JonS

BINGO!



I didn't see Gerasimov, but could easily be that I just didn't recognise him

deleted

Why would you fight so hard to keep monuments for people who fought for the right to keep other people as slaves?

Leaving statues and monuments is a daily act of violence against the affected communities. Just like the statue of Saddam in Bahgdad and the various statues of Stalin and Lenin in the former Soviet bloc, the statues of Colston and all the traitorous US generals can FRO. 
Edit: if you are relying on statues and memorials to provide an education in history, well... /rolleyes

Leaving statues and monuments is a daily act of violence against the affected communities. Just like the statue of Saddam in Bahgdad and the various statues of Stalin and Lenin in the former Soviet bloc, the statues of Colston and all the traitorous US generals can FRO. 
Edit: if you are relying on statues and memorials to provide an education in history, well... /rolleyes

Back in the mid-late 80s I was in Berlin working for a branch of our govt that I cannot name performing duties I cannot discuss (not as exciting as it sounds).

At the time I had the opportunity to visit many of the Soviet/East German memorials and I was always impressed with the effort that was put into representing a mythical recounting of history.  Now this is nothing new in how we stylize our desired perceptions of our particular cultures, but I distinctly recall thinking that these works were probably the grandest form of social/cultural masturbation I had ever encountered.

But there's quite a difference between cemetery and monument, don't you think? The example of Hitler statues is actually great here, you wouldn't allow it to stand anywehere, no way, right? Tearing down monuments of your (perceived) opressors is only natural and healthy.

I dont think these monuments have any resemblence of insight. Its not a memorial to the victims of crimes, it is a celebration of the perpetrators. See the Lenin statues being put up right now in occupied territory.
Would you leave Hitler monuments up so people can google his name and discuss the finer points of his politics? No. You tear that down and put a memorial to his victims on the same ground..
Now what if people TODAY would put up Hitler monuments, would that trigger some alarm bells?

What's the timeline for when a monument becomes legitimate? Does the Lenin statue raised in Kherson automatically get to stay as virtue of it being a monument? Is it 5 years, 10 years, 50 years?
Remember history by all means, but if you consider the raising of the Lenin statue by Russia in Kherson to be fine to be torn down once Ukraine retakes it, ask yourself if it was remembance that caused the statue to be raised in the first place or victory?

Leaving statues and monuments is a daily act of violence against the affected communities. Just like the statue of Saddam in Bahgdad and the various statues of Stalin and Lenin in the former Soviet bloc, the statues of Colston and all the traitorous US generals can FRO. 
Edit: if you are relying on statues and memorials to provide an education in history, well... /rolleyes

Leaving statues and monuments is a daily act of violence against the affected communities. Just like the statue of Saddam in Bahgdad and the various statues of Stalin and Lenin in the former Soviet bloc, the statues of Colston and all the traitorous US generals can FRO. 
Edit: if you are relying on statues and memorials to provide an education in history, well... /rolleyes

OTOH putting up monuments is a political statement in itself, and often a very violent one (new Lening statue in Kherson for example). Tearing them down is just a part of the discourse.
Edit: in case of this particular monument, you won't tell me that it's purpose was the remembrance of fallen soldiers - for this you put up monuments in your own country. This monument's purpose was to make sure that Germans never forget who beat them and cause of that, who's the boss now (if that was rightful at the time is another topic entirely) - basically a symbolic violence of winner against loser.

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

Have to get a reasonable measure of the area, but probably comparably low for a direct hit.
A few comments though:
1) That barrage looked like it was entirely airbursts, and if you scroll through slowly, there's a burst at 0:05 above the unit that explodes on the ground very shortly before the big explosion.  So it wasn't likely a direct hit from a round, but from one of the fragments from that round, which spread over a much larger area than a single round.  So the chances are that most of the vehicles got hit with shrapnel, and that one got hit with a piece with enough energy in the right place to set of a secondary explosion.
2) There's selection bias in the videos that get posted - a bunch of rounds blowing up without dramatic results is less likely to get posted (i.e. how many rounds a day are they firing and how many of those bangs get posted on twitter)
3) I think that's the first time I've seen a barrage of airbursts from either side.

Ya, can't let this one slide.  This was a really good post but it fails right about here because it misses a major point.  First off I do not subscribe to the "every able body Russian should take their suitcases of money and flee to a less inconvenient locale (i.e. "sunbelt)".  This is frankly insensitive and demonstrates a serious western bias: when the going gets tough, well just move to Hawaii in your yacht and sip Mai Tais...it will be fine.  What about the rest who cannot afford to move?..."oh I am sure they will figure it out".
You make a solid case for a fracturing of the Russian Federation as a result of this, and a severe risk of "significant civil violence".  I will simply state it, we are talking about a significant risk of another Russian Civil War here.  You note "lack of Moscow military power" as reason this will be avoided, well 1) Will is the primary determiner of civil war, not military power.  Savage civil wars have waged with a lot less than what Moscow will have left, and 2) the unfortunate reality of a civil war in a state that has the majority of the worlds nuclear weapons.  We came close to this during the break up of the Soviet Union but saner heads prevailed; we have no guarantees this time.
I very much think that a NATO v Russia global nuclear war is an extremely low probability.  However, a nation in a civil war, cannot guarantee the security of that arsenal and even a small nuclear exchange has global impacts (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00794-y).  So what?  Well, here we need to recognize a harsh truth - none of us are "safe at our keyboards" in this thing.  The stakes are much higher than the normal western ennuie of "war somewhere over there, donate to charity, feel bad and change the channel).  So, no, do not "move to the sunbelt", try and do something about it.
I am a veteran of two separate wars, both civil in nature, and know exactly what risks we are asking Russian's to take here. However, the risks of "not doing anything" is frankly what got them into this fix in the first place.  And there is a risk of a lot more than "trouble over there" at stake here.  This is why I keep coming back to "Russia needs to figure out how to lose this war and survive".
As to resistance, well simply coming on this board and being exposed to the truth, or at least "other facts" is a first important step.  DMS lives in a country where publicly saying "war" is outlawed and they are being lied to daily on their mainstream media.  My advice is to "get the word out" any way you can as an important first step.  There is opposition to this war in Russia, and there is opposition to the current regime...it needs all the help it can get.
We are a small little wargame forum in a great big dangerous world.  But it is a platform to exchange ideas and voice apolitical opinions freely (well we do have limits), which in this day and age is hard to find.  In a perfect world every Russian would read this website and what we did here and at least a few would go "huh?  Wait a minute."  That would be enough for a start.

No just no.  The only thing the west wants is for Russia to quit attacking it's neighbors.  Had Russia not invaded Ukraine none of what you mentioned would be an issue.  This is Russia's fault...not Ukraine's not NATO's and certainly nobody in the west.  You want to live in peace...perhaps put some pressure on your leadership to stop having delusions of grand empires...those days are over.  (For reference look at the UK...they are an empire no more.)

Between autoplaying videos, and disallowing hotlinks, reddit is the ****ing worst. I mean, /maybe/ if they had paid writers creating content, but this treatment of someone else's words provided for free is bs.

Gold. Although I'm not sure what the CI would make of it on a TEWT.

Gold. Although I'm not sure what the CI would make of it on a TEWT.

I am leaning towards Steve’s initial theory that this whole thing was a staged production.  The RA needed to look busy but knew they could not possibly pull off what was being asked, so “look busy, don’t die” looks to be the main scheme of manoeuvre here.
That, or this was the attempt and it fizzled as predicted, because the terrain and force math simply never added up.  Russia is approaching the bottom of the barrel option-wise.  Try to dig in and hold on while declaring victory…or leave.  That first one may work for awhile but the UA will eventually move to major offensives, and that is a LOT of terrain to try and defend.
 

Could easily be both together. A Bn FDC can easily coordinate that.

Dave

A lot has already been said, but if this was some kind of HQ, and set up like you SHOULD set up an HQ, you might be using the building for "office space", however, all the vehicles would be parked and camouflaged in the woods surrounding, and if there are radios in the building, the antennas SHOULD be scattered about in cover somewhere that is not the building. Also, for a major HQ of some kind, it should be surrounded by some sort of AA capability, even if that's just several crews of MANPADS, also in the woods. 
So that distribution looks "normal".  They hit the building dead on, whether by precision or good data. Pretty good chance they can generate an exact GPS or grid coordinate for a building like that. If not precision a precision round then it would be the number 3 gun firing at that coordinate. #3 is the center of the battery and is SUPPOSED to be your best gun crew. That's the gun you register with, and should have the most proficient crew and gun chief. At least that's how we do it (we being US and what I know of Cdn and UK - I think all NATO is pretty standard that way) And in a normal unadjusted sheaf, with no corrections applied, #3 would land center of the pattern. Unadjusted, the pattern should mimic the distribution of the firing battery guns on the ground (say they are set up at the front of a treeline somewhere, which is an irregular shape). When you have spare time, you figure out Terrain Gun Position Corrections. That's the deviation from a straight, regularly spaced line, to what you have on the ground. Apply those to each gun individually, and then your standard sheaf is a regular spaced even line (within CEP). From THOSE, you can then apply other corrections for different shapes - circular, converging, etc. BUT, if your target is significantly off your center line of fire, then those TGPCs become less accurate and your sheaf different, not the perfect line.
Looks to me like they wanted to cover the likely area of where the antennas, support vehicles, etc could be stashed and not just the building.
Dave

I mean ... the rounds have to land somewhere, and within the CEP the building is about as likely as any specific tree or specific piece of open ground. But, within the apparent CEP^ there is a lot of open ground, making it far more likely that some piece (rather than a specific piece) of open ground will be hit rather than the building.
It is ... curious that the camera was centred - and zoomed - exactly on the building. Granted, whoever was filming presumably knew there was an FFE coming, and what the point of aim was. Still, they appeared confident that the point of aim itself would be hit, rather than just the area around the POA.
On the other hand, assuming the building was the point of aim, then that's a good indication that Ukrainian gunners have solved the artillery problem. The mission looks like it's a Circular 200, which is no surprise as it delivers good shrapnel coverage across the entire area^^. However the MPI appears to be very well centred on the building, indicating that they have good survey and up to date corrections-of-the-moment; met, shell lot and charge variation, etc. Still, I'd have expected to see some air burst fuzing, and that appears absent.
 
^ Ie, the big circle where all the rounds land
^^ assume that int provided confirmation that something shiny was in the building. Cool, let's snot the building! Except, there is always stuff spread around that you don't know about and can't see - vehicles in hides, sections providing security, parts of the shiny thing split off and set up nearby for dispersion or because there isn't enough room, caches of fuel and/or ammo, etc. Slapping a Circular 200 down (instead of, say, a Converge just on the building) means you're likely to mess with the feng shui of all those other bits and pieces, as well as the shiny thing in the building.

I mean ... the rounds have to land somewhere, and within the CEP the building is about as likely as any specific tree or specific piece of open ground. But, within the apparent CEP^ there is a lot of open ground, making it far more likely that some piece (rather than a specific piece) of open ground will be hit rather than the building.
It is ... curious that the camera was centred - and zoomed - exactly on the building. Granted, whoever was filming presumably knew there was an FFE coming, and what the point of aim was. Still, they appeared confident that the point of aim itself would be hit, rather than just the area around the POA.
On the other hand, assuming the building was the point of aim, then that's a good indication that Ukrainian gunners have solved the artillery problem. The mission looks like it's a Circular 200, which is no surprise as it delivers good shrapnel coverage across the entire area^^. However the MPI appears to be very well centred on the building, indicating that they have good survey and up to date corrections-of-the-moment; met, shell lot and charge variation, etc. Still, I'd have expected to see some air burst fuzing, and that appears absent.
 
^ Ie, the big circle where all the rounds land
^^ assume that int provided confirmation that something shiny was in the building. Cool, let's snot the building! Except, there is always stuff spread around that you don't know about and can't see - vehicles in hides, sections providing security, parts of the shiny thing split off and set up nearby for dispersion or because there isn't enough room, caches of fuel and/or ammo, etc. Slapping a Circular 200 down (instead of, say, a Converge just on the building) means you're likely to mess with the feng shui of all those other bits and pieces, as well as the shiny thing in the building.

JonS is the real expert here, but i want to throw in a little semi informed speculation. I think there were two batteries/sections shooting, and one of them was better than the other one. I agree with Steve that the first shell that hit the actual building was guided. But we won't know if was a vengeful God or a laser beam until someone tells us. Given that they got the General, maybe they will, eventually. So just going thru the film hit by hit. It really looks like there are two overlapping circles. The first one is 100% on target with the a second shell landing at the end of the copse of trees the building is in, and then after about 8 impacts rounds start landing in the field. I think rounds keep landing in the field after they stop hitting the copse of trees. My theory is that the intel was good enough to get an absolute max priority fire mission from everything that could reach. Either they were attempting a ToT barrage from two different locations, or if you are on team Steve regarding the guided round the other battery held back by 10 seconds or so. This would be to be sure no one ducked before the guided round hit. I have no clue if The Ukr is up to that level of coordination at this exact moment. Or If the FDC just put everything they had that could reach on the target and it all worked out.