NationStates

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:50 am**

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Can Travellers or Romani make good soldiers?

I think they can but in this RP some guy said they would all steal from civilians and desert. I thought that sounded racist.

...what.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:52 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Can Travellers or Romani make good soldiers?

I think they can but in this RP some guy said they would all steal from civilians and desert. I thought that sounded racist.

...what.

This guy was making racist comments that they would all desert and steal from civilians

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:54 am**

Obviously the british/Irish gypsy/romani/traveller community has provided effective soldiers to the british and Irish armies for several generations although admittedly only one managed to get decorated in ww2.

Its possible for anyone of any background to make a good soldier, the more relevant question is if it would be likely.

A character with a traveller background in the british army is perfectly believable but a regiment of travellers is more than a little far fetched. Of course such a regiment would likely be 30% Fijian...

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:13 am**

Is there any point equipping IFVs or APCs with hardkill APS? Are you just gonna end up gibbing your own troops?

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 6:53 am**

Hrstrovokia wrote:Is there any point equipping IFVs or APCs with hardkill APS?

Yes. If you don't, they will probably die.

Hrstrovokia wrote:Are you just gonna end up gibbing your own troops?

Hottest meme since "ERA will kill your own troops" and "autoloaders feed soldiers into the breech".

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:10 am**

Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Can Travellers or Romani make good soldiers?

I think they can but in this RP some guy said they would all steal from civilians and desert. I thought that sounded racist.

I'm going to answer this question and every other "do x make good soldiers" question. Ethnic and religious background have little influence on who is a good soldier. It's more about are you motivated to be good. See the real life Afghan army. Afghanistan has the whole "graveyard of empires" reputation and Afghans have a reputation as good fighters. Most of the Afghan army is garbage. Yet lots of countries that are known for being "peaceful" have good armies and effective soldiers because they're more motivated.

Also you shouldn't be RPing with shitposting trolls.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:11 am**

Austrasien wrote:Hottest meme since "ERA will kill your own troops" and "autoloaders feed soldiers into the breech".

To be fair the autoloaders on the early models of the T-64 were a bit janky.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:29 am**

It was literally one guy not minding his space relative to the loader. He didn't even lose the arm or anything, he just ripped his shirt and got a cut and bruise.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:38 am**

Dayganistan wrote:
Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Can Travellers or Romani make good soldiers?

I think they can but in this RP some guy said they would all steal from civilians and desert. I thought that sounded racist.

I'm going to answer this question and every other "do x make good soldiers" question. Ethnic and religious background have little influence on who is a good soldier. It's more about are you motivated to be good. See the real life Afghan army. Afghanistan has the whole "graveyard of empires" reputation and Afghans have a reputation as good fighters. Most of the Afghan army is garbage. Yet lots of countries that are known for being "peaceful" have good armies and effective soldiers because they're more motivated.

Also you shouldn't be RPing with shitposting trolls.

I will ask you to back up your accusation that I am a "shitposting troll" in telegrams.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:44 am**

Do we have a source regarding the T-64 autoloaders never seriously injuring crewmembers? I remember years ago reading several contemporaneous books that said how there were cases of serious injuries, coupled with an unrelated and unidentified (in the West anyway) catastrophic malfunction of the autoloader, which were bad enough for all the T-64s getting sent back to the factory for autoloader refits. I was just wondering if there is a more recent source that discredits those accounts.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:44 am**

Gallia- wrote:just stop replying to him lol

he's literally like 14 just add him to ignore and move on

Brute facts.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 7:56 am**

What do people think of this Frankenstein abomination of an IFV?

A Russian BMP-3M fitted with:

Berezhok Turret
Zaslon APS
Garant RCIED Jammer
Raketa ERA

It's for a country that has suddenly found fossil fuel wealth but has little to no indigenous defence industry and reliant on exports from Russia/former Soviet Union. Everything would be relatively easily to get. The Berezhok allows for the use of Kornet-EM's.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:00 am**

The New California Republic wrote:Do we have a source regarding the T-64 autoloaders never seriously injuring crewmembers? I remember years ago reading several contemporaneous books that said how there were cases of serious injuries, coupled with an unrelated and unidentified (in the West anyway) catastrophic malfunction of the autoloader, which were bad enough for all the T-64s getting sent back to the factory for autoloader refits. I was just wondering if there is a more recent source that discredits those accounts.

They were repeating bad urban legends of the 1980's, obviously. Through a game of telephone and deliberate myth making by highly reputable sources like "turned KGB officers", the idea of "autoloader eats the crew" started as "it broke some guy's hand once", then became "it shoved his arm into the breech", then became "it ripped his arm off" and the scale and number of the events spiraled with each embiggening of the fish. In reality what happened is probably during the testing of the original 6 or so prototypes of the T-64 (or T-72), I think a guy ripped his tanksuit's sleeve cuff or something, probably after getting it caught on the sheet metal handguard and yanking a bit and tearing the cloth. Maybe.

Having seen Americans that are are stupid enough to stick their hands in moving assembly line belts it may literally be a projection of what they would do, whereas more rational ethnes like Russians and Japanese wouldn't.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:02 am**

Gallia- wrote:
Champagne Socialist Sharifistan wrote:Can Travellers or Romani make good soldiers?

I think they can but in this RP some guy said they would all steal from civilians and desert. I thought that sounded racist.

It's probably right.

Gypsies/Roma communities have been hotbeds of petty crime since they arrived in Eastern Europe in the 1000's.

Crookfur wrote:Roflcopter

The virgin FOBbit vs the Chad Wandering Free Company.

Paladin Press readers are probably a bigger threat than gypsies.

It would probably help this guy more in the long run if everyone just ignored him or reported him for spam or something.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:08 am**

Hrstrovokia wrote:What do people think of this Frankenstein abomination of an IFV?

A Russian BMP-3M fitted with:

Berezhok Turret
Zaslon APS
Garant RCIED Jammer
Raketa ERA

It's for a country that has suddenly found fossil fuel wealth but has little to no indigenous defence industry and reliant on exports from Russia/former Soviet Union. Everything would be relatively easily to get. The Berezhok allows for the use of Kornet-EM's.

it would be... ok

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:20 am**

Triplebaconation wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
It's probably right.

Gypsies/Roma communities have been hotbeds of petty crime since they arrived in Eastern Europe in the 1000's.

The virgin FOBbit vs the Chad Wandering Free Company.

Paladin Press readers are probably a bigger threat than gypsies.

It would probably help this guy more in the long run if everyone just ignored him or reported him for spam or something.

I was waiting for someone to point out the biblio.

I can't wait to get all my Javelins pickpocketed by order of the Gypsy Mafia High Command.

Then they can read Paladin Press's Rocket Rally: The Art and Science of Using Man Portable Anti-Tank Missiles to Eliminate Your Political Enemies (20XX) to overturn election results in the local county that they don't like.

But yeah he was already reported for spam (thanke Ostu-chu~ :x ) but he's back now.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:20 am**

Gallia- wrote:
The New California Republic wrote:Do we have a source regarding the T-64 autoloaders never seriously injuring crewmembers? I remember years ago reading several contemporaneous books that said how there were cases of serious injuries, coupled with an unrelated and unidentified (in the West anyway) catastrophic malfunction of the autoloader, which were bad enough for all the T-64s getting sent back to the factory for autoloader refits. I was just wondering if there is a more recent source that discredits those accounts.

They were repeating bad urban legends of the 1980's, obviously. Through a game of telephone and deliberate myth making by highly reputable sources like "turned KGB officers", the idea of "autoloader eats the crew" started as "it broke some guy's hand once", then became "it shoved his arm into the breech", then became "it ripped his arm off" and the scale and number of the events spiraled with each embiggening of the fish. In reality what happened is probably during the testing of the original 6 or so prototypes of the T-64 (or T-72), I think a guy ripped his tanksuit's sleeve cuff or something, probably after getting it caught on the sheet metal handguard and yanking a bit and tearing the cloth. Maybe.

Having seen Americans that are are stupid enough to stick their hands in moving assembly line belts it may literally be a projection of what they would do, whereas more rational ethnes like Russians and Japanese wouldn't.

So we don't know either way for sure. That's unfortunate. I have been wondering whether it was true for years and was hoping to finally put it to rest one way or the other.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:26 am**

I wonder if similarly ridiculous nonsense about M1 Abrams' ammo door eating arms 24/7 would've spawned under certain circumstamces.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:27 am**

Hrstrovokia wrote:What do people think of this Frankenstein abomination of an IFV?

A Russian BMP-3M fitted with:

Berezhok Turret
Zaslon APS
Garant RCIED Jammer
Raketa ERA

The Soviets before them relied on having a few base vehicles or even just chassis and adapting them for a whole variety of uses, so the fact the Russians and Ukrainians are continuing this habit makes some sense. Unfortunately the results can sometimes be...aesthetically displeasing...

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:29 am**

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:I wonder if similarly ridiculous nonsense about M1 Abrams' ammo door eating arms 24/7 would've spawned under certain circumstamces.

After it almost happened at least once!

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:29 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
They were repeating bad urban legends of the 1980's, obviously. Through a game of telephone and deliberate myth making by highly reputable sources like "turned KGB officers", the idea of "autoloader eats the crew" started as "it broke some guy's hand once", then became "it shoved his arm into the breech", then became "it ripped his arm off" and the scale and number of the events spiraled with each embiggening of the fish. In reality what happened is probably during the testing of the original 6 or so prototypes of the T-64 (or T-72), I think a guy ripped his tanksuit's sleeve cuff or something, probably after getting it caught on the sheet metal handguard and yanking a bit and tearing the cloth. Maybe.

Having seen Americans that are are stupid enough to stick their hands in moving assembly line belts it may literally be a projection of what they would do, whereas more rational ethnes like Russians and Japanese wouldn't.

So we don't know either way for sure. That's unfortunate. I have been wondering whether it was true for years and was hoping to finally put it to rest one way or the other.

We know that there's no reported incidents of someone suffering any serious injury in an autoloader accident that didn't involve removing the handguards or putting their hands where hands shouldn't be.

Austria-Bohemia-Hungary wrote:I wonder if similarly ridiculous nonsense about M1 Abrams' ammo door eating arms 24/7 would've spawned under certain circumstamces.

Electric stop saves your arms doe.

also hi~

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:43 am**

Gallia- wrote:
The New California Republic wrote:So we don't know either way for sure. That's unfortunate. I have been wondering whether it was true for years and was hoping to finally put it to rest one way or the other.

We know that there's no reported incidents of someone suffering any serious injury in an autoloader accident that didn't involve removing the handguards or putting their hands where hands shouldn't be.

Given the strict censorship of the time that'd hardly be surprising; but such a thing, if it existed, would likely be somewhere in the KGB or GRU archives.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:59 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
We know that there's no reported incidents of someone suffering any serious injury in an autoloader accident that didn't involve removing the handguards or putting their hands where hands shouldn't be.

Given the strict censorship of the time that'd hardly be surprising; but such a thing, if it existed, would likely be somewhere in the KGB or GRU archives.

Yes I'm sure the Main Intelligence Directorate is extremely interested in why Sergei Ivanov's tanksuit has a 2 millimeter cut on the cuff hem.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:05 am**

Gallia- wrote:
The New California Republic wrote:Given the strict censorship of the time that'd hardly be surprising; but such a thing, if it existed, would likely be somewhere in the KGB or GRU archives.

Yes I'm sure the Main Intelligence Directorate is extremely interested in why Sergei Ivanov's tanksuit has a 2 millimeter cut on the cuff hem.

Not what I meant.

Posted: **Thu Aug 13, 2020 9:23 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Gallia- wrote:
Yes I'm sure the Main Intelligence Directorate is extremely interested in why Sergei Ivanov's tanksuit has a 2 millimeter cut on the cuff hem.

Not what I meant.

It is more or less what you said lol.

It's unlikely it would be considered a state secret, or any sort of secret really (beyond medical confidentiality, as Soviet medical ethics resembled those of the United States when it had actual material constraints on treatment [and, arguably, common sense]), since it's not particularly important enough to be noted in official documentation. It would be written down by a battalion medical officer as any other nominal injury, similar to what happens during negligent discharges or whatever. The specifics of the event probably wouldn't leave the tank company involved. How often do you hear about the Joes who get run over by tanks during station training? Or drown? It happens, but it hardly makes national, or even regional, news. It's a local news story at best that gets forgotten quickly.

For something as minor as having a finger broken or something because a hatch closed on it, or a shell ran over it, is something that guys in the battalion would be "aware" of, but they certainly wouldn't know who it happened to, or why it happened, or anything really specific except "some dude got his hand broke". It would be something that moves through a game of telephone from the company where it happened to the battalion being aware that "an incident" occurred involving an automatic loader on the new medium tank, to the regimental commander maybe visiting the hospital for an entirely unrelated event being conflated as "it ate his arm", to spreading to the rest of the military as "the new medium ate some dude's arm in Dagestan is I heard from Ivan" to eventually "Soviet autoloaders ate their crewmen for lunch and were greased with the blood of rebellious Ukrainians for the crimes of their fathers during the Holodomor" being reported as absolute fact by some "military historian" in the West. Then the cover of his book "Thanks, But No (Autoloaded) Tanks" shows a man lifting a sabot shell off the ground and he talks about his workout routine for "beating the snot outta the commies" every 5th page involves lifting a real sabot round off the ground 10 times every morning. He then proceeds to ask everyone he knows at his next ice cream social/powwow/writing workshop why his back hurts when he power cleans a 105mm rubber training shell off the ground.

Oh and then it turns out it was actually Senior Conscript Sergei and he just got his tanksuit's sleeve cuff caught on a chain rammer's guide and it tugged a bit and gave him a wrist sprain (somehow), and he has a little swelling but the battalion surgeon gave him an ice pack and he was back to work the next day, and it was noted in the medical logs which are routinely discarded after about 8 months due to space saving regulations on keeping long period bookkeeping that involves destruction of conscripts' medical files after their service period is over if they don't volunteer.

Praporshchik Pavlov yelled at him for having a cut on his tanksuit but Lieutenant Ivanov assured him it was okay and that the tanksuit would be replaced. It wasn't because Sergei left before the end of the fiscal year and when the battalion funds were disbursed it was discovered that he wasn't on the roster anymore. Problem solved!

The sooner you realize that the Russians (and by extension, whatever else boogeyman of the week, be it the PLA or the DPRK or the Iranians) are more alike than not the sooner it becomes easier to put things into context.

"Autoloaders eat arms" is mostly a bullshit myth invented by some radical traitors who were looked to as oracles by people who quite literally didn't know any better (nor wanted to) but sold a lot of stuff to a part of Western democracies' public that was very interested in the subject of "Soviet military life" but perhaps not competent or otherwise healthy enough to partake in it in the "normal" manner like joining the U.S. Army, learning Russian at the DLI, going Green to Gold, and becoming a signals analyst or MI briefing officer; so instead, they lived vicariously through books written by people with a vested interest in writing interesting stories instead of the truth. Can that be verified in any way? No. But neither can the GRU swooping down like Men in Black to cover up ~~a UFO~~ a fresh amputee being wheeled off because the T-64 ate his arm or whatever and that this would somehow embarrass the Soviets.

No, what embarrassed the Soviets was going to a grocery store.

Next you'll tell me the French really did have giant movie theaters, swimming pools, and flower shops in the Maginot Line.

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NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0