Pentagon orders AMRAAM missiles worth over $1 billion for Ukraine

Opening the comments section of stories like this is always a real eye opener for the type of people lemmy has attracted kinda sad.

No kidding. Who is honestly against moves like this? I mean very few issues are black and white and defending Ukraine is as close to being on the right side of history as one can get. They were invaded by a much larger country that suppressed them for so long. They are a democracy that is trying really hard to further the will of their people. Russians are committing genocide against the local population. Supporting Ukraine and watching the Ukrainians fight back for their freedom is one of the few great parts of history that inspires.
- The only real country that comes close to Russia lately as far as a polarizing bad guy is WWII Germany, and THAT is saying something.
- Who is honestly against moves like this? I mean very few issues are black and white and defending Ukraine is as close to being on the right side of history as one can get.
  Says every single chickenhawk in this country every time there's a war. There is always an excuse.
  Vietnam: They attacked us in the Gulf of Tonkin (which was false) and we have to fight communism!
  Iraq 1983: We have to help Saddam Hussein defeat Iran. It's the right thing to do!
  Iraq 2003: They did 9/11 and they have WMD's! (They didn't.) We killed a few hundred thousand Iraqis anyway just to make Halliburton a shit-ton of money.
  Afghanistan: The Taliban is evil! (True, but that doesn't mean we should go bankrupt policing them permanently.)
  And it's only a matter of time before any justifications for Ukraine blow up in your faces too. There's already been a ton of reporting on the corruption in the Ukrainian government this year. We'll learn more about that as we get even further entrenched into this war.
Yeah. I get being cynical about all of the wars the U.S. has been part of in my lifetime.
But if you can't see how helping the Ukrainians is unequivocally the right thing to do, I don't know what to say. To me it's nice to be the good guys for once and point our defense industry at something worthwhile.
I gotta say, the tankie infestation of the fediverse is giving me serious second thoughts about this place. I get that it will get better over time as more people join and dilute the crazies, but I currently have a very hard time suggesting lemmy to people because of this.
- Good, go back to reddit if you want a neoliberal echo chamber.
- I guess you've no problem with the open Nazis on here? Says a lot about you.
- It's fediverse. You don't like an instance, you create your own and defederate from the ones you don't like. That's the nice thing about it.
Okay I'll bite. Some people support Ukraine but don't support more weapons spending. In the early days of reddit, a lot of the power users were libertarian leaning programmers, and Lemmy has naturally attracted that cohort. You can see subs like Privacy and Piracy moving here, and there is a staunch anti government position that comes with anti centralization. I don't think these people should be called sad, as some are very well reasoned and thoughtful about their anti government position. What's more, if you don't live in the United States, it's very easy to call out the hypocrisy of US government warmongering e.g. in the middle east.
What's sad is how little our country knows of war outside of the US propaganda machine. We spend more on war in one year than the next ten countries combined, and those countries mostly have health care systems that don't bankrupt their people. Canada, for instance, spends a mere 23 billion a year on war.
We on the other hand don't have health care so our country can involve itself in eight or nine wars at once, and our people think it's a good thing because they can't form a coherent thought outside of what they're being told on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
- US spends about as much per capita on healthcare as many other developed countries. The issue is that your insurance companies pocket a lot of it. Be angry at them, not at Ukraine or the weapons going to Ukraine.
- “Our” that’s one big assumption there brother not everyone here is American. I don’t know why you assume the U.S military budget is stopping Universal care being a thing over there it’s a far more deeply rooted issue than just the military budget. Look how contentious even something like the Obama care was never mind a full blow universal care system.
- The US would actually spend less on healthcare if we had a single-payer or other "socialist" system instead of the mess we currently have. So that line of reasoning doesn't make sense. We don't make war instead of spending on health care. We make war and spend on health care.
There's already a huge handful of conservative communities and almost every conservative I've ever met is suddenly very upset with our military budget and without any proof think Zelensky is just pocketing the money.
But it has felt like they're still the minority for the time being.
- Have you seen the community list? The top conservative communities have like 150 subs.
They were always there. Lemmy literally is developed by tankies and genocide deniers.
What I see are some dissenting opinions and then people parroting US government talking points browbeating and downvoting them. Russia is absolutely wrong for invading Ukraine, but let's not overlook the US government using Ukraine as a pawn to advance its own geopolitical ambitions, similar to how it benefited from arming groups in Afghanistan when Russia invaded there.
I'm hoping Lemmy provides for more nuanced and diverse discussion instead of brigading and shouting down of opinions simply for going against the officially-approved narrative of the US government.
- hated for being world police but also hated for not "doing something" about international injustices. US can't win.
- The fact that you were downvoted so heavily for saying "two-sided discussion is good", presumably because Americans got uncomfortable with the accusation that their government is writing their narrative for them, tells me that on this specific issue it's most likely going to be an echo chamber
  People have been hearing one side of this debate for so long that it feels kind of like a lost cause, to me. I've more faith that productive discussion can be had re: China than this war
Part of the reason why I wanted a fresh start on kbin but alas, this is what the fediverse is built on.
I'm considering making my own instance and shitcanning the Lemmy instance.
- You're on lemmy.world right now, dummy. "Starting over" on kbin doesn't mean anything if you keep coming to lemmy and commenting on lemmy threads.

I hate war, but Ukraine hates dying. Beat Putin's ass, and Slava Ukraini!

War sucks, and most veterans and their families know it. But when forced to fight Ukraine is standing, and I hope that Western support doesn’t waiver. I’m sure Putin is hoping to interfere in moar elections as an out.
Could you imagine if his lil orange minion was in power?
Shudders.
Ps, people make sure you are registered to vote.
- And if you are registered to vote, periodically check if you are still registered.
- The moment I realised that the USA was unavoidably moving towards fascism was when the so called political left collectively decided that the problem wasn't anything internal, it was just that evil, perfidious foreigners had corrupted the innate goodness of America.
- Well, with Putin suddenly deciding to unveil his newest intercontinental dildos, I doubt even the orange rapey puffball could have stood against the urges of the military industrial complex. This is it folks, we're once again comparing explosive rage boners for sport, what fun!
  Humans are interesting, a little disappointing, but interesting nonetheless...
- Ps, people make sure you are registered to vote.
  I keep reading that. Does one need to get actively registered to be allowed to vote in the US? That completely contradicts that people say you can even vote without any personal ID card (both sound ridiculous to me)
Okay Nazi scum.

Awesome :)

It'd be really nice if our legislators would stop giving warmongers a blank check. We could use that billion in so many better ways here.

Warmongers being... the country currently undergoing a genocide from a global superpower? If you come to my home and shoot my kid, I'm not a warmonger for returning fire.
And the idea that the reason our programs at home are underfunded is a result of foreign aid is complete bullshit. They could fund those programs in a heartbeat at any time with or without a war. We could absolutely do both, the reason we don't is because none of your politicians give a shit about you, unrelated to what's going on in the world.
- Warmongers being… the country currently undergoing a genocide from a global superpower? If you come to my home and shoot my kid, I’m not a warmonger for returning fire.
  Here your kids are getting shot to death in schools, but as far as oppressive global superpowers go, read up on how the US has been helping Saudi Arabia starve and decimate Yemen for the last eight years. But, to be clearer, the warmongers I refer to are the ones taking a trillion of our tax dollars every year and funneling them into their own companies and the other eight wars we're already hopelessly entangled in.
  I'm all for Ukraine fighting this war... on their own. I just don't appreciate seeing our people impoverished and neglected because of it.
  And the idea that the reason our programs at home are underfunded is a result of foreign aid is complete bullshit.
  False. Canada spends $23 billion a year on war. They have universal health care. We 100% lack universal health care because we're spending over a trillion a year on war, and now, another $1,015,000,000 billion on another country's war. (On top of the tens of billions we already gave them in charity.)
The cash isn't going to Ukraine, it all stays in the US.
Let me get this straight: Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked, yet you think Ukraine is the "warmonger"?
- You'd think the tankies would keep it to lemmygrad.ml and Lemmy.ml, but they seem to run alts everywhere.
I dunno man. If we don’t stop Putin from taking Ukraine, he’ll roll straight into Washington DC after. And then that shiny new school you wanted to spend $10 million on will look pretty dumb, won’t it? /s

All I can say is Slavi Ukraine! Stay strong and I hope you persevere.

You sure you couldn't say something that wasn't a fascist slogan?

- The payback is also the destruction of Russia's military.
  Ukraine is basically providing a free service, the US (and rest of the world) is just paying for materials.
  Most importantly, the US gets to see Russia destroyed without dead US soldiers or nuclear war.
If Ukraine continues on the expected path, then it will be as wealthy as Germany in a few decades. It has the resources and the human capital to do so, all it needs is peace and a bit of help to get started.
Unlike russia, which paid fuck all after WW2 lend-lease and stayed a shithole to this day.
- Haha, good luck with that.
Most of the hardware and financial aid is donated. As far as I know the Biden administration even expressly rejected a lend-lease program so there is no pressure for Ukraine to pay it back.

Ah yes. More dollars spent where we shouldn’t be spending it.

I wish we didn’t need to do this but honestly this is some of the best spent military funds I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s all hardware, manufactured by the US. So that’s jobs. None of it is death payouts to American families like we had to do in Desert Storm. Russia richly deserves the fight. We’re getting a lot of help from other countries.
I wish we didn’t need to do this but since we do, fine.
- Funny how you don't "need" to do it when it's non white countries being invaded
- undefined> It’s all hardware, manufactured by the US. So that’s jobs.
  Jesus Christ. Half a million dead for your stinking jobs. Shame on you.
And you can bet your ass everyone involved in that decision is an investor in Raytheon.
- Stock ticker RTX, you can get in on it too

I kind of don’t even understand how, in the age of missles, we still have tanks and soldiers at all. I guess I don’t understand how missles work. My assumption is that they’re able to just erase anything that is in a spot you indicate in some kind of Google maps interface. If they’re not that smart, I don’t understand why not. How do armies still march and drive around in tanks when the enemy can just push a button on their phone and cause explosions where they are?

Because anti-air deletes missiles. Also you can't hold territory with just missiles. You need land presence, and for that you need soldiers. And since soldiers are more useful alive than dead, we built thick metal boxes that can roll around the battlefield so they can be protected while being transported to important locations. The metal boxes themselves also have big ass cannons attached that will utterly destroy any other vehicle or building an enemy might be using as cover. These are just some of the reasons soldiers and tanks are still used.
- How does anti-air work? Just fill the sky with flak? How do you know when and where the missle will be? Just radar?
If you shoot a missile costing millions to hundreds of millions at everything, your country will be bankrupt very quickly.
Long range missiles roughly do work the way you described, but if you press the "erase this spot" button and then the tank or soldier moves, you just wasted a missile. You also first need to find the tank, and your missile can be shot down.
Of course there are missiles that are able to track moving targets, but that gets even more expensive, less reliable, etc.
Missiles also have a hard time dealing with heavily reinforced/underground targets, and missiles can't occupy territory.
Who will win: a country that has 100 long range missiles, or a country that has 10000 soldiers spread out in more than 100 groups, with rifles and a couple hundred short range missiles (think Javelin) for good measure?
- I’ve learned a lot by these replies so thank you. I really can’t answer that scenario you laid out though. We’d need to define “win” and “lose.” The side with only a conventional army is going to take a lot of casualties, while the side with missles only spends money. Really I don’t think missles only was ever in my head but just having them in the mix.
Because missiles cost $1+ million each.
Because long-range missiles flying at 500mph will take 3 or 4 minutes to hit their target. The target can move, hide, or otherwise escape the missile
Because bullets near instantly hit their target (within 5 seconds) in battlefield conditions. Tanks in particular fire hypersonic 3000mph shells, you're dead in 2 seconds (at 3000m range), though the soundwave hits you at the 10-second mark.
Because bullets are extremely cheap. Artillery shells, such as the 155m are famously like ~$500
Tank shells are likely under $2000 IIRC. So you can fire lots of tank-bullet for the same price as missile. More accurately (due to speed an information). And firepower: 40 shots of a tank can affect a battlefield more immediately than a missile. A tank can fire and near instantly kill targets it can see out to 3km ranges (~2 second travel time). A missile or rocket taking 60, 90, 120+ seconds to reach long-range targets just cannot affect the battlefield in the same manner.> How do armies still march and drive around in tanks when the enemy can just push a button on their phone and cause explosions where they are?
How do armies still march and drive around in tanks when the enemy can just push a button on their phone and cause explosions where they are?
Because missiles take a long time to fly. Even at modest 50km ranges, you ain't affecting the battlefield in time (~500mph missile will take over 3 minutes to reach 50km).

Did they also order them a peanut butter sandwich made with jam?

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