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Biden Donates Counter Mortar Radar To Russian Weapon Exhibition
via TASS – The Technical Institute of the Army of the Russian Federation would like to express its gratitude to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for donating the AN/TPQ-48A Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar, NSN 5840-01-541-8783, Serial #369 to our museum. We intend to add the system, after a short period of technical evaluation, to our permanent public exhibition.
The above press release has not been written yet. But it might well soon be published. Consider:
November 21, 2014 – US delivers anti-mortar radars to Ukraine: Pentagon
Washington (AFP) – The US military has delivered three radars to Ukraine designed to detect incoming mortar fire, the Pentagon said Friday, amid appeals from Kiev for Washington to send weapons to help fight pro-Russian rebels.
The counter-mortar radar systems were flown to Ukraine in a C-17 cargo plane that accompanied US Vice President Joe Biden, who paid a visit to Kiev on the first anniversary of protests that unleashed a year of upheaval.
Before Biden flew to Ukraine a Presidential Drawdown Notfication documented the serial number of the three counter mortar radars he took with him. The value of one such radar was noted as $117,968.
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A recent photo of one of the boxes of the counter radar system with the serial #369.
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The above picture is a screenshot from about 4:20min into this video which shows the collecting of battle field trophies by east Ukrainian federalists in Debaltseve. The video shows the opening of the box and a view of the packed system. It looks complete and unused. This is not astonishing as the battle was fought with heavy artillery over long ranges and not with rather short ranged mortars. In such a scenario the Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar is of little use.
It will still be an interesting addition to the Technical Institute's exhibition.
@S-true #28:
The Wehrmacht/SS Germans that *USED* your family for a political purpose were thinking about their own ideology/country
Sorry, I think that’s completely wrong. This is for two reasons. (1) My father told me that when the Germans abandon a country they have occupied, they take their non-German collaborators with them. This is in contrast to the Anglos, who abandon their collaborators, because they are of no further use. Just think of those scenes of the US helicopters flying away from Saigon, with Vietnamese trying to get on and the Americans kicking them away. (2) My father wanted to enlist with the Germans to fight against the Soviets, but a German officer talked him out of it, telling him that he was crazy for wanting to do that. What I conclude from all that is that the Germans are like the Russians in that if you speak German, you are part of the German world, even if you are not ethnically German, and that means that you are equal to a German. (Of course, that doesn’t work for Muslims, since the German world is Christian, so that hanging on to Islam is a vehement rejection of Germanness. Being Jewish is OK because there is a long tradition of Jews assimilating into German culture.) That is to be contrasted with the English, who are obsessed with ethnicity, and hence, ironically, are racists in the loose sense of the word, whereas the Germans (and Russians) are not.
@Al #30:
I think you’re right on all points. Yes, Ukrainian nationalists have an ideology of pseudo-racist supremacy, and yes, the non-nationalist conscripts are just grunts. The reason the republicans (rebels) keep on asking their Ukie POWs “What are you fighting for?” is that being Russian, like me, they simply don’t take the idea of a Ukrainian nation or people seriously, and so can’t understand what it’s all about.
@S-true #31:
Thank you so much for the link to that performance. Of course I loved Katyusha, even as a boy. But I think of it as Russian, not communist, song. I recall someone telling me, “You know, that’s actually a Soviet song”, and both of us thought that was funny, because everyone we knew loved the song. That’s one reason why it’s hard for a Russian to understand Ukie nationalism. To a Russian, if something is good, why not like it, no matter who created it? The Ukies in contrast reject and abhor everything Russian, no matter how good it is.
@Debs is dead #34:
Sure there may have been some real assholes in that phone-vid but the odds are good that most of those soldiers were just confused and manipulated as soldiers everywhere are.
Each death is a cause for grief not celebration.
Sure they are brainwashed, but if they had any brains, the brainwashing wouldn’t have worked. These people have no moral agency; they are zombies in the philosophical sense of the word. Whether zombies have a right to live is a complicated question. Personally, I think that it is speciest to believe that someone fighting for the Kiev junta has more of a right to life than a random cat.
Posted by: Demian | Feb 21 2015 4:41 utc | 37
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