Baneman

"I think that people in Moldova and in the Baltics should be extremely, extremely nervous right now." I tend to think that it's the Russians in Moldova, Georgia etc. who should be extremely nervous.

There's no reason why they should die of their wounds ... unless all the medical facilities in the area have been bombed... oh well... Sympathy failure here - also, has this actually been verified ? Then the Russians say "In the first response from Russian authorities, the chairman of the investigative committee of the Russian Federation, A.I. Bastrykin, said an investigation would be launched "to establish all the circumstances of the ill-treatment of captured soldiers by Ukrainian nationalists."" So - quick to launch investigations into "ill-treatment", but they aren't nearly so quick to launch investigations into arbitrary shooting of Ukrainian civilians as noted in phone intercepts. My sympathy remains in a failed state.

To be fair, you might be being slightly harsh about the 10 years - Ukraine turned it around in less than 10. ( then again, they knew they absolutely had to - despite Putin's showy hysterical squalling, no one is threatening to invade Russia. )

As soon as you see the words "crisis actor", you should know whatever the story is, it's nonsense. I'm not aware of any event in the world that was actually staged using "crisis actors" - it's just a right-wing meme. In fact, if you thought about it critically for a bit, you'd realise that such a thing would be almost impossible to pull off - you'd have to get everyone for miles around to buy into it, or someone would be saying "they're not from around here" and variations on it. PS: the woman you're calling a "crisis actor" died of her wounds.

Heh, yes, after I posted, I then looked it up and changed it. But too slow !

May 9 will be fun.

The activity doesn't seem staged though ... which is insane - although that could explain a lot of those unexploded shells/bombs/missiles if they routinely treat their ammunition like that.

Countermeasures will still be around and improving all the time, but maybe they won't be needed for tanks. As I see it, the tank was originally a breakthrough weapon, designed to A) Get infantry and firepower into the enemy line while ( B ) being largely impervious to the infantry arms in that line. As time went on from WWI, (A) evolved and mutated a lot, but the tank was still useful in all sorts of ways because (B) still held. With this war being practically the coming of age of infantry portable long range AT weapons, the utility of the tank appears to be diminishing fast. (B) no longer holds and (A) can be achieved in all sorts of ways that weren't available when the tank was born. Fire support for the infantry no longer needs a tank, you'd be better off with several small unmanned vehicles with something like a CROWS on top - drones don't have to be airborne, right ? The means for any other specialist task that tanks were used for can these days be carried or easily brought up to the infantry requiring it. The all important ATGM and drone countermeasures you save to protect your mobile artillery and EW assets.

Nope, uh uh, sorry. The lack of adjustment has been on pretty public display since 2016. Which strengthens your point.

The action is so fast moving that any info from more than a couple of days back is likely to be completely useless. So if this was taken on the 10th, by now there's surely no issue with releasing it.

Another of Putin/Russia's strategic goals met. ( I'm assuming that the plan was to stop selling oil and gas to Europe ... right ? ) "BREAKING: Germany agrees to a long-term gas supply deal with Qatar" https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1505630820056563712?s=20&t=2m5ed8y8ZNiyc4wy_6AwdA

I still vote for the Battle of the Horns of Hattin as being the best equivalent - it has the lack of need, the sheer military incompetence as well as the massive political fallout.

Yes, but it was never about NATO expanding east, it was countries that happened to be east of the NATO group of the time that felt threatened by a future Russia and wanting to join. There's no reason to join a defensive organisation unless you distrust your neighbour - and given Russian behaviour, they weren't wrong to want to join. Do you really think that Russia wouldn't be bullying the Baltics just as in Georgia, Moldova etc. if those countries had stayed out of NATO ?

Isn't there at least one Moscow in the States ? That could make for some tense double-checking of your targeting co-ordinates !

To be fair, the Romans had a militarily incompetent leader and were caught on the march. I think the Battle of the Horns of Hattin better reflects the level of arrogant incompetence by the Russian HQ ... and might have similar after effects to the entire power structure. ( we can hope ).

My take was that it was deliberately ( and somewhat successfully ) targeted at the "Western Volunteers". I doubt it will put anyone off as they hope, though. It also appears to speak to their targeting priorities being pretty scattershot in that they seem to hit the "hot target of the day" without it apparently advancing any military objectives.

Can't speak to politically, but practically I can't see it happening in the necessary timeframe - by the time any of that was ready for frontline service, the Russian army will either have nominally "won" and be fighting the ant-occupation forces, or have been kicked back to the Russian border.

FFS John - that was already posted on 2 March page 97 ! And this on 3 March Page 109 !

Hmmm, notice how the CM spotting model is NOT broken ! The first and 2nd vehicles drove past that ambush position which is no more than 10 AS's from the road and covered by only spindly trees and saw nothing !

Yeah, right. lmao, the vehicles driving past the infantry ! ( explains a lot ... )

The latter. But so were the ones he's just fired, so unlikely to effect any actual change.

Best I can suggest is set them to the severe ammo so they have no RPG's and then manually reload their small arms ammo from a truck. Ammo transfer will happen between squads in the same platoon ( afaik ), but they need to be within a couple of AS's and they don't physically pass it over, the presence of friendly units close by allows the depleted ammo unit to keep firing, but using the ammo of their neighbour.

Please just stop.

Note how the Ukrainians aren't stupid enough to have tanks swanning about on their own... ( that whole clip had a distinct CM "move 1 tank up to deal with a specific persistent threat" feel to it. )

Didn't the Donetsk/Luhansk fighters have red armbands ? Could be connected.