Rokossovski

It's going to be a long and tedious post, but I believe it's vital to address all points. 
Bakhmut's is somewhat different from norm since Wagnerites' leadership is moderately competent and they are used to shooting a week's worth of ammunition in one day. 
Vuhledar is somewhat different from norm since the RU command there is more obsessed with the result. These are RU marines who are envious of VDV's reputation and are determined to prove that they are superior to VDV.
Svatove-Kreminna is somewhat different from norm becasue RU army regulars there are not especially keen on dying or showing off. (RU Nats specifically accuse them of sabotaging offencive)
But, the overall situation is the same everywhere - RU are experiencing high (and in many places terrible) losses as a result of an explicit order for non-stop assault. 
Let us examine how fighting happens in urban areas (and why UKR are keen to hold them). The UKR defense is based on concealed firing positions with pre-planned killzones. Subterranean passageways link the fire positions through subterranean infrastructure. The Soviet-style buildings contain basement levels, which UKR soldiers connect to form a system of passageways to maneuver between fire positions.
A RU meat aka assault group advance until getting in to a killzone. Then it dies. Now the crucial difference between Wagnerites and RU regulars - RU regulars do not have a lot of drones so it takes them a few more meat groups to figure out what has happened. Wagnerites have drones and they watch progress in real time. As soon as the group dies they know where and how it died and more importantly what building to hit with arty to push UKR troops out of firing position. Then the next meat group goes out and dies in the next killzone and so on and so forth.
The only time when RU can get 1:1 ratio is when UKR get out to counter-attack a RU penetration - RU can hit UKR attack with overwhelming arty (sometimes).  But UKR counter-attack are not a main part of battle. They happen but not that often. 
So, my question - how exactly does RU archive 1:1 ratio?
Their tactics are not better than during summer offensive. In fact, the current Wagnerite tactic is nothing more but LDPR hardcore volunteer tactics used during summer offenicve Their arty is significantly weaker Their zek supply does not exists anymore (well, for Wagnerites at Bakhmut) That's my first concern with the experts opinion - they are unable to describe how exactly RU got significantly better. 
This is my second problem the experts - they seems oblivious to the Ukrainian cultural thing.
What do you get when talking to two Ukrainians? Dozens stories about how everything is f*cked up. What do you get when talking with three Ukranians? Millions of stories about how everything is f*cked up.
This is how RU intelligence got messed up - RU cultural thing is exactly the opposite. Therefore, when RU operatives spoke with Ukrainian contacts, they heard true stories of how everything is f*cked up in Ukraine. Rest is  history.
Let me reitterate - my second concern is whether the experts used a cultural filter when listening to what their UKR contacts told them. Because it does not appear that they did.
Just in case - I've been reading straight from UKR sources about how everything is f*cked up with dead corpses everywhere, beginning from Severodonetsk (that when I started reading UKR sources), Lysichask, and then Pisky. A few weeks before Izum collapse, I read about how UKR is suffering on the frontlines at Izum.
 
My impression is that nothing serious was put in favor of 1:1 ratio. So far I have seen only one explanation that when both sides shoot out of buildings UKR do not get an advantage. Since this is not how the fighting occurs, I do not buy it.
It does not mean somewhere sometimes UKR do not suffer bigger losses (see my explanation about UKR counter-attacks). It does mean on average 1:1 ratio is highly questionable.
While I am not fan of 1:7 or 1:5 ratio (we have no firm independent data to confirm it) I must reiterate that the following is not a general sentiment but facts. 
Vuhledar is not exception Meat assaults (previouslyzek rushes) is a norm (this winter and spring) Institutionaly RU military is orc stupid (it is cultural thing). Wagnerites like to think they are smarter and they certainly are.. to a certain extend, but not by much (it is cultural thing).  
In reality, based on RU Nats conversations, I see RU suffering horrendous losses starting from January. Over the same time period, Wagnerites lost zek sources, were cut off from arty supplies. 
Despite this, I've heard from experts that RU are doing better currently.
Just some clarification - In March 10 post Mashovets said the RU Center group cannot simultaneously fight for Bakhmut and conduct an offensive toward Siversk. The most combat-capable units are engaged in Bakhmut. After the fighting in Bakhmut stops, RU Center will turn them north and attack Siversk to threaten the UKR salient (Belohorivka). So, this is the military reason (not attriting RU) to hold Bakhmut according to Mashovets.
 
Initially, they intended to seize Bakhmut as a prelude for the battle for Slavyanks-Kramatorsk. That's how they got engaged in Soledar-Bakhmut battle. But, the Izum line collapsed at some point, and the UKR gained a salient at Belohorivka [toward Lysychansk], which seriously alarmed the RU (not Wagnerites) command. As a result, the RU High command intended to destroy the salient during the winter offensive by striking it from multiple directions, including from attack from Bakhmut sector.

But that still underlines my first point- democratic societies can adjust, its systemic to the concept. Autocratic systems find it extremely hard to do so, also systemically. Repeated military defeats will stress any society, with democratic ones better able to release the pressure and shift form/priorities. They are also able to shift priorities without military disaster, often avoiding the geopolitical pitfalls that autocratic societies often back themselves into.
WRT Russia, I'm deeply skeptical that any replacement system, arrangement of regions, coalitions, whatever will be democratic in nature, or if starting out so will last very long in that formatting.

Y'all missed the basic difference that drove how a society adjusted (or didn't)  to its new situation - regular democratic changes in home government. The response was systematic based, not esoteric personal ideas of how societies respond. 
This allowed the original governing elite to be replaced, then their replacements swapped for people more focussed on Home,  ad infinitum.  That process or churn at the top allows a society to steadily shift and adjust,  responding (eventually) to new realities with new governance. 
A good example is France and its colonial Holdings ( @Taranis et al feel free to pile in here). France fought extremely fiercely to retain its empire but the inevitable change in government led to similar inevitability in its adjustment to reality,  and the eventual withdrawal from many overseas colonies. 
The malleability of democracy was in play, with Change being accepted by and operating on the society at large as Opportunity. 
But autocratic governments hate Change as a core principle. Change is unknowable in the final extant of its effects, making it a Threat. 
Ref France, the attempted coup to stop France abandoning Algeria was driven by autocratic aversion to Change among the military elite. Any Government that includes the Military priorities in its final decision making  is always  autocratic and averse to change. Examples flood history and it can really be counted a truism of Humanity,with the 600lb gorilla example being the USSR (wartime Deomcracies don't count,  as when the War is over the Deomcracy unbekts itself, with consequent Change). 
Each time an autocratic government is forced to change it ceases to function,  locks up and,  inevitably, replaced. For Autocracy this equals death (often literally).  In Democracy,  change is how it works, there's no penalty for it so there's no excessive friction against it (we can get into Lib.  V.  Cons and paths to autocracy separately).M onarchy is autocratic in nature and extremely averse to Change (La Guillotine being a salient example why! ).
So for a society to adjust to change its government must be anything but autocratic. 
And with Russia's track record, I deeply doubt any replacing government to Putin's regime or system will be non-autocratic, so true change in its geopolitical outlook will be unlikely, if not impossible. 
 
 

I agree in that I don't see the west being able to totally replace the manufacturing output of China for quite awhile. However, we are already seeing displacement in certain things back to the west. You mentioned the chips which is pretty high profile (intel started up two big factories in the US two years ago), but I think we will see the cheap stuff be the majority in the short term, then the heavy stuff, and lastly the tech stuff.
I say this because where my folks live in the upper midwest a Ramen noodle factory got built last year. It replaced the one they had in China. The labor costs there have increased significantly over the last ten years, supply chain issues, and cost of shipping all come together to the point that it is now cheaper to make it here stateside. This will probably become more and more of a trend due to pricing and others have said that China and Xi have become harder and harder to work with as well. 
With the heavy industry I expect it will shift back to the west as a lot of that was sourced out of Russia (pig iron, steel, aluminum, etc). The same factors of labor, shipping, politics, and supply chain issues apply to China sourcing. Mexico has been industrializing the past 10-20 years and might be able to absorb a lot of the manufacturing not to mention South East Asia. South America also has a lot of potential. India? So it isn't that China is irreplaceable, it just isn't replaceable in the short term. Give the rest of the world 10 years and a lot of what has made China important could be shifted to other sources. 

Extraordinary claims only require an extraordinary amount of yelling nowadays.

The question is why should somebody do anything about Belarus? It was their choice to become a russian ally, they picked their side, they helped russians cause a lot of warcrimes and still very actively do - so that path has its consequences.
Just like Ukraine made a bunch of dumb civilizational choices since 1991, we now pay for this in blood sadly, but we do make a different choice now and it counts now - if a little too late.
West should concentrate on people who want to be with the West and stop trying to "save" people who are anti-West. Anything like that should be a result of people's choice, not trying to "white horse" it on them, even if you think you are doing a good thing. Extra 10 years in Afghanistan were a lesson in just that.

Your missing my point, which is to state that Germany has been a leading power in Europe for centuries and continues to be, and that wishes for a "weak, divided and confused" Germany as being "unfair to Germany" is implying that the wishes are unfair or for prior past slights and have no interest in the present when I'm emphasizing that's not remotely true.
Like that meme about Germany rearming, everyone should be worried you see every so often. Jokes they are, but they indicate that people seem ignorant as to German military history, so people might be more lenient towards Germany refusing to "rearm" or make weapons. Not that I'm saying it was wrong for Germany to reduce it's military, just that this pacifist position is not simple.
Or take for example German foreign policy, which one can reasonably consider Aragon alluded to in "weak, divided, confused", as to portray Germany as taking second fiddle to the U.S, following its lead.
No absolutely not. Germany did not weakly expand trade cooperation with Russia, did not weakly lead the Normandy Format and Minsk agreements, did not weakly profit from decades of energy integration with Russia.
This idea that "woe, you will regret empowering Germany" or "woe, we can't make a decision cause you kept us weak" is part of this idea that Germany is not responsible for being the leading economy in Europe or has no obligation to take a position, and that's just not true. Nothing wrong with being opposed to Germany doing this, but acting as if people are unreasonable for pressuring Germany, as if Germany didn't seek out being the most powerful economy in Europe or seek out Russian closeness to the west, that's just not reality. 
Tldr, Germany acting weak, unwilling, indecisive, is not due to European desires for such a Germany, but are simply cover for whatever domestic or foreign policy Germany has.
Which is fine! But shielding from the criticism by acting like Germany didn't want to be the leading economy in Europe and was forced into it is silly.

Well that is a loaded question to be honest.  Bil H will no doubt chime in but a few factors came into play as I recall:
- Resources.  We can take a really good shot at BAOR and not cripple ourselves in development for years - along with the other BFC titles.  The core team is pretty small and we were looking for a quick, but solid, follow up to the main game.  Germany would have been a lot more work, as would  any other NATO nations, and the French were just a non-starter.  Those modules will take much longer, particularly in vehicle modelling and artwork.  BAOR had a lot of new vehicle models but much more manageable in the timelines for a first DLC.
- Locale.  The Northern Plain was actually where the most likely Soviet Main effort was going to fall.  Hate to admit it but Fulda was a bit of a sideshow in the overall Soviet plan.  It made sense game wise simply because the largest market for the game is the US, and we had a lot of details on this fight - US research is a dream as they put everything out there, Canadians are a nightmare.  That said we really wanted to do the northern plains from the start and historically that is BAOR or the Germans.
- Expertise.  We had experts on both UK and Canadian orbats right out the gate, which made research a lot easier.  I joined in 1988 and had a lot of my old battlebox stuff to pull from and some old timers I still know from up the day.  On the UK side we had similar expertise.
- Timeframe.  Late 70s, early 80s is really the “tipping point” of the Cold War.  It was when the doctrine and equipment of both sides was pretty balanced, each offsetting the others strengths and weaknesses.  Before this you get the nuclear armies, which were just nuts. And after you get the  western advantage leaning into overmatch and then we start to look a lot like CMSF or BS.
- Straight up cool factor.  So how would the UK done against the Soviets?  Canadians are fun because they mix European and US kit.  You wanna know how a squadron of Leo’s would have done…well let’s find out.  Not saying the other nations are not interesting but when you add everything up it just made more sense to do BAOR next and they would be fun to play.
As to “how will they play”…totally honest…no freakin idea.  We also had no idea on the main game.  It wasn’t until I played those first few scenarios while we were early in did we see that we were onto something.  BFC doesn’t balance for gameplay or market. They literally plug in the data from research and then throw it at each other in game. The balance is almost entirely emergent.  When we do up scenarios and campaigns there is always a level of balancing that goes on but this is macro stuff like force size and enablers.  For CMCW we were amazed at how little balancing we had to do. I designed the campaigns and scenarios based on doctrine on both sides and basically how they would have gone into a fight with each other.  The fact that these led to tightly balanced fights that require deep understanding of what each side can do was all pretty much emergent design.

@Bil Hardenberger the BAOR is highly requested, it's not per se wrong to do them first. Especially, if you have experts on the team to take care of them.
I'll buy it, no question, I want to see the Brits too.
It's just that it feels a bit like Combat Mission Fortress Italy without the Italians.

Cold Warriors.
  Well it looks like Steve has already dropped the mic over on the annual update thread, so let myself, Bil H and Cpt Miller (along with a small team of unwashed heathens - two of whom are actually from the UK), be the second to announce the first CMCW Module - CMCW - British Army On the Rhine (BAOR).

We are still in development so I will only outline the broad strokes of what we are working on, and insert the caveat that we reserve the right to add/subtract - 
 - Time frame of the game is going deeper backwards into the Cold War.  We are setting the clock back to 1976, so CMCW will now encompass 1976-1982 (including some minor tweaks to the existing US orbats).  As has been noted we are less interested in the later Cold War years largely because they really do start to resemble the later CM titles and we are shooting to keep CMCW distinct in its own right.
- UK BOAR - right now we have a pretty comprehensive build planned for the UK units as they transitioned from their 1974 structures - to where they landed in 1980.  As per the picture above players should be able to become deeply engaged within the historical BAOR sector of the ETO.
- And because I just have to represent the home team, we are also doing the Canadians.  That little black box is the planned 4 CMBG AO - you will note this was right at the tail end when the brigade was still part of the BAOR, although for those that really want to play First Clash and park them down in Lahr you are fee to do so because the basic unit structures remained the same.
- We do have plans for the Soviet side, but are going to hold off on details until we zero them fully in...more to follow. 
- I will let you all speculate and discuss what new vehicles and weapon systems we are talking about but there is a not insignificant list of new ones we are planning - more as we start to get some cool screen shots.  
As noted by Steve, we are well on our way and are planning for a release this year - content and full scope remains TBA.
Thank you all very much for your support, the response to CMCW has been well beyond what we were expecting and that is entirely thanks to you guys.

Agree with both of you and so it may take a little longer than 6-12 months, but it will eventually catch up with them.  And when it does is when we'll see a much larger impact from sanctions.

If you think that the West needs to be on war footing for Ukraine to beat Russia in this war then again, you simply don't understand the fundamental facts of the situation. Ditto on the idea that the Western government's are just "arguing about tanks to send".  I don't mean that to be insulting. I'm telling you bluntly that your arguments sound naive and superficial.

Here is where...amongst the flummery...we get to brass tacks.
You are reducing the war in terms of resources to Russian industrial capacity vs Ukrainian industrial capacity. Any realistic assessment should be comparing Russian abilities to Ukraine's plus that of the nations who are providing support. In that case, the scales are heavily weighted in Ukraine's favor.
As to manpower, there too you make some fundamental mistakes.
First, gross numbers are a bad measure. Russia labors under highly inefficient logistical systems that eat up manpower. It's troops are in relative terms very badly equipped with less accurate systems, less advanced targeting at a lessor distance, poorly supplied, etc. History is replete with larger armies losing to smaller ones. Russia in 1917 springs to mind for some reason.
Second, the manpower pool a country possesses isn't remotely the same thing as what it can actually bring to a fight. Russia is an older country. That industrial capacity you overestimate needs workers. There are political constraints to limit who can be conscripted without destabilizing the state. How many you can minimally feed, arm and actually deliver in some sort of fighting condition factors in. And every single one of these conditions has been observed so far in the war on the Russia side. 
Fundamentals.

TheCapt can be ..... direct.  I've been on the other end of his directness once or twice.  His worst and most despicable trait is his annoying and endlessly troublesome habit of being right, often, especially over longer time periods.  It's awful 🙄.  But the dude really really knows his stuff and I've learned a ton from his posts.

The Russian economy is about the same size as Italy, or Canada. That's an OR, not an AND. Does Russian have vastly more resources than Ukraine AND Britain AND France AND Germany AND Finland AND Norway AND Poland AND The United States AND Canada AND Italy AND Australia AND &c.?

You do realize how that sounds?  Probably gets some hackles up and so makes readers less receptive to your message.  The folks who post here are pretty smart overall but you seem to imply that folks just aren't smart enough to understand your message.  They understand, they are just disagreeing with your positions on several matters and have made some very strong arguments.

What? A new Perun PowerPoint video drops and no one mentions it? I'll fix that.
 

I don't view it as an issue of international legality, it's about taking a side in  a state-power conflict and the repercussions of doing so.

First, I doubt in possibility of anything major happening in the south. It's probable that the ground won't ever freeze solid there and as we see, nobody in his right mind should plan major mech movements through rasputitsa, even in XXIst century.
In the northern Donetsk/ Luhansk? Perhaps, though both sides seems to be counting on recuperating and generating more forces for the campaigning season later that year. Both sides seem to be doing shaping operations in Luhansk (UA) and Donetsk (RU), but it's hard to see any major follow on to that.
As for where the RU would strike when the weather improves, my bet is firmly on anywhere else but the Zaporizhya. The logistics of Melitopol are done through Crimea, and with perspective of UA gaining even more long range strike capability, planning offensive from there would be quite risky.
IMO the best hope for RU would be to attack somewhere through the international border - Lviv, Kyiv or Kharkiv. Idea would be to leverage the ban on HIMARS (and perhaps other long range western systems) to be used against Russia proper. This could allow much easier concentration of forces, logistics etc. Of course it runs a risk of US lifting the ban, but it's still a better bet than Zaporizhya. As to where:
Kyiv is very defendable, and second failure there would be just unacceptable.
Lviv is tempting, but that's a lot of ground to cover and it will be both risky and difficult to do it with NATO ISR assets just few kilometers away.
Kharkiv is closest to the border, does not require BY cooperation, and is a key to Donbas too. This would be my type.
 

I can't argue with your post. Not everything makes me happy, but I grudgingly have to admit that you have made it balanced probably true in most points. Just my comment to this one line. I don't think we ever wanted to lead Europe (well after 1945, obviously) - I'm not entirely certain about that though. Way more ironically, I am fairly certain that the rest of Europe never wanted is to lead, either (pay the most, yes, take responsibility, sure, lead? Hell, no!).

I think in these cases, it's always helpful to remember that we're not here as representatives of our respective governments. I feel no need to support or defend Scholz's behavior simply because I'm not the one being adressed when people here are criticizing Germany.
I find that providing some context especially on domestic political realities in a country can be quite important to understand what's going on, especially since these things are often lost in translation through the international media.

He should tell which blend and make a fortune.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/ukrainian-soldier-sips-coffee-amid-firefight/vi-AA15zqlb?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=89d0647776e6405e845f27ed6a7b45c9

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above: How quickly can a target be identified and located?
It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to re-calibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.
The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.
Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.
There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.
None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.
How quickly can that be sent to a firing battery?
This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a per-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.
None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.
How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?
Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.
Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.
Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummeling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.
At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or plane that’s about to buzz overhead.
Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.
How well surveyed is the gun position?
This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.
So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.
How well known are the current met conditions?
Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.
You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.
Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.
Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.
 
 
So, all that’s to do with speed and accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery piece is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, exhaust products of burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.
Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependent on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.
Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.
 
 
Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like the two forces were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.
Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be going off over your head rather than the bad guy's. Good FOs know those considerations, and choose fuzes accordingly.
  Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing in what he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

For those with time, an entertaining memoir of the chaotic early days of the Foreign Legion by 'Big Mac', a cheerful British volunteer whose nonmilitary background is in rock festivals. He served 7 months (less 4 weeks away with Lyme disease) as an ADC to the company CO, mostly in a swampy area east of Kharkiv.
First 20 minutes he rambles about the Day 3 missile strike on the foreign base, which you can skip if you like*. The last 5 is Lindybeige doing the necessary sponsor promos, so the meat of it is about 20 minutes. Cliff notes here....
23:00 The Duty Experience: 'If you're fighting the Russians, you're mostly in a muddy hole getting horribly shelled. There is no sweet spot. It isn't Call of Duty.'  About 700 of 1000 volunteers either went home or found other units. A lot of the Western stanbox vets couldn't handle the mortar stonks ('Goldilocks soldiers').  American non-vets were often better than the Army guys. 'We don't get air support mate...' Few guys brought much in the way of kit; they expected it all to be provided. Casevac was initially on foot to a civilian car, weather conditions. Nobody gets 30 minute casevac, it's more like an hour or two. Rifles maybe account for 1% of the killing; it's all HE. Overall he doesn't have very much good to say about the Ukrainian officers. A lot of ex-Soviet inefficiency in their procedures, and also a lot of nepotism and corruption; 2 trucks of modern small arms went missing. USMC vet and businessman became the platoon leader. A lot of the self-described special operators were weeded out early on Boy Scout level basic woodcraft. A lot of Western militaries don't issue mess tins anymore. Nobody in A'stan had to light a fire or gut a goat. Be grateful we have wet wipes. Richard would have won the Crusades with them. Covid and Flu was rampant in the spring. * One interesing bit: the Russians may simply have useed the large concentration of foreign simcards to locate and target the base, rather than having spies on the inside.

I'm totally with you and agree that this is a way out for Putin. However, it would also fit in with Russia and their constant say one thing and do another. They have gone on forever how the decadent westerners are weak and pathetic, a bunch of woke homosexuals, couldn't fight themselves out of a wet paper bag, etc and then use these same people as the big bad boogeymen that beat them. Yep, it would totally make sense in Russian from what I've seen the past few months.