acrashb

Good article, keeping that one. I like the shout-out to China at the bottom. Check the article above, they're on the move and have been for some time. IMO they aren't supporting Russia because 1) they aren't ready and 2) they have read Sun-Tzu and prefer to win without fighting. Unlike Putin.

And one more, this is how hot the train fire was: https://streamable.com/0tow6w Melting steel is 'really' hot (I'll leave it to others to google). Steel rebar loses its strength well below melting point. Ergo the bridge is damaged, and may not last very long.

About bloody time - and not just for Germany. I will remind all of us of ISW's summary from October 6, only a few days ago: "As ISW reported yesterday, Russian forces do not appear to be focusing these [Iranian] drones on asymmetric nodes near the battlefield. They have used many drones against civilian targets in rear areas, likely hoping to generate nonlinear effects through terror. Such efforts are not succeeding." If these missile and drone strikes will not achieve their goals, as ISW says (and I agree), then why do they happen? Culture. If a culture thinks that brutality succeeds, then things are seen through that lens. I've seen it at some corporations, where effectiveness metrics are replaced by "how tough do we want to be". It ain't about tough, it's about does it work. Russian military culture, which of course mirrors the larger culture, is about "how brutal do we want to be", as evidenced in all of their recent wars and in WWII, where my Romanian friend(s) describe their family's experiences with Russian soldiery as "savage".

Pretty sure HRIM-2 does not have a terminal laser guidance feature.

All good, wanted to emphasize again that CEP is radius, not diameter. So 15m CEP is 30 meter diameter of 50% hits. Your point about misses possibly not being known is well taken.

Well, so did some of my friends, so you've got me there I don't have much of an opinion either, as I said, it's all estimates. Just adding 'risk managment' for a single middle into the fray, I don't think it's been mentioned earlier. At the end of the war as things become declassified, there will be some fascinating reading.

It would not. Powdered aluminum, a key ingredient in fun-with-thermite, burns the way it does because of the very high surface-area-to-volume ratio. It's the same concept for any dust / powder explosing, like in a grain elevator. The grain doesn't go boom, the grain dust does.

Here is some risk-based food for thought in favour of the truck hypothesis. When Ukraine planned this operation, secondary to blowing the bridge but still front and centre is continuing to shift Russia's internal narrative that they can win the war. Striking and failing, on Putin's birthday, would shift the narrative in the wrong direction, so the planning would include as a top priority the need for near certainty of success. A single missile - there was only one explosion - does not bring that level of certainty. Everything is an estimate, so let's go with estimates. A four-lane highway would be about 14 metres across. Let's say 16 to be generous. If HRIM-2, no-one (in my searching) knows the CEP. But if it is as good as ATACMS (very unlikely), it's as small as 10 meters - and remember that this is a radius, not a diameter. Let's say 20 meters because a) HRIM-2 will not be as good and b) the ATACMS CEP is unpublished, to the best of my knowledge. So the CEP is 40 metres in diameter. For simplicity (my ability to do calculus is long gone) we can treat the roadway as circular. This would mean that the likelihood of a missile missing the roadway is significantly greater than 50%. If we stretch the road out into, you know, a road, then it's still around 50%. If you add in the railway, aim at the middle and hope for the best, we are still hovering slightly below 50% for a strike. Let's say 30% for a single missle to miss, to be generous. Two missiles are then .3*.3 == 9% likely to miss. Three missiles, 3%, and four missiles less than one percent. The previous highly-accurate missile strikes on bridges were GMLRS, which has a small CEP, say 15 meters, and they used multiple missles. Even if my numbers are significantly off (e.g., if the HRIMS-2 is in fact as accurate as the smallest CEP I've found for ATACMS, or Russian roads are a lot wider than typical ones), using a single missile is fairly likely to miss, so if this is a missile attack then the hypothetical Ukrainian planner either says "let's wait until after Putins b-day" or "let's send three or four missiles". Since it was on Putin's b-day and there was a single explosion, that makes a missile less likely than a truck bomb with a GPS trigger and an unwitting (there is no evidence to date that Ukraine can generate suicide bombers) driver. Granted the truck bomb requires human assets to pull off, I'm of the view that there is enough chaos in Russia, particularly near-ish to the front, to make it relatively credible. And if it fails, it does so silently, or at least not spectacularly, and not necessarily on Putin’s b-day. The train would be easier to sabotage, I guess, but trains are stationary in more predictable, and hence more guardable, locations. Perhaps there were multiple irons in the fire and the truck bomb worked first. At that point, the slow-moving train that burned becomes a happy bonus, like a weevil in one’s biscuit.

One can analyze and laugh at the same time:

Cool name / new weapon system / much secrecy == Wunderwaffe == "lot of discussions". Then it dies off in favour of the latest thing. Either Switchblades had a less strategic impact than HIMARS - likely - and/or the use of Switchblade has been obscured because of OPSEC, and because it could be readily obscured given the smallest Switchblade weighs 5.5 pounds all in and M31A1 GMLRS has about 200 pounds of HE alone.

Newsweek is certainly feeling impending victory. The assessment is related to control of water on the Crimea, chokepoint being Nova Kakhovka. Headline "Ukraine Close to Controlling Crimea as Russia's Southern Front Collapses" https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-southern-front-crimea-water-nova-kakhovka-1748811

Good question, curiosity got the better of me and here's the answer: apparently it's before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio And, to keep this a bit more war-oriented, apparently the Switchblades made in part with natural-gas created energy and possibly natural gas-created plastics are doing good work in Ukraine:

Pancakes for breakfast, every day. I think there are more areas that need more heating in winter than Germany; also more areas that need cooling (requiring among other things natural gas generation) in summer: Köppen climate classification - Wikipedia Otherwise, standard of living appears about the same on average: File:Map of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita in 2022 by IMF.png - Wikipedia

"Russian Soldiers Keep Surrendering for Cash and Socks" A bit wordy, and wandering in some points, particularly past the first 2/3 (skip to 24:04 if you get bored), but a useful summary of the incentives - some from Ukraine, and many from Russia - and mechanisms for RA soldiers to surrender. There is even a moment dedicated to footwraps Many of the included short clips have been seen on this forum before.

And we were told that these were only suitable as battle taxis, certain death in a modern battlefield during combat. It appears that, if the enemy's anti-tank capability is seriously degraded, the venerable M113 can still fight That's so wrong on so many levels. Let's take a high-level look. Until recently, the US was (for the first time in a long time) energy self-sufficient and had the option to improve energy flows from its friendly, democratic neighbour - Canada. Now, the US faces shortages that have driven up energy costs, disproportionally impacting the poor; is going to reduce sanctions on a brutal autocracy and strategic competitor - Venezuela - to reduce the cost of energy; has been gravely depleting strategic reserves to reduce the pump cost; is considering blocking off-shore drilling; and so is once again at the mercy of OPEC. Sounds kind of like - not an exact parallel - Germany, and we all know where that has led. Love fossil fuels, hate them, either way they are necessary in the mid term, and no solution that includes confiscation of corporations and/or their assets - that's what nationalization means - to put them in the hands of disinterested government controllers is going to improve things. If anyone think nationalization works, the most recent blindingly obvious counter-example is ... Venezuela, which is now a living hell. And yet, President Biden just mooted exactly that: https://nationalpost.com/news/biden-nuclear-armageddon-risk-highest-since-62-crisis I don't know if it's strategic messaging or just a gaffe.

Not sure which direction the messaging comes from - perhaps bi-directional, but I think predominantly from Russia (and not with love). Every authoritarian government needs an external enemy; Russia of course has NATO, but more narrowly Britain. At this point I expect that Britain's omnipotent security services are a firmly embedded conspiracy theory, having the same place in Russian minds that groups like the Bilderbergers, Rothschilds, Davos attendees, Knights Templar and Illuminati have in the minds of conspiracy theorists elsewhere.

Would that be paraphernalia locally manufactured (which would be surprising), or is it left-behind stuff from the Biden evacuation?

So is it still a box when it's empty? Does the box, the thing have purpose? Or are we... what's the word... You said, in effect, that the credibility of Russian soldiers / agents filling a box with dental appliances (gold) was low because they wouldn't have left them behind but would have stuffed them into pockets etc. I showed a picture of boxes of dental appliances (gold) from WWII to indicate, that if it happened before it could happen again. Which it apparently has, but time and international investigation will confirm. The box isn't relevant - it's the contents and the usage of the box that makes the comparison work and suggests that Russian soldiers / agents ripping gold from people's mouths is on the plus side of likelihood.

Time will tell as international CSI types show up and lend their expertise and credibility. For now, regarding "they wouldn't just put them in a ... box" - the Nazis did, so why not the RA of today? The boxes of 80 years ago look eerily similar:

First, congratulations on your Escape From Buffalo (soon to be in a theatre near you starring Wyatt Russell). Second, it isn't the lake, it's being downwind from the lake. The wind picks up moisture from Lake Ontario and dumps it on Buffalo. I live upwind from that lake, and our climate is indeed moderated by it - we certainly get snow, but not like in Buffalo or even a bit North / West of here.

More evidence of systemic collapse: Thousands of Russian Soldiers Call the Ukraine surrender hotline (eutimes.net) " “The hotline has received a lot of calls from Russians who were called up recently, and even from some who have not even been called up yet. “They’re calling and asking ‘What should I do if I get called up? What do I have to do, what’s the right way to surrender?’” " And, as many here have been calling for, this is how Ukraine says it will treat surrendered Russians: “Among other things, we are talking about three meals a day, medical care, and the opportunity to contact relatives.”

With a review like that, I just ordered 50 on Amazon. The way to keep feet warm is to keep your core warm and your feet dry - but sitting in a windy hunting stand for hours at a time, in boots thin enough to make the pack-in / pack-out part bearable, does get the feet chilly.

I keep saying that Putin is still a rational actor, but letting the regions buy their own gear is edging towards irrational. At best, it is a "win now, pay later" bet that he is likely to lose. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html Oryx lists "captured" - for RA MBTs, 420 as of now.

It can be difficult to keep up with the volume of information:

According to Oryx, UA has lost 274 MBTs. So they're coming out ahead, which is stunning (or would have been thought so in the first few weeks).