tires cracking and falling apart when used , that shows that they were not exercising their tires, since tires degrade over time when stuck in the same spot and exposed to sunlight
If thats how they treated their equipment on the initial invasion, the rest of war would be complete dog shit