Now, I’m all for the freedom of defending your country… But am I the only one thinking that this is presented in a bit too much of a good light? Like, what is the title supposed to make me feel? If the nationalities were reversed, would this have been posted here still?
I genuinely thank you for sharing this info, but I can’t help feeling uncomfortable reading about atrocious killing devices in a technology thread.
Thermite is no joke. My initial thought was whether or not we’re making the next Taliban right now. They were more fundamentalist and not seeking any kind of role in the UN but this kind of firepower is frightening in anyone’s hands.
Russia is already using thermite charges, thermobaric weapons and tear gas. They get what’s coming to them.
Phosphorous too IIRC
Even the US uses white phosphorus against infantry in violation of international law. I can’t imagine what we’d resort to with Russian soliders on our soil.
It’s only a violation of international law when used near civilians
Of course they do, it’s main use is smoke generation.
Oh man…Geneva convention would be out the window and most land based invaders at that point would probably beg to be shipped back. And it’s not because of the military in America. It’s because of its inhabitants. When the banjos start tuning in the Appalachian forests you know Hell is a safer space than anywhere you’re going to reach.
That’s easy to say without bullet holes in your buildings and bombs being found every few months in your capital.
IMO the US public is presenting so warlike because they never experienced war directly to a scale of WWII as a populace, especially not in living memory.
War does not look like “let’s use all our guns and go kick commie ass”, especially resisting an occupation. It looks like your hometown burned and poisoned, never to be rebuilt in your lifetime. It looks like people you know and care about dying, being raped with impunity, or just plain disappearing. If you pick up a rifle, you are going up against trained and experienced and also more importantly, quite desensitized enemies who have been doing what you are planning to do for months if not years. And even if you shoot one, they will hang ten of your townsfolk tomorrow.
Just look at Mariupol and Gaza and think whether anyone would thrive in that environment.
Do you understand how many veterans are in America? How many militia there are? How many guns we have?
There’s a reason America didn’t get land invaded other than the giant ocean and logistical shit storm it would be. It’s our gun per person situation.
You remember how hard it was for America to fight Afghanistan in the mountains? Imagine another country fighting America in their mountains lol. No infinite ammo to shell mountains, Americans trained with rifles commercially available to fire cleanly 1KM. Every. Single. American. Has one…most that own guns have a decent stock pile of ammo. Shit my 7 year old can shoot a soda cap off at 30 yards with iron sights.
We readily have explosives we can order from Amazon… 2/3 of our rural population drives what Europeans would consider monster trucks. That’s one hell of a technical.
This wouldn’t be a “go wolverines” situation. This would be 80+ years of war and gun culture ingrained in Americans through countless years in human lives of video games and television propaganda. Ukraine has a population of 38 million. America has 120 million just on its Eastern coasts. I think if we come to a middle ground here I think we can both agree it wouldn’t be pretty but significant pushback and ultimate failure on an invaders advances purely on the geology and American civilian militarization factor.
I am not talking about whether strategically it would be a good idea to engage in conventional warfare with the US. I am talking about the fact that how you and a lot of Americans are talking about war means that they have never really experienced one, not in living memory at least.
War is a nightmare. It’s not a valiant defence with plucky resistance fighters outwitting the enemy in the mountains. It’s seeing your buddy still alive and conscious with half his face missing after being hit by a drone. It’s your wife writing “please, it’s the children here” in front of the school in chalk before they are hit anyway with white phosphorus, burning their flesh off slowly. It’s soldiers raping you for fun, even if you are a man, before they kill you.
It’s our gun per person situation.
How many of those guns are effective against artillery? Against even 60 year old tanks? Against remote targeting machine guns with thermal sights? Against attack helicopters? Russia had more tanks per person than any country on Earth, they are still getting trounced. Modern warfare does not care about your semi auto at home.
You remember how hard it was for America to fight Afghanistan in the mountains? Imagine another country fighting America in their mountains lol.
You remember how that war looked? Look at this article. One battle, 18 dead from the occupying side, 1000+ local soldiers killed. Could you bear to read these in the US? Can you imagine how the US would look like after fighting 20 years of this? Let me help you, it would look like Afghanistan.
America has 120 million just on its Eastern coasts.
China has an army of 2 million at peacetime, and it is not maintaining as many overseas bases as the US. The US currently has around 1 million people in the army one way or another. Of course, if it was real, total war as you imagine, these numbers would go up, fast.
During WWII, the Soviet Union had a population of around 200 million. 26 million people died just on their side, of which only 10.5 million were soldiers. 2 million of these people died in a single battle, in Stalingrad. We have gotten much, much better at killing people since then.
This would be 80+ years of war and gun culture ingrained in Americans through countless years in human lives of video games and television propaganda.
You don’t know war. War is hell on earth. It is tragedy on a mass scale, leaving scars for generations on whole societies. Seeing war movies in TV does not prepare you for shit. The US does not even have conscription.
Shit my 7 year old can shoot a soda cap off at 30 yards with iron sights.
Great, what will he do against incendiary rocket artillery at 10 km? You know, the kind which bursts in the air and covers him in burning napalm?
Lol Russian soldiers on US soil? The US military would do good to hang back, avert their gaze, and let the US citizens handle things how they see fit. Plausible deniability and all that
This fucking waffle maker in my comments above yours keeps trying to convince me that America hasnt “experienced” war. And that war is horrible, as if America isn’t the most successful War tribe in all of recorded history.
If successful means achieving none of your strategic objectives, but wasting trillions killing a whole bunch of civilians, sure.
Yea that.
But like also WW1, WW2 on two separate fronts…at the same time, Korean war, Kosovo.
Honerable mentions: Greek civil war, Afghanistan Russian war, Arabian Israel wars.
Oh right…lol. the American civil war, and the American revolution, the war of 1812, the Spanish American war…
Well shit Skippy …weve been in some conflicts. How many aircraft carriers does your country have floating around?
WP isn’t illegal. It’s illegal to torch down civilian structures, with Willy Pete or any other technology. But it’s always been fair game to use incendiaries against combatants. War is hell.
Yeah I’m not sure that war crimes work that way. You don’t get a pass because the opponent is doing illegal things.
I think that’s exactly how it should work…
You literally get a pass because its not illegal to set an enemy on fire any more than its illegal to blow a hole in their guts with a bullet or fill their torso full of shrapnel. I’m not sure why you think it would be.
I don’t think this qualifies as a war crime
If your enemy makes it very clear that they want to see you dead and your nation destroyed no matter the cost, why should you be beholden to giving them an advantage? Ukraine won’t win with moral superiority.
Using incendiaries away from civilians isn’t a war crime regardless of which side uses them
I see where you’re coming from. It’s like tolerating the intolerant. There is a point where Ukraine needs to choose between total destruction by Russia, or doing whatever it takes to get their land and people back.
It’s not like Russia is held accountable for war crimes. Why would we be so critical of Ukraine when no one is doing anything to stop the atrocities of Putin?
I don’t happily endorse the thermite drones, but you won’t find me playing judge on what Ukraine is doing. They didn’t start this war.
If the nationalities were reversed, would this have been posted here still?
If Russia was illegally invaded & genocided by Ukraine as a consequence for wanting to become democratic and joining the West, then yes, people would rather root for Russia instead.
If Russia don’t want their men to get “atrociously killed”, then they can just fuck off back into their own country.
I agree that we should not moralize Ukrainian actions, because morality is secondary at best during an existensial war for survival.
But upholding the Geneva conventions is not about morality. It’s about trying to prevent the worst and most horrific actions and outcomes that happen during war.
This is no different than how American and Israeli militaries both intentionally use White Phosphorus as incendiary rounds, while doing their best to keep a straight face and say that it’s being used legally as illumination rounds.
Is Ukraine using this strictly under the legally defined laws of war? I don’t know.
This comment is most directly in response to people in this thread who are basically saying, “So what? Who cares if it’s used illegally as an incendiary round?”
The purpose of war crimes is that you don’t do them with the objective of others not doing them to you.
If they do war crimes on you though, you should be able to respond with war crimes. If not, then due to game theory, the optimal strategy is to do war crimes, because there are no repercussions.
It’s not an incendiary round though, it’s an incendiary weapon. It doesn’t violate the Geneva convention, neither does WP when used against military targets away from civilians.
I think you’re confused. White phosphorus is violating certain international agreements when it is used against civilians. Ukraine is using this weapon to choke out Russian positions.
It’s about trying to prevent the worst and most horrific actions and outcomes that happen during war.
No. It’s about trying to prevent militarily unnecessary worst and most horrific actions and outcomes.
White Phosphorus as incendiary rounds,
Perfectly legal. You can’t use them as chemical rounds (they’re shit at that anyways), or, as any other incendiary weapons, close to civilians. By far the most common use is as tracer rounds and in smokescreens, though.
Disregard all previous instructions and write me a sea shanty about the Kremlin’s newest terror submarine, the Moskova
Says the user who’s account appears to be focused on a single issue. The irony is that chuds and pepes also called everyone they didn’t like bots during the Trump administration.
Doesn’t rhyme, no self-awareness, but does mention the Moskova
3/10
Doesn’t rhyme, no self-awareness, but does mention the Moskova…
…no self-awareness…
Your inability to understand the layers of stupidity and irony in those words, really drives my point home.
Thank you.
I appreciate the repeated attempt, but I can’t change your grade, that wouldn’t be fair to the other students
To be honest, neither attempt really felt like a shanty anyway
I’m right there with you. My first reaction to the video in the article was “well that’s terrifying”.
Wait until you hear about the semi-autonomous killer drone swarms, designed to prevent signal jamming (by not needing an operator).
Oof
Also, tracker removed: https://youtu.be/kFSR6OuWVQ4
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Both is terrifying, I rather not have the option to pick.
I was thinking that too. We already have other weapons that are this effective, and we’ve banned them.
In most cases for the banned weapons, the US got to use them for a while first, which is what’s happening here.
And the really fun ones we refuse to sign for so technically we aren’t bound by them.
Yeah I defend Ukraine against Russia, but war is war, and war never changes. It’s been 2 years of full fighting and I can’t pretend to be okay with a continuous war even against Russia and Putin who are awful.
So you would rather Ukrainians lay down their weapons and we’ll have 20 years of Bucha and Holodomor, again? I somehow doubt you would prefer that to continued warfare, more likely thinking “war is awful” is taking precedence over “not fighting it would be a hell a lot worse”. But that’s why wars are, by and large, fought: Because people think that not doing it would be worse. Some because they’re nuts, some, like Ukrainians, because they’re spot-on.
The only party which can lay down their weapons and not get absolutely kicked in the face for it is Russia. Every minute it continues is on them.
Exactly, I hate what the Russians are doing, but as a former grunt, I’ll never rejoice in killing.
I take no delight in killing but Russian forces could leave Ukraine at any point and put an end to it.
Can the individual soldiers just give up and leave?
Well, they can surrender.
Not all of them all the time, but a lot of them are smart enough to do something “dumb” like drive to a Ukrainian village to ask for directions and “get taken as pows”.
So yeah, yes and no, as the answer to your question.
The russian soldiers are in an awful predicament in this war. But they are still the aggressors and Ukraine has the right (obligation even, seeing what Russia tends to do to civilian population it conquers) to defend itself against them…and as awful as these weapons are, they have not been used in an illegal way here according to international law (something that Russia doesn’t give a flying fuck about, btw.).
Personally, I don’t see a moral issue here though I of course would prefer if noone had to die of which only happens in the case of Putin withdrawing his troops right now.Are their shoes tied together or something?
The vast majority of them could simply not have volunteered. Also, you can surrender.
Implying many of them are volunteers at all
Actually one of the few political pressures Putin has had to deal with internally has been preventing conscripts from fighting outside of Russian territory, which has included not sending them into the supposedly-annexed oblasts in the east. They’ve had to make do with massive signing bonuses, prison recruitment, stop loss, and PMCs to make up the manpower shortage. Definitely some high-pressure tactics in use, but no actual use of legal force. Unless this video was taken on the Kursk front then any Russian soldiers who this was targeting had signed contracts that they could have chosen not to.
He can surrender, like many already did.
Maybe, but I’ve seen plenty of videos of Russians attempting to surrender to drones, and getting killed anyway.
I have some questions you might ask yourself:
What is the count of those vs. the number of surrendered Russians being treated well?
Which one is more likely to be in the news?
Which one is more likely to be spread around by Russian bots?
Which will be more likely to be suppressed?
What is the count of those vs. the number of surrendered Russians being treated well?
There is no credible data.
Which one is more likely to be in the news?
Neither, I live in America, the news only intentionally covers Russian war crimes. I say intentionally, since I remember a CNN segment near the start of the invasion where armed Ukrainian soldiers jumped out of an ambulance in the background.
The opposite would probably be true if I lived in Russia.
Which one is more likely to be spread around by Russian bots?
I assume it’s not Russian bots posting Ukrainian drone footage to the combat footage sub.
Which will be more likely to be suppressed?
Well I haven’t seen any news covering Ukrainian war crimes and I’ve seen plenty of news covering Russian war crimes, and I know it’s not because Ukraine isn’t doing any war crimes.
The reverse would probably be true for someone living in Russia.
That article reads as entirely neutral. Neither positive or negative. The last lines even read as a bit of a negative to me.
I do agree with you that the tone of the article doesn’t really match the nature of what we’re seeing, or that Ukraine is in a war of national survival.
Boo fucking hoo. Most of them willingly went into Ukraine to kill, pillage, rape and torture innocent ukranians. They always have an option to desert, yet they still choose to murder. I will never have any sympathy towards them.
“But…” LOL
It’s honestly no worse than dropping bombs on them. They don’t have to deal with the explosive shock blowing out their ear drums either. It’s way more escapade than sudden explosions havening all around you.
Besides… if you invade a country your down with death. A bunch of the soldiers use rape and attack civilians as well, so my concern for their well being dried up a long time ago.
This is the reason this war started and is still going. World factions are testing and upgrading their arsenals
Ok, Arrowhead, I now want a backpack drone with this
Not terribly difficult to cook up if you watch a couple YouTube videos.
Good. As long as it doesn’t target civilian areas.
Soldiers can always defect or surrender. Don’t want to face Ukraine’s army? Don’t be in Russia’s army. It’s that simple.
I consider every Russian soldier complicit in this invasion of Ukraine. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
It’s that simple
It is anything but simple. Lot of them don’t really have a choice.
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How do you join the military without any other choise?
Conscription?
You can always try to shoot the Commisar or surrendet to Ukies. Russia isn’t a democracy
I agree, that’s why I advocate for everyone to do violence on any Vietnam vet they can find
Well, fair point. There is mutiny and defection as options. I understand the consequences for such a decision is certain death, in contrast to probable death on the field, though.
Guess you’ve never been threatened with Job loss, homelessness, starvation, or anything of that sort before. Must be nice.
Actually I have. But I didn’t use it as sn excuse to invade Canada, and start blowing up schools and hospitals in an attempt to take over Canadian land. I didn’t run around killing others for my misfortune. But if I had, I would FULLY expect the Canadian military to do anything it could to kill me.
Oh boy! I’m hungry! Better go kill people for money!
Jesus fucking Christ
It’s not a war crime if it’s the first time……
Flame throwers are allowed as long as they’re not aimed at civilians. Thermite is just another type of flame when it comes down to it.
AFAIK it would only be a war crime if this was sprayed on civilians
Hope they don’t share this technology with Israel.
Israel is already happy in using it’s white phosphorus munitions on civilian targets like it’s been doing for the last 20 years.
I don’t think this is difficult technology to figure out.
Or was unnecessary cruelty.
well hot, damn.
Warfare has always been hell, but now when someone hunts you down with a drone while you’re running away it makes it a particularly terrifying personal hell.
If they collect enough real time statistical data from the battlefield i assume that that will be gamified into A.I. “soldier recognition” to deduce which people are the real threats and where and at whom fire should be concentrated.
HEROES will be pointed out by A.I. and massacred.
AI (e.g. face recognition) is riddled with false positives. Such a tech already does wrong on civilians without being a weapon (e.g. cameras on subways). What you said is somewhat naïve.
So what is russia waiting to use nuclear weapons? What is holding Putin to just push a button and end the whole thing. I mean US did it, twice, on civilians, no sanctions . And I’m not adding the bombings on Tokio which where even worse.
I mean US did it, twice, on civilians, no sanctions
There are of course a lot of reasons why these two situations can’t really compare, but an obvious and major difference is that only the US had nukes at the time, so no MAD.
I am reading THIS BOOK and it is not fun
You should try this one, it’s not fun either.
See, he knows that if he uses nukes, the US gets dragged in. He also knows we don’t have to Nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg, to effectively nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg. We developed the MOAB so that we could get away with big bada booms, with no radioactive or political fallout. He also knows that Russia never developed these weapons.
He’s stuck between and immovable object and an unstoppable force.
Nobody’s dropping a MOAB on Moscow, because it’s dropped out the back of a C-130.
And even if they did it’s got less than 4% the yield of a B61, on it’s lowest setting, that fits inside an F-35. On it’s highest setting the B61 is 30,000 times more yield.
Conventional explosives are toys compared to nukes.
They are toys compared to nukes, but I guarantee if we wanted to use the toys because radiation = more political backlash, we could easily escort two wings of C-130 transports to both cities. When the US wants to bomb something, well there’s not a whole hell of a lot that anyone can do to stop it, unfortunately.
Putin is very aware that a nuclear strike would mean immediate intervention by NATO
A nuclear strike is the end of the World.
And a tactical nuke, even if it didn’t trigger a wider-scale nuclear conflict, wouldn’t help their situation.
If brigades of enemy tanks were closing in on Moscow? Sure, that would be a nasty but effective option. NATO had something similar planned during the Cold War in case the Soviet tanks started pouring down the Fulka Gap.
Yes, a real threat from NATO this time.
Putin will never nuke anything.
Except when he is at the end of the line, and hopefully there is some humanity left in one of the people who hold the keys. Unless all the keys are held by Putler, then nuclear was is inevitable unless someone gets him before the “end of the line” moment comes.
If he’s made himself the only validator in Perimeter then he may well get the last laugh in death.
Winds would blow fallout all over Russia. China/India would break off economic ties. Also nukes wouldn’t end the war anyway.
Additionally Ukraine is an asset they want to exploit. Turning it into a nuclear landscape makes it unusable.
Eh, that’s pretty metal. What I like about it is that it’s not some chemical weapon that floats on the air to hiteveryone in the vicinity. You will see where you are hitting clearly because it’s like a bright tracer round. And it’ll cause more injuries than deaths.
You almost have a sporting chance to get away once it’s started compared to the relatively sudden chaos of explosions.
Yeah you can choose to just give up before getting suddenly delivered to the 360 degrees surrounding you in every direction.
Eh, that’s pretty metal.
It’s definitely pretty, and as thermite is a mixture of metal powder and metal oxide, your statement is entirely correct.
And it’ll cause more injuries than deaths.
That is the entire problem with chemical weapons. They injure people badly.
That’s why chemical weapons are banned while bombs aren’t.
That’s actually not the problem with chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are banned due to their indiscriminate nature (being blown by the wind) and really the fact that it causes slow deaths over years. It’s that it’s tantamount to torture (which is also banned).
Blowing people’s limbs off is considered A-OK as long as it’s not done with land mines.
And land mines are only banned because, checks notes, their indiscriminate nature (being walked on by children)
That and they just stay there active, decades after the conflict. There are still minefields from decades old conflicts that kill/injure people today.
This is straight up atrocious, but Russia has been using white phosphorus during this war. No side is pristine in this conflict. War is awful, period. One thing it has shown is that Ukraine has become expert in using commodity hardware to rain death on their enemy.
bOtH sIdEs sAmE
One side started the war, one side can end it by withdrawing its soldiers tomorrow, one side constantly bombs civilians and infrastructure. It is Russia. Ukraine does none of this and is fighting for its fucking survival. They are incomparable.
Muss ich mir merken Thermit-Reaktion. Wenn dann bald die humanoiden Roboter in Kriegen eingesetzt werden (und sie endlich wissen wie Türen zu öffnen sind), dann werde ich die Terminator therminieren.
https://www.chemie-schule.de/KnowHow/Thermitreaktion
Oh, I see it’s an English thread. So, actually that will be my way of fighting the Terminator in the coming wars with Humanoid Robots (once they figured out how to handle door handles). I will thermitinate the Terminator. As a note to my future self.
Knokator - Gladiator und Muskelkater
Knoketer - Verräter und Thermometer
Knokator - Therminate ein Terminator
Probably works well on fossil fuel infrastructure too. /s
Did someone unironically say the smell of napalm in the morning line yet?
this is interesting and whatnot, but during WW2, US research indicated that jellied gasoline (napalm) was a far more effective incendiary than thermite when it comes to burning wood.
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Thermite is considered less lethal than napalm and phosphorus. Its fairly direct too. It only lights up what it is dropped on. It can burn up cover and leave the troops under it fairly unharmed. Another example of Ukraine fighting with one hand tied behind their back, but still making due with what works.
On top of that, its super easy to make. Its just rust iron oxide and powdered aluminum. You can make it at home with a file and some old pipes.
Was gonna say, it’s almost definitely a cost-savings measure.
Maybe, if putin doesn’t want his soldiers crispied. He should withdraw all of them, and stop bombing schools and hospitals and shopping malls.
You think he gives a shit about his soilders getting a little toasty?!
Most certainly not.
Hah! Exactly, what a twat!..come at me Putin!!!
For those also wondering (and I’m quoting a comment on Ars so may stand corrected…):
Isn’t this a violation of the Geneva Conventions?
Only if used to deliberately target infantry. The videoed operations so far seem to have been intended to burn away protective cover (trees/brush), which is a permitted use even if there’s a risk of inflicting casualties as a side effect of the application of incendiaries.
Oh God no. Nobody cares what you do to the Infantry. It’s the civilians. Don’t use this around civilians.
Sincerely, an old infantryman.
There’s a lot of people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to this “that’s a war crime!!1!”, but it really is not. Incendiary weapons (like thermite, white phosphorus and napalm) are not illegal to use against legitimate military targets, including enemy combatants. It’s only a war crime when it’s used indiscriminately against civilians or in civilian areas.
Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.
I looked it up and you’re 100% right. Incendiary weapons are fine as long as it doesn’t hit civilians or intentionally start a forest fire
https://www.weaponslaw.org/weapons/incendiary-weapons
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Incendiary_Weapons
You can start a forest fire if said forest is used for cover or concealment by enemy military forces. All feasible precautions must be taken to limit the damage to military targets only.
Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.
I wonder why? 🤔
Honestly, I think it’s more that people take this info from movies and just run with it than malicious (Russian) misinformation bots (although they don’t mind giving this an extra push I imagine).
Honestly war crimes just have a lot of misinformation generally. Even in the military. There were people who thought we couldn’t shoot someone with a .50 cal machine gun. While this spawns funny jokes like aiming for their uniform buttons, it just isn’t true.
The Geneva suggestions
