Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

I was promised a recession.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

In my day, never was longer.

A consequence of cucumbers

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Second rate reporter says what?

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You are here: Home / War in Ukraine / Ukraine: Military Jargon and Acronyms – Part 2 (Open Thread)

Ukraine: Military Jargon and Acronyms – Part 2 (Open Thread)

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First, a bit of levity.  Subaru Diane sent this to me.

Ukraine: Military Jargon and Acronyms – Part 2 (Open Thread)

So everyone was a big help on Saturday, responding to my call for help in clarifying some of the military jargon and acronyms that are being thrown around in comments about Ukraine.  (Saturday’s post is linked below.)

The first draft of the War in Ukraine lexicon is done, and I need your help once again in adding terms that are missing and correcting things that are not quite right.

Whether you’re up for contributing to the lexicon, or you are like me and you had no idea what most of those terms mean, please check it out.

The war lexicon is the first item under WAR IN UKRAINE, which by now you all know is in the blue category bar up top, and the first item in the mobile menu.

Ukraine: If You’re Using a Military Acronym (Open Thread)

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Reader Interactions

172Comments

  3. 3.

    montanareddog

    Just started browsing the lexicon and, ISTM, the definitions of HAHO and HALO have been inverted.

  4. 4.

    Scout211

    I’m confused. Zelensky or Zelenskyy or Zelenskiy?

    I thought I read in the previous lexicon thread it was Zelenskyy but the various news services and here on Balloon-Juice, I see different spellings.

  5. 5.

    Steeplejack

    @Scout211:

    “Zelenskyy” is the spelling now preferred by the man himself, and it appears to be the most overtly “Ukrainian” spelling, according to the articles I linked to in the first acronym thread.

  8. 8.

    FlyingToaster

    @Scout211: The problem is varying transliterations from Ukrainian Cyrillic.  Which is not the same as Russian Cyrillic nor Belarusian Cyrillic.  And I’m sure there are more dialects/variations as well.

    His twitter address is @zelenskyyua.  Which is probably the best guide to which of the variations is best accepted.

    The Cyrillic is: Володимир Зеленський. 

  14. 14.

    painedumonde

    Was the information for the PPC obtained from Mech Warrior resources? I personally like the Thunderbolt. Old school mix of lasers and missiles.

  15. 15.

    Betty

    I have seen several people, including on twitter, abbreviate Ukraine as UK. Very confusing, trying understand what the British are doing there. Then I get it..

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    I added two links to the Zelenskyy section in the lexicon.  Someone had linked to them in Saturday’s post, but I didn’t notice who it was.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty: I don’t know about anyone else, but I personally found all the information in there really helpful.

    I included the top set that i called BASICS because like you, i was confused.

    UA = 2-letter code for Ukraine

    RU = 2-letter code for Russia

    Like everything else, it all makes sense once you know it.

    UF = Ukrainian Forces

    RF = Russian Forces

  18. 18.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I have no idea what should be done about Putin’s War, and I am going to stay out of any discussions.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @painedumonde: All the information came from Saturday’s thread that is linked above.

    I don’t know what the Thunderbolt is.  If you can explain that and expand on your comment, I can add that to the Ukraine war lexicon.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    This is an open thread, by the way, so we can talk about whatever we want.  It doesn’t just have to be about the lexicon, though input on that will be greatly appreciated!

  23. 23.

    Kelly

    Due to having family in road construction and spending a few summers working road construction I keep puzzling over the bad roads. Pavement is hard to fix but gravel is easy. Heavy trucks can make a nice steady 25 to 30 mph on a gravel road. Gravel is ubiquitous in construction, inexpensive, heavy and sources are easy to find so there’s usually a gravel pit nearby. Rivers provide the easiest sources. Around here there’s a gravel pit within 10 miles of even small towns. Seems like invasion planning would map all the gravel pits along the route, commandeer their stockpiles and equipment, start spreading gravel.

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    @Steeplejack: If I type a double-y word my editor self will apply the cattle prod. Not sure how to resolve that bit. (Rather like writing an individual as “they.”)

    I may have a past-due firmware update.

  27. 27.

    trollhattan

    @Kelly:

    On reason Grant was so successful was his prewar experience as a quartermaster. He really understood the need to keep supply lines open and the value of earthworks, channeling rivers, etc. McClellan was none of those things.

  28. 28.

    painedumonde

    @WaterGirl: unless there has been a giant leap forward in directed beam energy weapons, a PPC is a fictional weapon used in a game called MechWarrior. I could be wrong.

    But in the game there is a mech called a Thunderbolt. And I like it.

    (✿^‿^)

     

    @WaterGirl:

  29. 29.

    Steeplejack

    @Scout211:

    I forgot to add that all news services and media outlets have their own style guides, which they are loath to change and which may not agree.

    Example: I am mildly surprised that U.S. newspapers still use ungainly state abbreviations like “Calif.,” “Ore.,” etc., instead of the by now universally recognized “CA,” “OR,” etc.

  32. 32.

    trollhattan

    @WaterGirl:

    The P-47 Thundebolt was a huge lump of a US fighter plane in WWII. Very effective as a ground attack plane versus armor, as well as aerial combat. Something modern like it would be very helpful to the Ukraine Air Force.

    Vid games, know I not.

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @Kelly:

    I think the situation in Ukraine is a bit different from what you’re used to.  Yeah, you can put down some extra gravel, but it won’t help much if the road base is a meter of mud.  That’s especially true if you’re going to try to run really heavy military equipment, like tanks, on it.  They’ll churn through the gravel and into the mud in no time flat.

    In terms of the Lexicon, the first undefined term I could find was Counteroffensive.  This is exactly what it sounds like: an offensive launched after the other side’s offensive.  It can either happen while the other side’s offensive is still underway, in which case it might be an attempt to cut the enemy’s advanced troops off from resupply, or wait until the enemy’s offensive has run out of steam because they’ve exhausted their troops and/or outrun their supply train.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack

    @trollhattan:

    I feel you. I have finally managed to suppress my reflexive flinch when using “they” instead of some clumsy “he or she” construction.

  37. 37.

    painedumonde

    @trollhattan: even though everybody calls the A-10 the Warthog, it’s officially Thunderbolt II. Also somebody might be playing a trick by adding in this PPC definition.

  38. 38.

    trollhattan

    @Steeplejack:

    AP Style Guide used to be a very handy resource, and much simpler than giving my folks each a copy of Chicago.

    Got a kick out of poring over each new addition alongside the previous, to see what had changed. They’re on Edition 55, meaning mine is way out of date but I haven’t done that kind of publishing in ages.

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    @painedumonde: I have never heard of most of those things before, so I had no idea that was fictional.

    PPC has been removed for now, until or unless someone can confirm that it actually exists.

    thanks.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @trollhattan: The WWII version of the A-10 Warthog.  Other WWII ground attack planes include the German Stuka (Ju-87) and the Soviet Sturmovik (Il-2), which was probably the best of all WWII ground attack aircraft.

  43. 43.

    Kelly

    @Roger Moore: Even here in Oregon gravel is a consumable. It goes away, you spread more. Bigger rock lasts longer. For the last 30 years or so wide rolls of geotextile spread between the rock and the mud is commonplace and effective.

  46. 46.

    Kelly

    The occasional use of “UK” instead of “UA” makes me reread a comment to track if it the United Kingdom or Ukraine especially when someone is writing about supplies.

  47. 47.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Hmm. Y’all know that the commenters you are dissing in the downstairs thread can read what you’re saying in this one? Or is that just a mean girl tactic?

    Also too, one of the joys of Balloon Juice is that we get to disagree and debate issues, including ones you (or I) don’t care much about. Would be mighty boring if all we had to say is “I agree” x billionty.

  48. 48.

    trollhattan

    @WaterGirl:

    Apparently, a once and future plane, based on the folks pointing out the A-10 is a modern day reuse of the P-47’s name. I also think of it as the Warthog but guess back in the day, the sales team would not have pitched that to the brass. “Warthog? Good day, sir!”

    Similarly, the B-52 is named “Stratofortress” but is instead called one of many nicknames, “BUFF” as one example. I’ll leave the translation to others. :-)

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @Kelly:

    Grant was really the complete package.  Yes, he understood logistics and how to take advantage of modern developments like the telegraph and railroad.  But he was also an able strategist and tactician, and he had the offensive mindset the Union really needed.

    Sherman said that one of Grant’s great strengths was that he was always thinking about what he was going to do to the other guy and wasn’t too worried about what the other guy was going to do to him.  He figured that if he was on the offensive, he could force the enemy to react to his plans to the point they wouldn’t be able to implement any of their plans.  This worked very well at both the tactical and strategic level.  It helped that he could often react quicker than his opponents, so he was on to step 3 while they were still reacting to step 1.

    This was exactly what the Union needed.  They had more resources than the Confederacy, which meant they could always be doing more things than the Confederacy had the resources to respond to.  They needed a high command that was going to attack in enough places to make that approach work, and Grant provided it.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @Villago Delenda Est: Wow, that says a lot.

    Speaking of Ethiopians, I remember a cartoon of a starving woman on the beach holding her baby, with US soldiers coming off a ship to help, and the little thought balloon above the woman was “gee, I hope none of them are gay”.

    Obviously to mock all the “oh the military will be destroyed if we make it okay to be gay”.

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    @trollhattan:

    As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I mentally default to some version of the AP guide, occasionally gussied up with New Yorker/​Chicago/​book publishing formality, usually involving diacritical marks.

  53. 53.

    Keith P.

    @WaterGirl:  Given the amount of firepower those things carry, I’d guess that they could just fly down the Kyiv highway strafing the convoy en masse. It’d help to send some stealth ahead of time to clear out any AA, but either of these essentially means full-on war with Russia (as would sending in mechs). I’m mainly basing this speculation on many hours of playing “A-10 Tank Killer” on a 90s PC

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @WaterGirl: No one but the US flies the A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka Warthog) so it’s not in use in the current Ukraine-Russia war, but if it were in use, A-10s would feast on Russian tank columns in a NATO air supremacy “no fly Russian bastards” zone.

  59. 59.

    JaySinWa

    @trollhattan: Most spell checkers have the add a word or exception option. Maybe you can avoid a firmware upgrade with a patch? Of course the editor function is often driven by a grammar checker and those are inherently buggy or outdated so a brain powerwash and reinstall with upgrades may be necessary.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @O. Felix Culpa: I don’t see anyone dissing commenters in this thread, just dissing the subject matter, or at least indicating lack of interest in a discussion on that topic.

    I personally feel like if i’ve seen one squad conversation, I have seen them all.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl:

    AFAIK, the A-10 is only used by the United States.  I was responding to someone else saying that the US could do some horrific damage if we joined the fight on the Ukrainian side.  Of course that kind of thing is generally true.  Adding a new, unexpected side into a war will usually have a dramatic effect, even if they don’t have the power of the US military.  The side they’re attacking has deployed with the assumption the enemy they’re facing is the only one they need to worry about, and an attack from an unexpected force from an unexpected direction will usually completely upset their plans.

  68. 68.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @WaterGirl: Fun fact: waaaay back in those fabulous 80s, when I went on maneuvers in Germany, American troops would trade C-Rations for German field rations.  The troops on both sides were interested in something different.  I never found MREs to be that bad, but there were a few items that I didn’t care for and would trade for other items.  Also, US troops often consider a bottle of Tabasco to be an absolute must in the field.

  72. 72.

    raven

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    A Brief History Of How Tabasco Became The Military’s Favorite Condiment
     

    When he took control of the McIlhenny Company, Walter began exploring ways to create a ration-sized Tabasco bottle, and in 1966, he finally found a way to unofficially break into the military market: The company put out a pocket C-ration cookbook called No Food Is Too Good for the Man Up Front, perfect for the standard American GI kit — and with it, the popular two-ounce bottle of Tabasco was born, wrapped neatly within the cookbook itself.

  73. 73.

    scav

    I don’t think noticing that the usual suspects are going on about their usual topics ranks that high on the disrespecting scale.   “TaMara is posting about ducks!” “Break out the Brined Tomatoes at Dawn!”

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    All I know from the Internet is victory is simple if one follows these two simple rules;

    • Quote Sun Tzu
    • Use a Katana

    Nothing else needed.

  79. 79.

    raven

    @Villago Delenda Est: He had a genuine interest,

     

    Called to active duty when the United States became involved in World War II, McIlhenny spent 31 months in the western Pacific as a member of B Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. At Guadalcanal, he received the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. He also saw action at New Britain and at Peleliu, where he received a second Purple Heart.

    Upon retirement from the Marine Corps Reserve, McIlhenny received a promotion to brigadier general.

    Despite his interest in military service, McIlhenny felt obliged to enter the family business around 1940, when he began executive training at McIlhenny Company, maker of world-famous Tabasco brand pepper sauce at Avery Island, Louisiana. McIlhenny’s grandfather, Edmund McIlhenny, had invented the fiery condiment. His father, John Avery McIlhenny, had presided over the company from 1890 to 1898.

    World War II interrupted McIlhenny’s training at McIlhenny Company, but he returned to the organization in 1946, assumed its presidency in 1949, and retained that office until his own death in 1985. During his tenure as head of the company, McIlhenny expanded and modernized the production and marketing of Tabasco brand pepper sauce and helped to mold the brand into an international culinary icon.

    McIlhenny would draw on his experience with the mid-century ‘C-Ration’ to produce the “Charlie Ration Cookbook or No Food Is Too Good for the Man Up Front”- bundled with a 2-ounce bottle of Tabasco sauce within a waterproof container, the humorous cookbook offered recipes for the production of diverse meals from standard C-Rations, combined with Tabasco sauce and other ingredients.[1]

    In the early 1980s the US Army began to issue Meals Ready to Eat, commonly called “MREs”. Each MRE includes a miniature bottle of McIlhenny Tabasco sauce.

  80. 80.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JaySinWa: One of the reasons I made it a habit of not making a habit of MREs.  When I was in Germany, I’d visit small groceries in villages and grab some Brötchen, cheese, and sliced meat and give it to my troops so they had some variety aside from their C-Rations (this was before the MRE replaced the C).

  82. 82.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @WaterGirl: You mentioned a “nym,” which is not a topic. And stating that you know–without having read the discussion–how it would go is a diss. In fact, that discussion had an interesting and sometimes positive exchange and has now organically moved on to a worthy conversation on how to extend financial services to poor people. Some of those same nyms are involved and might not be quite as predictable as you think.

  83. 83.

    raven

    Called to active duty when the United States became involved in World War II, McIlhenny spent 31 months in the western Pacific as a member of B Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. At Guadalcanal, he received the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. He also saw action at New Britain and at Peleliu, where he received a second Purple Heart.

    Upon retirement from the Marine Corps Reserve, McIlhenny received a promotion to brigadier general.

    Despite his interest in military service, McIlhenny felt obliged to enter the family business around 1940, when he began executive training at McIlhenny Company, maker of world-famous Tabasco brand pepper sauce at Avery Island, Louisiana. McIlhenny’s grandfather, Edmund McIlhenny, had invented the fiery condiment. His father, John Avery McIlhenny, had presided over the company from 1890 to 1898.

    World War II interrupted McIlhenny’s training at McIlhenny Company, but he returned to the organization in 1946, assumed its presidency in 1949, and retained that office until his own death in 1985. During his tenure as head of the company, McIlhenny expanded and modernized the production and marketing of Tabasco brand pepper sauce and helped to mold the brand into an international culinary icon.

    McIlhenny would draw on his experience with the mid-century ‘C-Ration’ to produce the “Charlie Ration Cookbook or No Food Is Too Good for the Man Up Front”- bundled with a 2-ounce bottle of Tabasco sauce within a waterproof container, the humorous cookbook offered recipes for the production of diverse meals from standard C-Rations, combined with Tabasco sauce and other ingredients.[1]

    In the early 1980s the US Army began to issue Meals Ready to Eat, commonly called “MREs”. Each MRE includes a miniature bottle of McIlhenny Tabasco sauce.

  86. 86.

    dww44

    Since this is an open thread, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who  saw/heard Larry Summer’s appearance at the end of the LOD MSNBC show last evening?  Summers stated that the government had overstimulated the economy last year and that the inflation caused by it makes it very hard to deal with that created by the Crisis in Ukraine and the sanctions resulting from it.  That’s one of the takeaways for me but there was the overriding impression I got from him that he wasn’t supportive of taking any further stimulus, apart from ellminating regulations that might make it difficult for companies to dig new oil wells, etc.

    I also noted that LOD thanked him for his remarks and didn’t comment on them one way or the other.  IMO, O’Donnell didn’t exactly agree with Summers.

  88. 88.

    trollhattan

    BBC reports from Kharkiv, a city literally on the eastern front.

    Kharkiv was once Ukraine’s capital – it has the parks, cathedrals, museums and theatres you would expect, as well as the Antonov aircraft factory and tank and turbine manufacturers.

    All of the city is now a front line.

    And this, too, should come as no surprise. The Russian war-playbook has been perfected in Syria over the past 10 years. Surround, besiege, and terrorise the population. In Ukraine, as in Syria, the population is being bussed out of their home cities as Russian forces continue their advance.

    But still Ukraine resists.

    I meet an intelligence team, who drive with anti-tank missiles ready to use in the back of their vehicles. Again, I head to the city’s edge, and pass through the front lines into a wasteland. Two petrol stations just outside the city that have been destroyed by shelling and gun fire.

    Lying in the snow, are a dozen or so frozen Russian corpses. The men lie like wax figures, some with hands reaching out, their matted beards frozen still in the cold.

    The guts of one is spilled across the forecourt. There are blood red footprints around his corpse. Their weapons have been taken, and I ask Uta, one of the officers, what will happen to the bodies.

    “What do you think will happen, we will leave them for the dogs,” he says with a shrug.

    If Tucker were there (IKR?) he’d either complain of the lack of decent squab options in restaurants, or be concerned that the Ukrainian soldiers are too disrespectful of Russians, clearly causing further war.

  89. 89.

    Captain C

    Since this an open thread, apparently Chelsea has some problems now that Roman Abramovich has finally been sanctioned.

    The government of the United Kingdom announced this morning that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who was an advisor to and remains close with Vladimir Putin, has been personally sanctioned. The announcement of these sanctions has suddenly thrust Chelsea, Abramovich’s most prized asset and one of the most famous soccer clubs in the entire world, into a strange and precarious position.

    The upshot of these sanctions is that Chelsea is now effectively an asset of the U.K. government. Because Abramovich still owns the team, the freezing of his assets could have prevented Chelsea from operating entirely. But the government has issued a special license to the club that will allow it to go through its day-to-day operations while also being restricted from certain activities. The government released a fact sheet laying out exactly how these sanctions will affect the club’s operations. As of right now, Chelsea can:

    • Travel to and host games, and pay reasonable travel and logistical costs associated with those games.
    • Pay wages to all players, coaches, and staff members.
    • Complete any payments related to loans and sales of players that were agreed to before March 10.
    • Continue to collect its share of Premier League broadcasting rights fees.

    What Chelsea cannot do is:

    • Sell any additional tickets, though season ticket holders and fans who have already purchased tickets to upcoming games will be allowed to attend those games.
    • Sell any merchandise.
  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    WaterGirl didn’t predict “how it [the discussion] would go.” She merely said she could predict one nym in the conversation. That’s pretty mild—hardly a diss.

  91. 91.

    JaySinWa

    @Villago Delenda Est: Summers is often wrong and no one should take economic advice from him.

    While the BFOM [big flood of money] that kept the economy afloat through COVID shutdowns combined with shortages from supply chain and labor issues contributed to inflation it kept a lot of people solvent. I suspect that the BBB (renamed to whatever) is necessary for infrastructure rebuild and restructure is necessary . It may keep costs up temporarily, it should not be seen as stimulus even if it has that effect.

  92. 92.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Steeplejack: Read #70.

    That’s not dissing anyone, that’s just acknowledging that I’ve seen the conversation before and I know how it goes.

    Anyway, we’re all on edge. I’m destroyed by yesterday’s bombing of the maternity hospital. I gotta go dig in the dirt or do something productive for a while. Ciao, for now.

  94. 94.

    sdhays

    @JaySinWa: Reminds me of Manchin’s “can’t reduce costs by spending more, hurr hurr hurr” – is it cheaper to spend a lot more now to fix and update infrastructure or is it cheaper to just wait for it to collapse?

    Pay the bill now and keep the interest.

  96. 96.

    White & Gold Purgatorian

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I have no idea what should be done about Putin’s War

    Me too, and those decisions are way, way above my pay grade anyway. So thankful we have a competent and compassionate president now. What a nightmare if we were counting on TFG to make good decisions in current circumstances.

  99. 99.

    Calouste

    @Captain C: Chelsea’s main shirt sponsor have asked them to take their logo off their shirt and anywhere else it might be in the stadium.

  100. 100.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Anti-Tank missile. For example, I heard of a “recoil-less rifle” with a 105 designation, meaning (I guessed, correctly) fired a 105mm rocket. Rocket, because it was unguided, and rifle, because it had a rifled barrel – it would fire straight, as expected from a rifle. Rockets don’t have recoil, because there’s no explosion affecting the main gun barrel, pushing a bullet out of it. So: a recoil-less rifle was a sort of point and shoot AT weapon. (Keeping in mind, blowing the tracks off a tank might be all you need to turn it into a “no longer moving” foxhole.)

    Pulling that back in for re-write:

    AT: basically, any anti-tank weapon. There are crew mounted rockets (like the LAW), there are weapons like “recoilless rifles” that fire large rockets directly (like a tank’s main gun), rather than indirectly (e.g., a howitzer); and there are missiles and bombs that might take down a tank, one way or another.  AT is a way of saying “if you know how, you might destroy, or disable, a tank with this weapon/ammo combination.”

  102. 102.

    trollhattan

    @Captain C:

    Chelsea Women are supposed to participate in the Women’s International Challenge Cup in Portland this summer, a tournament I’m likely to attend provided 1. they can still participate or 2. they’re replaced with a similarly talented squad (with acknowledgement there’s is but one Sam Kerr available to the entire planet).

    ETA status Q&A here.

  105. 105.

    CaseyL

    @Steeplejack: I used to be an intellectual property (IP) paralegal, dealing with the official 2-letter abbreviation for nation names.  “CA” used to throw me, as it’s the international code for Canada.  Now when I see CA I think “Canada” before I think “California.” Still have to do the mental dogleg, but in the opposite direction.

    And an international code that has at times caused utter disasters among IP operations is:  CH.  No, it is not the code for China; it is the code for Switzerland.  Oh, the stories I could tell!

  108. 108.

    jnfr

    Thanks for gathering all this info together, WaterGirl. You do so much to keep this place useful and functional.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @dww44:

    I also noted that LOD thanked him for his remarks and didn’t comment on them one way or the other.  IMO, O’Donnell didn’t exactly agree with Summers.

    I missed that segment because I decided to do the dishes when LOD said “Coming up… Larry Summers”, but I’m surprised he didn’t push back. He got kind of heated the Lt Col Vindman over military matters, and even though I leaned toward LOD’s argument (Vindman was, or seemed to me, to be leaning toward the “limited NFZ” thing– I could be mistaken) I was surprised at his rather patronizing tone toward an actual Nat Sec expert

    O’Donnell has always been kind of a weird mix of establishmentarian (Let us all praise Daddy Moynihan!) and self-described socialist.

  112. 112.

    scav

    @JaySinWa: I had to cleanup an international hotel database quarterly and every single time there would be hotels in Georgia the country claiming to be in Georgia the state.  Also around for the great Nunavut NT / NU kerfuffle.

  113. 113.

    Origuy

    As a former stamp collector, I know the reason why Switzerland uses CH. They have four official languages and don’t want to play favorites. So they use Latin Confoederatio Helvetica, or just Helvetica, on the stamps and the coins.

  114. 114.

    dww44

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for this.  I also did see the earlier segment with Col Vindman and both spouse and I kinda did agree with LOD’s pushback.  Vindman is sincere and well-meaning, but one must remember that he’s vested in Ukraine.  For good reasons, but vested and pre-disposed, nevertheless.

    Agree that LOD is sometimes a strange mix.  But he really didn’t have time to pushback on Summer’s remarks and maybe the timing was on purpose.  I got the sense that he really didn’t agree but  also didn’t want to pushback.

  115. 115.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl:

    @JaySinWa:

    The mistakes, and disasters, are mostly among the brand new folks.  When I trained people, that was definitely one of the things I told them to look out for (I used to put together Cheat Sheets/Quick Guides).

    After one memorable clusterfuck which became legend in local IP circles (which resulted in a huge company moving its entire multi-million dollar IP practice from one law firm to another) I would be VERY surprised if those tricky country codes aren’t listed, in big red font, on office walls everywhere.

  117. 117.

    trollhattan

    @WaterGirl:

    To make it more funner, it’s short for Confoederatio Helvetica, which is the country’s formal name and who the hell knows how they get “Switzerland” from that? Also “Country, or typeface? Experts disagree.”

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @dww44:

    Since this is an open thread, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who saw/heard Larry Summer’s appearance at the end of the LOD MSNBC show last evening? Summers stated that the government had overstimulated the economy last year and that the inflation caused by it makes it very hard to deal with that created by the Crisis in Ukraine and the sanctions resulting from it.

    This is just bullshit. It is interesting, though that various media outlets would go to Summers for comment.

    A boatload of economists backed Biden’s stimulus plans.

    For example, from September 21 of last year.

    Seventeen recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics signed a letter in support of President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better package on Monday. They refuted arguments made by Republicans and moderate Democrats that the massive “human infrastructure” bill—which would provide funding to expand education, health care, child care, and climate efforts—is far too expensive.

    Treasury and the Federal Reserve were on the same page here, and made good arguments that more stimulus would not overheat the economy.

    There has been pretty good coverage of this issue in the economic pages of media sites and on good public radio programs like Make Me Smart and MarketPlace.

    But the conventional wisdom that spending is bad, bad, bad is always featured on the main and headline pages. And politicians don’t need to know a damn thing about economics. Their votes are what matters.

    The idea that profits are OK but economic stimulus is bad represents a very conventional ideology bound way of thinking.

    Joe Manchin, for example, has never offered any reasoned argument for his opposition to Biden’s plans. It’s just the way he sees the world and that is all that is necessary.

  126. 126.

    Anonymous At Work

    That picture is a choking hazard.  I almost choked on SOUP when I saw it.

  131. 131.

    trollhattan

    @Lyrebird:

    Heh. Luckily I never had to “go camping for Uncle Sam” but remember buying surplus C Rations in the ’70s to use backpacking and they were a mixed bag, at best. MREs are probably better in some ways but anybody stuck eating just one narrow selection of, I’ll call it food, for weeks or months at a stretch is going to hate them pretty damn quickly.

  133. 133.

    WaterGirl

    @WereBear: Yes! Unlike the U.S.

    Of course, Zelensky is more than just an actor.  He has a PhD.  He’s a comedian, an actor, a dancer.  As far as I can tell, he has risen to the top of nearly everything he has done.

    I am beginning to think Zelensky is like Obama in that way.  I love this photo with his family so much. (see next comment)

  135. 135.

    Kelly

    Heading out for a nice long walk in the sunshine at Silver Falls State Park. See if I can walk off some of 10 lbs I put on comfort eating since the plague blew up March 2020, Beachie Fire Sept 2020, Jan 6 2021 insurrection, June 2021 PNW heat dome, ongoing Ukraine war. Interesting Times.

  139. 139.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @WaterGirl:

    they are just trying to screw with us on all these acronyms that can mean more than one thing. :-)

    RF also stands for République française, but fortunately for your lexicon France is not involved in this war.

  140. 140.

    JaySinWa

    @WaterGirl: I knew that, I was going  to add a quip about the country that thought Brexit was a good idea to clarify the sarcasm. I doubt very much they will keep their footballers indefinitely, but they are likely to fumble the ball (to mix a metaphor) along the way.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    I overheard a funny convo at the courthouse today. I was waiting for judge in the hall, as were two people, a man and a woman, I think brother and sister. He was bitching about gas prices and she said “gas hasn’t been this high since Bush”

    That a girl :)

    NOT in a political way. She’s just a truthteller.

  142. 142.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @WaterGirl: The official name for Switzerland – which has 4 official languages (French, German**, Italian, and Romansh) – is in a fifth tongue, Latin: Confederatio Helvetica, Swiss Confederation. Hence the abbreviation. (Confused the hell outa me too until I looked it up some years back.)

    You’re quite welcome! :^D

    (& of course Origuy got there foist, at #112 supra, dammitall…)

    ** In practice, Schwiizerdütsch, which is largely incomprehensible to non-Swiss. I had a friend fluent in German who spent a couple of years in Switzerland who related an evening in a bar when out of sheer frustration she blurted out, Gibt’s niemand herein der Hochdeutsch spricht??​

  143. 143.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    I’m sure Stalin would’ve had Putin shot by now, not for the brutality of this war, but for all-around incompetence. Who thinks Putin will have a job – or a pulse- by year’s end?

  145. 145.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Baud: And many others…Today I learned in a news update that the cause of inflation in the good ol’ US of A is consumer demand and higher wages.

    They got their marching orders…supply side trickle down UBER ALLES.

  148. 148.

    SteverinoCT

    @Keith P.:

    I’m mainly basing this speculation on many hours of playing “A-10 Tank Killer” on a 90s PC

    You know, you can still find this online, and play it (and other old PC games) using DosBox. In fact, some sellers will package the game and DosBox pre-configured. Still fun!

  149. 149.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @SteverinoCT: I know one of the guys who worked on putting that game together.  They met with A-10 pilots at McChord who helped them tweak it to be more like the real thing.

  152. 152.

    dr. luba

    @Kelly: Roads in Ukraine aren’t built very well for the most part. The huge highways between major cities can be quite nice, but other roads?

    Main roads are asphalt, but without a very good base.  Why? poor road building practices and corruption (with theft of building materials or the cash for them).  This means  the roads may look good until you get a really bad winter, and then they all go to shit.

    And roads like this aren’t meant to handle tanks or really heavy trucks or machinery.

    When you get out into the villages, there may be a strip of asphalt through the center, but roads between them maybe be badly damaged asphalt, nice new asphalt, or dirt.  When potholes develop, people drive on the shoulders, forming parallel dirt roads. This is tenable until there’s mud.

    And the corporatization of agriculture means lots of really heavy vehicles moving on roads not built for them, so many were  already damaged/marginal.

    The further you are from a maiin ciiity, the worse the roads.

    Some oblasts, with better governemtn, have better roads.  Others…..

  153. 153.

    Kalakal

    @CaseyL: Currencies can be fun for country codes ( I wrote a fair amount of forex dealing software) so its

    CHF = Swiss Francs

    However before the Euro took a lot of the fun away there was

    DFL = Dutch Florins – not bad considering the country is the Netherlands and the currency used to be the guilder ( Florins is pretty historical)

  154. 154.

    Martin

    ‘motti’ is a term I’m seeing more in the last 24 hours. It refers to a tactic developed when the Finns were fighting the soviets. The Finns could more easily move through the heavy forest on skis than the Soviets could in their tanks, so the Finns would rely on scouts to size up the Soviet forces, create an obstruction to block a mechanized group, then block it from the other end to keep it from retreating, and then encircle it and take it down. Ultimately it wasn’t enough, but it lets a smaller number of very mobile, underarmed troops take out a larger, more heavily armed, but slower moving group. The Finns were able to really punch above their weight.

    If you’ve seen video of Ukrainian forces, it’s probably been squads of half a dozen or so guys, all with anti-armor weapons of various sorts moving through the woods and outskirts of towns, doing hit and runs on Russian armor. It’s why they might not have been too worried about that convoy, because they had a plan to deal with it.

    This tactic should work even better against supply lines if the advancing forces are failing to secure territory as they go. Ukrainian forces simply pass the heavy armor, take down the supply convoy behind them, which is easier to do, and wind up not only neutralizing the Russia heavy armor because it runs out of gas or ammunition, but possibly allows Ukraine to capture the vehicle and use it themselves.

    What’s notable is that there seem to be VERY few Ukrainian troops that don’t have a weapon on them that can take out a tank or at least a personnel carrier.

    The other benefit to the current Ukrainian tactic is that Russia surely planned that these various offensives (north from Belarus, east from Russia, south from Crimea) would at some point meet so that they could reinforce each other. Right now, they can’t do that. Ukraine has kept them all isolated from each other. So if the north is struggling, Ukraine can pile on the pain there while just holding the other fronts at bay. This of course requires detaching the military goals from the civilian carnage and taking the civilian losses rather than shift tactics to what Russia wants Ukraine to focus on.

  155. 155.

    Kalakal

    Seeing as the UK just gave a few thousand of them to UA

    Starstreak is a British short range anti-aircraft missile system. Actually it comes in a lot of varients, eg vehicle or ship mounted but they’re probably getting  the LML (Lightweight Multiple Launcher) version as that’s the most portable. Often has HVM tacked on the end of the name = High Velocity Missile. Its party trick is that it launches 3 seperate missiles at once each doing about mach 4, it can’t really be jammed or decoyed and a pilot has almost no warning.

  158. 158.

    Idus Martiae

    @WaterGirl: >Of course, Zelensky is more than just an actor.

    Absolutely. But as far being a competent actor helps it is an unalloyed good against what is – in a word – evil; it is evident that Putin’s plan now is to hold the civilian population hostage to extort a peace treaty in his terms.

  159. 159.

    Martin

    @WaterGirl: It’s a real plane. Pretty old one too. Very simple and effective. Basically it’s a big fucking gun with a plane wrapped around it. Kills tanks like nobody’s business. Bullets are about the size of a coke bottle and it can shoot 60+ of them per second. Depleted uranium (barely radioactive but extremely dense, so a lot of kinetic energy). Nicknamed the ‘Hawg’ because it’s slow and ugly, but it’s kind of a fan favorite because it was designed to do one thing and it does it extremely well. In gamer parlance, ‘A-10 go brrrrrrrt’.

    But it’s not in this conflict for two reasons:

    1. Ukrainians don’t know how to fly it. They don’t have parts to repair it. They don’t have ammunition to make use of it (it consumes ammunition like you would’t believe).
    2. It needs air superiority. It’s easy to shoot down. Not very fast, very durable to light arms, but it’s a fucking magnet for anti-air missiles like Stinger.

    If NATO does enter this conflict, it’ll be with stand-off precision munitions. Anti-armor missiles from planes fired from miles away. A-10s go in later when there’s less threat to them being shot down and you have a lot of mopping up to do.

    Politicians keep mentioning A-10s because A-10 are cool, not because they make sense here.

  161. 161.

    Kalakal

    @WaterGirl: My all time favourite military acronym ( sadly of no use to the lexicon) is MADGIT. Military ADviser General Infantry Training, a UK  middle ranking officer on attachment to the civil service to help drafting policy documents

  163. 163.

    Martin

    New development in the last few hours.

    In place of the MiG idea, it looks like a similar plan to shift S-300s from former Soviet aligned NATO members to Ukraine is being explored. More or less the same deal, the US will backfill transferred units with US made equivalents.

    The S-300 is a Soviet designed long range anti-aircraft unit. These things are big – bigger than tanks, but not armored. They can hit targets up to 75 miles away, depending on model. These could be driven across the border, so no need to fly in, and they aren’t really a threat to targets inside Russia so unlikely to be views as an offensive Ukrainian weapon. It can also target cruise and ballistic missiles, so would provide Ukraine with additional defense against them.

    Not sure if it’ll happen, but DOD has hinted toward it.

  164. 164.

    CROAKER

    @painedumonde: Way too much heat to dissipate – if you Alpha Strike with weapons load outs on a Thunderbolt.  I would up my tonnage and look at a Warhammer or better a Grasshopper.

  167. 167.

    WaterGirl

    @Martin: Because they could be driven across the border and couldn’t be used to attack Russia, that sounds lot me like a safer choice.

    I added the S-300 to the lexicon.

  169. 169.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Martin: MUCH better idea! As you say, purely defensive – no chance for UAF pilots to get lured into the sights of Russian air defenses or, worse, across the border in hot pursuit, providing Ptui!n another pretext for upping the ante toward the unclear (i.e., nuclear) firebreak.

    What UA could really use is counter-battery fire: artillery (conventional or rocket) that can reach the Russky batteries pummeling the cities, and real-time precise targeting information (courtesy of us of course). Heck, even without artillery, if they amass enough of the Bayraktars at the right time in the right area they could bloody up one of those artillery formations & make those bastards pay dearly. Which might be all that’s needed to kick the last crutch out from under the hobbling invasion forces.

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