Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a bad idea

https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russia-ukraine-cell-phones-track-combat/

by Stratoscope • 4 years ago

122 236 4 years ago

Came to post exactly this. It's like the Stavos (?) thing from few years back where everyone saw the secret running track on secret bases. Only this is not an amusing running track, but dying.

It does emphasise something I have been saying for a while - privacy is the politeness of your neighbours, and secrecy is dead.

nindalf• 4 years ago

Strava.

Fitness app Strava lights up staff at military bases - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42853072.amp (Jan 2018).

kzrdude2• 4 years ago

"secret running track" feels like a joke, but the point it illustrates is clear - the massive uncontrolled dispersion of location data.

MikeDelta• 4 years ago

There was also a case of soldiers using flash-card apps to learn about the nuclear bases they were stationed at, revealing various facts.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...

stavros• 4 years ago

What did I do now?

codedokode3• 4 years ago

By the way, I remember a similar case in Russia. A telco company published a heat map created from GSM location data that reflected where in the city yound people spend their time. One of the "hot" spots on the map was in a remote forest area with nobody living around. Most probably it was a military object.

tester756• 4 years ago

Aren't soliders across the world taught of this? like how does it even happen in current_year

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

This is why Russian troops are forbidden to have cellphones and to use social media.

simion314• 4 years ago

Probably the superiors did not waste time explaining the reason and just demanded their phones, then the Russian soldier stole or robbed a phone and called home since he knows there is a big chance that he will be dead soon.

So if you think that your soldiers have this need to talk home maybe an competent army should offer them some alternatives, like some satellite phone they can use once a day and call home, you can't expect 18 years old forced to go to war to be professionals.

praptak• 4 years ago

Yeah I bet they are also forbidden from looting.

sofixa4• 4 years ago

The Russians don't have reliable communications, so it's not like there's that much choice.

Furthermore, the level of training and education of the average Russian soldier is.. not great. Look at some of the things they did around Chernobyl for an example of their knowledge gaps. Same goes for their discipline ( low morale, poor training, corruption, encouragement of war crimes will do that).

octoberfranklin4• 4 years ago

The Russians don't have reliable communications, so it's not like there's that much choice.

Oh come on, VHF radio is stupid reliable. It's a war zone, so nobody's enforcing TX power limits. I don't buy this explanation. They aren't downloading multigigabyte 4k video, they're issuing combat orders. VHF has done a great job with that for decades.

kzrdude2• 4 years ago

How do they leave so many dead bodies of soldiers behind in current_year? There's a lot you can ask about the mess in the Russian military culture.

cm2187• 4 years ago

On this topic, a french journalist also highlighted the use of small civilian plane navigation devices on Russian jet fighters, most likely because of the lack of access to components with the sanctions.

belter• 4 years ago

"Moscow4"

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/04/19/navalny-mosc...

lordnacho• 4 years ago

The stories of Russian military incompetence are so widespread, I'm starting to have a hard time believing it.

They can't drive a convoy a few hundred miles, they don't seem to know that tanks need protection from anti-tank missiles, they're scared to fly their plans, they use ordinary mobile phones to talk to each other, their generals are way out on the front line, their flagship got sunk, soldiers are quitting their jobs due to this not being an official war.

Wouldn't you stop after I don't know, a week of this? It just seems so overwhelmingly bad, you have to wonder if actually the war is going ok for them despite all these things and the Western media is simply keen to point out their shortcomings.

It just makes less and less sense with each story.

ekianjo2• 4 years ago

Probably most of these stories are part of the pro-Ukrainian propaganda - in every war the side people are on makes fun of the adversary.

foldr8• 4 years ago

What would that even mean, concretely? It’s not Ukrainian propaganda that the Moskva sunk. Russia admits it. (And if it wasn’t sunk by a Ukrainian missile, extreme Russian incompetence is the other explanation on the table.)

greggsy• 4 years ago

Ukraine’s losses are also being reported - it’s not all positive stories

Bayart• 4 years ago

The bias and narrative is definitely pro-Ukrainian, but the facts are well documented. There's a massive OSINT effort around this war. There's a Dutch group called Oryx specifically tracking material deployment and destruction [1]. That data is also scraped and put into a visual format by a guy on GitHub [2].

[1] https://www.oryxspioenkop.com

[2] https://github.com/favstats/uaconflict_equipmentloss

foepys• 4 years ago

The whole thing made no sense right from the start. Russia is alienating themselves from the West and its allies. Instead of keeping the grift on Russia going, Putin and his henchmen decided its a good idea to just start a new war in Europe. It's clearly not explainable with common sense.

DontMindit• 4 years ago

Tucker Carlson had a good piece on the biolabs in Ukraine and how someone was collecting Russian DNA enmasse.

scandox• 4 years ago

Of course we (the West from my POV) are conducting propaganda. That's war. However at the present level our propaganda is more to do with emphasis and exaggeration.

I think the truth is the Russians are not doing great and we're exaggerating their failures.

nootropicat• 4 years ago

Given that you know the outcome: a supposed second strongest military is losing in a war everybody expected them to dominate in a week, explanations like that are the most plausible ones. Hard to believe outcomes have hard to believe causes.

WilTimSon• 4 years ago

Yep, I'm in awe at some of the other replies. "Keeping up with Russian sources"? The same ones who claimed Ukraine was not a real country or that they were developing battle pigeons? I wonder which side is more likely to be correct: the ones who claim their enemy is incompetent or the ones who claim their enemy is using black magic. Seems clear-cut to me.

lezoid• 4 years ago

I would believe it in part. Coming from a post-communist country, I can testify corruption levels at all layers of society were massive. We are still working hard to change the collective mentality 30 years after a regime change, and I have all the reasons to believe there is far more work in this regard to be done in Russia.

(Also, the stories from folks who served in the Czechoslovak Army back then border with the incredible)

pmoriarty• 4 years ago

There has been speculation that Putin doesn't realize how badly the war is going:

"We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership," Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told reporters during a press briefing.

"We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth," she said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-advisers-too-afraid-tell...

philistine4• 4 years ago

Way back when, they did make fake newspapers for Lenin to hide the truth from him. It’s the same thing here. The cabal of Russian leaders don’t want to get killed for their incompetence before Putin dies and they replace him with one of their own.

93po• 4 years ago

This reeks of propaganda. There is zero chance Putin doesn't have full knowledge of russian troop presence in Ukraine, and you can't really deny that he doesn't have troops in major cities he wants to control.

seer• 4 years ago

Keeping abreast with Russian sources as well, I would hazard a guess that it’s a little bit of both.

All of those things seem true, but Ukraine has so few forces and Russia has so many, that it kinda balances out.

And this is not highly trained and motivated Israeli fighting a desperate force a generation or two below their tech. Ukrainians seem to be on par, but russians look to be way more able than the Arab alliances from those past wars.

At the start of the war their tech was comparable, and the new weapons poring out of the west are only now reaching frontlines.

Russians are loosing slowly - the failed Kiev offensive is a proof enough of that, its just they have such a strong media clamp down that their people are not exactly aware of how bad things are for them, well nobody knows _really_ right now but it does keep morale high.

And Putin can’t really afford a “graceful loss” - he needs a win, and I think he’s banking on the west not being able to stay coherent for a long enough time, and to wear down the enemy slowly. It’s not without precedent and authoritarian regimes are considered more stable through war than democracies, let alone abstract things like the EU.

RektBoy• 4 years ago

I guess, you're from US? Anyone with experience with Russians, this situations is not just believable for us, this is Russian default.

chii• 4 years ago

if this is the default, do they expect to win via attrition? I don't believe russia can out-industry the west. Perhaps they hope that the voting population gets sick of the cost, and bail out, giving russia the win.

wickoff• 4 years ago

Read up on how the Russians fought in WW2. Russia has executed 153000 of their own soldiers, among other things. They defused mine fields by forcing penalized soldiers to walk through them. Nothing has changed.

You don't need to believe propaganda, just look at the map of the invasion and ask yourself how is it possible that a far superior military on paper is losing so badly.

mellow-lake-day3• 4 years ago

Quantity has a quality all its own.

divan• 4 years ago

I think many westerners do not realize the sheer scale of incompetence and lack of standards or protocols in Soviet/post-Soviet organization. Bundled with corruption and misaligned incentive structures, it's ridiculously dumb and ineffective. The whole system is trained to make it look ok from the outside, though (especially when higher ups are coming for inspection).

I'm Ukrainian, and unfortunately familiar with reality of Soviet/post-Soviet organization systems. Before 2014, the word "army" was a joke. Army was a place for those who couldn't make it into universities. Most of the time soldiers were working in fields or building mansions for generals. It all changed after 2014, of course.

But in russia it's been much worse. Historically russia tried to keep army low-status, so it can't pose risks to the ruling class (communist party in USSR, and FSB in post-Soviet russia). Thieves-in-law are higher in the russian power hierarchy, for example. Consider these news (google-translated links):

- Russian conscripts are forced into gay prositution [1]

- Thieves imposed a tribute on russian military base in Kemerovo [2]

[1] https://www-kommersant-ru.translate.goog/doc/742132?_x_tr_sl...

[2] https://lenta-ru.translate.goog/news/2021/12/26/konraktniki/...

zasdffaa4• 4 years ago

"Bundled with corruption and misaligned incentive structures, it's ridiculously dumb and ineffective"

Aren't there the same 'corruption and misaligned incentive structures' in China, yet they seem to be doing rather better?

mellow-lake-day3• 4 years ago

22 years of corruption under Putin has gutted the Russian military

philistine4• 4 years ago

There might have already been nothing there in the first place.

dragonelite6• 4 years ago

Truth died 3 months ago in the west regarding Ukraine and Russian war. If the Russians were really as bad as western propaganda said they were. Macron wouldn't have said too Zelensky to just let Russia anex Ukrainian regions and sign a peace accord same with the Lloyd Austin US defence minister.

I wouldn't be surprised that once the $40 billion "Ukraine bill" gets approved as one last big tax payer slush fund for western elites, the message will change real quick how the Ukrainians fought like brave lions against the Russian asiatic hordes.

But the Russian asiatic hordes were just too much, how the Russians used human wave attack, while reality russia is fighting a Ukrainian force that is 2~3 times the size of the Russians fighting forces.

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

Do you think Russia is attaining any of its goals? Ukraine was corrupt, debilitated and inept. Yet it holds against Russia. Minor resistance crippled what we thought was a war machine.

Russia isn’t a great power. It’s a nuisance that now, thankfully, falls almost solely to Beijing go manage. Yet we keep pretending it’s a real threat, the real crime herein.

throwaway0x7E62• 4 years ago

2~3 times

it's far worse than that. even volkssturm conscripts are being sent to the frontlines. it's everything that Ukraine has - which is a lot in a country of 40-something million people, against a contingent of 150-200 thousand men

grapeskin2• 4 years ago

Russia’s military really isn’t good.

Their problem is that the Russian military has an ongoing history of not fighting against militaries—it’s not their focus. They fight against civilians. The Soviet period was endless murder of their own people. Endless atrocities were committed in Afghanistan. Massacres and rapes against civilians in African countries are reported with disturbing frequency. Ukraine is following that exact script.

There’s no longer much of a worry of a prolonged war being beneficial to Russia. It’s that they’re just going to increasingly terrorize civilian targets and further expand their genocidal tactics. Rape and massacres of civilians are already being reported in huge numbers. It’s going to expand. Macron probably thinks Russia will just stop doing it if they’re allowed to have a nibble of Ukraine, but Ukraine knows they’ll just keep doing it until they’re driven out entirely.

LittlePeter3• 4 years ago

while reality russia is fighting a Ukrainian force that is 2~3 times the size of the Russians fighting forces.

This is not the reality though. At the start of the war at least, Russian troops count exceeded Ukrainian ones by a factor of 2 if not more.

Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=russia+vs+ukraine+troops+cou...

philistine4• 4 years ago

It’s always the same thing with the Pro-Russian arguments : it’s all or nothing. Never any space for nuance. Russia must be winning, one Western leader made one query implying trouble for the Ukrainians.

Go and have yourself some democracy for a century or two, and learn the concept of nuance and compromise.

nikanj• 4 years ago

An armed horde of soldiers is a formidable force, even if the individual soldiers appear to be rather vodka’d

See also: the Capitol insurrection that was taken extremely seriously, even though many of the people were just straight-up morons

wiseowise10• 4 years ago

An armed horde of soldiers is a formidable force, even if the individual soldiers appear to be rather vodka’d

Not against modern weapons.

jillesvangurp• 4 years ago

Well, there's the simple matter that they have been on the ground in the Ukraine for a few months now; seemingly without actually achieving any goals worth reporting. They attacked Kiev, tried to surround it and take it, and then Jill Biden went sightseeing there last week. I think it's safe to say that whatever the Russians wanted there failed. Completely and utterly. If you cut through the propaganda, it was Jill Biden touring Kiev and not Putin having a WW II parade there on the 9th of May (which is when they remember the end of WW II). They had one in Moscow instead. Apparently the "special operation" is still going great for them. All according to plan. Or so the propaganda says. But Jill Biden went to Kiev and Putin didn't. Simple realities.

It wouldn't be the first war that Russia got involved in that went badly for them. They only won WW II because of massive amounts of supplies from the US. Very much like the Ukraine is currently being supplied. And of course Afghanistan comes to mind. Russia was there in the 1980s.The US was supplying all sorts of goodies to the Taliban. I saw Rambo III (speaking of propaganda that did not age well).

Of course there's a bit of more recent history in that particular country where the US also got some egg on their face. As a matter of fact, that ended last year after two decades of boots on the ground. The US finally walked away after two decades of throwing their weight around without achieving a victory.

Anyway, you could ask the same questions you are asking about Russia in that context. And of course people have. But it still happened. Yes there is propaganda; but there are also facts on the ground, and lots of bad decision making, bad intel, bureaucratic inertia etc.

I know people from the Ukraine. I run into refugees here in Berlin on a daily basis. I'm sure it's all a bit abstract and distant for you. But it sure feels awfully close and real to me. Nothing that drives the point home of a war than seeing actual people just trying to find a safe place to stay for their families. All I have to do to see that is take a ten minute walk to the main train station here in Berlin.

rocgf2• 4 years ago

I believe the way you feel migh also be somewhat due to a lack of exposure to the environment in which Russians live. While I'm not Russian and have never been to Russia, I do come from Eastern Europe, so a former communist country, and I now live in the West.

There are just so many things one takes for granted in Western democracies which are just not so in a place like Russia. Nothing really works as it should, not public institutions, not private institutions, army, judges or anything else.

Throughout my life I've seen plenty of things which I thought were normal at the time, but make me cringe now. A few brief examples, I can expand on all of them:

- policemen bribed with a raw steak out of the trunk

- doctors who wouldn't treat you without a bribe

- teachers who'd fail unless you went for "private tutoring"

- whole neighbourhoods built without a permit

- nepotism in public/private institutions to the point where whole departments are basically just friends/family

- public/private jobs which are only available for a fee to the right person (e.g. in order to become a nurse, you need to pay X 2000 EUR)

- skipping queues/processes (e.g. getting a passport) by bribes or knowing the right person

- faking official documents in pretty much any circumstance if it's easier for any party involved

- many others that I can't think of right now

In these places everything is solved with a small bribe. It's required and expected and just the way it works. Things have changed since the EU and all, but everyone who grew up in Eastern Europe knows what I'm talking about.

So while I expected the Russian army to be more capable, hearing that they're selling petrol out of their vehicles and don't know how to operate their tanks doesn't even make me raise an eyebrow.

justsomehnguy6• 4 years ago

The most amusing thing here is what Ukraine is just the same post-Soviet country with exactly the same problems, but suddenly...

pasabagi• 4 years ago

I've heard the general-in-the-front thing is just Russian military culture. They lead from the front. That has advantages and disadvantages: one of the disadvantages is that generals get killed. For instance, they lost a fair few high-ranked officers in Syria.

A lot of the stuff you've mentioned is a combination of ordinary military incompetence (do you remember that US destroyer crashing a few years back? That's happening in the most well-funded, capable navy in the world. Other militaries are worse), Russian doctrine (scared to fly planes = no tradition of SEAD/DEAD, no doctrinal requirement, etc), and the fact that this war is not really the kind of war the Russian military is designed for.

That's part of why it's all so surprising. People didn't think the invasion would take place because it's a bad idea for the Russians.

If you consider that a military is like a very big, too-big-to-fail company, with marginally worse-than-average pathologies for that kind of organization, except when disasters happen, people die and it's plastered all over the news by a very unsympathetic media, you can probably imagine why the Russian military is looking the way it does. My takeaway is essentially that the Russian military performance is exactly what you would expect for an organization that size, in a country like Russia, doing something very difficult against determined opposition.

wrp7• 4 years ago

People didn't think the invasion would take place because it's a bad idea for the Russians.

Just before the invasion, French military intelligence told Macron that Russia wouldn't invade, because Russian military capabilities were not sufficient.

grapeskin2• 4 years ago

There’s a lot of propaganda meant to make Russia look far more incompetent than they are.

There are also countless videos from the war showing Russia’s military is full of people more incompetent than even the most ridiculous propaganda could ever make us believe. I’ve seen loads of tanks and Russians getting blown up in ridiculous ways and I’m really not even going out of my way to search for it.

cracrecry2• 4 years ago

There’s a lot of propaganda meant to make Russia look far more incompetent than they are.

They are certainly extremely incompetent, no question about that.

Just ask any person in any army in the West. I talked with some of them. Nobody gave two cents for Ukraine against Russia, because Russia on paper was so overwhelmingly superior.

Specially the US believed Ukraine had no chance against Russia and did not want to send free weapons to Russia(after they defeat the Ukrainians and took their weapons).

Everybody was shocked and surprised by the sheer incompetence of that army. I have a friend that is Colonel in a NATO country and even today is shocked and say they find it very hard not to underestimate them after what we are seeing.

Obviously Ukrainians are not going to show their tanks blowing up on youtube, but the offensive should be already over if the Russians were competent at all.

topspin• 4 years ago

I'm starting to have a hard time believing it.

I am not. Those, like me, that are following the conflict in detail, have overcome the disbelief you're struggling with. I knew before the invasion that Russia was about to fill YouTube will hundreds of blown up tanks just based on the number of Javelins I knew were already present in theater, but what has happened has exceeded all expectations.

Two weeks ago Ukraine began attacking Snake Island. They used Bayraktar UAVs to systematically destroy all of the air defense equipment Russia placed on that rock, publishing video of these attacks in almost real time. Response? Send in a top commander in an MI-8 in full view of the UAVs and zero air cover. Destroyed on landing. Send in assault craft with zero air cover. 2 destroyed and the third chased off. Now they're sending in more equipment -- respawning like NPCs in a video game.

Similarly, last week Russia tried a (minor) river crossing with two battalions of men and armor. They stacked it all up waiting for pontoon bridges to be deployed and delivered a perfect target to Ukrainian forces. They did this under the surveillance of NATO satellites and Ukraine's drone surveillance. Result? 50+ armored vehicles and men annihilated by 1970's artillery.

This is every day. Every. Single. Day. Ukraine pulverizes some chunk of the Russian military that is so farcically inept that they are unaware of basic knowledge about the conditions of this conflict and apparently incapable of learning or adapting to it.

You are observing epic dysfunction in action. Proof that corruption and cognitive dissonance are fatal.

And it's going to get much, much worse. The advanced heavy weapons that Ukraine has received are only just now starting to appear in the front lines. M777A2s started limited operation a few days ago. By the end of May they'll have batteries of these firing. PzH 2000 is weeks away yet. Ceaser still later. Gabriel V/Blue Spear anti-ship missiles are on the horizon. They've just now adapted Brimstone missiles to launch from what is effectively an ice cream van. And the Russians are and will do absolutely nothing to anticipate or adapt to any of this.

RobertoG6• 4 years ago

I'm not expert but I, more or less, follow the war (from my comfortable sofa) and I would like to point some observations.

-We see a lot of Russian bad decisions and result of that decisions but never Ukrainian. That should you make you stop and think.

-If you look only to the maps, and not the news, it's not obvious that the war is going so well for Ukraine, despise they have logistic and intelligence support from NATO.

I could be wrong, but that makes me think that we are the target of a marketing operation.

amalter• 4 years ago

Just a note. Unfortunately the Russian's have reestablished the garrison and anti-aircraft systems on Snake Island (https://twitter.com/ArtisanalAPT/status/1525220038914895872?...)

The cost to do this when the island will likely continue to flip flop in control is callous military incompetence.

neffy• 4 years ago

It's generations and generations of hierarchical control, and nothing else. Men who did anything other than advance towards the enemy as ordered were shot, in WW1, in WW2, even again today. That scene in Stalingrad with the NKVD, completely factual. Look up the WW2 battle of Izium which is just one example. They're fighting there again today.

No, it doesn't make sense by western standards. But this is as much as anything a clash of network topologies - hierarchy vs mesh. Our tolerance for constant debates and internecine arguing doesn't make any sense to them either, if that's any consolation. They think we´re stupid to tolerate it, when it's so much easier and simpler for everybody to just follow the vision of the one true leader. To their death.

cracrecry2• 4 years ago

You just don't understand Russia culture. Americans live in lala land, they have no clue.

What communism was about in Russia was taken the best people at every single sector in Russia and just exterminating them. In the 1930s over 50% of Dombass engineers were put out of work!

Most of them were later killed. Anyone that had the minimum entrepreneurial spirit(kulaks) was exterminated. Their children could not study on public school, they became pariahs even without access to food.

Their families were humiliated and deported to the other side of Russia.

Over 50% of the economy was the military and police State to control the population that naturally reveled. When workers did strike, the Soviets took hostage of their families, then after the strikes were over the leaders were killed.

Merchants, unions and the Church were also exterminated. All communities gone so nobody could go against the power.

With Putin all the power remained in the KGB, Putin came from it, all the oligarchs were Putin's friends from the KGB. The Church leader was also a member of the KGB.

Ukraine by the way has the same History, the same System and corruption as Russia by the way, but they are fighting for their land, and have the support and training of the West.

Millions of Ukrainians died from starvation with the Soviets while Stalin exported grain. It was on purpose against peasants as punishment.

Americans admire successful people. Russia culture is the polar opposite. Think for a moment about that.

wrp7• 4 years ago

While there are several good comments here about how Russian social problems have contributed to their poor military performance, they all neglect what I think is the most significant factor in this conflict. From before the start of the war, US/NATO has been providing enormous intelligence aid to Ukraine.[1]

Consider one guy with a sniper rifle running around the countryside. He's not going to be anything more than a minor annoyance to an invading army. Provide him with real-time intel on the exact location and vulnerabilities of high-value targets, and he's now a serious threat. Extrapolate that to the entire Ukrainian armed forces.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-intel-...

nosianu2• 4 years ago

I have an anecdote from one of my trips to Moscow (I also spent some time in Ukraine for two months and one week, Odessa and Lviv, respectively). This was the one time I was there in winter.

This was many years ago (10? 15?), but I have no reason to think the attitude behind what I describe have changed.

I went on a walk not far from the Kremlin in early evening. Lots and lots of cars on the wintery multi-lane streets in the center of Moscow.

For no reason whatsoever, on many major crossings with four lanes or more, when the other side had to stop because of red light the cars started occupying the opposing lanes(!!!). Yes, the ones for the traffic from the opposite direction, the one that would be needed a minute later when the traffic lights changed colors.

Of course, this lead to total gridlock, because that happened on both sides. So, the started to also use the side walk(!?), for even more standstill gridlock.

There they stood, and I saw this on several major crossings in the city center, facing one another, and no way to untangle this idiotic situation because nobody could move forward any more.

There was no reason for any of this. Police did nothing. It happened every evening that I watched.

Why on earth would you block the lanes for the opposite direction? Even assuming complete selfishness and disregard for others and accepting it, how could one possibly think that would help one get ahead faster? You could see the cars waiting on the other side of the traffic light, the ones whose path you are now blocking.

detritus2• 4 years ago

Funnily enough, I have a few vaguely 'libertarian' (in a UK-sense) friends who don't see that if everyone broke societal 'politenesess'/manners as they do, ekeing a small personal advantage, then everything goes to shit. Sure, one or two do it and they can advance. Well done, them. Everyone does it and back in time we step. People forget that most manners were purely an invention of post-medieval society, not some naturally-inherent instinct.

I feel as much about how Big SV Corps get forward, by externalising little bits of shit that the rest of society has to wipe off its collective face. Looking at you, Amazon.

torginus• 4 years ago

I believe one doesn't need to look at these individual stories of incompetence, failure of tactics and/or technology.

It's simply that you can't take a country of 44 million with 100 thousand soldiers.

What the heck were they thinking?

christophilus• 4 years ago

My brother is military, has been to Ukraine, and has studied Russia as part of his degree. They are a nation in collapse. Corruption and a centralized command structure are a really bad combination.

Their military is like a headless chicken if you take out those in command. Compare that to a more decentralized, guerrilla-military operation from Ukraine, and you have the results we’re seeing.

I have no doubt that what we see here in the west is an inaccurate and one-sided view, but I think there’s still a clear enough picture that Russia is reaping what they’ve sown.

Mikeb85• 4 years ago

It's unbelievable but the evidence supporting it is overwhelming.

Balgair• 4 years ago

To my Western mind, it seems similarly crazy.

One thing I took away from a recent Econtalk episode[0] was that the minds of the Russians are not our minds. I didn't grow up in a post/soviet state. I didn't have to deal with that kleptocracy. I am not the commander of thousands of nuclear warheads. My mind is not their mind.

One good and easy vector that I have is the twitter account of the 'Tires Guy' that was popular briefly in the early part of the war [1]. Trent's continuing insights to the conflict, mostly from a logistics perspective, have been good for me to understand the war and the motivations behind the decisions. He brings in a lot of conflicting voices, history, and other media too. He is open about the fact that he can only see white propaganda and tries to balance that out when the data comes in.

Trent's insights on the Syrian conflict, unfortunately, seem to indicate that the Russians are likely to 'lose' the war, but just go on fighting it anyway (again, their mind is not my mind).

I'd give the guy a follow if you'd like to stay up to date on the conflict. It may take a week or more to grok though, so be prepared to be patient.

[0] https://www.econtalk.org/chris-blattman-on-why-we-fight/

[1] https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko

shreyshnaccount2• 4 years ago

*troops, fix the heading please

Stratoscope2• 4 years ago

Yes, I noticed the typo after the two-hour edit window. Hopefully dang will fix it.

There is a mildly amusing story behind this. Or perhaps I am easily amused!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31376306

Thorrez• 4 years ago

If you want dang to fix it, click the contact button on the bottom. I always get a response, and usually it's extremely quickly.

shreyshnaccount2• 4 years ago

It is amusing xD

willnonya• 4 years ago

"To some, this type of scenario may seem...hyperbolic"

Or just wildly inaccurate given the lack of cell phone networks at sea...

Once they are on land

octoberfranklin4• 4 years ago

I am very surprised that the Russian military hasn't simply cut all the fiber optics running into and out of the areas where they're operating. Does anybody have insight on this?

Fiber isn't hard to find. The aerial stuff is unmistakable (snowshoes or other slack-loop storage). The buried stuff has conductive marker tape, like the stuff used for locating buried power lines but with a different resonant frequency.

It can't be that hard to find the few fiber optic arteries into/outof the next city they want to crap all over and cut each trunk once.

Would love to know why this hasn't been done. Obviously I would not make a good general.

Edit: okay, the article mentions this, claiming that the Russians don't have VHF radios, which I find to be an utterly ridiculous claim. This is 1960's (or earlier!) technology folks. Does not pass the smell test. Even if they've resorted to "civilian handheld radios", those don't need cell towers or fiber optics.

randomsearch2• 4 years ago

Usually the military doesn't target infrastructure they'll need themselves.

I've seen various Ukranian sources mention Starlink as a useful comms tool.

octoberfranklin4• 4 years ago

Sure, but I don't see how the Russians need the Ukranian fiber optic network or cell network. By all reports it's being used against them quite effectively.

Military orders go over VHF radio, not cell networks.

I have a hard time believing that Russia is incapable of invading countries without cell towers (although it would be cool if that were true!)

I've seen various Ukranian sources mention Starlink as a useful comms tool.

That's actually yet another reason for them to take out the fiber optics. Starlink only reaches a hundred miles or so; beyond that it needs fiber.

flohofwoe• 4 years ago

Usually the military doesn't target infrastructure they'll need themselves.

Apparently the Russians destroyed mobile towers despite their own encrypted phones relying on civilian 3G/4G infrastructure:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ukraine-russian-m...

wrp7• 4 years ago

Early on, it was rumored that Russian troops were under orders to not damage infrastructure. That makes sense especially if they expected to take the country without much of a fight. Even so, one stereotypical difference between American and Russian approaches to war is that Americans try to bomb everything to rubble before sending in troops, while Russians try to preserve infrastructure they can use once they capture territory.

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

troops cross into Ukraine, their cell phones emit a roaming signal that connects to Ukraine’s cellular network... naive and ignorant about using mobile devices, they often call home

This is not unique to the Russo-Ukraine situation. I've been with British personnel who carry their own laptops with them while on active duty and move across borders with them. We have an unbelievable naivety about technology in all societies - basically an inability to control it, because people see carrying an all-in-one personal tracker as their god-given inalienable right.

CO: Put this uniform on!

PVT: Yes sir!

CO: March 500 miles in the rain and snow!

PVT: Yes sir!

CO: Eat this disgusting MRE.

PVT: Yes sir!

CO: Fire on these enemies!

PVT: Yes sir!

CO: Please surrender your cellphones for the safety of your entire company.

PVT: FK OFF! I need* to post on Facebook.

While running an exam I asked students to switch off their phones and put them in a box at the front of the hall. Half were resistant. I had to expel two for refusing and another who sneaked-in a second phone that rang during the examination. Many of the remaining students were distracted, looking nervously at the box every minute.

These are good, honest, hard working and normally attentive young people, not delinquents, but those things have a hold over them that is worrying. These things are drugs and the sooner we start saying so and treating them as such the sooner we can find the appropriate psychological stance and interventions.

totetsu• 4 years ago

It's like you need some phone isolation practice time before the exam also. One class a month with phones in the box.

PebblesHD• 4 years ago

The students you mentioned are probably more nervous about the $1000+ device now not in their control than they are as a ‘withdrawal’ symptom. I’m happy to show the device being turned off and out in a backpack in those situations, but I’m not letting it out of my possession. I’d sooner just not take it with me in the first place.

Taking my own phone into a hostile situation on the other hand, why would you? I don’t even take my own phone when travelling for business.

klysm2• 4 years ago

I don’t even take my own phone when travelling for business.

Huh? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Being on business travel is exactly when I want my phone.

pmichaud• 4 years ago

Yeah this is a good point. Maybe it’s solvable with simple tech like this: https://www.amazon.com/brotrade-Hanging-Jewelry-Organizer-Je...

Get a similar soft display case with compartments big enough to hold cell phones, and have it displayed at the front of the class where everyone can see them. You put your phone in one of the “pouches,” you can see it the whole time you’re taking an exam, you pick it back out once you’re done.

I’m not sure what a practical method of ensuring you get the right phone back would be, but I can think of a few schemes. For example, each pouch has a uniquely numbered card, and when you put your phone in there, you take the card. Then you put the card back when you pick your phone back up. It would probably be helpful to have 1 or 2 visual indicators that you got it right, like the coordinates from the card also printed on the clear plastic in a way that’s easy to see them match, plus maybe a color scheme where a stripe or sticker of some kind on the clear plastic matches the color of the card itself. (This all to prevent accidental mix ups, not theft. The main benefit I see is letting the people still taking the exam feel confident that their phone is visible to them and it’ll remain where it is until they pick it up.)

rco87863• 4 years ago

Highly disagree. We all have things that cost money that we don’t think about every 10 seconds. Even your own example, leaving your phone while on a business trip is fine. But having it in a box a few feet away is somehow anxiety inducing because of its cost?

PartiallyTyped3• 4 years ago

As a [near poverty] grad student, I am more concerned with the loss of the device than with "cheating" in an exam. The phone has my cards, contact info, plus its actual value. Understandably, exams are a stressful situation, and risking losing your phone is an added and frankly unnecessary stressor. 250 euro (how much my one plus nord cost me on sale) is not a lot to most people here, but that covers my living expenses (minus rent) for a month or so.

jb3689• 4 years ago

Does this imply that you value passing your course at less than 250 euros? I understand your point about the hassle, but trying to understand the rationality

bell-cot2• 4 years ago

If the instructor had announced, a few weeks before, "Absolutely no cell phones in the exam - leave it at home, or it will go into a box in the front corner of the classroom during the exam, or else you will automatically fail the exam"...would that work (both operationally and psychologically) for you?

newsclues• 4 years ago

Are we underestimating the power and importance of connection to family and home?

Given that soldiers went to great lengths to write letters from trenches, it seems like war might suck and it may be nice to hear from mom or the wife.

On the other hand, if your army has shitty comma gear having a cellphone might be useful as a fallback communication option, but I probably would prefer to use previously locally acquired sims…

sandworm101• 4 years ago

Maybe schools should not then demand that students carry cellphones. Let them register for courses oldschool, using paper forms. Let them submit work in hard copy. And give up on all those emergency/amber alert/active shooter notification schemes. Stop asking for personal phone numbers on every form.

adastra22• 4 years ago

What school requires students to carry cell phones?

rco87863• 4 years ago

Asking for schools to go backwards on technology is kind of the opposite of what we want. Schools already get enough flack for not preparing students for “the real world”.

nbevans• 4 years ago

This has been going on for a long time and affects Western nations just as much as what's happening in Ukraine.

Remember all those Strava (and other) fitness/running heatmaps from US/UK bases in Iraq/Afghanistan back in the day?

watwut4• 4 years ago

I think that you are underestimating soldiers emotional need to have contact with wifes, children, parents, friends. Yes, it put them in danger. No it is not just about facebook.

Second, students really dont want to loose phone. Do, they like me have habits - check pocket/bag periodically whether phone is in. If the phone is not where I always have it, I will search for it soon.

It is expensive. People without such habit loose their devices often. And yes I know such people and they buy new phone once nine months or so. Cause the old one got lost.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Mail a letter.

hunter-gatherer• 4 years ago

I was in the Army before smart phones really existed and did a 15 month deployment. While it does indeed suck, soldiers are capable of functioning without continued contact for long periods of time with their families.

I more recently was employed as a mobile device exploitation analyst at DIA and leverages many and more tactics outlined in the article against 'enemies of the state' if you will. The pragmatic thing to do is to properly educate the military and prohibit the use of these devices on deployments. Alas, that'll never happen though.

ordu• 4 years ago

Many of the remaining students were distracted, looking nervously at the box every minute.

There are many possible reasons to look at the phone. Some were mentioned in comments, I can add two more.

It may be a reflex action triggered by the need to consult google. Not the real attempt to google, but when my mind suggested such a possibility to me, my eyes could flicker in a direction of my phone.

Another possible reason is the process of rehearsing. If I was rehearsing answers using the phone, then I would try to look at my phone on each question needing a mental effort to answer. It is how memory works: when you trying to remember what you had read in a book you will look at the book or at least imagine the book.

Or third reason. A neurotic reaction. Exam is a stressful experience, while phone often used to relax, to shut down external reality and to get some rest. So students are trying to get grip on themselves by taking a phone, but stop themselves from doing it. Probably they stop not just because their phone is unreachable, but because it is an exam and not a time to relax. But their mind keeps trying to use phone as a tool of self-regulation. If phone was in their pocket, they would touch it sometimes without looking.

These things are not drugs but a new part of a human body. Like pants. Or even better, like glasses. I use glasses from my childhood, and I refuse to use contact lenses, because I feel myself naked without my glasses. I feel every movement of the air. It is disturbing. If you asked me to take an exam without my glasses, you probably would watched how I sometimes reach my nose with my hand, trying to touch my glasses founding everytime that I wear no glasses now. Or how sometimes I look longingly in a direction were my glasses are. I would do all this while being absorbed in an exam, and probably wouldn't remember it afterwards.

tyleo• 4 years ago

These things are not drugs but a new part of a human body. Like pants. Or even better, like glasses.

The big difference is that glasses are a clear net positive. It is possible for phones to be a net positive but a phone is multipurpose and I doubt most of there users prioritize it as an educational device.

Sadly behavior like mindless scrolling is all to common, and companies know and measure success by sucking in more of there users minutes. The goal of these companies isn’t to maximize productive and meaningful minutes. The goal is to get any minutes at all. Sadly those mostly seem to come from the more drug-like use cases.

uptime• 4 years ago

If phone was in their pocket, they would touch it sometimes without looking.

I am old enough to remember people doing that with packs of cigarettes. Automatically or subconsciously touching the pack for comfort at an interval when not actively smoking.

I have remarked on this behavior in myself and my phone.

Gwypaas• 4 years ago

While running an exam I asked students to switch off their phones and put them in a box at the front of the hall. Half were resistant. I had to expel two for refusing and another who sneaked-in a second phone that rang during the examination. Many of the remaining students were distracted, looking nervously at the box every minute.

Seems like you are looking for conflict trying to be abrasive and prove your prejudice. This is especially the case now since many people use cases which are also wallets for your credit cards. Would you be comfortable leaving your wallet in a pile of other wallets in a box you can't control?

The easy way of doing it, which I personally experienced during countless exams, is that all phones needs to be turned off and put in your bag. The bag is then stashed out along the walls or hung on hooks. Then you can both keep an eye on your bag, knowing that no one will ruffle around in it and the exam watchers can easily make sure that only allowed materials are on the desks. Magically there's no opportunity for conflict.

Sure, someone inevitably forgot to turn off their second morning alarm and then an exam watcher and the person would together walk to the bag and under supervision turn it off. No need to escalate it into something more than it is.

cinntaile• 4 years ago

Indeed. Put it in your own bag and you're good, I wouldn't trust a box filled with mobile phones. Someone is bound to take the wrong one home when they're done, someone might even steal one. There is really no need to create that unnecessary stress when you're already writing an exam.

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

Seems like you are looking for conflict trying to be abrasive and prove your prejudice.

With respect, it sounds as if you have some issues with authority. The chaps were told weeks in advance. The box was for their safety. It's not a theatrical magicians box that disappeared down a trap door in a puff of smoke while my scantily clad assistant made big eyes and cooing noises. It's just a clear plastic storage cube in full view the whole time - really no different than having it on the desk in front of you, just a few feet further away.

Would you be comfortable leaving your wallet in a pile of other wallets in a box you can't control?

Absolutely yes, in the hands of a trusted figure, if protocol demanded it. I have to put my gear through a scanner every time I fly. Damnit, I have to put my life in the hands of others. It's something you get used to as you grow. We're not all in in control all the time.

Sure, someone inevitably forgot to turn off their second morning alarm

You're making my point for me. The example I am giving is just a crummy maths exam. People are griping about scratched screens and other first world "nightmares". The original article was about getting yourself and all your buddies blown to pieces because of an "inevitable" lack of self-discipline.

cyanydeez• 4 years ago

Yet no one in government finds a reason to curtail the privacy invasion aspect or the gross level of location tracking they do.

moistly• 4 years ago

These things are drugs

Dopamine dosing systems.

de6u99er• 4 years ago

Military needs to bring it's own crll towers, so troops don't need to use local phone operator.

TomK32• 4 years ago

The best targets are those emitting strong signals.

Stratoscope2• 4 years ago

For anyone wondering, yes I do know how to spell "troops".

I submitted the story with its original title:

Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea

The HN code auto-corrected this in a most amazing way:

Roops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a very bad idea

I was on mobile and tried to make the obvious correction to that, but missed a letter! And now the edit deadline has expired. Ah well.

This proves that with a combination of human and machine intelligence, anything can go wrong!

@dang If you see this, I wonder if you could fix my typo, and also in your copious free time figure out how the original title got corrected to "Roops"? :-)

dredmorbius• 4 years ago

Email the moderators directly at hn@ycombinator.com

(I've done so in this case.)

kkfx• 4 years ago

I strongly suggest a different point of view: having always smart devices nearby is a bad idea. For us, civil in peace.

Why? Because letting very few to know very much about us while most of us know next to nothing about them is VERY VERY VERY bad for Democracy.

A small example: let's say you are named Alphabet or Microsoft, does not matter, and you have started to harvest data, no one can know if, how and when you do, from "remote schooling", let's say you have an in-house well developed behavioral model and you are very skilled in ads and propaganda campaigns... What stop you from identifying most skilled students for aspects of your interest and drive, an ad at a time, their interest toward you, so depriving you potential new competitors of talents, perhaps directing bad students to them? When you have essentially the complete control of all human communications because they simply happen on your platform you are not a company anymore, you are a de-facto corporate-state and your customers are your slaves.

Remember a thing: if there is no privacy for all it's ok, if there is complete privacy for all is equally ok. If we are almost all in balance it's ok, if very few hold too much all others will suffer. War is the extreme example, but it's a VERY good one, because as Carl von Clausewitz have written years ago war is just politics by other means and modern management/corporatocracy is just kind-of mock war by few against many others, against customers included, since lock-in, coercion etc pay back well.

slim• 4 years ago

Most of you correctly identified this as propaganda even though it's not lies. But you don't seem realize that this propaganda is targeting you and it's purpose is to paint Russia as weak to enroll you in the war effort

yosito• 4 years ago

No cell phones on the battlefield seems like operational security 101. Deployed soldiers should not get cell phones, ever. I wonder if this happens more because of bad military policy about cell phones, bad enforcement of said policy, or because even for deployed soldiers it's next to impossible to survive in the modern world without a cell phone. I suspect it has a lot to do with the latter. Cell phones are completely inescapable.

hackernewds• 4 years ago

case in point: https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-13-after-exposing-secret-mi...

Strava exposed unmarked US bases since soldiers were using the app for fitness tracking, and suddenly unexpected parts of the globe had activity in their heat map that Strava chose to publish.

fulafel• 4 years ago

There is lots reporting about video/photo and geolocation uses of mobile phones in the war zone that seem to pay off, the reality seems to be a bit more nuanced. See eg https://time.com/6166781/ukraine-crowdsourcing-war-crimes/

sunstone• 4 years ago

Pretty sure it has nothing to do with Starlink.

Russian troops are proving that cell phones in war zones are a bad idea

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