Elmar Bijlsma

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
 
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
 
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
 

Guys,
So beyond the obvious competing narratives out there (nazis, bio-weapons, crisis actors etc) let's remember what this entire thing is, an egregious violation.  There has been no, and I mean zero, casus belli established for this invasion. 
People are pointing to the US invasion of Iraq in '03 in some weird "well two wrongs make it ok to kill thousands of civilians", however, the US did take their case to the UN, they were attacking a strongman dictator who had; invaded a neighbor for "reasons", used massive oppression on his own people, and had even employed chemical weapons against civilians.  So we are not even in the same strategic context here as Ukraine; a free democracy that had not even coming close to behaving like Saddam Hussein.
I have stayed out of a lot of these conspiracy theories floating around but even if the wildest ones are true (which I do not believe for a second) and let's say the Ukrainians were employing a combination of recovered nazi-occult and alien technology to make all Russian bears impotent...in the modern world your first response to that is not rolling in 120 BTGs!!  Worse, you cannot back that up with "well they were gently rolling in 120 BTGs"...no such reality exists.  That much metal + ammo + scared teenagers is never going to equal "gentle violation of sovereignty".
We can play the point-counter point game all day and try to gain political points but all of that is noise around the central and incontrovertible fact that Russia illegally invaded another sovereign European nation in a gross violation of sovereignty and global order...this is not "ok", this will never be "ok".
Finally, I know there are theories floating out there that the Russian Restraint can explain the slowness and stalling on the Russian side.  This is abject nonsense.  It is much, much harder to try and do a soft invasion.  The US military tried in Afghanistan and Iraq and they found it nearly impossible to avoid collateral damage and civilian deaths.  I have seen nothing to suggest that Russian ISR and Joint Targeting is so sophisticated and disciplined that they have any idea what they are hitting beyond..."hit there".  This baby hospital thing has been brought up, right sure....how exactly did Russian Joint Targeting know the hospital was empty (which it was not)?  How did Russian C2 know this when they don't even know where most of their own troops are?
So I am going to offer some simple rules that people can chose to adopt or not:
- Precision is hard, incredibly hard.  If your theory depends on greater Russian precision in anyway shape or form stop and think.
- Organization is hard.  If your theory depends on highly organized Russian capability...stop and think.
- Conspiracies are hard, in this day and age nearly impossible.  If your theory is relying on a "big secret"...stop and think.  All western governments leak like a sieve and even the autocratic ones bleed data like a stuck goat.  No government on earth, even NK, has an airtight seal on what information it leaks out.  So if you are relying on a "star chamber" or "black sites"...stop and think.
- If it looks like a Duck, stop calling it a Kitty Cat.  War is incredibly hard so the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.  It is the principle that has actually put this thread and forum out in front.  We have avoided over-analyzing (I know right?!) compared to others chasing some theories.  If Oryx has 297 open source pictures of destroyed/abandoned Russian tanks, well given the UA was outfitted with thousands of next gen ATGMs...it is not a hard squint to see the freakin quacking water fowl.  This is not some photoshop campaign for the ages, the Russians have lost a lot of tanks.  Is it 297, probably not could be more or Orxy might have some double accounting but it is a lot. 
- Assumptions, Factors and Deductions.  All this comes down to Assumptions, Factors (or Facts) and Deductions.  As I tell dead-eyed Majors, "make sure the line between these items is as straight and short as possible".  Make damn sure your Assumptions and Facts stay on speaking terms and then do not under any circumstances let the line between Factors and Deductions turn into a Pollock painting.  War is hard enough, complex enough and weird enough...it does not need your help in any of these areas. 
Go with the god of your choice grognards,  and try and stay out of trouble.
 

I am not an unreasonable guy. Behold! The compromise solution: Mech riding Elementals.
 

Hmmm. I am not sure big guns are all that they used to be. These day modern targeting and fusing doodads can make auto-cannons plenty deadly. 120mm HE's "close is good enough" isn't really needed as much as it once was.
 
I am thinking armour of the future is going to be (or at least, should be IMHO) a multi-role vehicle. A large-ish auto-cannon (where is the 50mm there was talk of a few years back?) backed by ATGMs for the vehicle and perhaps the handful of onboard infantry. And its own drone bay. Ideally a drone that aside from recce can also guide an ATGM to an otherwise unseen target.
Unmanned? For patrols, recce, forward supply runs and maybe for tip of the spear stuff with actual humans nearby in support. But there's still so much you need a set of hands for. Who is going to put a thrown track back on a unmanned vehicle?
 
Ultimately though, it's gotta be mechs. Because **** ground pressure, mechs are cool.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

The other question here, why do you need a 120mm at all? What is the mission that needs to be accomplished? If your problem is "**** that room and everyone in it" does it matter how, exactly, you accomplish it? There have been a lot of interesting developments in terms of radio triggered munition fired from shoulder launched rockets or even out of an autocannon which could clear a room through a window a mile away. If, rather, you dont want the room to exist at all I'm not sure why a hellfire cant do the same thing? And if you dont want the entire building to exist? A JDAM, dropped from drone or aircraft, would do the job even better than our 120mm platform. 
Modern tanks arn't designed for infantry support. Nobody sat around the table in the XM1 era and said 'how can we make this the system the world's best infantry support vehicle?' Trust me. I've read the documents. First concern, by far, was how to make the XM1 into a Soviet can opener. During the GWOT and past the M1, like a lot of US hardware, has been adapted to fit into multiple roles. And of course as everyone rightly points out, one system can accomplish many missions. BUT! My point here is, if you free yourself from the need to peel open Soviet/Russian armor, those jobs can be accomplished just as well other ways. This is the true value of drone/PGM warfare, and IMO we are on the brink of a tremendous period of systems evolution and proliferation.
I would compare today to the mid-1920s when automotive technology got to a point where the wild ideas of men like JFC were not quite as unrealistic as they had been right after WWI. Technology has begun to meet theory, and much like in the interwar period I think were about to see monomission platforms proliferate in the US and elsewhere as people experiment with the best ways to do old jobs. And in the process theyll realize that actually the new battlefield needs weapons to solve all kinds of jobs. The MBT isn't about to go away and, if I had to guess, well get at least one more 'classic' MBT generation from the west. But the near term future for UGVs, like UAVs and USVs, is going to be to operate in tandem with conventional forces. You might get the Leopard 3, but also all kinds of teeming support vehicles. Imagine networking your MBT platoon in with a UGV scout platoon. Forget ATGMs. Put two M2s on a 2 cylinder, give it treads and a ****load of cameras and radio sniffers, and then throw it out 1000m in front of your advancing Leos. This platform alone could automate ground recognizance and intelligence gathering. Combine with UAVs you could easily do, with ten guys and a bunch of drones, more than what an entire scout platoon would risk life and limb to do in the 1970s. Take another situation, imagine youre in a MOUT environment. Badman is in a room with an LMG and you want to make badman go boom without having to risk your guys. 1970s solution would be to either A) call in air support and erase the entire block or B ) get into some infantry fight with the guy and hope you dont get shot up. But what if you could pull up a VW bug with an armored plate and twin Bushmasters and just obliterate that one room. Or call in the location and a TOW drone emplaced on a hill two km away engages the target without your team ever having exposed itself. Or even an unmanned MGS platform with concrete defeating munitions to do the same job. 
The tank is the product of over a hundred years worth of systems evolution. Its battlefield role is heavily contextual to the 20th century battlefield. Its three functions are currently so wound up it can seem like the tank just has one job. It doesn't. And as drone proliferate we will, IMO, see the begin to unravel the MBT's role (as with so many other 'integrated' systems) and replace them with more modern solutions. Like with the English Longbow, there is no intrinsic value to the MBT. It is only valuable for the mission it can do. If the same mission can be done more cheaply, with a higher ratio of success, or with fewer human risk factors, there is no reason to cling to an outmoded technology. Like I said, I think there will be MBTs most of the rest of my life. But I think we can all see whats coming, and thats a predominantly unmanned battlefield. 

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

I am not an unreasonable guy. Behold! The compromise solution: Mech riding Elementals.
 

I am not an unreasonable guy. Behold! The compromise solution: Mech riding Elementals.
 

If we are mothballing the tanks, I vote for POWER ARMOR!!!!!!! Now it is only a matter of deciding:

or

If these options are not logistically friendly or something I guess mechs will suffice.  

The more or less suicidal ammo handling practices are just amazing, But I wanted to get back to what is next in ground warfare since the Ukrainian General Staff has more important things to do than keep us informed. Hopefully those things include the encirclement of several thousand of what passes for Russia's best troops. 
Things we seem to learned beyond all doubt in this war, tanks can't charge effective ATGMs being employed by competent and unsuppressed troops, it is literally suicide. Which ever side can turn drone data in an accurate firing solution first wins. You have to have ammo to implement said effective firing solution. The signals/ECM platoon is now the most important unit in the entire army. Going thru through a few thoughts on all of these, please feel free to skip it or tell me how wrong I am.
Given that ATGMs almost completely dominate any fight where the opposing sides can see each other, how do you make them more effective. My little Idea is pretty simple. The missile needs to be able to crawl a 30 or 40 yards on its own and then be fired remotely. The Ukrainians have already demonstrated the effectiveness of their Stugna ATGM with a controller that has a few tens of meters of wire. So imagine a javelin with a similar set-up that could crawl the last twenty meters to the crest of the hill by itself. Imagine the javelin crawling out onto the balcony of a hi-rise building, While the operator is doing his best to be tiny and invisible in the hallway.  The next level trick of course is for the sensor to do the crawling, and the missile fires from a 1/4 mile back. But I really think a Javelin with even a twenty meter crawl range would be game changing, and there is no "new" tech involved, just a nice integration of things that are pretty much out there.
The next question is how can the infantry carry more of these missiles. Can we build a UGV with a load capacity high enough, and a signature low enough to be useful to an infantry unit that doesn't want to be the next drone target. I have read about some tests, but the cost benefit ration doesn't seem to be there yet. As several people have mentioned there are also a lot of programs out there that give infantry some version of powered armor, or at least greatly increased load bearing capacity, if tanks don't make sense anymore this needs a lot more money thrown at it, because if a guy with one missile is dangerous, a guy with three who can still move around is even more so.
To paraphrase Steve, drones are the greatest effectiveness multiplier since breech loading rifles, so what does that look like going forward. First and foremost there are going to be a LOT of them, and the side that can keep more of theirs up for longer wins the whole battle. Second, you have to be able to kill these bleeping things, or you might as well stay home. The U.S. already seems to have several technologies under development to knock down drones, and whatever was being spent on this last month needs to be increased by somewhere between a factor of ten, and a factor of a hundred.
As much as drones have mattered in the Ukrainian war, we still haven't seen them used in QUANTITY. By quantity I am talking about a five ton truck whose entire load is something very like a a bunch of switchblade 300s, and they deploy by the hundred. Maybe half of them are not much more than decoys with some sort of cheap jammer/ fake radio.
It isn't viable to kill truly large numbers of drones with missiles that cost six figures, and in guns don't have the range, so what does work? Both lasers and high powered microwave jammers are under development.This is going to be its own arms race.
If 12 or even two of the 100 drones you just launched are still up and feeding data to your artillery, we come to the next question. Do you have any artillery ammo to shoot at them.  Some one who has actually worked in fire control unit needs to do some math about how many truly smart artillery round vs how many merely good conventional rounds is the ideal mix. Smart shells cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and not smart shells don't. Smart shells are certainly useful against some targets, but regular 155/152 seems plenty good enough in a LOT of cases. How much is cost difference effectively reduced by the logistics burden of getting rounds al the way forward to the guns? Is the "shipping cost" so high that they might as well all be smart rounds?  Going one step higher what is the mix you need between really expensive loitering munitions, and tube artillery? The expensive stuff is great until you run out of it.
Random extra thought about unguided artillery accuracy. How much would accuracy improve if the drone that was feeding you targeting data also gave weather info., wind speed, air density, and so on. Is it worth it for every drone in the force to collecting this all the time?
Last but not least signals/ecm is not going to be on anybodies back burner for a long time. A real advantage here cascades though everything else for better of worse. I am not an expert at the details of radio frequency communications, but i want to put one simple idea out there. You need a better plan than the plan Russians are currently using when your radios don't  work. I would stipulate the the plan in question shouldn't rely on radio frequencies at all. Some sort of laser based system comes immediately to mind, but there needs to be a plan B, just in case you are fighting someone competent.
Again, feel free to tell me how wrong I am.
Glory To Ukraine!

Hmmm. I am not sure big guns are all that they used to be. These day modern targeting and fusing doodads can make auto-cannons plenty deadly. 120mm HE's "close is good enough" isn't really needed as much as it once was.
 
I am thinking armour of the future is going to be (or at least, should be IMHO) a multi-role vehicle. A large-ish auto-cannon (where is the 50mm there was talk of a few years back?) backed by ATGMs for the vehicle and perhaps the handful of onboard infantry. And its own drone bay. Ideally a drone that aside from recce can also guide an ATGM to an otherwise unseen target.
Unmanned? For patrols, recce, forward supply runs and maybe for tip of the spear stuff with actual humans nearby in support. But there's still so much you need a set of hands for. Who is going to put a thrown track back on a unmanned vehicle?
 
Ultimately though, it's gotta be mechs. Because **** ground pressure, mechs are cool.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

There it is...moving the goal post.  I have avoided getting into "well here is how the Russian's could have succeeded" discussions too deeply as there is still a real war and it is kinda disrespectful to people still fighting and dying but maybe we are far enough along to offer a few ideas.
If Russia had made the Donbas and the infamous "land bridge" to the Crimea to sole operational objectives of this war, they may have actually achieved, or at least had a better chance at their strategic and political ones.  If they had focused their main efforts to 2 main axis of advance with a limit of exploitation pretty close to what we are seeing on the maps now in the SE, along with "shock and awe" strikes across Ukraine they could theoretically have:
- Achieved their objectives much faster by concentrating their combat power and logistical capability.  This would have prevented or at least mitigated the UA build up and influx of western support.
- They could have simply dug in, took Mariupol and the land bridge and declare "mission accomplished".  Russia would have demonstrated its "immense power" to the world.  A shortened war (and I am not talking 72 hours but maybe a couple weeks) would have lessened western resolve and shaped the negotiation table.
- A short hard modest successful demonstration would have left a lot of "doubt" on the table for the West and Ukraine.  This would have made a threat of "further special actions" much more effective on the calculus on the West.  It also would have kept a lot more strategic options open as compared to where they find themselves now.
- It may have fractured the west more than fused it.  If Russia could demonstrate restraint and humanity in a "internal border dispute" it immediately call into question the economic sacrifices the rest of Europe will be making in what has become an economic war with Russia.  Further, it would play on the ever widening political divides in just about every western democracy.  It would have kept China very happy, without risking becoming one of their provinces. 
- If Putin really was a "genius", his play would be to immediately call for UN Peacekeepers in a ZOS once he had gained what he needed to.  Not western troops but Malaysians or Brazilians, a crew he could keep in his pocket.  We would have crumbled into a hot burning mess if Russia, backed by China and India, called on the global collective diplomacy and security body to intervene...it would have broken us.  If we say "no freakin way", then who are the warmongers who are pushing their agenda and supporting a massive military industrial complex?  If we say yes, we are in for years of negotiation and diplomacy, likely false but we built the system now we have to use it, all the while those sanctions start to go stale and erode.  
But here we are on the possible threshold of some really scary stuff, led by an insulated and deluded madman surrounded by yes-men, who decided that he could pull off a modern land invasion on the scale of the Fall of France with a couple hundred thousand poorly supported troops and complete failure to establish pre-conditions or align his strategies. 

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.

Alright, enough lurking, long past time to dust off my old forum account and say "hi" and thank all of you contributing this gem of a thread, which is keeping me well ahead of the mainstream media.
 
Can we just admire the huge leap in technology? No, not ATGM or drone tech. Pah! Who cares about that? No, the all important meme-tech. It has come leaps and bounds since The Great Meme War. The other day I was in the car with my brother in law, who barely even acknowledges the existence of the internet, when my 6 y.o. nephew pipes up. "Look, a tractor!" and I decide to be a smartass and deny it is a tractor. "It cannot be a tractor, it isn't towing a Russian tank behind it" and it even got a laugh from my brother in law. The memes of Russian ineptitude, and SOF-like abilities of Ukrainian farmers even reached him. I was surprised.
 
Of course, this war isn't all fun and games. I for one deeply lament Steve deciding to put actually making games on the back burner. Not that I can blame him, his new profit making scheme sounds very lucrative:  Cold calling autocrats the world over.
"Hello Mr Maduro, I am calling to let you know we are going to be making a game set in Venezuala"
-Please don't. Here's 5 million dollars to **** off.
"For 5 million more, we will change the setting to Colombia"
 
Well done, Steve, that is now two countries you have plunged into chaos. If you ever make a game set in the modern Netherlands, I am gonna start packing.