Vanir Ausf B

Thanks Vet, we agree on many things but maybe not this one.
I did a little research. I have heard a lot about this agreement without knowing anything myself. Apparently what was signed in 1994 was an agreement in which the US, Russia and the UK offered 'assurances' not to attack or coerce the minor countries, including Ukraine. I cannot find a commitment to defend the minors from aggression. If there is a bad faith actor in this it looks like Russia to me.
Assuming Wikipedia is a reliable source in this context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
"The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance,[3] prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." 
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-states-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-states-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-putin-invasion
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-ukraine-give-nukes-russia-us-security-guarantees-1765048
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html

A depressing bit from Mashovets' update:
https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/1529
 

calling yourself Fred/California won't help... oh wait..

Christmas on the front line with the 72nd Mechanized Brigade.

More photos at
https://kyivindependent.com/christmas-on-the-frontline-how/

So reviewing ISW and it hits upon particular peeve of mine with respect to western strategic mindset:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine-part-2-—-military-threat-and-beyond
If you read these toe pieces what jump out is how binary the analysis it.  We either fully liberate Ukraine and somehow live in a safer world - the impacts on Russia of a total defeat and possible follow on impacts of that on regional security are not explored.  Or we lose Ukraine entirely.  The analysis of losing Ukraine entirely is solid and I do not dispute.
What I dispute is the lack of any negotiation space.  All war is negotiation.  Most wars in history have ended in some form of negotiated end-state.  We tend to highlight and fixate on the maximalist wars because they had very “hot” impacts and make for good drama.  But most wars end somewhere in the middle - no one gets 100% of what they wanted.
So a major shortfall in the west has been a clear articulation of strategic end-states.  I am not proposing we give Russia “outs” or off-ramps but we have not even painted a vision of what a post-war order will look like.  What are our conditions for renormalization with Russia?  What is the post-war reconstruction plan?  How quickly can Ukraine be pulled into NATO?  What do we plan to do in the event of a Russian collapse?  The sum total of western declaration has been “support Ukraine to the end” without defining what that end in fact is or is not.  By failing to do this we tie victory to the map and not human conditions.  That is dangerous as we know the map may not demonstrate what we need to win, nor does it indicate a loss.
Now I strongly suspect that this thing has been mapped out by staffs in the backfield and all we hear is the party line.  However, this war may end with a complete Russia failure.  The RA may turn around and March on Moscow.  A military coup in Russia is not good news.  The last time it tore the country apart.  This time it could make things worse not better.  The absolute military victory being championed by ISW (and others) will very likely mean complete chaos in Russia itself.  We have never had a nuclear power completely fall apart below the state level.
Many simply go “meh, we will deal with it.” But then lose their minds when we ask “well what if we wind up with less than we want”.  This is called strategic scope eye: a dangerously singular focus on one certainty while neglecting the rest of the problem.
We should absolutely support Ukraine.  We should push them as much  as we can.  We must bring them into a collective defence umbrella - it is the only proven deterrence to Russian aggression.  We must rebuild Ukraine.  We must also map out what renormalization with Russia would look like.  What are the enticements /inducements?  
Finally “victory” may be a continuing work in progress.  We may have to accept partial victory now and work to a broader one later.  And accept Russia is going to do the same.  I keep coming back to this, in the middle victory spaces: there is “declared victory” and there is “real victory”.  Russia can declare whatever it wants.  Putin could be pushed back to pre-22 lines and still cry victory because he held onto Crimea and Donbas.  He will definitely crow and declare total victory if he holds onto what he has right now.  So freakin what?  Russia failed to achieve its strategic goals - undeclared and declared.  
As to “real” Ukrainian victory: if Ukraine is in NATO and seeing hundreds of billions in reconstruction as it is being fast-tracked into the EU in 2025 - how is that not a strategic victory?  By 2030 Ukraine could be an Eastern European powerhouse with a larger economy and military industrial base (as it schools the entire western world on how to fight a modern war) than it had before the war.  Russia will likely be sulking and planning…much as it has for the Baltics for decades. But it will be doing it under sanctions as a Chinese satellite.  It may not even be a great power by that point.  It ability to project regional threats will be diminished.  It will face a decision to renormalize with the west or continue to decline.
Is all that going to be a massive strategic defeat if we are stuck at the current conflict lines?  Was Korea a major strategic defeat for South Korea?  We have to deal with NK but we have shown we can…for years.  Is all this a major Russia strategic victory?
This is the problem with binary end-states, they ignore the realities of war.  The reality is that parties enter into the conflict with a certainty - a version of reality without doubt.   Those certainties are in collision and irreconcilable with the opponent.  The “war” is that violent collision.  As it progresses, a third certainty is created and each party must negotiate with it. War is as much about negotiation with oneself as an enemy.
To be clear, I am not advocating withdrawing support to Ukraine in any way shape or form.  I am not arguing appeasement with Russia.  What I am asking is that if we have run out of military option space - what are we willing to live with inside that third certainty?

Worst porn name ever....

no, I am not ready to provide a link to a document that indicates the direct number of Ukrainian military personnel who are currently performing their duties in the war. I can only say, referring to recent speeches by the President and the Minister of Defense, that the total number of Ukrainian military personnel is more than 1,100,000 people. While the number of people directly performing their military duty on the front line is about 450,000 people.
 
For example, the TOTAL composition of the French armed forces as of 2022 is 203,250

If NATO got involved in this war now I am not so sure we would cut through the RA to be honest.  First off we would not be doing strategic strikes into Russia as we would be bounded by escalation constraints as well.  Second we cannot have this discussion and leave China out of it.  If we threw in on Ukraine, China would be heavily motivated to support Russia more in order to act as strategic spoiler.  Russia sux, but China does not.  We cannot move NATO fast enough for China not to see this coming.
 So if we were fighting in the same box as Ukraine could we fix some things?
- Air superiority.  I have to be honest I really am not sure.  Above 2000 feet we could do SEAD and kill most of those IADS.  But if China started pushing a lot of MANPADs we would be challenged and face stiff loses.  My bet is Russia would go for denial, denial and denial.  We could lose hundreds of very expensive aircraft trying to do SEAD the old fashion way.  All the while long range loitering munitions would be swarming our own airfields along with Deep Strike.
- ISR.  If China supplied C4ISR support, we would also be in trouble.  We can not blind space or operational ISR outside of Ukraine.  And tactical has gone UAS.  We pretty much have all the ISR pointed at this problem so any improvement on the Russian side would be a very bad thing.
- PGM.  Our stuff still blows up.  Chinese HJ-12s are an absolute knock-off of the Javelin.  Not sure how you feel about an ATGM team that can hit at 5 kms, fire and forget, with high accuracy…but it concerns me.  China also has equivalent HIMARs systems etc so get ready for our big fat logistics back end to get mauled.  Hell Russia could hit us from inside Russia itself.
- Unmanned.  China has zero qualms about pushing Russia fully autonomous unmanned systems.  They likely lead the planet on this technology, along with UGVs.  The RA would be getting smart and distributed very quickly.  We have no answer for fully autonomous unmanned systems.  EW does not work. SHORAD does not work.  UGV is a nightmare in the wings.
- Minefields still work.  We would still need to fight through roughly 20km of extremely heavily mined belts facing all that above.  I am betting we would see loses much like the UA did last Jun.  Except entire Bns stopped cold.  
- Manpower.  To your point- NATO direct involvement would take Russian force mobilization off the leash.  We would be facing potentially millions of troops - even hastily trained and ad hoc equipped with left over Russian, Iranian and Chinese equipment.  
- Logistics.  Our logistics is ridiculously large and frankly we have not practiced conventional wartime logistics in about 30 years.  We cut them back and depleted them.  Hell back in 06 Iraqi insurgency managed to cut off operational LOCs coming up from Kuwait…and they did not have a fraction of what we would be facing.
- Willpower.  We would balk at the first real military disaster.  If we lost 1000 in a day we would go into collective political shock.  If the RA could drag this out the public would turn on the whole thing.  How many NATO nations are willing to lose thousands of people over Ukraine?  Russias willingness to take losses is already well established.  I do not think we would take 100k in a year…nor could we sustain it.
So my guess is that we would have to shoot for a quick war but be unable to deliver.  This is not Iraq.  We cannot bomb Russian strategic targets with impunity.  If we went down that road then this is a “would we win WW3 discussion” not a Ukrainian discussion.  China would be heavily invested in dragging this thing out and so would Russia.  Our combined arms and equipment is not somehow immune to being lost…we have seen plenty evidence of this.  
And frankly our doctrine and training is lagging.  We do not have unmannned doctrine and training for what we are seeing in this war.  We would try traditional mech manoeuvre after establishing what we think is air superiority and wind up bogged down by pretty much what ate the RA at the beginning of the war.  Only way this goes differently is if the RA is dumb enough to try to fight the same way we would.
In my estimation, if we had to fight this war with similar constraints as Ukraine we might actually do worse because they have higher experience levels than we do.  We have equipment but not as much as we think.  The US is divide in spending money let alone spilling blood.  
Now if we want to talk about a non-nuclear WW3 scenario things get more interesting.  We likely would not even bother with Ukraine and instead attack along several other fronts/theatres.  Here we could strike deeply into Russia and we might see a more traditional but extremely costly outcome.  Then of course “we broke it we bought it” and we would be trying to manage a broken Russia with China watching and waiting to help us mess that up.

We all know how long "soon" can take in your world, Steve. 😀

I recall discussions on our military forum 15 years ago about ways of development of ground forces. And discussions will it worth to completely substitute tracked BMPs on Ukrainian BTR-4, which indeed is wheeled IFV. 
Now we can be shure in our mud season conditions in the fields and dirt roads, any wheeled vehilces lost to tracked ones. 
 

This is true and 35 is very optimistic lower threshold. In some brigades average age of soldiers is 50+ years. 
Now is sharply put a question about mobilization of more young people, because of men over 45 y.o., having many health problems (and trench life doesn't add health to them) can't be effective infantrymen, especially in assault actions. 
Currently you can be mobilized from 27 y.o. All youngers can be enlisted only by own free-will as contract servicemen. But indeed most people, who are mobilized are older than 40-45 years. Recently a law was passed, reducing the lower age of mobilisation from 27 to 25 years, but president didn't sign it yet
On other hand example of 3rd assault brigade and Azov brigade, having own recruitment system, shows most of their soldiers are young and middle-age people, having good motivation and much better physical conditions. This was one of factors of 3rd brigade effectiveness in offensive. But one brigade can't tow whole front

"So, Zelensky, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

Short explanation why and how Orban did not block the start of the EU process for Ukraine: when the vote came, he left the room and the other 26 voted yes. So legally, everything is ok even though Orban didn't vote at all.
However, he has ample opportunity to block this process further down the line. But given the glacial speeds this process runs, he may be out of office by then. IIRC next vote is in 3 years in Hungary.
But there is another thing that has IMHO the biggest potential to delay Ukraine's EU membership: the EU will have to switch to a qualified majority vote for most of its process. Away from the unanimous vote style we have now. After the fun we had with Poland and have with Hungary, there won't be another two EEC countries joining the club while the rules are what they are now.
That reform will take a looooong time. Even though today is a happy day for Ukraine in this respect, I predict heavy frustration in the coming years.

"So, Zelensky, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

"So, Zelensky, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

I searched some LA data of drone attacks and found, but only for Russian side. 
You can see that since August- September Russians rapidly increased usage of FPV drones (I repeat, this is just spotted video confirmations, real number of attacks are much bigger) And November became a champion with 657 FPV spotted strikes. 
From this total number of FPV attacks videos (2508) they give next results (results, alas, don't reflected on the diagram, so I write from the text of LA): 
Targets destroyed - 373
Targets damaged - 385
Successful hits, but result is unknown - 1093
Result of strike unknown - 336
Misses - 184
So low number of misses can be explained, that usually Russian servicemen post a video of successfull strikes (or successful by their opinion), it's strange if you will post 100 % miss. This will reduce your chances to get donations. According to UKR "Magyar birds" unit they manage to supress/destroy about 60-70 % of drones (both FPV and recon Mavics), but they have special unit with special EW equipmnet for this
What Russian FPV operators have been chosing as targets:
Positions - 916
Infantry out of shelters - 353
logistic vehicles - 345
armored vehciles - 257
buildings - 293  
 
 

Russian anti drone modifications to their trenchlines.

UKR servicemen warn that Russians more and more use newest night FPV drones with cheap NV cameras, which allow to operate in dusk or night on 10-15 km behind frontline. For example on Bakhmut direction on the one of frontline section each night there are reports about 1-2 night FPV attacks. But several days ago Russians conducted "NV swarm drone attack" on one of directions and they could take out about dozen our soldiers and four pick-ups. This is very dangerous tendency - we also use night FPVs, but this is mostly Mavics with thermal cameras and they are too expensive for such single usage, when Russia already ordered direrctly in Chima dozen thousands of cheap FPV with NV cameres, much more cheaper, than thermal. And since some time this can cause huge problem for out logistic, because most of movements in close rear is conducting in darkness. So, our soldiers demand from officials immediately to find solution for quick development and mass production of EW assets, capable to supress video channel of drones.
We already have some working models, but not all of them showed itself good, and all of them developed for some particular tasks. ANd both we and Russians already try to pass on new control frequensies, so this race can be endless.
More universal solution will have bigger dimensions and development of suchg things demand many money, qualified developers, IT-specialists etc. But I have met more than once stories like this: "You came to enlistment center - by free-will or being mobilized and say - I xxxx specialist, I know English, I have experience in YYYY, I will be effective in ZZZZZ. Enlistmet officer says, oh, that good. You come to training center and became usual riflelman to assault next tree-plant since a month" 
Here is diagram, from where Russia imports spare parts for own drones production (it's unknown either assembled drones included or not)
China - 54.29 %
Taiwan - 20 %
Honkong - 5.71 %
UK - 4.29 %
Turkey - 4.29 %
USA - 2.86 % (special thanks to NVIDIA for their AI video chips for Lancets)
Canada - 2.86 %
Chili - 1.43 %
Bulgaria - 1.43 %
Uzbekistan - 1.43 %
So, China is a growing monster of drones production and spare parts and I afraid, western countries one time can encounter with painful reality...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/08/ukraine-russia-war-draft-dodgers/
This article seems to be all Zeleban.

Just a nice show of longer range fire from Bradley autocannon:
Saw translation lately of one of posts from Russian milbloggers, it was in roughly this manner: when Ukies storm our trenches riding on Amercian Bradleys, defenders tend to run away immediatelly or fight o the bitter end, nothing between. Fire from their cannons is worse than facing tanks; at least the latter need to raload and leave 10 sec. gap to run/hide, while autocannons sweep everything in the area, not even leaving time to surrender.
It seems Russians captured two Bradleys in working condition, and videos with them are flying everywhere in Mordor TV.
 

Something a little different, POV from Russian squad being harassed by Ukrainian tank.
https://www.reddit.com/r/u_ForMemesHereIAm/comments/17u7b16/ru_pov_a_video_about_a_russian_cossack_with_the/?utm_term=2650774938&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_source=embed&utm_name=&utm_content=header
 

Not bad. But autoloader is critically needed ( 
 

some war stuff about the RU losses around Andiivka.  A summary of things we already know but some nice charts & such.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/3/2209226/-Ukraine-Update-Why-a-lack-of-armored-vehicles-is-stalling-Russia-s-infantry-assault?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_8&pm_medium=web
 

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev