JonS

Isn't this a somewhat ... romanticized (heh) take on the composition of the legions?

Wow. I can’t imagine how disappointed in Ukraine you must be right now. It’s so cruel of them to personally let you down like this.

Aye, well, this at least makes a lot more sense than that tweet which basically reads as "give Ukraine Taurus tomorrow and the Russians will have to evacuate Crimea by the end of the week." I'm still not sure I buy it though - they can possibly/probably deny the peninsular as a significant base of military operations through fires alone, but if Ukraine wants to retake Crimea I'm pretty certain that they're going to have to go in and winkle the the Russians out^, rather than just lobbing SSMs over on the regular. As Bullethead used to say; it ain't over till some grunt sticks a flag on it. ^ which could proceed pretty quickly if they can engineer a clean break either on the mainland or across the isthmus, rather than being a drawn out saga.

Ha. Fair point. But let me counter by asking you this: is this thread for analysis, or do we just accept every claim of chemical weapon usage, mass mobilisation, and wunderwaffen at face value and run with that? If it's the latter, then cool. War's over tomorrow because Gen Hodges said so. Well done chaps. Tea and medals all round.

Well, that's a bull**** thing for a general to say. One weapon system is not going to make Crimea untenable.

Engineers: *also* bad at graphic design

So ... yes?

Do you have nazi genealogy? You seem very wedded to a gotterdammerung world view. MAD continues to work as it always did. Especially the M and D bits. Also the A bit. Currently Putin seems very keen on D, and while NATO et al are also keen on D for Russia they're less so on it for either themselves or Ukraine. Therefore there is little enthusiasm for MAing it.

The thing about engineers, and engineering equipment, is the correct quantity is tricky to quantify, although the rules-of-thumb are easy to articulate; During peacetime the correct quantity is 'a lot less', because boring, expensive, and unsexy. During wartime the correct quantity is 'a lot more', because useful, and amusing. (Although engineers themselves remain deeply, deeply unsexy) The transition is tricky, though, because you can't just nip down to IKEA and get a couple of flat pack bailey bridges, or order some more engineers off amazon for express delivery.

Almost all of them? Late last year and early this year the was noticeable shift from deliveries being almost exclusively defensive and immediate use equipment, to a higher proportion of offensive and sustainment equipment, including a lot of engineering stuff (esp breaching)

It would also be seizing the narrative initiative, since it requires Russia to start responding to Ukraine's story rather than pushing one of their own.

Wait - when did KE become important for HEAT rounds? I thought they were all about chemical energy, making the speed of the round irrelevant to penetration ability? For a tank round the speed still matters for accuracy, of course, but that's not so applicable to drones.

Well, sure. That's why we need govt: people won't just spontaneously chose to do the right thing. Case in point: https://i.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/300941132/elon-musk-refuses-to-turn-on-starlink-for-crimea-drone-attack Remember that next time someone seductively whispers "outsourcing" in your ear.

Meanwhile ... https://apnews.com/article/france-china-russia-chip-technology-smuggling-66a8a4edcaf7137e109a16d6d300cd94 https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/07/man-arrested-for-dodging-sanctions-against-russia/ https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/suspected-russian-intelligence-operative-extradited-estonia-face-charges-related

Never mind. The_Capt was right; the big red button is the better choice.

Mmm, that depends. If I could get a Russian company - or an artillery battalion - to respond in the open to a raid or a probe by a platoon, and I could be assured of destroying said company or battalion with my ISR-and-fires, then I'd be attacking (or "attacking") at 1:3 odds all over the damn place, and be very happy about it.

Are the Russians and Ukrainians holding back their air and naval forces due to … exaggerated inter-service rivalry, or sumfink?

This seems like the (predictable?) inverse of the Allied experience in the last year of WWII. This is from a thing I wrote a few years ago: *** In the NWE campaign in WWII, so called 'veteran' units - especially infantry units - were predominantly manned by men with less than a couple of months service with the unit. The proof of that is in the casualty stats. For example: 4th US Infantry Div suffered 250% of TOE strength in casualties (299 days in combat) 90th US Infantry Div suffered 196% of TOE strength in casualties (308 days in combat) 29th US Infantry Div suffered 204% of TOE strength in casualties (242 days in combat) Therefore, on average, someone in: 4th US Inf Div saw 120 days of combat before becoming a cas 90th US Inf Div saw 157 days of combat before becoming a cas 29th US Inf Div saw 118 days of combat before becoming a cas That’s averaged across the roughly 14,000 men in an infantry division, but the vast majority of those casualties were concentrated amongst the fairly small number of men in each division labelled "Infantry." Without rummaging through detailed statistics (which I anyway don't have access to), I suspect that no more than half that number of days-in-combat – about two months - would be the very upper limit of what a rifleman could expect to survive. Therefore I think that the average quality of individual riflemen probably declined across the campaign as long-service, highly trained men in the first waves were replaced by questionably trained men with little esprit de corps, led by 90-Day-Wonders. In any infantry unit from mid-June onwards there'd have been a mix of men representing every stage of that chart (edit: Grossman’s combat effectiveness/exhaustion chart) which would tend to reduce the overall effectiveness of any given unit. As the campaign progressed and men started getting close to the 60 combat days referred to above, large-ish numbers of those survivors would have been in the combat-exhaustion and even vegetive phases. At the rifleman-squad-platoon-company level, infantry units were NOT on an ever escalating performance curve.How, then, did divisions learn and improve if the individual riflemen weren't really getting a whole lot better at their jobs? They did it by becoming much better at the stuff that actually matters. Battalion and regimental staffs tended to survive much longer. And I specifically mean the staffs, rather than merely the commanders. Men in supporting arms like artillery, logistics, and even armour also had much greater longevity. Improvements in those areas meant that combat infantry units were fed into combat much better prepared and supported, and working to a plan based on realistic assessments and objectives. Given that, it didn't matter that Private Snooks in 3rd Squad, 1 Platoon, C Company, 2nd Battalion wasn't becoming a better soldier, because less was being asked of him, since he was being given more support to achieve objectives *** The Ukrainians don’t have those competent and experienced higher level (bn, bde, and whatever they have above bde) staffs yet. Or, they do, but unevenly. This is equivalent to the position the US found themselves in at Kasserine, or the British during CRUSADER. They will get better (and are!), but it takes time, and there’s no shortcut or magic wand or uber-weapon-du-jour that will make the experiential shortfall just go away.

“We” are not fighting a war. In case you forgot.

I meant legally. To see the difference open vs confined makes. Without damaging anything or injuring yourself.

One you can do at home: Mentos + coke in a shallow bowl Vs. Mentos + coke in a coke bottle At home, but I do reccomend doing it outside ...

You mean like AGsRA?

It’s sort of more interesting that Rybar thinks this is interesting. Cross-organisational-boundary fire support has been a thing since at least 1940.

Aye, that seems reasonable. It could also be a weird artefact from something like odd polarisation interacting with a ****ty low res camera over a limited data pipe.