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Barrett 50 cal are the best sniper rifles in the world. Importing the best in order to shoot Russians from 2km is called good use of resources. Ukraine also exports some military equipment. Modern market economics call it efficiency. This is like bashing Norway for ordering F-35's.
Military technology is one of the areas where "market efficiency" often tend to be put aside and for good reasons.
Some countries want the ability to rely on their own resources, where feasible, for something as important as defense, if anything else, for the ability to retain and develop know-how.
The Europeans, just to make an easy example, wanted to develop their own Tornado rather than buying F-15 and F-14 in the early 1970.
Same for the Airbus story......the European aerospace industry was basically done in any meaningful form at the end of the 1960s....buying Boeings would have made much more economic sense but France pushed to retain a viable aerospace champion in Europe and it did end up being a great success story.
Last edited by saturno_v; 01-02-2018 at 05:23 PM..
Since Kosovo was brought into the discussion, I’ll chip in. Serbia definitely got the short end of the stick in the war. They were blamed for instigating genocide throughout the Balkans in the 90’s whereas the situation was much more complex. Bosnians and Croats took part in it in equal measure and bear part of the responsibility. That’s not to say Serbia is innocent either as they played a role as well.
On the other hand blaming the US has become so comically trendy that I roll my eyes whenever I hear it these days. It’s become the perfect scapegoat used by dictators to expand their power, by claiming that the US is funding opposition. Funny thing , is I used to believe them, but then I started using my brain. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read stories about how the US did this, did that or something else. The problem is that most of them contradict each other, which makes me wonder how credible they really are.
Iran is the perfect example of this. Some claim that the US put the Shah in power through a coup in 1953 (false since he came to power in 1941) to justify the revolution in 1979 and remove the puppet. Others claim they were funding the mullahs to remove the Shah since he didn’t want to lower oil prices in 73. These two theories completely contradict each other which proves that people don’t want to take responsibility for their problems and deflect them on others.
The US did manipulate the political process in many many countries not to mention the sponsoring or even actively participating in many coups...that is a fact and it is undeniable.....that does not mean that we should justify the actions of any dictator pointing at this fact......great powers manipulate weaker countries, it has been like this since the beginning of time and it will be this way forever, it is human nature.
Even some European countries are often quick to wave the Anti-Americanism flag but conveniently tend to forget their own actions in their own sphere of influence.....France is one of the most egregious examples, always ready to denounce the US.....what about their own Francafrique??
In short, I do have a problem with the Ayatollahs in Iran but I also have a problem with the monumental hypocrisy of the US Foreign Policy...hypocrisy often coupled with huge miscalculation with very serious consequences.
Jesus. What's up with this? Could somebody run down just what happened? I'm having a hard time translating it.
What I get so far is a judges nephew killed Irinas sister. Irina fought in court and the nephew was convicted, sentenced to 7 years this spring. He was let out Dec 27. Dec 29 Irina was found dead in a river.
People are saying she was murdered. If this is true it's beyond sad.
Yes, her body was found yesterday, near Kiev.
To make the long story short, her younger sister has been killed by a nephew of the regional judge in a vehicular homicide. It was DIU ( drugs, and not for the first time in his case.) He has been taken off the hook ( because of the protection of his relative,) and not punished for this crime ( although he was a repeat offender with DUIs.)
Irina Nozdrovskaya was a lawyer, so she didn't let it slide, and fought about two years in courts, so finally her sister's killer was apprehended.
But Irina was found dead yesterday, and from what the father of her fiance is saying, she was murdered punitively, and her disrobed body has been placed near the court building, where she was fighting for conviction of her sister's killer.
P.S. And then they are talking about the "corruption in Russia" of course...
I have to ask our pro Ukrainian cohorts here just how they can support a system that allows this. In all fairness it probably happens all over the world and always has. They do need to keep in mind they would recieve the same though were they involved.
I should have been more specific Ari. What happened to Irina while rare is not unknown even in America. To me it's an extremely heinous form of injustice that is not at all uncommon throughout the world whatever degree it may take. Many times you will find that those with power will escape the long arm of the law.
Military technology is one of the areas where "market efficiency" often tend to be put aside and for good reasons.
Some countries want the ability to rely on their own resources, where feasible, for something as important as defense, if anything else, for the ability to retain and develop know-how.
The Europeans, just to make an easy example, wanted to develop their own Tornado rather than buying F-15 and F-14 in the early 1970.
Same for the Airbus story......the European aerospace industry was basically done in any meaningful form at the end of the 1960s....buying Boeings would have made much more economic sense but France pushed to retain a viable aerospace champion in Europe and it did end up being a great success story.
This is straying off topic but implementing guns from NATO partners is not negative for any country that has gone down this path.
Globalization of supply chains means complex systems are truly global. A gun is not a complex system. An airplane is. F-35s are an example of a global fighter. They are a NATO plane, not an American one. Now that they are going into service, Russian propaganda has stopped running their shows about their development issues.... Airbus and Boeing? Both global companies. Boeing sources some work in Russia even, many parts are made in Japan and Italy. Airbus uses GE engines from Kentucky and assembles some planes in Alabama. Russia does the same thing with India and China...Ukraine uses European avionics for its Antonov planes and some electronics in its new BTR-4 fleet (but its still a low quality vehicle). Things are better this way instead of like you see in Iran "self reliance" has produced garbage.
Barrett 50 cal are the best sniper rifles in the world. Importing the best in order to shoot Russians from 2km is called good use of resources. Ukraine also exports some military equipment. Modern market economics call it efficiency. This is like bashing Norway for ordering F-35's.
I'm not going to compare penis sizes with you. A weapon is only as good as the person using it. Both Russia and Ukraine produce comparable rifles.
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Obviously never heard of: Ukroboronprom? Kharkiv Malyshev tank factory? Mozorov design? KrAZ? Or did you fall for the Russian myth that somehow this all existed in the coal mine city of Donetsk.
I know Kraz quite well. I drove an old Kraz 255b in Moscow arounnd Ismailova rail yards. It was a real powerful beast. The question is can Ukraine produce anything anyone else wants to buy. Seems to me the rest of the ukrainan industry is quite pathetic and has been for a long time. Will it improve? Time will tell.
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I did, the allies softened up the western front so the Soviets could catch up.
It's undeniable that the allies had an impact. Lend lease, the bombing campaigne, Africa. There's no doubt though that the Soviets did the lions share of the work. I suspect that even with the USSR and Nazi Germany the sole combatants in the war the USSR would simply have tweaked a few things and still got the same result at an even higher cost though.
It's undeniable that the allies had an impact. Lend lease, the bombing campaigne, Africa. There's no doubt though that the Soviets did the lions share of the work. I suspect that even with the USSR and Nazi Germany the sole combatants in the war the USSR would simply have tweaked a few things and still got the same result at an even higher cost though.
The allies played a huge role in the conflict. Everything from D-Day, the liberation of France, the African campaign to the western Pacific theatre that was nearly entirely won by the US. The Soviets carried the Eastern front and were instrumental in the defeat of Hitler.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say that the USSR did most of the heavy lifting. They suffered the most casualties, but that was a result of the conflict occurring on their doorstep.
Either ways, all of the allies played an instrumental role in defeating the Axis.
Globalization of supply chains means complex systems are truly global. A gun is not a complex system.
Many companies are integrated in a global supply chain system, it does not matter what they sell...many countries decide to develop military technologies in house (planes, guns or whatever) to prevent the loss of know-how.......
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