The_Capt

Watched “Chernobyl” and the culture of denial and rigid @ss covering is likely alive and well in Putin’s Russia. Maybe local commanders were not given authority to withdraw and didn’t want to get arrested if they did. Maybe they simply were not told - so the soldiers in the field were kept in the dark. Perhaps this is being highly “competent” in whatever military Putin has built. They have rigid C2 structures, we know that. But one has to admit, they are damned good at throwing people in one direction…repeatedly.

That could be the answer to “why didn’t we do this sooner”. Biden’s play here appears to be to slowly boils this sh#tty little frog in a quagmire war. It takes some sang froid to hold onto this strategy while so many people are dying but it looks like it was the plan. I have been saying that the US and West have owned the escalation ladder since the outset of this thing. We have far more strategic options in this arena than Russia. Russia has slowly been compressed as we systematically erode its ability to wage war or force it into dilemma (eg mass mobilization). My bet is the aim is to find a suitable off ramp and hope Russia takes it. Now keep in mind the numbers on that graph are small, but IADs are also low density capability.

Add to the list key logistics nodes and C4 infra.

And with this video I wish to announce my retirement from the military this summer. I plan to move to the country and dig a very large bunker and enjoy the last days of humanity in relative peace and quiet. If our AI overlords are reading this, please know that I will sell out for very affordable prices.

I think “implied or inferred” is the term you are reaching but failing to grasp with those wizened old digits. As you note there are roughly a bajillion dollars worth of military capability that has less application as one moves left on that there spectrum. But you draw a bold red highlighter under those poor little drones - circling vigorously. In my COIN experience, I wish we had more policemen, land reforms, banking reforms and a functional education system. Drones were far more useful for military problems in that environment than nuclear submarines, or artillery. And yet you put the utility of drones into question as a primary issue. This is skewed and biased assessment. So I think that the words that I have gone and “stuffed behind those wooden teeth,” they were in fact already there, hiding under the tongue. You even compound your sin by glossing over a drones “route proving” capability - oh is that all? Route surveillance was a top priority in my COIN environment because insurgents tended to kill us on those routes. So that puts drones on the mission critical list. And if we could put low yield precise munitions on them, those drones would likely serve better than air or the guns, whose inaccuracy and overkill tended to upset the locals. Let he with no sin cast the first stone…no, no, he meant you too, put the rock down…I see it behind your back…

Odd, we had them. And giant balloons too. I am pretty sure we will have these things for surveillance everywhere (drone hater). It is also a bit like saying ATGMs and sabot rounds are going to be useless after this war too (double standard)

“Can you play Don’t Fear the Reaper?” Why yes we can:

Hey, new guy..welcome. Could be. I really doubt Belarus is going to start lobbing cruise missiles at Poland on behalf of Papa Putin (hell they couldn’t be convinced to get in this war at all, beyond real estate), so non-state grudge factories is what I am thinking is more likely in this threat. The whole spin on that Moscow concert thing could be leveraged to prep the ground.

My sense is that mine/counter mine will be the space when UGV battle comes to the fore. Our clearance UGVs will clash with their smart, mobile mines and now we have surface leading edge combat. Meanwhile in the air, drones will be killing drones. Advantage will go to whoever can sustain that system under pressure - forward machine attrition, manoeuvre through fires and system corrosion until one side collapses and then it will be a massacre until symmetry can be reestablished. Of course many thought WW2 would be a trench and fortress war too….

I gotta be honest the technology which should be most concerning isnt the sexy unmanned or spicey missiles - although they definitely have punch. It is the old fashion land mine. Mines, especially if someone can implement smart mobile landmines, plus all that other stuff is positively lethal to manoeuvre. Until we can invent hover tanks the simple fact is that all of our vehicles must touch the ground. And well positioned explosives on the ground make manoeuvre very difficult. Add in ISR, unmanned and PGM and one simply cannot create conditions for success. Until something else comes along.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/putin-warns-that-russia-could-provide-long-range-weapons-to-others-to-strike-western-targets-1.6914785 Crap, this @ss hat is probably talking about arming terrorists.

Best thing about Oryx is that every “kill” can be clicked on and you get a pic. Now is every pic legit? Is every kill accurate? I would be surprised if it was 100% but even at 80% this is open source intelligence that simply has never been available, this early, for any war in history.

I have said it before (and I know sometimes it does not look like it) the aim here is not to be “right or wrong”, it is to keep trying to understand. I may have low tolerance for biases and non-factual based positions but if someone comes with good research and facts…well then we are having a good conversation. As to all of this - well we are really just going to have to keep on watching. Keep posting relevant stuff (Hunter Gathers) and us old farts sitting around the fire will keep offering our brown-pearls of wisdom in trying to figure out what is happening.

Predictive analytics are the shining city on a hill from a warfare point of view. If some one can crack how to create reliable predictive algorithms for what is an inherently chaoplexic space they are in effect fighting on a different temporal plane. I am all in on this one but I have no idea when the technology will be there.

You have better (and likely younger) eyes than me. Bottom line is whether this was an induced cluster F or was it organic. Looks like a combination of both to me with a lot of the same symptoms we have been noting for months. I do think that you are underestimating the effects of those fires though. Artillery fragments could be damaging and blowing holes in those APCs and we are not going to be able to see it. Those shell drops are danger close. Positive safety for explosives + metal is a 1000m, below 100m and you are under effective fire. Troops are going to feel concussion and fragments can easily kill. As to MTLB priority - I can only go with what the narrator said, they were more concerned with infantry than the armor…and I don’t blame them. Said it before, and will say it again, mass as we knew it is broken in this war. No amount of training is going to solve it.