https://x.com/ArmchairW/status/1831176695589618060

Could [the Europeans] reopen the Bab al-Mandeb without US assistance?

After all, right now the Western mission in the Bab al-Mandeb is run by the EU as EUNAVFOR Aspides, so they're already in charge of the area of operations. Reopening the straits will require ground troops to land and occupy enough currently Houthi-held territory to prevent drone and missile launches at maritime traffic transiting the strait. Can the EU muster the force? Power projection requires amphibious assault ships and aircraft carriers. Four European navies operate these capital ships: the UK, France, Italy and Spain. Between them they have four aircraft carriers worth the name (Cavour, Charles de Gaulle, Queen Elizabeth, and Prince of Wales) and eight amphibious assault ships of note (Giuseppe Garibaldi, Juan Carlos I, Galicia, Castilla, Mistral, Tonnere, Dixmude, Albion, and Bulwark). The Italians additionally operate three very small amphibs of the San Giorgio-class. Many of these ships are in some kind of reduced readiness or maintenance status. Realistically the European Union could deploy on a "surge" basis two carriers (with a weaker combined air wing than a single USN carrier) and a single amphibious group comparable to a USN Amphibious Ready Group. This sealift capability would support landing a brigade-size element in Yemen.

The Europeans also maintain a sizable number of airborne formations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain all have brigade-plus or -minus elements standing and aren't faced with fighting Russia on short notice), and can field about 100 heavy transport aircraft, mostly A400s. Based on RAND corporation analysis (link in the first post) it would take approximately 105 C-17 sorties to deliver one US infantry brigade with appropriate enablers for a high-end battle. Yemen will be a high-end battle. Although an A400 can jump about the same number of paratroopers as a C-17, it can carry only about half the cargo. Ergo, something like 150 A400 sorties would be required to deliver one brigade, not to mention ongoing sustainment requirements. As it's doubtful more than 30 or so aircraft would be (or even could be, I'm not going to try to analyze ramp space in Djibouti) committed to the operation, the EU task force could realistically only jump a single fully-equipped brigade into Yemen alongside the amphibious landing.

Barring military access from Saudi Arabia or Oman, these two European brigades are going to have to hit the dirt and seize a seaport (perhaps the city of Al Hudaydah, shown) to allow conventional shipping to come in and "administratively" deliver what's going to be a pretty meager follow-on force. That entails a city fight. Even with a seized airport and light reinforcements beyond the initial brigade flowing in by air (alongside much of their logistical requirements!), that's a tall order - particularly given the Houthis have real anti-access/area-denial capabilities and a reasonably competent army. Two or three European brigades in the Middle East, with a mission to seize a major urban area, relying on sketchy air support and tenuous supply lines, can get into a lot of trouble in 2024. Al Hudaydah, for instance, is a Houthi stronghold with a population of close to three-quarters of a million. A smarter course of action may be to enter in non-Houthi controlled eastern Yemen, establish logistics and attack from the east - but it'll be much slower to open the straits and oh, by the way, will require those aforementioned logistics to travel around the Horn of Africa because the Bab al-Mandeb will remain closed in the interim. So the indirect approach is fraught with its own, very significant, issues.

Which brings me to the crux of the problem - Yemen is a big country. It's somewhat larger than Iraq and has about 3/4 the population. The vast majority of that population lives in areas controlled by the Houthis. And, most importantly, the Houthis are very competent fighters. Ergo, even a minimal operation to reopen the Bab al-Mandeb should be expected to be something more on the scale of the 2003 invasion of Iraq than the sort of African bandit-chasing expedition we've seen European forces actually perform in recent memory. And the EU doesn't remotely have the capability to deploy and sustain forces at that level. The force that overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003 was 200,000-strong - an order of magnitude or more larger than what I've described above.

So to answer my starting question: No. Not a chance. In fact it would be a significant operation even for the United States - certainly not something that could be done quickly, easily, or with the commitment of minimal forces.

Not sure, the demos I've played are pretty vague about the lore. I think the devs are Polish, so who knows.

Yeah, this is just how it was labeled on the antiques site where I found it, but I also thought it was weird for it to be labeled a Bowie. Although for the clip point specifically, that doesn't seem to be absolutely necessary - there are bowies with more conventional blades, these days they're often referred to as "Arkansas Toothpicks" just to better distinguish them, but in the actual historical period the two terms seem to have been used interchangeably.

Still, this one seems too small - but it could also be a situation where the American and English definitions simply differ

"The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power" has got to be one of my favorite lines,

either he doesn't see this as a negotiation (in which case he has a middle-school understanding of civics and should get the fuck off his high horse about it)

He doesn't even understand the most basic facts about the legal system in question - he was going on about "b-but what if it sets a bad precedent"... the EU does not use fucking common law (completely, now that the Brits are out). They don't give a shit about precedents (well, at least they give less of a shit than a common law system would)!

Yeah, some of these don't fit so well. Metro isn't open-world either (at least until Exodus, and I guess that's more semi-open: still a linear sequence of levels, just with some of them being larger and more open), Tarkov I think had some ambitions for being open-world but that hasn't happened yet (and probably never will given how that game's development is going), and I'm not sure how well This War Of Mine fits into what people typically envision as the open-world framework.

A few of these should probably be swapped out with the Witcher 1&2, and maybe Boiling Point as a more obscure entry. Or just the "open-world features" part be removed from the description.

From what I know, there's a distinction between dao (刀) and jian (劍) - the first for single-edged blades (sometimes translated into English as "saber", due to a similar connotation), and the second for double-edged ones.

I guess in modern Chinese the word has evolved to just refer to knives, rather than swords.

It's just another symptom of the games industry continuing to seek prestige and mainstream approval by aping existing artforms like film. It's disappointing, but I guess it's working out pretty well for them (apparently there's no greater sign that you've "made it" as a work of art than getting a TV show adaption )

a little bit of analysis about Kursk

The only thing I'd want to add to Mikael's excellent analysis here is that the Russians are actually fighting a much more conventional area defense than we've seen in the very static fighting in the Donbass. They're not trying to stop Ukrainian drives at the screen line like we saw in the Hundred Days, they're instead diverting them into engagement areas between their front line of screening troops and the main defensive line 5-10km to the rear and destroying them there. Ergo why we've seen Ukrainian units just go on these long runs in the last couple days - way past where the front line should be - and then get wiped out in what look like complex ambushes. That's... actually just how you do a very normal area defense.

Why have the Russians changed tactics? Two reasons. First, in Kursk they - paradoxically - have space to fight. The Donbass is a cramped theater where real estate is at an absolute premium. They're either backing up into the sea, key lines of communication, or critical urban areas there. There's actual operational space in rural Kursk. Second and relatedly, the "forward" defense we're used to seeing in the Donbass will not inflict crippling casualties on an attacker quickly for the simple reason that attacks often fail in the "cone of fire" in no man's land or even behind the attacker's front line, allowing defeated units to easily withdraw. In a conventional defense the attacker is defeated in a kill zone behind the screen line and it is far easier to annihilate an attacking force. Ergo why we're now seeing huge AFU equipment losses, with entire Ukrainian companies burning out behind the ostensible Russian "front."

Having found themselves in battle with the AFU's strategic reserves, the Russians now very much intend to use the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo to destroy as much of those reserves as possible. Even if that means scaring some war mappers on the internet.

tbf, apparently Borderlands was mostly filmed before Tár - it was just in development hell for so long that it released years after

advanced warfighters will join the war

damn, they're sending Ghost Recon in? Tom Clancy's™ Ghost Recon™© Advanced Warfighter™®?

I think it's mostly for weight reduction (with minimal loss of strength), although there could also be aesthetic considerations in some cases