Posts by Gman

  • ICOM BOOK CLUB

    GG, I recommend you try taking a few speed reading courses. I have Evelyn Wood's 7 day speed reading course/book, it's excellent, and teaches you varying levels an techniques to increase your speed and retention. There are quite a few others you can find online for free, let me know if you're interested and I can email/lend some to you. Even if you increase your speed and retention by say only a factor of 2, you'll be able to read a TON more material, and retain and understand it better as well.


    Books I've been reading -

    Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom series. My ancestors being from the same area as his (Cornwall, I'm a Cornish (last name )) I find his books interesting. I'm reading his Civil war series as well, the StarBuck chronicles.


    Like Elfie, I too have been reading the bible, I've never read it cover to cover, and it was a bucket list item that I'm intending to cross off this year.


    I've been re reading some chapters out of a variety of Tom Clancy's books, the topics he wrote about and created resonate so well with what's happening today, from airliners used as poor man's guided weapons, the USA having to deal with terrorism on a large scale, the rise of China's military capability, to small infantry units stopping Russian tank column/advances with small shoulder and tripod mounted mobile anti tank missiles (a major theme in Red Storm Rising).


    Lastly I've been reading a bunch of non fiction historical books on the BF109 and FW190. I have 2 dozen books in epud/pdf format on these aircraft alone, if anyone is interested in a book list or reading any of these, let me know. Some excellent stuff I've found over the years online.

  • Russia begins invasion of Ukraine - what now?

    Quote from wayne5

    I follow this guy and he fills in a lot of information.


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    I was one of the first 200 subscribers to Mooch's channel, fantastic isn't it. I encourage everyone to sub and watch his video catalogue, there isn't a single video that isn't worth the time IMO. He's involved in the DCS sim community too.


    Sorry to hear about your son's leg, break in 3 places, damn. Hope he heals quickly, nothing heals like a kid (a great Tom Clancy quote, among so many others).


    Our dearly departed Mike/Airhead used to have some fantastic and accurate rants about the VA. You know, I don't think I've ever heard a single good thing about the VA from all the US vets I know and have worked with. The last PMC company I worked for had a lot of former US Marines and Army guys (and a couple NSW Navy guys too), and every single one had nothing but issues dealing with the VA. One area that should be focused on, here's to hoping a new administration gets in during the next election in the USA. Or before that, hah.

  • Russia begins invasion of Ukraine - what now?

    So far as Putin being taken out, I've read a few articles written by Russian reporters who aren't fans of Putin who claim he's surrounded by yes men right now. I doubt Putin is going to expose himself much in the near or even mid future - since he's been sending units after Ukraine's president, it follows that he must figure on the same happening to him, from both external and internal threats.


    Russian papers today claim that almost 10,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and nearly 17,000 wounded. That's a VERY high casualty rate considering the invading force numbers. Shockingly high, especially considering they haven't even gotten into the really brutal aspects of urban combat yet. If these numbers are accurate...crazy, and this is among some of the best equipped units in the Russian military too.

  • Russia begins invasion of Ukraine - what now?

    Hah, ya, that was the exact video I had in mind. Quite the nose plant that Hind did after being fireballed by that hit. Crazy huh. I wonder how the British Starstreak will work, the triple unit they set up on a tripod or the very large shoulder mounted unit - no explosive warhead, just the 3 high velocity kill vehicle darts. Time will tell on those too.



    Quote from Toad

    Hiya Gman. Good to see you here.

    Hey Toad, how've you been, good to see you too!

    Quote from Gina

    I think Putin is really fucked.

    Ditto, I think stalemate is where he's headed, which is NOT good for him or Russia. Not at all. Today Russia demanded a couple cities to surrender, and the both told Russia to eat shit.

  • Russia begins invasion of Ukraine - what now?

    =Bows-


    Greetings all, good to see you.


    Hey Gscholz, I guess we finally have a bunch of vids now of the Mi24/35 being taken down by manpads. For others here, until this war, even including Syria, there was few if any vids of a Hind being destroyed by mapads systems, an interesting subject GS and I have discussed a lot on the "other" board. The Hind is a tough effing helo. But, like any battlefield mathematics, it's just a matter of time so far as up arrow ratios go. There have only been a 1/2 dozen vids or so, but some of the vids of Hinds taking it on the chin are pretty crazy. Such a shame this invasion happened, but considering the Russians stationed their best units and equipment in their "Battalion Tactical Groups", Putin's focus on new wizzy high end tech investment at the cost of training and equipping his regular army, has shown pretty negative combat performance results. Even with the best BTGs making up the spearhead of the invasion, they still took a bit of a drubbing so far - obviously so have the Ukrainians, big time. Also, as Tom Clancy once wrote, amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. A guess Putin wasn't a fan and didn't read that.


    A great article here by Justin Bronk about Russian air power and its lack of capability and performance right now. He states that the reasons for the lackluster performance of the VKS so far boil down to a few points -


    https://www.prospectmagazine.c…ble-of-complex-operations


    1. Russian pilots are getting 1/2 to 1/3 the flying hours that Nato pilots get. Just enough to keep basic skills proficient, and not much more than that.

    2. Due to this they only fly 2 ship formations, and rarely if ever have multi group missions assembled like the West is capable of.

    3. They shot off most the their stocks of precision weapons in Syria, and so far as using the rest, see point 1.

    4.They have an age old Soviet problem - their focus on mobile SAM/AAA systems is a double edged sword, and they've apparently taken a lot of blue on blue (or is it red on red, haha) loses with their own surface to air defenses plinking a bunch of friendly Russian aircraft from the skies. They have had major deconfliction problems which contributes to them only flying small 2 ship formation missions instead of larger co ordinated air power missions.

  • Russia begins invasion of Ukraine - what now?

    Quote from GeeEss

    To be fair, the WWII stuff is in Ukrainian hands, not Russian. I like those Ukrainian SF bullpups. Never seen those before.

    IPI in Ukraine makes that bullpup, they call it the "Malyuk".. The Malyuk is "mostly" built with drop in AK74/etc parts, they have made them in 762/39, 5.45, and 5.56, but mostly they are in 5.45 with a proprietary in house constructed suppressor system attached or included.