• sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    I hate the use of the word “decimate” to describe “total or near total destruction”, even though the word’s structure clearly doesn’t mean that (decimation is called that cause it is a reduction by 10%). It would be like if future generations began using the word centimeter to just mean “really small length” instead of “hundredth of a meter”.

    I think it would sound much better if 86% was described as “nearly 9 decimations” or “about 8 and a half decimations”. We should start doing that.

    Ok, this word pedantry is dumb. I’ll make an actual comment on the news.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    According to Military Watch Magazine, 27 out of the 31 vehicles delivered to Kyiv are no longer in commission.

    In my opinion, this actually doesn’t really say much about the capabilities of the abram. What were westerners expecting 30 tanks to do in a peer to peer attrition war? Were they expecting that only 5 or so tanks would be destroyed?

    It sounds a lot less remarkable when you put it as

    “In a war involving over a 1,000,000 soldiers fighting more than a 1000 day’s, firing 1000s of rockets, countless drone attacks and millions of artillery shells, 27 hits were successfully made on a weapons system that can’t fly in the sky or hide in the water”

    Why Is the Abrams Tank So Effective?

    Designed by General Dynamics Land Systems—formerly known as Chrysler Defense—the third-generation tank exemplifies survivability, lethality, and combat effectiveness.

    What point is this article even trying to make? If the abrams “exemplifies survivability”, why write a scare piece about it, uh, not surviving?

    Is it to just shit on the ukrainians for not using the system correctly? Is it to generate consent for more deliveries? If it is, kind of wierd to shit on the ukrainians for aparantly wasting the wunderwaffe.

    Genuinely strange article imo.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      I think the west is still clinging to the idea of NATO tech being superior, and it’s a big shock to people that it’s not performing miracles.