cyrano01

I'm just wondering if the anti-ship missile might not actually be LMM/Martlet. The Ukrainians already have it and would appear to have shot down a drone using it. The weapon is designed to be capable against small boats and, although the RN uses it from helicopters, there seems to be apossible surface mount available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martlet_(missile)

I vaguely recall hearing a WW1 historian of the British Army commenting that the best way to become a brigadier was to be a lieutenant in 1914 and not get killed. The Russian Army seems to be working on an accelerated promotion scheme.

Also, this time out, there are plenty of anti-Russian neutrals happy to supply arms and equipment to Ukraine whereas potential supporters of Finland had other things going on in 1939-40, global demand for weaponry being rather high at the time!

Sounds about right, I don't believe there has been a prosecution under the Foreign Enlistment Act since the Jameson Raid (1895/6). Would be rather hypocritical too for a country that benefits from the services of the Ghurkas.

Yes, I've been wondering this. Could be explained by the earlier point about weapons nearing their 'use by' date. Alternatively, if they perceive the AD environment over Ukraine as too hostile to allow overflight it may be that they see this as their only attacking option despite it not being cost-effective. Something must be done, this is something so this must be done. Either way, without wishing to minimise the pain of the losses at the barracks, the Russians do seem to be breaking windows with guineas (to borrow a phrase derived from similarly inept British use of resources a few hundred years ago).

Agreed. General media are usually pretty lacking in military matters (certainly in the UK) and I would expect the Guardian to be less good than the average, talking competence and depth of fact checking/analysis here rather than inherent bias. I'd be willing to bet the journalist only went to the english language Kiev Independent website rather than the primary source. Doubly so since they probably don't have a kraze or a Haiduk on hand to translate for them.

Bill Slim observed that, 'Nothing is so good for the morale of the troops as ocassionally to see a dead general.' So Russian morrale should be through the roof right?

This was what struck me too. The wide variety of AT weapons being carried and the fact that almost everyone seemed to have one. The days of one A/T weapon per squad/section seem to be dedlining, at least if you are facing a heavily mechanised opponent.

Definitely this. You pay a price for strategic resilience and governments/taxpayers have not been willing to pay it. Large scale movmenet towards gas to reduce carbon levels from coal fired power stations and a total unwillingness to invest in nuclear (France excepted), Germany is in a particualr bind due to the closure of their nuclear plants. Meanwhile in the UK we have governments that simply hate ever having to do anything or spend money, so long term resilience or strategic thought are totally out of the question. This applies to health services, military, transport, energy, the lot.

Certainly better to have than not. I just wouldn't want to place any reliance on it once the immediate crisis is past. Oddly enough I would be pushing for NATO membership were I Ukrainian, my bet would be that allies would be more likely to make good on Article 5 than anything else - or at least the Russians couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't. Still the matter of beating the Russians first though. As Mrs Beeton said, 'first catch your hare.'

I don't disagree with you. If I were Ukrainian I would certainly want future NATO membership to deter direct attack. I'm just not convinced NATO would be prepared to go to war with Russia for anything less than that. e.g. To enforce the terms ot any peace treaty that involved demilitarisation or force withdrawal. I can't quite see a future US, or UK head of gevernment anouncing that Ruissian has moved military units back into the Crimea (if it were Russian territory at that point) and so 'we are now at war with Russia.' Ecenomic sanctions maybe...

The only problem is that, if I were the Ukrainians, I wouldn't be 100% confident that NATO, and especially not the EU, would be willing or able to enforce these in the future. 5 or 10 years out I suspect that there might be no appetite to use military action to enforce treaty conditions against a re-armed and revisionist (and still nuclear armed) Russia. Any more than the western allies were willing to take action when Hitler re-militarised the Rhineland in 1936.

This; when I saw the RPG gunner heading back to the same spot I was mentally shouting, 'noooo, he will have rotated his turret, he will see you easily.' CMBS would appear to be a harder teacher than the Marshal Rodion Malinovsky Military Armored Forces Academy.

When I read the two RUSI reports and saw the spike in a/c losses in the last 24-48 hours I wondered if Putin and the top brass were starting to push the VVS into stepping up their intensity and forcing them out of their comfort/competence zone.

Well, the government has advised UK citizens to leave Russia as soon as possible...

It looks like that is old video dating back to January.

I seem to recall that the Royal Marines in South Georgia managed to damage an Argentinian corvette with a Charlie-G and small arms fire back in 1982. Pretty sure a Javelin would be rather more effective.

If this is the case it speaks volumes about the failings of the Russian SEAD/OCA operations. Having to use stand off weapons to lob HE into urban areas at this stage of the war does suggest that the VKS is still worried about Ukrainian air defences otherwise they could overfly the target high enough up to avoid MANPADs and light AA and pick their spot with either guided or dumb bombs.

So, if the Taman Guards are out of the way now's the moment for a coup in Moscow? Gerasimov? Bortnikov? Anyone?

Truly the night belongs to Charlie (Von Clausewitz that is).

Not especially Auftragstaktik though, not that such a thing was ever big in the Russian military.

Quite, scary stuff. At hte very least the Russians might decide to go down the Grozny/Aleppo route in Kiev rather than committing their second wave troops to an immediate assault on the city.

I'm almost wondering if some of the better quality units are being held back against the possibility of outside intervention, depsite the statements from the West that it won't happen. If Putin is sufficiently paranoid...

All sounds perfectly reasonable to be using CM Pro to model confronting HM enemies, got to be more fun than extracting data from the RARDE wargame for use as base scenarios back in the 80s was. What does concern me a touch is the rest of the Pro catalogue. Kind of hoping that nobody is making heavy use of 'Nuclear War Simulator: Professional Edition, especially not in, say, Tehran, or Pyonyang or anywhere really...

This dates back to 2017 but it might be a decent starting point. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot Spots/Documents/Russia/2017-07-The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau-Bartles.pdf