By smekalka I mean the weird primitive rag-tag solutions Russia has to their military problems. Yeah, yeah I know 2nd world military and all but when facing reality what other choice do they have given their situation? They either have to pick between using a T-55 as artillery or not having artillery at all and a bunch of wasted 100mm ammo. Other things like the Shahed drones also do seem to be pretty useful at clogging up Ukrainian air defenses especially for what they cost.
Yes, it leads to half assed solutions that aren't an actual solution. At best smelkalka leads to treatment of symptoms, and it honestly makes you look like an idiot.
>Is there anything actually inherently wrong with smekalka?
In America, we call smekalka "Black person-rigging". A less offensive term would be "kludge".
Jury-rigged (historical nautical term) and Gerry-rigged(UK WW2 version)
Jury rigging was an accepted practice since you had no choice on a ship a year from home out in the middle of the ocean.
The Russians seem to do it as make-work.
people are going to be most familiar with Black person-rigging over kludge.
"MacGyvered" is similar, no?
"MacBlack personed" if it's done poorly
MacGyvered means the half assed solution actually works and isnt complete shit
macyver is clever and able to create interesting devices to bust himself out of whatever problem
but macgyver isnt telling people that his improvised contraptions are better than the real thing, its just a showcase of his intelligence under pressure
russians go one step further
its not enough that you are smart enough to rig a solution on the fly, you must brag about how you did something scientists would need to do so at high cost and requiring high technology
it would be like if macguyver deliberately eschewed modern equipment because he outright does not need it, improvised equipment is good enough
>they either have to pick between using a t-55 as artillery or not having artillery at all
false dichotomy. Plenty of other choices exist. See: every other country.
There's a fine line between improvisation and sheer desperation.
This, pic related is improvised armor on a US truck in Iraq, 2004. It's better than nothing but far from ideal. That same year the Cougar MRAP entered service because the US and UK knew improvised armor wasn't ideal.
At least it's metal.
That armor seems like it's there to stop small arms too, not a futile attempt to stop ATGMs, RPGs, and drone strikes.
The problem is that they have to resort to these things while posing as a premier military power. This is the kind of shit I'd expect from africans or arabs.
>smel kaka
beautiful language
Smekalka includes the delusion that they are somehow superior to everyone else in coming up with cheap and reasonable effective solutions to cope with the fact that most other nations simply build stuff that is vastly superior.
I lot of Russians know about their cultural problems, but get called unpatriotic liberal pidors if they talk about it by the majority.
Didn't expect to see Morozova posted here.
Unironically this
Russians take pride in their perceived capability to make very effective solutions cheaper than the next guy. If you tell a Russian the story about Americans spending millions for a pen that can write in space while Russians simply used a pencil they will cum on the spot. I guess thats where the shitsneed costs x while ukrainians have to use interceptors that cost millions cope comes from. I guess its natural to pat your self on the back for being a smarty pants but it really has no merit when you think about it, especially when your wits are not actually a thing.
>.t russians infest my country
>If you tell a Russian the story about Americans spending millions for a pen that can write in space while Russians simply used a pencil they will cum on the spot.
the thing about that story is that its missing why nasa spent all that money. The carbon from the pencil is a serious fire and eletric hazard due to graphite particles. But traditional BIC pens or whatever couldnt be used. So everybody laughs at americucks when its the russians who are in the wrong for jepordizing the space station.
NASA didn't spend shit, the pens were a civilian enterprise by Paul Fisher.
Oh, and the soviets fricking bought them, too. NASA bought 200, the soviets bought 100.
And before the space pen, both sides used grease pens to write on plastic slabs
Americans obviously needed a solution to writing, space pen or not
And Soviets were aware of the dangers of pencil shavings in 0G
super neat gift if you want to impress some little nerd kid in your family. my nephew loved it when i got him one when he started school
it's a nice story but ultimately made up. you don't want to use pencil in space because having graphite dust floating around in micro gravity actually causes a lot of problem. it can easily get into your eyes. or it could even float behind the instrument panels potentially causing shorts and start a fire in the oxygen rich environment.
the Soviets didn't use pure oxygen low pressure atmosphere like NASA, they used regular atmospheric pressure and composition
You're correct, but it doesn't matter, they still didn't use pencils, they bought the space pens.
>They either have to pick between using a T-55 as artillery or not having artillery at all
Russia didn't just pride itself on being the second army in the world, they prided themselves on being the unmatched industrial artillery power. The Russian Army was - supposed to be - a massive artillery park with tanks and an air force.
So how the FRICK do you run out of barrels? Using T-55s as improvised SPGs is Arab tier, but how Russia got there in the first place is the true humiliation.
There is nothing wrong with building a maus tank either. But that's just not an efficient use of resources. Every minute spent on training crews and maintenance for a T-54 is time that could have been spent teaching scrubs how to dig trenches. Retooling for T-54s takes time and could be spent on repairing T-72s.
Every train loaded with T-54s could have been loaded with food as soldiers on the front haven't eaten in three days.
Or in short: The idea is moronic.
Smelkala is supposed to be a short term solution till supply chain and manufacturing catches up, not an institution of your military procurement
The thing is that it's okay as a stop gap measure. Like the armored guntrucks used in early Iraq. But those guntrucks were quickly replaced by actual purpose built vehicles.
The Russians do not replace their stop gaps.
The problem is not the solution, but the fact that said solutions are necessary in the first place
>smelkaka
Accurate
>Is there anything actually inherently wrong with smekalka
Yes. They're inferior, low ROI solutions. Modern war is about economics, having enough of the right stuff in the right place at the right time. Nothing is free. Cope cages are a heavy, high visibility, inefficient way to accomplish that goal. It can be easy to forget but you're looking at a LOT of plain heavy metal right there, that cage isn't like, 50 lbs, that's hundreds and hundreds of lbs. It may have some effect, but much worse then a real solution, and that weight inefficiency COULD have been more ammunition, or fuel, or whatever else.
Sure if things go to true shit and you need to improvise just to survive a few weeks while your country gets you reinforcements or whatever fine, that makes sense. But stopgaps should be for GAPS in coverage, not still there a year later.
The things you mentioned aren’t so much “quick fixes” as they are Russia making full and effective use of what it has.
It’s also funny how /k/ hates Russia but loves Russian loanwords.
Yeah we should all wait for “slat armor” (cope cage but available 1 month later for twice the price because some engineers had to design it). It’s much better or however the french fries
Hey, what's that on the back of T-72b3 Obr.2016?
Is that? Slat armor?
And what's that on top?
A cope cage? That will only serve to ensure the crew burns to death when it traps them inside?
>Yeah we should all wait for “slat armor” (cope cage but available 1 month later for twice the price because some engineers had to design it).
Ironically doesn't get that cope cages don't work because the conscripts who put them together don't know that the bars have to be a certain distance apart and a certain width to actually work as slat armor.
What you posted is literally the problem with smekalka. "these idiot eggheads, I can get a welder and do this myself for almost nothing" confident in his ignorance of the mechanism that slat armor actually works through.
Yeah your post explains the issue with Smekalka. It isn't the fixes itself that are the issue, it's the sense of superiority that Private Ivanovich somehow can make something better than a bunch of Engineers and that only Russia has ever thought of doing this, it creates a complacency where Russia just never bothers to actually do anything properly.
They're so happy to find workarounds in a bad situation that they never complain that they shouldn't have to. In other words: They're finding solutions to problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Yes, quick thinking on your feet can be valuable in exceptional situations. But most effort should go into avoiding those exceptions.
It doesnt help logistics
Yes.
The possible outcomes are:
1)Make things even worse
2)Put in patch after patch after patch wasting time and resources time and again
Every army encounters surprise problems thst need fast solutions in the battlefield, and the ability to figure out quick and efficient temporary and/or local solutions for that is a sign of cleverness. But when you have to do that all the time, everywhere, and it becomes a part of your SOP, then your army is garbage and is certainly run by idiots.
>By smekalka I mean the weird primitive rag-tag solutions Russia has to their military problems. Yeah, yeah I know 2nd world military and all but when facing reality what other choice do they have given their situation?
I think the big reason people are laughing at Russia for this has little to do with what they are doing but why, after all Ukraine is doing the same thing to some degree. People have already pointed out they bragged that they are "2nd best military in the world" but a key part of the mockery is that they actually don't have to do any of this.
Russia chose to walk into Ukraine and at any moment they can choose to walk right back out knowing that their internationally recognized borders will be secure. This was them taking what was considered one of the largest most prestigious military forces in the world and turning about 2/3rds of it so far into scrap metal and killing / crippling hundreds of thousands of young men for what amounts to a vanity project for the current Czar, a poor attempt at map painting.
If Russia was a victimized nation on the back foot fighting to defend their land then people would not be laughing, they would be rooting for them. Russia did this to themselves and were going to laugh at them for it.
Which internationally recognized borders - by whom? Are Crimea and Luhansk within their borders?
No, the 1991 recognized borders. Recognized by the whole world.
>Which internationally recognized borders
The ones recognize by literally every country in the world including Russia until Putin decided he wanted to LARP as Peter the Great
Budapest Memorandum borders, moron
By Budanov, obviously.
>does thinking only our country can be innovative bad?
Yes
The problem is that the definition of Smekalka isn’t just about fixing a problem with low tech solutions - It’s focused on *APPEARING* to fix a problem using cunning. You don’t solve the issue in reality, you solve the issue politically by convincing your supervisors that it’s sorted. It’s just concealing problems that may come back tomorrow to bite you in the ass.