Whenever I listen to these types of recordings, there's so much static and it's hard to hear the words. Is this how it actually sounds to pilots/ATC operators or is their feed actually much clearer?
These unofficial ATC feeds are usually captured by volunteers or at least companies not directly affiliated with the aviation industry (similarly to services like Flightradar24), sometimes some distance away from airports, which makes ATC and aircraft on the ground really hard to hear.
What also helps a lot is that the formats of messages relayed are pretty standardized (ICAO phraseology), and knowing what phrases to listen for can help a lot.
On the other hand, it can unfortunately also cause people to hear what they are primed for – such as a landing or takeoff clearance... (Not implying that this happened here – I can't make out what's being said on the tape myself!)
I can't prove it, but I doubt most of the ATC recording amateurs have very good antennas. Also, the ATC transmitters are likely pointed upward for obvious reasons.
I had a more charitable reading of GP's comment: supposing, hypothetically, the US wanted a proxy war against Russia, it didn't have to "trick" Russia. This is a perfectly valid rebuttal to GP's parent imo, especially because GP's GP never suggested US "tricked" anything.
> If China downs one in South China sea, the US might keep it quiet because neither country wants a violent escalation into war just yet.
>> just yet
No, sorry. Neither country wants a war. Full stop. I despise this tendentious reading of normal tension between two major world powers as a claim that war's going to break out. It's dangerous fear-mongering.
Sibling commenters saying US did not want to provoke a war with Russia are being biased imo. US drew a line in the sand, or kept pushing on the issue for Ukraine to NOT promise it would never join NATO. These are facts. Whether that justifies Russia invading parts of Ukraine is the debatable part.
Hint, when you hear the mainstream media constantly repeating a slogan or phrase nearly unanimously, there's probably something that language is hiding. I'm thinking about how all media called the war "unprovoked". Well, that isn't entirely true, and is some US propaganda/face-saving measure.
> Whether that justifies Russia invading parts of Ukraine is the debatable part
No it isn’t? When America invaded Vietnam to keep it from going communist, that didn’t make Ho Chi Minh and his backers war mongerers. And it didn’t mean that we were provoked. We went to war to achieve the political objective of containing communism. We were the aggressors.
With Ukraine, Russia’s political objectives were unclear. The stated ones, about NATO expansion, have backfired. But just because Moscow was stupid doesn’t also mean it was absolutely the aggressor.
>The stated ones, about NATO expansion, have backfired. But just because Moscow was stupid doesn’t also mean it was absolutely the aggressor.
I dont think you can stake this claim without understanding the objectives, the resolution of the war, and especially exploring the counterfactual from the Russian perspective.
It is easy to sit and the west and imagine that Russia regrets its actions deep down, but as bad as this outcome is, I think you have to ask if there are even worse outcomes that were considered from inaction.
This is a separate question from those about morality or aggressors, but one of realpolitik incentives.
Conversely, you can ask the same questions about the US failed wars in Vietnam and the middle east. Obviously many or most objectives were not met, but were enough met to better the counterfactual?
> It is easy to sit and the west and imagine that Russia regrets its actions deep down, but as bad as this outcome is, I think you have to ask if there are worse outcomes that were considered even worse from inaction.
I agree. Russia does not regret anything. Russia was carrying out genocide in Chechenya in late 1990s and early 2000s while the west was giving them free money in the form of development aid. The invasion of Georgia didn't see any reprecussions either, nor did the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 see any meaningful response.
If the west retreats, then this once again validates their strategy of expanding Russia with regional wars, and they will attack Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland next.
The western fear of escalation is escalating the wars, because it lowers the risk for Russia.
That might be a necessary condition, but definitely not a sufficient one to be considered a superpower. Simple thought experiment, "completely erasing" the US as you suggest would render the Earth unpleasant to live on, for a while, for all inhabitants.
yes, that's why they remain a superpower. If you have the ability to make life on earth extremely unpleasant for all of humanity, that's super power status. Even just having nuclear weapons isn't enough for that- you need large numbers of fusion bombs -- which Russia has, and the US has, and no one else does.
No, this is just not correct. Being a superpower requires, at a minimum, being able to win a conventional war with a state lacking nuclear weapons. The reason for that is that nuclear weapons cannot actually be used in practice. They can only serve as a deterrent to not be attacked.
They seems to have some highly suicidal tendencies and really don’t mind massive casualties these days (e.g. 5x more Russian died in Ukraine in just 2 years than during the entire 10 year long Soviet war in Afghanistan).
So one has to double whether they live in the same reality as most people in the west which makes them pretty scary and unpredictable
> the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective
Is unclear at this moment. It only matters how much of this 34M/150M people are in an accurate age/sex to fight. Putin wouldn't survive a move to force massively women to enlist in the army, and Russia had yet a demographics problem. One million of youngsters exiled and are unavailable to became hamburgers.
Also Russia is trying to kill anybody in that 35M of people but Ukraine mostly fight only the Russian soldiers. I bet that each Ukrainian soldier had killed yet more than five Russian soldiers at the current meatwave ratio.
> I suppose the counterargument is that the US educational system is generally so poor that it's not generating enough people with the necessary technical capabilities
But what if it's not a policy/ed system issue but a culture/society/values choice? As a teen today, why go to college when I can try my hand at drop-shipping/digital marketing/content creation/ChatGPT startup/whatever guru du jour's shilling today
