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Where Do Things End With Vlad? (h/t romad1)


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Posted

The slumbering H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan GOP stirs. 

pass that baton to the party that isn't beholden to Putin, Epstein and Maxwell. 

Posted

Hey, look whose in Russia 

I could also post in the media thread.  Looks like Elon, Vlad and the fascist RW are all in a loving embrace, eating Ukraine's children. 

Posted

Putin is claiming a skull here because Brexit shattered the British treasury and made it almost impossible for it to meet its European and NATO defense commitments and pay for the rest of the required budget. 

The UK just needs to get back into the EU and go balls to the wall on fighting Russian meddling within its shores. 

Posted
2 hours ago, romad1 said:

woo!!!!

 

To be fair, the documents they are sharing are forecasting Putin's approval might be 55% by September 20, but as of end of May, it was still 66%, actually showing an uptick at the end of May. I would guess this is not an objective polling document as much it is as a political document, and I might even question whether it was planted with the Ukrainians via interception for reasons.

Posted
1 hour ago, chasfh said:

To be fair, the documents they are sharing are forecasting Putin's approval might be 55% by September 20, but as of end of May, it was still 66%, actually showing an uptick at the end of May. I would guess this is not an objective polling document as much it is as a political document, and I might even question whether it was planted with the Ukrainians via interception for reasons.

Speculate if you like and its right to do so.  I will say with some confidence it is within their capabilities to acquire such documents.  

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

This is an interesting development.   Tailor make the navy you have to the challenge you face?  Or, build aircraft carriers that look awesome but are above your budget and make it so you can't have the many small things you do need? 

Don't mistake me for a guy who doesn't like carriers for the US Navy.  I think the UK Navy needs to concentrate on the North Atlantic if they want to get back into the EU like they need to. 

 

 

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, romad1 said:

Tailor make the navy you have to the challenge you face? 

Or take so many years to get a design in the water that you change your mind about the use case, have to retrofit the whole thing before you finish it the first time and then scrap the whole project because you are 15yrs and  10x over budget and the package is already obsolete. But the contractors are working cost plus and the Senator from Groton is happy so who's complaining?

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
On 6/11/2026 at 7:58 AM, romad1 said:

Putin is claiming a skull here because Brexit shattered the British treasury and made it almost impossible for it to meet its European and NATO defense commitments and pay for the rest of the required budget. 

The UK just needs to get back into the EU and go balls to the wall on fighting Russian meddling within its shores. 

I don't think it will happen that fast -- trust isn't rebuilt over night. More likely a series of single issue re-integrations and eventually they will be in in everything but name. Everybody needs their fig leaves.

Edited by gehringer_2
Posted

The Ukrainians have turned the petro-dominant Russian capital into the summer of 1973 or 1979.  

These are apparently all the shuttle buses they use to bring workers to the center city from the suburbs.  

Posted
13 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't think it will happen that fast -- trust isn't rebuilt over night. More likely a series of single issue re-integrations and eventually they will be in in everything but name. Everybody needs their fig leaves.

My son was in Europe over the last two summers and says the EU has made all customs processes not involving EU citizens ridiculous as a means to punish the UK. 

No matter how loud he talked he didn't get superior service! 

Posted
3 hours ago, romad1 said:

My son was in Europe over the last two summers and says the EU has made all customs processes not involving EU citizens ridiculous as a means to punish the UK. 

No matter how loud he talked he didn't get superior service! 

we went through Schipol this spring, the non Schengen passport verification line was 1/2 mile long maybe. They had agents walking the line pulling out people with less than 15 minutes to boarding  - a bow to keep the airlines from going ballistic at them I suppose.

  • Like 1
Posted

How do we know the European theater WWII US Strategic Bombing Survey is like the Silmarillion to the US Air Force?

I did a thesis on the Oil and Transportation bombing campaigns in grad school.   The fact that the UA is going for this as a critical node is really ... dunno ... is cool the word? 

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, romad1 said:

How do we know the European theater WWII US Strategic Bombing Survey is like the Silmarillion to the US Air Force?

I did a thesis on the Oil and Transportation bombing campaigns in grad school.   The fact that the UA is going for this as a critical node is really ... dunno ... is cool the word? 

The two most critical pieces are probably the top of the reactor column, which has complex internals and takes a big mother crane to service. If you lose that you have to get a new top with internals fabbed, than you have to cut the top off the old on to install the old one. In the entire US there are only a couple of cranes capable of lifting the top of a cat-cracker reactor and just assembling that crane takes a week and staging of 3 or 4 smaller helping cranes so just doing the scheduling for that is hard. The other highly bespoke piece is not in the picture. A CatCracker is like a turbocharged engine. The exhaust gas from the regen drives s huge recovery turbine that in turn compresses the feed stream and runs a power recovery generator. These three sit on a long common shaft on a rig about the size of two diesel locomotives. Hit hat and the you are waiting of a whole bunch of very custom fab. 

Take out the 'Cat' and you cut refinery gasoline production somewhere in the 70% range and the remaining gasoline is lower quality. Effect on diesel and jet production is less severe.

In the media, a storage tank on fire always look like the biggest disaster, but tankage is probably the least valuable and easiest to rebuild bit of a refinery.

Edited by gehringer_2

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