acrashb

To expand on this a little, all training I was exposed to as the "victim" or the trainer put a lot of emphasis on the unexpected. In field training, we were constantly bombarded with trainers throwing wrenches in the works, just like the old saying that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. All of us, from officers to riflemen were trained to be flexible, to modify the plan, to listen to each other and take suggestions. 

So while we had an excellent foundation in combined arms operations, we also had no problem shifting gears. 
And one more thing I was thinking of. I had no hesitancy in asking my team sergeant for his opinion and recommendation. Every one that I had working for me were smart, had about 10 years experience, and a lot of valuable input. Good officers will take advantage of that. Sure we had some "know it alls" who's attitude was that they were the officer.  As an Asst S3 (as a Captain), our S3 (a Major) actively solicited our advise and planning input too. 
I don't think any of this is present in the Russian army of today, or in the Cold War period.

Dave
 

Post 2 led us to this link with this text from  ISW: "Russian forces attacking on the scale and along the axes of advance laid out in the reported plan would nevertheless likely achieve their military objectives of destroying the Ukrainian military’s ability to continue fighting and encircling major Ukrainian cities ... the outcome of the initial fighting itself is not in doubt."
Like so many predictions, it hasn't aged well.

Post 2 led us to this link with this text from  ISW: "Russian forces attacking on the scale and along the axes of advance laid out in the reported plan would nevertheless likely achieve their military objectives of destroying the Ukrainian military’s ability to continue fighting and encircling major Ukrainian cities ... the outcome of the initial fighting itself is not in doubt."
Like so many predictions, it hasn't aged well.

There's a video out there somewhere of Kilcullen and Rory Stewart going off after the Afghan pullout and it's a really incredible exercise in un-self aware buck passing. I actually respect a lot of Kilcullen's work...but his inability to comprehend the gap between means and ends or to properly place Afghanistan and the WOT where it belongs on a list of strategic priorities is utterly glaring. He reminds me of the acolytes of 'self driving' cars. They always tell you that the solution is just around the corner, that more money and research will break down the insoluble problems and that ultimately the user/consumer is to blame when it fails to work.
BLUF, beware the critiques and analysis of anyone who has a strong interest in the outcome.

You are of course assuming the US or anybody truly understands modern warfare at this point.  I think Ukraine understands it better than any nation on earth and there are even things they are stumped by.
If you look at the performance of the RA across all three phases of this war I do not see a bunch of pretenders flailing - I think the steady diet of tactical vignettes is skewing the viewpoint on this thread.  I do see the RA attempting to fight according to the logic of their capabilities; the problem is their capabilities.  For example:
- Phase I - they had a lot more armour and air power as well as sea control as well as the element of multiple avenues of approach.  They went in looking a lot like the US did in Grenada with respect to a disconnected but attempt at a joint fight.  They were using position advantage and the speed /shock to try and overwhelm Ukrainian resistance before it could form up.  They were not counting on the UA having access to Western ISR and an ability to hit their entire operational system - in fact no one was. They were instead expecting a front-edge fight which they had advantage upon.  They then tried attritional warfare but were severely overstretched and did what made sense and narrow axis of offence to the south.
Phase 2 - given that the pretty much destroyed their leading edge in phase I and armour was not (and still is not) working like it should.  They had to switch again to a heavily attritional systematic grinding offensive around Severodonetsk using freakishly high density of artillery with infantry follow up.  This bought them some ground - again they are focusing on ground and not UA capability, which is old thinking - as they tried to smash their way to something they could call a victory.  By end Jul it was clear that they were running out of gas and due to the introduction of HIMARs in combination with Western backed C4ISR they could not sustain the offensive anymore.
Phase 3 - The RA has clearly gone on the defensive, they have mobilized for defence and are aligning their defensive objectives to the capabilities they have left.  Hell they are even conducting what looks like a withdrawal operation in Kherson right now.
None of that was conducted with a qualitatively good military - you get what you pay for - but it was/is not illogical.  The fact that the RA has lasted until now demonstrates that they can and have adapted. They just cannot do it apace with the UA. I propose that their major issue is not that “they suck”, although they definitely have quality issues, it is instead that the military they brought was prepared to fight the wrong war.  Again roll back the clock to 1991 on both sides and relook at how things could have gone, and the RA starts to make more sense.  They still did not have enough infantry and their logistics was not great but their advantages of mass would have likely worked much better.  They were in short fighting in the wrong war.  The final nail in the cargo cult theory is that if the RA was in fact simply pretending then the UA in their current condition should be at the pre-2014 border by now.  No, the RA is conducting a defensive operation, pretty messy and ugly but the cargo cult as described could not start landing planes if they suddenly showed up, the Russians still are.

True. However- forgive for small ancient intrusion- original Greek notion of barbaroi was people who couldn't temper their emotions and desires. There were two markedly different types of barbarians, representing two dangers of society falling: crude, cruel and anarchistic "wild, hairy Northemen" and "decadent Easterners" (Persians) that were subjected to their own lust, were womanish, soft cowards and lacked moral fibre. It is paradoxial, but while we may entirely correctly use first meaning describing Russians, Putin's propaganda is painting something very similar to second picture to define the West. Grumbling about LGBT, satanism, social experiments, liberal hollowness, adapting strange customs (like wearing trouses instead of tunics like real men😉) etc. would speak very well to many ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle.
Russian ability to join complicated technical equipment into complex network is indeed very interesting topic. Whole political system Putin use almost blocks (if not forbids) open flow of information and innitiative that are probably already necessary to manage modern battlefields of XXI century. One need culture that is appropriate to technical sophistication, and Russians at almost any level show they did not changed theit patterns of thinking from Red Army times. So like it was very difficult to Persians to copy hoplites or for steppe peoples to field decent close-combat infantry, so is for Russians to change their entire mode of thinking about war. It is curious if they would be at all able to do this, even with more normal NCO's, competent offcier cadre and those PDF manuals Steve descibed.

But is it?  The fabled - and fun to shoot at long range - .50 BMG isn't itself .50 cal (.500 of an inch).  The bullet is .510" in diameter; the ".50" comes from the land-to-land diameter of the barrel.

Okay, so if the 12.7x108 bullet is the same as the .50BMG (12.7x99) then we can still call it, colloquially,  a "fifty" - but it isn't the same.  The bullet is .511" diameter, which, if stuffed into a .50BMG case would cause serious overpressure and likely barrel / breach failure immediately or soon.

Is there a cartridge with a bullet that is actually .500"?  Yes - at least the .500 S&W Magnum and .50AE, both pistol cartridges.
 

Thanks for the link.  Good article.  It lays out the time-line of the major events and some of the thoughts/reasons things were done or not done at a given time.  Below are just a few selected parts from the article. 
 
Zaluzhnyi told Milley that Ukraine had almost no fighter jets left. Milley insisted that Ukraine still had plenty. The two did not speak for more than a week. 
 
the assessment was also that, in the end, Putin could be deterred. A senior U.S. intelligence official said, “It’s not like he wants World War Three, either.”
 
Reznikov is certain that such deliveries are inevitable. “When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” he said. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. himars, no. harm, no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and atacms and F-16s.”
 

But is it?  The fabled - and fun to shoot at long range - .50 BMG isn't itself .50 cal (.500 of an inch).  The bullet is .510" in diameter; the ".50" comes from the land-to-land diameter of the barrel.

Okay, so if the 12.7x108 bullet is the same as the .50BMG (12.7x99) then we can still call it, colloquially,  a "fifty" - but it isn't the same.  The bullet is .511" diameter, which, if stuffed into a .50BMG case would cause serious overpressure and likely barrel / breach failure immediately or soon.

Is there a cartridge with a bullet that is actually .500"?  Yes - at least the .500 S&W Magnum and .50AE, both pistol cartridges.
 

Just so you know, if you replace twitter.com with nitter.net in the URL (but keep the rest), you can go to alternate site that gets data from twitter and neither hides things for being 18+, nor asks you to create account if you scroll.
I assume Twitter will block them eventually, but for now it works.

Like the Cold War. East Germans had the Trabant West Germans produced Mercedes and BMWs. West Germany didn't need barbed wire to keep West Germans in West Germany but the East Germans needed it to keep people from escaping. The real invasion was by Coca Cola and everything what comes with it Burgers, Fried Chicken etc. They just can't stand the idea that the Ukraine becomes a West European country. 

The BMP-2 gun (2A42) has the same principle of automation as the Kalashnikov assault rifle - Gas-operated reloading. She shoots very accuracy, since her barrel is motionless. But it has an increased return, which makes it impossible to install it on light vehicles such as BTR.
The gun BTR-82, BTR-4 (2A72) has a principle of automation similar to the Chauchat machine gun - Long recoil with gas assist. The barrel of the gun makes very long reciprocating movements when firing. Due to this, its reсoil is much less than that of the 2A42, but its accuracy is much worse than that of the 2A42.

As I know since 2014 OFFICIAL supply to Russia were canceled, but Boguslayev never hide own pro-Russian sympaties. I think, he was detained also and bacause of that strange deal with China, when startegical UKR enterprise almost ended up in the hands of China and only pressure of USA forced to break a deal

Not at all. That, to my knowledge, implies a fancy facade where the the actuality is much less impressive. But it's still a military, just weaker then expected.
Cargo cults, for those that don't know, are a Pacific island phenomenon where the natives build imitation airfields and the like in the hopes of inviting back the bountiful supplies the US Army, Navy and Air Force dumped on their islands during WW2, who built similar bases. They don't really understand what airfields do, but they build something shaped like one.
 
And that is why I prefer to use cargo cult.
The Russian Armed Forces seem to have build something akin to what won them the Great Patriotic War in the quasi-religious hopes that victory returns to them, without fully understanding what it is they are supposed to do with it.  Push onwards to Kiev, because that is what Zhukov would have done. Mass artillery bombardments because it worked for Rokossovsky. Logistics? Stalin never paid attention to that either.
They have this thing called an army but they don't really understand how it works and how to use it. Hence, cargo cult.

Huh? 
 
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/oct-6-2022-united-states-announces-55-million-in-emergency-assistance-to-help-ukraine-prepare-for-winter

Put simply:
1. The intelligence haul from Russians fleeing is going to be higher than the risks of additional Russian operatives among those fleeing. 
2. Every 30 year old productive male subtracted from the Russian economy and/or the Russian military manpower pool is a win for the West.
3. We are fighting a war of systems. A continuously demonstrated desire, among the best and brightest in Russia, that ours is better never stops being a good thing.

OK, ya got us!  A sinister cabal of Canucks has been pulling Steve's strings the entire life of this board.  What, you actually still believe Vermont is a US state?
....And as for @BFCElvis? Ha!  he's been our sock puppet all along. Just post an Eighties hit and that poor sap rolls right over.

Yeah, how dare you. Don't you know the two moderators of this thread, The_Capt and LongLeftFlank are the only ones who can go off topic and decide what's off topic and what's not?

Cisza po polsku!! according to G-translate.  Grumpy?  I thought I was politely and gently steering the fella to a forum full of East Front lunatics who could help him out.  
Grump?  Good lord these young fellas should have been here back in the Madmatt days.  We are positively tender and loving by those standards.

Sure, and Poles got caught up in it too, along with Romanians, Bulgarians, Slovaks, etc. The 'lucky ones' went to General A̶n̶d̶e̶r̶s̶' Berling's Polish Army. Others simply got stuck in Red Army units, as ordinary infantry or else doing whatever menial jobs (often hazardous, like mine clearing. 'Letter to Ilza' is a memoir).
*Nobody* is whitewashing the Red Army in WW2 on here either, btw.
This board is filled with hard core grognard wargamers who have spent their adult lives reading deeply into all the corners. We are pretty hard to gull. So if somebody shows up making an extraordinary claim that by late 44 the ethnic Russians are largely running punishment detachments of everyone else in front of them onto the German lines, well, bring your sources mate.
Because the consensus is, the Red Army were pretty much equal opportunity bastards, with a brutality exceeded only by their enemy.

Right.  So a innocent random post-1944 "Red Army" FYI?  The whole "into meat grinder" remark and the heavy implication that "Russians sucked 1941-1942 but had it coming because...Russians" and "all victories after 1944 were not-Russians" were simply colour commentary?
I think we are all pretty clear on the point being made, it was not subtle...never is.  My point is that diminishing and sullying the sacrifices a nation made over 70 years ago in an existential war on their own soil because of this war is not cool.  The two events and strategic contexts are completely different unless one subscribes to the "every Russian man, woman and child is evil, everywhere and forever", which the narrative appears to suggest.
Russian leadership is definitely evil and needs to be removed - those responsible held to account.  Russian military has lost its footing on the slippery slope of war and it is a stain they should wear from here on out - again those accountable held responsible.  The Russian people who openly supported this war are wrong or misled, and they will need to come to terms with that...much in the same way the US had to come to terms with Vietnam, Indigenous genocide or slavery, or the UK in India, South Africa etc, or French in...well pick a spot in Africa. 
The Russian people who have died resisting, or have fled their nation, or continue to resist as best they can should be supported in hopes the seeds of a better Russia lay within their hands.  And at some point in the future the Russian children who pick up this mess that they had nothing to do with will need to try to make their country functional again and hopefully ensure this sort of war does not happen again. 
Of course if this was just an innocent "FYI" from the OP, then we are all golden.  To that I would only humbly suggest that his comments - pretty much from day one of this thing - may be easily misconstrued.

It appears as this is a pretty contentious issue (not surprising).  Estimates are pretty difficult given the really big numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union  I would use this as a start point and not definitive.
Everyone seems to agree on about 27 million across the board.  Distribution is the politicized part.  These figures above get used a lot (http://www.aalep.eu/deaths-soviet-republic-world-war-ii)& (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/world-war-two-casualties-by-country).  According to this site Belarus actually took the highest hit per capita loss: https://www.businessinsider.com/percentage-of-countries-who-died-during-wwii-2014-5?r=US&IR=T
Regardless, the idea that Russians (who either "are" or "are not" a real thing depending on the day, apparently) sat back fat, dumb, and happy while their colonials did all the dying in ww2 does not really measure up anymore than the same line fits the British or French Empires.  A whole lot of Russian people died in that war in order to defend their nation, diminishing that in this one to somehow make Russia "more bad" really is beneath the normal acceptable standards of this forum.

Some house republicans are doing this.  The vast majority have not done anything like this.  As I've stated before, I recognize and honor the vast majority of GOP congressman and senators for doing the right thing, every time, for Ukraine.  And hopefully they'll take their small number of dictator-loving friends out back and teach them about right & wrong.  
I am feeling optimistic that GOP & dems will continue to support Ukraine.  There's plenty of other places to play politics, I don't think they'll do it w UKR.
 

I just find the catastrophizing hard to stomach.
"OMG the Republicans are going to take over the House and everyone will be forced to go to church, have babies, own a gun and get a job!!"
or
"OMG the Democrats are going to take over the House and everyone will be forced to burn their church, kill their babies, turn in their guns and lose their job!!"
So if we look at the numbers, a whopping 57 out of 438 representatives voted against the spending package for Ukraine. That only accounts for 13% of the ENTIRE house and 26% of the House Republicans. 150 House Republicans have voted steadfastly for Ukraine. The latest polls predict a shift of 13 seats to the Republicans. 13. Now I'm not a mathemagician but I fail to see how 3% of the House is going to persuade the other 84% to totally change their views and voting. Especially when it has been pointed out the the majority of the citizenry is in favor of supporting Ukraine. And if 74% of Republicans are already voting for support, at that ratio it just adds 10 in favor and 3 whole votes against. That puts future votes at about 378 to 60. 
So maybe, just maybe people can take a deep breath, self medicate with their chosen medicine, relax and wait to see if there is any effect at all to the support due to this massive political upheaval that we will all be so overwhelmed by.
Personally I think the biggest threat to future support for Ukraine will be how the economy goes. It is already going to be tougher and tougher in Europe with their energy crisis and looming industrial crisis stemming from it. If the US economy really tanks it will be hard for the elected officials (NO MATTER THEIR POLITICAL PARTY) to continue support at very high levels and neglect their constituencies. 

Potato…Asparagus.  No real disagreement but if the RA still holds Kherson by winter then they will have actually accomplished a likely operational (and strategic for that matter) objective.  Doesn’t signal the end of days, but could signal that the RA has more left in the tank than assumed.  The RA achieving a defensive objective - hold Kherson - equals strategic and political options, or at least sustaining the few they had left.  And that is not a good thing by any metric.
If we want to crawl out of an echo chamber we must note Russian successes.  We did so on the few acres back at Severodonetsk, as costly as they were.  We will have to note that they made it to their likely defensive objectives if they still hold the northern bank of the Dnipro when the snow flies. This will likely achieve the predicted aim of Putin to drag out the war past the US Congressional elections and shoot for that small ray of sunlight a shift in US politics and a deepening recession may provide for him.  Putin and Russia will have more options as of January if they can do that as opposed to them being at the Crimean border or cut in half at Melitopol. 
Now also keep in mind that the tipping point may be only a few days away and we will see the operational collapse we have been looking for well before then…here is hoping.