Russia’s space chief is “very unhappy” with “hostile” US policy

"I am very unhappy with the openly hostile policy of the USA toward my country."

Read the whole story

 

[galahad05]

Eh, up close and personal---like every army since forever when it was swords, spears, and shields.

 

[Resistance]

I really wonder how the FPV operators do not succumb to nausea. Their drones often circle in on a target, or make a bunch of turns through a structure or the woods, meanwhile the pilot's head is not moving at all. The discrepancy between what the semicircular canals are sending and what the eyes are sending in situations like that makes most people violently ill after a while. Maybe if they do it long enough they just learn how to adapt? Sort of like the infamous US air force "motion sickness desensitization training" where they spin pilots having nausea problems until their brains (figuratively) just give up and stop trying to make sense of it. Here is a civilian version:

https://www.grandforksherald.com/ne...tion-sickness-if-you-can-stomach-the-spinning

I don't know if that would even work for drone pilots, and in any case, there are so many drone pilots now, they couldn't possibly be putting them all into spinning machines like that.

It's the same thing that let's people play video games at all, not much different, the big problem is using FPV goggles that have a screen that moves with your head, the trick is to keep your head still, then it's just as easy to tolerate as any video game.

 

[numerobis]

Eh, up close and personal---like every army since forever when it was swords, spears, and shields.

The scale is wildly different. Drone pilots fly multiple missions per day and kill someone -- probably several people -- every day, day after day.

Soldiers showing up with swords and spears rarely actually fought battles, maybe one or two in a campaign season. Usually the side with more soldiers won, killing a fraction of the side with fewer soldiers... so it's far less than one kill for the average soldier.

The type of killing is also different (a completely one-sided fight versus a vaguely fair one) but I don't know enough how that would affect things.

 

[DanNeely]

Better or worse than US drone operators, who blow up people in Afghanistan then at the end of their shift go home to put little Timmy to bed and try to be a normal person. Every day.

But yeah the footage of individually hitting Russian soldiers, it's horrifying. Blowing up buildings and materiel and moving vehicles is probably easier, even if you know people on the other side are dying. Slamming into someone who's staring right at the camera, yikes.

Way worse I think. Predator operators just saw a building go boom 90% of the time. FPV operators hunting dismounted infantry are like snipers in that they see every enemy soldier they kill as a person before ending their life. That was the difference that historically left snipers with much more serious psychiatric trauma than the average front line soldier.

 

[wagnerrp]

Better or worse than US drone operators, who blow up people in Afghanistan then at the end of their shift go home to put little Timmy to bed and try to be a normal person. Every day.

But yeah the footage of individually hitting Russian soldiers, it's horrifying. Blowing up buildings and materiel and moving vehicles is probably easier, even if you know people on the other side are dying. Slamming into someone who's staring right at the camera, yikes.

I'd be worried about the simple idea that these are suicide drones. US pilots flying Predators or Reapers, they're in a cockpit with a lot of things to look at and ground them. The FPV pilot, all they have is the drone view with an HMD to block out everything else, and you crash into something and blow up. Then they power up another and do it again. It's literally a respawn. How do you untrain that instinct for a do-over?

 

[numerobis]

Way worse I think. Predator operators just saw a building go boom 90% of the time. FPV operators hunting dismounted infantry are like snipers in that they see every enemy soldier they kill as a person before ending their life. That was the difference that historically left snipers with much more serious psychiatric trauma than the average front line soldier.

The big issue with Predator operators was that they couldn't compartmentalize because they went home to a civilian type of life after their shift. FPV operators remain in the war zone, with fellow soldiers. Then the deployment ends and they aren't FPVing anymore.

Anyway it's all going to leave horrible scars.

 

[numerobis]

The geodetic distance from Urmia, Iran (ie, a location in NW Iran) to Crete, Greece calculated with this tool:

https://www.gps-coordinates.net/distance

is 1858 km. On paper at least, according to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_program_of_Iran

Iran has, or at least had, missiles with adequate range to cover that distance. They may not have felt that using one for a shot at some base in Iraq or Turkey made sense. Even if they hit it, how much damage would it do? Bases are usually spread out. On the other hand, a US aircraft carrier that cost 16 or 17 Billion dollars to build, carrying who knows how many billions more in airplanes, and thousands of American sailors, sitting immobile at a known (or at least knowable) location, would be an awfully tempting target.

Relax -- that's way beyond Iranian missile range.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/20/iran-war-live-updates-oil-prices-israel-netanyahu-ground-component-us-tensions-hormuz?page=with:block-69bdf44f8f0870f125bb09ca#block-69bdf44f8f0870f125bb09ca

Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000km from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously acknowledged, ...

 

[DanNeely]

Relax -- that's way beyond Iranian missile range.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/20/iran-war-live-updates-oil-prices-israel-netanyahu-ground-component-us-tensions-hormuz?page=with:block-69bdf44f8f0870f125bb09ca#block-69bdf44f8f0870f125bb09ca

Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000km from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously acknowledged, ...

They have orbital missiles, over loading them could create ICBMs with arbitrary ranges. Main problem there is that space launchers aren't intended to fly on no notice; and if it hasn't already been blown up I'm sure Trump and Bibi's war planers are just looking for an excuse to do so. (Beyond the simple fact that it exists, which is why I'm unsure that it's intact today at all.)

 

[Cthel]

Saturday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:

• 154x Shahed & Gerbera aerial torpedoes & decoys [~90 Shaheds] (148 intercepted/missed/crashed, 1 unresolved)

Spoiler: Telegram Embed (UKR)

View: https://t.me/AFUStratCom/33469#

 

[Cthel]

Another russian oil refinery attacked last night

Oil refinery in Saratov struck

On the night of 21 March, the Ukrainian Defence Forces struck facilities at the Saratov Oil Refinery in the Saratov Oblast of the Russian Federation. The facility processes crude oil and produces fuels and lubricants used to supply the occupying army.

The Saratov Oil Refinery is one of the oldest oil refineries in Russia. As of 2023, its refining capacity stood at 4.8 million tonnes.

According to preliminary information, the secondary oil refining unit and the RVS-10000 vertical storage tank have been damaged.

The extent of the damage is being assessed.

Spoiler: Telegram Embed (UKR)

View: https://t.me/GeneralStaffZSU/36349#

 

[VividVerism]

Eh, up close and personal---like every army since forever when it was swords, spears, and shields.

I think it's pretty much guaranteed there were plenty of combatants back in the day of swords, spears, and shields who developed PTSD. They just wouldn't have called it that at the time.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

I think it's pretty much guaranteed there were plenty of combatants back in the day of swords, spears, and shields who developed PTSD. They just wouldn't have called it that at the time.

I think acoup talked on that topic.
And I think he does mention that culture was different around combat, and that the combat experience was significantly different (especially since lethality was lower).

Different consequences could be possible, but probably not PTSD as we define it.

Edit : https://acoup.blog/2020/04/24/fireside-friday-april-24-2020/ (do note that he mentions uncertainty, but the evidence we have isn't showing PTSD being common in those era).

 

[C64 raids Bungling Bay]

The scale is wildly different. Drone pilots fly multiple missions per day and kill someone -- probably several people -- every day, day after day.

Soldiers showing up with swords and spears rarely actually fought battles, maybe one or two in a campaign season. Usually the side with more soldiers won, killing a fraction of the side with fewer soldiers... so it's far less than one kill for the average soldier.

The type of killing is also different (a completely one-sided fight versus a vaguely fair one) but I don't know enough how that would affect things.

They aren't humans, they are invaders and murderers. They've killed your family and friends. There is reason they're called orcs. Ukrainians don't have any time for soft touchy feely. Only good ruzzian is a dead ruzzian and we celebrate the defenders for doing the Lord's work.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

I think acoup talked on that topic.
And I think he does mention that culture was different around combat, and that the combat experience was significantly different (especially since lethality was lower).

Different consequences could be possible, but probably not PTSD as we define it.

Edit : https://acoup.blog/2020/04/24/fireside-friday-april-24-2020/ (do note that he mentions uncertainty, but the evidence we have isn't showing PTSD being common in those era).

Addendum : this quote is pretty neat :

I was always struck that – despite the fact that monastic life was often a destination for medieval military aristocrats troubled by their life of violence – none of the monastic rules I have read (admittedly, not all of them), which often have guidelines for abbots to deal with difficult monks, have had anything about how to deal with the symptoms of PTSD.

 

[Resistance]

They aren't humans, they are invaders and murderers. They've killed your family and friends. There is reason they're called orcs. Ukrainians don't have any time for soft touchy feely. Only good ruzzian is a dead ruzzian and we celebrate the defenders for doing the Lord's work.

What you're saying implies that PTSD is a failure on the part of the victim.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

They aren't humans, they are invaders and murderers. They've killed your family and friends. There is reason they're called orcs. Ukrainians don't have any time for soft touchy feely. Only good ruzzian is a dead ruzzian and we celebrate the defenders for doing the Lord's work.

Well, the fact is that reality is more complex than that, and the long term impact of this way of thinking will likely haunt Ukraine for a long time.
(At the same time, it shows how cruel and violent human can be turned into)

 

[Cthel]

In case anyone wondered what an alliance with Russia is worth...

Putin tells Iran that Moscow remains its 'loyal friend'

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow remains a "loyal friend and reliable partner to Tehran during this difficult time" in a message to Iran's new supreme leader and president.

In a greeting marking the first day of the Iranian new year, Putin tells Mojtaba Khamenei and Masoud Pezeshkian he hopes the Iranian people will "overcome these difficult trials with dignity", according to a Kremlin statement.

Link

 

[vhoracek]

In case anyone wondered what an alliance with Russia is worth...

Link

"Thoughts and prayers" po russki.

 

[Aurich]

It's clear that this thread needs to be closed and this conversation moved to a moderated space.

We have a dedicated Soap Box thread for the topic of Russia vs Ukraine here:

https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threads/ukraine-is-game-to-you-part-deux.1475506/

Everyone is welcome to discuss the topic there if they wish, where we have moderators. Using an old discussion thread to talk about war where nothing is monitored is too out of bounds.