Is this gentlemanly conduct

M

mark mywords

Active member
warning this was google translated from Chinese.

(Remember that much of the Ukraine hardware is identical to that being used by Russia)

the Ukrainian army was also stubbornly blocked by the Russian elite airborne troops. In this Kherson raid, the reason why the Ukrainian army was caught off guard by the Russian army was that an important factor was that the Ukrainian army painted the tanks with the most commonly used "V" and "Z" letters of the Russian army. This made the Russian army think that the tank on the opposite side was a friendly army, and was shot black by the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian tanks are all equipped with the identification system provided by the United States, which does not require letters to distinguish the enemy. In this case, the Russian army could not distinguish which tanks were friendly forces and which tanks were enemy forces, and quickly fell into chaos.
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Is this gentlemanly conduct​

I don't know what the Geneva protocols have to say about it. I gather it's illegal. The cliche' is military troops out of uniform can legally be shot as spies. Whether wearing the wrong uniform is the same I'm not sure, but would consider it so.

If Ukraine violated this protocol, shame on them. BUT !! From whence cometh the order to do so? The highest ranking military commander, safe in a bunker hundreds of miles from the bomb craters? Or a second louie whose cornered troops had a binary choice:
- escape by subterfuge, or
- obey the rules and be slaughtered.

I realize whatever the case, it's wrong.
But I also realize, in the heat of mortal combat, the Geneva Protocols shift a little from status of international law, to guideline.
The ancient Latin legal maxim is: quod alias non fuit licitum, necessitas licitum facit:
What otherwise was not lawful, necessity makes lawful.

If it was to slaughter thousands of invading troops that's one thing. If it was to escape being slaughtered, that's another. Wrong in both cases.
 
Actually it amused me more than a little - not the belly laugh I had when I first saw American tanks storming across the Iraqi desert with an inverted V emblazoned on them (in the 21st century) but enough to make me smile.

sorry about the garbled English in the report but as I said google translate


1666032521676.jpeg

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almost 500 years of advancement in identification
 
I thought the "V for victory" displaying extended middle & index fingers splayed together, traced back to Hank5, the battle of Agincourt.
King Henry V didn't want to kill the captured enemy archers, so agreed to let them go if they'd allow the severing of their two fingers, the two fingers archers use to nock and launch an arrow.
The victors taunted the losers by showing they still had their two fingers. "V for victory"

"IFF" (identify friend or foe) is a big deal. Friendly fire is as lethal as enemy fire. Military aircraft transponders deal with this, not sure how other than I imagine it involves both jam avoidance, and signal encryption.

Allegedly:
according to a U.S. military artillery manual: remember - if the enemy is within artillery range, so are you.
 
King Henry V didn't want to kill the captured enemy archers, so agreed to let them go if they'd allow the severing of their two fingers, the two fingers archers use to nock and launch an arrow.
Click to expand...

One of the penalties for poaching deer in a royal forest was amputation of the index fingers - if you think that that is bad you should hear what they did to forgers
 
Ukrainian tenacity has discouraged Russian ground efforts. Russia has taken to the skies, even losing a jet fighter inside Russia, a dozen killed. The Iranian drones reportedly slow moving, easy to shoot down. Reports filter in of Russia's new Su-57 stealth fighters set for introduction into Russia's arsenal. Whether, where, and how they'll be used, anyone's guess. But based on Putin's desperation, sooner than expected perhaps.
 
t #7
It reminds me a shade of The Princess & The Pea. The "mighty" Russian army being bashed back by meager Ukraine.
In the Princess story, she complained about her bed, as if there were farm implements under her mattress. At the end of the story the neighbors showed up to collect their farm implements.
The Western trigger finger is on the scale, helping tilt to Ukraine's favor. None the less, Russia has no fig leaf here.

The unknown: how much longer is Putin willing / determined to drag this out? If Russia begins feeding new equipment into the mix, to try to counterbalance what Ukraine has already been supplied from the West, there may be more than one Ukrainian Christmas with more than Santa landing on the roof.
 
Ukrainian tenacity has discouraged Russian ground efforts
Click to expand...

"Tenacity"? allow me to edit

Ukrainian application of the finest military hard ware that EU and America can provide has discouraged Russian ground efforts
 
The "mighty" Russian army being bashed back by meager Ukraine.
Click to expand...

Am I missing something here?
"mighty Russian army"? are these the same under resourced conscripts that are driving around in obsolete tanks?
"Meagre Ukraine" armed with the best military equipment NATO can provide
 
"Am I missing something here?" m #11
Click to expand...
A foreskin?
The scare quotation marks clarify. You're correct of course they're not much special. BUT !!
Any nation would like to foster the mystique that their own military is so fiercely formidable that no ding-bat invaders need even try.
That idea traces back to Sun Tzu, the best way to win a war is to not have to fight it.
And one way to not fight it is to discourage the thought. What a pity Ukraine hadn't done that a year ago. Conversely where would Ukraine be today if a year ago it had acquired full NATO membership? I'm not advocating that, but I suspect it might have changed more than what patches their troops wore on their uniforms.
 
During Operation Desert Storm, direct
fire engagements accounted for 12 of the
Army’s 15 total incidents of fratricide.
The numbers of casualties these inci-
dents represent are sobering: of 615 total
soldiers either wounded or killed in ac-
tion, 107, or 17 percent, were the result
of friendly fire. Thirty-five American
soldiers were tragically killed; another
72 were wounded because one friendly
vehicle opened fire on another.

Our IFF equipment is for on the ground, and in the air.
We've had combat more recently than Desert Storm. But in Afghanistan there wasn't much need to identify an enemy tank.

It's a serious problem mark. Considering low visibility and other problems insignia painted on may not matter too much.
 
R #13
There was a Schwarzenegger movie, possibly titled Terminator II. The movie began with a dystopian view of robot soldiers stomping across desolate grey-scale ruins looking for something to kill.

We already have remote-pilot semi-autonomous aircraft, so called "predator drones".
You have me wondering whether we'll begin phasing out human soldiers from our battle fields. If that, presumably the robots that replace them may have enemy identification / target acquisition protocols that will address this problem m #1 calls to our attention.
 
update: from sources such as https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/

Reports of planned new offensives from Russia or Ukraine waft in and out of reports from the region.

But my impression at this point is though the U.S. & West could supply enough materiel to snuff Russia out of Ukraine quickly, instead the U.S. & West have allowed the carnage to stabilize to near stalemate.

That this is so there is little doubt. Why it is so I am not certain. BUT !! I realize it may be in effort to prevent escalation to nuclear weapons.

And so the carnage continues. Kudos to the heroic Ukrainian defenders.
 
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