chris talpas

Thanks - I'll pick those up! Got to hit the library next week to pick up Beaufre's Introduction to Strategy, so will snag those as well. I'm on a second re-read of the Expanse right now; quite good. I also think Neal Stephenson's Anathem (oddly) does a nice job of analyzing strategic and operational art. In particular, it conceives of states of the world as points in a large vector space, and operations as moving through a world-line that's connected to the outcome you desire. That sounds a bit like the decision theory you're exploring.
Reading this thread, what's jumped out to me is the analogy to the Pacific Theatre in WWII with the Russians playing the part of the Japanese.
Each chose to launch an attack driven by ideological and operational concerns rather than strategic concerns. In the same way that the Japanese plan hinged on the Americans tapping out, the Russian plan appears to have hinged on a collapse of Ukranian resistance. Like the Japanese, they had a closing window when it appeared that strategic success was within reach, driven for the Japanese by the oil embargo and for the Russians by Ukraine's gradual tilt westward.
Operationally, the Japanese launched bold offensives that they could not support. They never had control of their lines of communication, especially after the USN figured out how to make torpedoes that actually exploded. The degradation of our submarines on the Japanese merchant navy are similar to the NLAW equipped light infantry wreaking havoc in the Russian LOCs. Like the Japanese, the Russians are penny-packeting troops into operations that have no momentum. Compare the repeated company sized attacks near Kiev with the flow of 500ish troops at a time into Guadalcanal on destroyers. Like the Americans, who carefully husbanded their (temporarily irreplaceable) naval assets until either strategic necessity (Coral Sea) or a huge tactical advantage (Midway) made their collective risk more palatable. Like the Americans, the Ukrainians have denied the Russians the decisive battle the appear to want, rather focusing on small attritional engagement and friction.
Time will tell whether Russian operational plans adapt in a way that Japanese operational plans did not.
Tactically, non-obvious factors in both Russian and Japanese formations turned out very important -- Japanese ships were light on AAA, had inferior (if any) CICs, and had poor damage control facilities and procedures, all of which turned out to be really important. Russian armored vehicles appear to have insufficient flotation and poor mobility maintenance, which appears to be really important.
Beyond that, American information supremacy eventually tilted carrier combat decisively in favor of the Americans, who could deliver CAP formations to just the right place to disrupt Japanese attacks. Similarly, Ukranian information dominance (?) is allowing them to attrit Russian formations and LOCs in ways that appear to seriously disrupt Russian attacks.
It's really bewildering to try and make sense of. But thinking in terms of the Pacific has helped me some.

Not super crazy in the context of when the ship was built. IIRC in the 1980s the ability to track-while-scan was relatively new and pretty expensive. The Ticonderoga's and Aegis was built basically to solve this in the USN. The Moskva had a different role in the Soviet Navy and was more about delivering the killing blow to a CV at range. 
The crazy part is that in 40 years Moscow never decided to pull the trigger on the upgrades and decided, apparently, to leave it with much of the old installed equipment she launched with. It makes the money fire (literally!) Kuznetsov even more scandalous in hindsight. Shes in such bad shape that she has to sit out the war, BUT they've already poured a fortune into keeping her (barely) afloat and giving her major rebuilds. Imagine if that gone into upgrading the Moskva a phased radar instead. Or even just in a few more AWACs with naval search radar. 

Russian Empire
Born 2 November 1721
Died 13 April 2022
Cause.  Embarrassment
This is just crazy.  Man I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the kremlin to see Putin's reaction.  Zelensky should arrange for a stamp to be sent.  "would you like a little salt in your wound?"

How would a policy of neutrality towards Ukraine have enabled it to defend against Russia?
2014+ Ukrainian Army was slaughtered by Putin.
Western support built what is working today. Without western Intel, all these ambushes would not be happening. Without western financing, no Ukrainian drones would fly, no NVGs, no nothing. Without western leadership the Ukrainian army would still fight with Soviet doctrine and lose.
What we are seeing right now is a result NOT of Minsk and Putin appeasement but of US/UK policy to bolster Ukraine in case of evident Russian aggression, despite concern of "worsening relation with Russia".
He does not care about economics. He does not care about his or our People. He cares about the past and everyone west of him is an enemy complicit in that "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century" to quote Putin himself.
Neutrality towards Ukraine would have in fact put Putin exactly where he wanted to be.

Wonderful. Every russian ammo depot should look like this...
 
 

Putting aside Boris Johnson’s own political motives, I think his appearance strolling the streets of Kyiv with President Zelensky projected a powerful message of strength and courage.  This beacon of hope, Kyiv, which fiercely resisted and drove back the dark forces of Sauron, is being shown to the world as still being free.
But the flame of freedom needs to remain fuelled; I’m glad the Zelensky was not left empty handed.  I thank the Peoples of the UK for their support of Ukraine.
It is fitting for the Brit’s to up the aid ante by now offering the means to project counter sea-denial operations.  No longer will the Russians operate on the Black Sea with impunity!
This expands their ability to cause Ivan some pain.  Not only Russia’s naval forces but couldn’t merchant traffic even be called fair game.
Fitting too that it be done by a NATO member with their own sovereign nuclear force.
The frog continues to slowly boil.
 

Already out of likes, So I will just say thank you Haiduk. Glory to Ukraine!

Putting aside Boris Johnson’s own political motives, I think his appearance strolling the streets of Kyiv with President Zelensky projected a powerful message of strength and courage.  This beacon of hope, Kyiv, which fiercely resisted and drove back the dark forces of Sauron, is being shown to the world as still being free.
But the flame of freedom needs to remain fuelled; I’m glad the Zelensky was not left empty handed.  I thank the Peoples of the UK for their support of Ukraine.
It is fitting for the Brit’s to up the aid ante by now offering the means to project counter sea-denial operations.  No longer will the Russians operate on the Black Sea with impunity!
This expands their ability to cause Ivan some pain.  Not only Russia’s naval forces but couldn’t merchant traffic even be called fair game.
Fitting too that it be done by a NATO member with their own sovereign nuclear force.
The frog continues to slowly boil.
 

Ahah, thanks, you make me blush ) I would be a hero, if did this from Chernihiv or Kharkiv, but Kyiv was relatively safe place, despite heavy sounds of artillety and MLRS and sometime missiles booms in the sky 

Want to add my thanks as well for the excellent analysis provided by TheCapt and Steve

Want to add my thanks as well for the excellent analysis provided by TheCapt and Steve

Putting aside Boris Johnson’s own political motives, I think his appearance strolling the streets of Kyiv with President Zelensky projected a powerful message of strength and courage.  This beacon of hope, Kyiv, which fiercely resisted and drove back the dark forces of Sauron, is being shown to the world as still being free.
But the flame of freedom needs to remain fuelled; I’m glad the Zelensky was not left empty handed.  I thank the Peoples of the UK for their support of Ukraine.
It is fitting for the Brit’s to up the aid ante by now offering the means to project counter sea-denial operations.  No longer will the Russians operate on the Black Sea with impunity!
This expands their ability to cause Ivan some pain.  Not only Russia’s naval forces but couldn’t merchant traffic even be called fair game.
Fitting too that it be done by a NATO member with their own sovereign nuclear force.
The frog continues to slowly boil.
 

Want to add my thanks as well for the excellent analysis provided by TheCapt and Steve

Putting aside Boris Johnson’s own political motives, I think his appearance strolling the streets of Kyiv with President Zelensky projected a powerful message of strength and courage.  This beacon of hope, Kyiv, which fiercely resisted and drove back the dark forces of Sauron, is being shown to the world as still being free.
But the flame of freedom needs to remain fuelled; I’m glad the Zelensky was not left empty handed.  I thank the Peoples of the UK for their support of Ukraine.
It is fitting for the Brit’s to up the aid ante by now offering the means to project counter sea-denial operations.  No longer will the Russians operate on the Black Sea with impunity!
This expands their ability to cause Ivan some pain.  Not only Russia’s naval forces but couldn’t merchant traffic even be called fair game.
Fitting too that it be done by a NATO member with their own sovereign nuclear force.
The frog continues to slowly boil.
 

Wow, hard to believe that was only 40 days ago.  I would caveat that this is a descriptive theory, not a prescriptive one.  Descriptive theories assist in orientation and allow us to better understand "what we are seeing", while prescriptive ones offer "rules for successful execution" and offer some predictive qualities (e.g. Clausewitzian attacking centers of gravity).  I have never really bought off on prescriptive military theory to be honest as it either has to be so broad as to be nearly inapplicable (see Clausewitz), or it is narrow and misses large pieces of the picture.  Descriptive theories provide a better observation reference but are not designed to predict or prescribe, we are left to figure that out on our own.
So 40 days later and what have we seen?  Well obviously both sides have been communicating across multiple mediums and in many ways.  Violence is the most obvious but we can see there are many forms of communication beyond violence in this war, narratives for example.  Even the atrocities committed by the Russian forces is a form of communication, one that I think the world has heard and understood very clearly; this will not be a clean war, because clean wars do not exist.  I think we forgot that fighting in far flung parts of the world but this one is hammering it home very clearly.  
What is interesting is the negotiation.  This is more than between the parties engaged in the war.  It is between a party and itself, and the reality it perceives in front of it; we negotiate with the future in war, an extremely uncertain future.  In the last 40 days the level of negotiation by all parties has been fascinating. 
We have watch the Russians have to renegotiate their entire envisioned end-state as the northern operational axis have collapsed.  We have watched the Russian political level negotiate with its own people by building a pretty weak argument resting on a ever increasing lattice work of falsehoods and lies.  Putin had better hope that Stalin was right about the size of the lie because even though the "first casualty of war..." and all that, the reality is that there is constant negotiation between the political and the people (Clausewitz nailed that one) but it is a highly bounded one.  As has been mentioned, culture plays no small part in framing that ongoing negotiation; however, in Russia's case the framework of lies keeps getting larger and larger, it is  matter of time before a counter-narrative starts gaining traction, much like it did during the Soviet-Afghan War.  So while Putin has had to re-negotiate his reality, he now has to try and re-negotiate that reality with an entire nation as more and more Russian soldiers "go missing" or come home in boxes.  Again, descriptive theory but where I come from this is not a particularly strong strategic position, particularly when you might need to mobilize your nation in order to pull off a weak draw by this point.
The Ukrainian negotiations have been no less startling.  I think there was a level of shock in those first four days and I would not be surprised if the Ukrainian government had a much more open position to ending this thing.  Now they have completely re-negotiated their reality and envisioned end-state:
From ISW: "Ukraine will not resume negotiations with Russia until Ukrainian and guarantor state negotiators finalize meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. Russian atrocities in Ukraine and Kremlin efforts to falsely blame Ukraine for these atrocities have reduced the willingness of the Ukrainian government and society to reach a peace agreement less than total Russian defeat"
This is not the negotiation position of warring party that is worried about losing that certainty I spoke of initially, in fact it has been reinforced.  Further, the Ukrainian government is not negotiating with its people from a position of weakness, it is one of extreme strength.  The Ukrainian people are galvanized more now, than they were back on Feb 28th.  They have sacrificed thousands and now the Russian atrocities are coming to better light they know that they are "all in" for the next decade if need be.  Further, based on what I have seen on social media, this resistance has taken root at a cultural level and I cannot describe how powerful (and dangerous for the Russians) that is.  The fact that killing Russians is being elevated to a near religious calling that will likely be taught to grandchildren is about as bad as it can get for an invader, trust me we found that out the hard way in Afghanistan.  
So what?  Well the communication will continue, now in context of re-negotiated end-states.  Negotiation is continuous and is constantly in contact with the other four elements.  What I am looking for are more signals of what that negotiation looks like.  I will say that it is never simple, it has twists and turns the longer this thing carries on.  Signals of negotiation on all levels, the texture and nature of those negotiations, what influences negotiation?  These are all things I will be tracking.
Finally on sacrifice.  Both sides have sacrificed and will continue to do so, the real question of Will comes down to "how much?"  Here Ukraine clearly has got miles of depth before they will accept "too much", particularly as more civilian massacres turn up; what is the point of "tapping out" when they are going to kill you anyway?  The Russians nearly the opposite position: "how close to the edge are they?"  I do not believe for a second that Russia has signed up for a total war but they really close to an unintended one.  The level of sacrifice to win it could soar to the hundreds of thousands as this rate, is Russia willing to pay that blood price?  The economic damage and diplomatic damage are heading to total but it will take months for them to see that in full, let alone believe it.  But the continued bleeding for a few meters of dirt in Ukraine, all projected across social media and on the internet forever is a growing cost that I am not sure the Russian government can negotiate its way out of.
Finally the West.  Well we also have to come to terms with the future and it is not the one we thought it was going to be.  We continue to communicate through proxy means, and negotiate militarily through proxy, while directly through economic and diplomacy means; however, we still are not "getting it":
https://www.reuters.com/world/un-vote-suspending-russia-human-rights-council-over-ukraine-2022-04-07/
These mechanism matter to us, not Russia or other powers like China that want to re-write the rules.  This is a laughable gesture by a creaking global order that has its head so far up its own...well you get the idea.  I have said it before, this war is terrible and costly, they all are and I don't want to downplay that, but it is the beginning of an era of "power being power" we are entering into, a Season of Mars (not Venus) that has been a long time coming.  That is bigger than this war, it has implications for the next ones.  This elevates this whole thing beyond "a local border disagreement" -as some have posited- and towards a strategic "black swan" or shock.  The implications span from the tactical through to the geopolitical, that kind of thing is rare.

Check this out from around 21:30 onwards where it discusses regional governors beginning to put their regions first in order to protect their own butts.
 

There is a truck mounted version of the Harpoon for shore use, I'm not sure what range it has but generally it would be between 65 and 80 nmi. That would ruin the Black Sea fleet's day. 😀

Hey Russo-Japanese also works, it is on my short list of "wars as stupid as this one".
In the North American 1812 conflict I see a a lot of parallels at the operational and strategic levels.  The American political level was also looking for a short, sharp war to grab British territory while the empire was distracted by that rascal Napoleon back in the Old World.  They made some assumptions that the Americans that were living in southern Ontario would quickly roll over and would even welcome them (forgetting the inconvenient fact they were the monarchy loyalists who left after 1776).  The American military also failed on operational pre-conditions such as logistics or information warfare.  We also see the same recruiting/conscript issues in that a lot of US soldiers signed on for fixed periods and simply left once those contracts were up which eroded American fighting power dramatically.
Then at the operational level, the US had the mass, by a significant margin; however, it was false-mass.  Poorly led, poorly trained and equipped, brittle terms of service and with ridiculously corrupt logistical systems.  This force attacked fellow Anglos to the North in a series of disasters like Chrysler's Farm in which British Regular units supported by locals and indigenous fought in a hybrid fashion to cut the US forces to pieces.  To the point that the invasion of Canada completely failed and fell apart.
Now whether the Ukrainians will invade Russia and burn the Kremlin before the ceasefire is still in question.   

I thought that city to be on the verge of surrender?
 

Heck of a speed trap.

as Astro would say ruh roh!
Putin ally China rejects Russian oil despite steep discounts amid Western sanctions, report says (msn.com)

I've noticed that Putin enjoys the support of both far left and far right political parties around the world.
Never made sense to me until I found out that one of Putin's big influences on his views on geopolitics is someone named Alexander Dugin.
Dugin is a "National Bolshevik" who wants Russia to conquer even more territory.
This video touches on Dugin as well as the geopolitical aspects of the war in Ukraine. a little info on the military side of things but nothing close as good as the info this topic has. 😃
 

This NOT the right way to achieve a hull down position.🤣

😳
 

Some historical comparison.  After Pearl Harbour, Admiral William Halsey said 'Before We're Through With 'em, the Japanese Language Will be Spoken Only in Hell"  A sentiment shared I'm sure by many Americans at the time.
Passions can run high during war time.