JonS

There were other issues too
https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/

There were other issues too
https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/

There were other issues too
https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/

There were other issues too
https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/

I read an interesting discussion with a Russian guy who had grown up in the USSR, with him being unable to understand how anyone would ever vote against whoever was in power. His thinking was that the president could order people to vote for him, and not doing so would be insubordination and get punished. And this worked all the way down the chain: officials at various levels, police, judiciary, election organisers, all follow their orders because not doing so would lead to punishment from above.
People tried to explain that in an established democracy it doesn't work like that. The fundamental difference is that (almost) everyone believes in the the rule of law. There are laws around how to hold fair elections, and anyone violating the laws to try and fix the result is very likely to face punishment. His counter was always "but why wouldn't the authorities just order people not to punish the rule breaking and punish the people trying to do things 'fairly'".  He couldn't seem to wrap his head around the idea that once there is a critical mass of people who follow the rule of law, anyone trying to break the law to fix an election is very much taking a big risk and on their own Anyone who might shield them from consequences becomes liable to consequences from higher up, up to an including the supreme court (or equivalent) and police who aren't under the power of politicians and protected from the consequences of following the law rather than the whims of the head of state.
So in an established democracy, enough people believe in the rule of law, following the law shields you from punishment, and anyone trying to subvert that is knowingly taking a risk that might well get them punished - even the people tyring to subvert the rule of law work on the assumption that the rule of law holds sway and that they are violating societal norms.
In Russia, from what this guy is saying, enough people believe that following orders from above  is what shields you from punishment, and following what the law says rather than what you are told to do is going to get you punished. Trying to follow the law and disobey the wishes of the president is what is violating societal norms, and is the same kind of conspiratorial risk-taking in Russia that trying to steal an election would be in an established democracy.
It was an interesting insight into his mindset that he just couldn't make the mental leap to understand how a society might function where everyone (or close enough to everyone to count) valued following the law more than following orders, and that was what protected people. He always fell back on "but what if someone punished them for that".
So yeah, democracy does kind of require a society built on the foundation  that democracy works and the rule of law reigns, and it is a self-sustaining system that functions very differently to the culture that the USSR and Russia had (and probably had before the USSR as well form what I gather)
 

That could be a reasonable thing to do though.
The point of that kind of wargame isn't like playing through a Combat Mission scenario to see who wins and by how much,. It is to practice co-ordination in the real world and to test doctine. If you've gone to the trouble and expense of getting a significant US fleet there for the exercise, and they've all been sunk on the first day, then you could
a) play on to the bitter end in a losing scenario, and have all the USN people sit on their hands for two weeks
b) note that their is a fatally exploitable deficiency in your fleet defense doctrine, make a note to start looking at solutions, and restart the exercise with that avenue banned so that you can meaningfully test how other things behave.
b is valid, as long as they don't sweep the whole fatal vulnerability under the carpet and forget about it, but treat it as a problem that needs to be solved and quickly.

Despite your effort to boil the ocean here I think we are in pointed agreement once again, albeit coming at it from different directions.
If I read you correctly, you're saying that trying graft a western style military onto Afghanistan didn't work because their government wasn't compatible with that style of military. I agree with that, and if I'm understanding him correctly, so does @Kinophile. That is actually his main point, despite your effort to disagree with it.
Anyhoo, I agree. However, in Afghanistan's case I think the original sin was trying to trying to give them a military that looked like some weird amalgam^ of western expeditionary-ish doctrines that was never going to work in their context. The Afghan people can obviously fight, really well and really effectively, when they fight in ways that suit them. In other words, like you, I think there was a mismatch between the civil/political milieu and the indigenous military forces in Afghanistan, but unlike you I think that effort should have gone into creating a military that fit that milieu, rather than trying to impose or import a political ideology that would have been able to support "our" way of fighting.
Hopefully the relevance to Ukraine is obvious. And I think on that we definitely agree.
 
 
^ given the number and variety of different training teams from different nations they weren't even trying to adopt a single doctrine. Instead they had to try and make sense of all the doctrines at once.

Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously.
If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function.
Is that about right?
Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)

Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously.
If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function.
Is that about right?
Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)

Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously.
If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function.
Is that about right?
Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)

Interesting analysis (the whole post, not just this snippet). Seriously.
If I may paraphrase you: militaries work best when they reflect the civil culture from which they spring and which sustains them. The more there is a mismatch, the less well that military will function.
Is that about right?
Hence, trying to graft a western-style military onto the Afghan government failed spectacularly. There are loads of other examples, positive and negative (Israel in the 1960s and 70s, Iraq last decade, Saudi Arabia, ...)

To clarify, we are in agreement to some degree, where I'm not saying Western is superior, militarily (or technically even that Democracy is) but that the combination of a military system built on fundamentally different principles of construction and sustainment by an autocracy is a bad match to a democratic government.  I certainly agree that democracies can do long term, large scale attrition (hello, WW1+).
I'm not convinced here:
Is it not simpler to argue they built such a large, intense and in-depth military system because Russia is geographically huge, the Soviets had a lot of enemies and modern war is highly destructive? These points would also apply to NATO, but with democracies as the source political systems and cultures the patterns of their militaries angled in a different direction from the Soviets. 
To further expand:
With Ukraine firmly in the democracy camp retaining a legacy Soviet military system can only grate and grind against the political and civil structures. We've seen that friction occur many times on the Ukrainian side; sometime sthe modern mindset wins out, sometimes the Soviet. Where reform/reformatting has not happened the Ukrainian military appears weakest. By contrast where the Soviet system is weakest is where Ukraine has its greatest successes.
This isn't simply Bashing the Soviet Legacy, its highlighting that when the Ukrainian military is allowed to operate in ways compatible with its current social construct is when its at it's most effective. Where it is hidebound by Soviet influence it fails far more often than succeeds. 
As I've said before, the greatest favour  RUS did to Ukraine was destroying its Navy. Here we see the Soviet naval legacy literally wiped away, an almost clean slate, and what does Ukraine proceed to do? Retake Snake Island, sink the Moskva +15% of the BSF, destroy the BSF command HQ, re-open the grain corridor, etc. 
Almost all through Western weapons and methodologies combined with Ukrainian initiative, technical ability and without the dead hand of Soviet material. It had to rethink its naval war from the waves up.
By contrast, the Ukrainian Army is very much built from and composed of Soviet machines and methods. Where they get Western tech and training to the right degree they succeed far more than when they have plenty of Soviet gear. I;m not saying Soviet gear/tech fails (it patently doesn't) but that Western gear/tech/mindset provides far more opportunities and avenues for Ukraine to succeed.
I'm not clear how you come to this conclusion.
Its well documented and also noted many times here that the UA has not been given the sufficient time and gear to fully transition into a Ukrainian/Western hybrid. Its currently a Ukrainian/Western/Soviet Frankenstein's monster. When its tried the 'true' Western approach in offensives it has not had enough training and not enough gear. When its combined the Western/Soviet its had decent success and when its gone the trad Soviet approach its had nothing but failures (almost all tactical). 
When the UA is fully supplied with modern Western gear and training it has a compounding effect with Ukrainian innovation and determination. The Soviet systems of doing things get in the way of the UA being all it could be. The UA is constantly testing and adapting the Western approach, but tailored to the realities of the front.
The Western approach works, just not in the classic, expected way of the West. If it didn't work the UA would rapidly abandon it. The Soviet way does not work for Ukraine, now, and especially not with the democratic society it is currently nailed onto.
My contention is we will see this removal of the Soviet legacy accelerate under both Syrskyi's leadership intentions, the attrition of the war itself and the modern expectations/demands of the civilian populace. I don't view the Soviet legacy as blameable for everything, more that it hass held back Ukraine from achieving even more than it has.
It certainly had its uses and can still deliver tangible effects, but those are no longer good enough, at large enough scale or as replicable as they need to be. They are certainly not as inventive and original as this war demands and by now are in deep & growing conflict with Ukrainian civil society's values and expectations.

Huh?  The same legacy system that has kept Russia in this war far longer than they should have.  There is nothing militarily wrong with the Soviet system for the time it was in.  In fact a modernized Soviet system might just be better at modern warfare than the western one - massed precision, for example.
The Soviet military system demonstrated its full potential at the end of WW2 and frankly was highly effective until about the mid-80s.  If modernized there is no proof it could not be highly effective again.  We have a tendency to blame every failure on this “Soviet legacy” without really understanding what that military was, or was not.  The Soviet system had very high resilience, which the RA is demonstrating pretty much on a daily basis.  It also could marshal and project mass like no one’s business.  Problem is that the mass was “dumb” - and frankly I am not sure it was as dumb as we believed.
Problems in a medical system could be from many causes.  The “Soviet legacy” has become an easy-button for western analysts to explain pretty much everything.  

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00039R000100110060-3.pdf
https://www.milbank.org/wp-content/uploads/mq/volume-40/issue-04/40-4-Highlights-of-Soviet-Health-Services.pdf
The Soviet medical system, for example, had its strengths and weaknesses but there was nothing inherently “wrong” with it (for example the Soviet Union had lower doctor to patient ratios than the US).  It was designed for a different baseline, much like pretty much everything else in the Soviet system.  The Soviet system was by-design aimed at supporting mass.  So failures in the current UA system buckling under the weight of casualties cannot all be thrown at the feet of Soviet legacy, when that legacy was designed specifically not to buckle under massive casualties.
 
 

Unfortunate choice, in relation to invasions of Russia... 😛

Hmmm unless they have a way to get it past the dogs in the manger they could promise anything and it ain't going?
🤔

Talking about sustainability and the importance of Western support, it is pretty clear that while Russia also spends an increasing percentage of its GDP, Ukraine is really in a bad spot economically. 6% is a lot but manageable, 20% isn't, at least not for too long.
And I think the situation is a bit worse than the graphic suggests. It appears like Ukrainian percentage GDP is high and volatile but not constantly going up. But that's assuming the GDP is growing by over 7% this year. They are apparently using the statista numbers (or have the same source) which look to me like a simple linear extrapolation from the years 2014-2023 (excluding 2021 as an outlier). And that sounds very optimistic to me.

So, the Germans have in fact given more % to Ukraine than US and have been hurt the most economically with Nord stream shut down etc. 
Let's keep this in mind in the next round of German bashing. 
 

I think he means that technically speaking, Russia will probably never exactly run out of war material, because before that happens it will reduce consumption/exposition to risk when faced with a shortage. Therefore one can not just draw a graph with one line representing average production, the other average consumption and at the point where they meet, the Russian army will stop firing guns or have no more tanks. He says this in all his podcasts in particular whenever ammo production is discussed, so I am fairly confident this is what is meant here as well.
And whereas the Russians can decide to reduce the firing rate/usage rate pretty much at will, they cannot increase the production rate by will alone, therefore the replacement rate is the more objectively observable variable.
 

That's from January 2020

I mean ... war is basically a political discussion using pointy sticks, so, yes?

Yes. Read the transcript. I don't know what he thought, but I know what he said.
Technically, he is the absolute monarch and head of the government of the Vatican State. So he IS the leader of a government. Since his faith is rather widespread, I guess that would qualify him as a 'world leader'.

I usually don't defend the Pope, but it seems to me that this time he has been very careful in what he has said. The problem is people without a basic level of verbal or reading comprehension. That's a BIG problem. Nowadays, you have to speak for fools, or you will not be understood by a lot of people.

Well, much better that than the money /actually/ going to the Russian armed forces 🤣
As an aside - that shell looks sketchy as sh!t.
 
Edit: as a second aside, this really isn't a specifically Russian behaviour. You see exactly the same thing after every natural disaster, and I doubt you'd have to do much scratching to find the same scam being worked supposedly for the Ukrainians. Basically: people suck. Really. Just the worst.

Mother Of All Bowel movements 
 

On the friendly side, that's one of the roles of the unit signals officer.
At the national level, there is an office which allocates broad frequency bands for things, generally in ranges in which the physics of the frequency band suit the application. So, there's a large chunk for commercial radio, a chuck for TV, a chunk for high capacity comms links, a chunk for airspace management, some for 3G, 4G, and 5G, some for consumer stuff like TV remotes and garage doors (yes they're low powered and not likely to interfere with anything else, but if they shared a freq with the local 100MW FM station ... well ... everyone's garage door will be opening every time Lady Gaga comes on rotation), a large chunk set aside for military use (although that's always under pressure from commercial operators), more chunks for the emergency services, wifi, satellite comms, etc etc. Then within each chunk, specific operators are allocated specific frequencies.
For mil use, in the olden days the sigs officer of an AO will be given a band to work within, then he'd have to come up with a plan so that each battalion and company and squadron and battery operating in that AO had its own freq to work with, and a plan to move those freqs around every 24 hours or so to mess with enemy signals interception efforts. That's not so much of an issue with frequency hopping and digital  comms - the new radios just sort of listen to everything that's within their band of interest, and know from the data packet headers which ones are 'theirs'.
For EW, you can just dump noise at high power across multiple freqs, but obviously that messes with your own comms. So the EW wonks and the sigs guys will work together to leave gaps in the blanket through which friendly forces can communicate with each other. Generally those gaps will be in places the bad guys aren't likely to be using. So, for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan the gaps would NOT be at or near the freqs that 3G or 4G cellular networks use ... Meanwhile, in Ukraine, presumably the gaps aren't at the common COTS UAS Freqs, except when FF want to send one up.
Generally, I would think that freq management along the front line in eastern Ukraine would be relatively simple. Since there's essentially no civilian activity there, then the entire EM spectrum is up for units to use. Further back the AD dudes would have to manage their freqs a bit more carefully given that there is still a full civilian economy in places like Kyiv and Odessa. But on the other hand they wouldn't generally have to worry too much about Russian jamming that far from the front.
Edit: oh, and don't forget to leave some gaps for the zoomies.