cyrano01

I came across something extremely interesting - a transcript from the French National Defense
and Armed Forces Commission, from November 16th. It concerns various subjects, but let me paste here the most juicy bits (Google translated):
On the RU losses:
On the monetary value military support from US vs UE:
And a bit about training UA forces and their plans:
Full document is available here:
https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/comptes-rendus/cion_def/l16cion_def2223022_compte-rendu#

200k sounds like a big number but we are still talking over 700kms of front.  That comes to about 258 men per km, which factoring for rotations and combat support is likely about a company per km.  This will shore up the line but it is not going to make it airtight.  Russian ISR is nowhere near the UAs so they have to spread out to cover more ground while the UA stay back in some sectors while seeing Russian moves before they even start.
My honest bet is that the RA folds in 2023 - is has done this three times now and the big one is a’comin.  Adding more troops is actually making things worse by stressing an already pretty beaten up logistics and C2 system.  Now how hard and fast that fold happens is really unknown but if we see continued levels of support to the UA, or better yet increases, and the continuing trend of corrosion on the RA - and let’s all say it together - all along the entire length of its operational system, the RA is doomed to failure. I suspect the milbloggers in the Russian sphere already know this.  
The real question is “what happens when the RA faces operational collapse?”  Does it cascade into a full strategic collapse?  Does it trigger a political collapse?  Or worse a complete social implosion?  The Russians had chances to get off this train from the start but stubbornly refused them.  There were off-ramps, Ukraine was even suing for peace back in March, remember “neutral nation”?  But the Russians just kept digging that hole.  Life is hard, it is harder when one is dumb.  What the west needs to remember, and take very personally, is that Russia took us all on this ride, not just Ukraine.

Who's "we" in this particular reality? How do you enforce a Naval blockade in the Black Sea?  How do you slip through the Montreux Convention?  Whose ships do the stopping and boarding? Who thinks the Black Sea Fleet will agree for one hot second to allow NATO vessels to stop them, to fire shots across Russian bows? Do you really think a Russian frigate is not going to fire back? What about the BSF submarines,  their naval ace-in-the-hole via a vis any potential adversary? How do you blockade them?
So who's ship's will do the sinking, and be sunk? The US? So, War then. Britain? War. EU? War. Turkey? ROFL. 
All it would do is play exactly and perfectly in Putin's bull**** about "fighting NATO, not Ukraine". He'd have a supposedly existental external threat,  that was real this time and I'm pretty sure would gather far more active national support than his nasty little jaunt into Ukraine. No more molotovs at recruitment centers, for one thing. 
And bye-bye any chance of this war ending in 2023.
Yer 'avin a laff, guv' nor! 

I think there is a coherent argument that the Russian military is in collapse, the rate of that collapse is really the outstanding question.  Personally I see collapse a "a failure to be able to sustain option spaces".  Collapses come in many flavors, the dramatic cascade failures get all the ink but I think history demonstrates that these are really just the punctuation marks on a longer process of systemic degradation.
Russia has seen its option spaces continually shrink in the prosecution of this war.  They had the most options on 24 Feb, and ever since then it has been a slow and steady compression.  Some has been forced by the UA and some by Russia itself.  Examples:
- On 23 Feb 22 Russia had pretty broad options, which included to not-invade.  Then on the 24th those options began to shrink.  They committed pretty much their entire ready-force on one Hail Mary plan: no Lviv cut-off back up, no strategic erosion campaign fall back.
- By the end of March, they had lost all viable options in the North around Kyiv and their main effort.  So they politically weaseled into new "real" objectives, which was simply accepting and re-selling the reduced options they already had.
 -  By the summer, they had run out of strategic options that relied on manoeuvre.  Recall those maps with sweeping red arrows drawn all over them - those were utter fiction.  The RA had lost an ability to sustain that sort of warfare over the Spring.  So they were down to attrition and mass based options at Severodonetsk, making incremental gains while simply trying to hold on everywhere else.
- Enter the HIMAR campaigns, along with other capability and by Aug/Sep 22 Russia no longer had viable offensive options at the operational level. 
- Then they lost any an all options around Kharkiv and Kherson over the Fall.
They are literally down to symbolic tactical grinding at Bakhmut and holding on by their fingernails everywhere else.  Their force generation capability is slumping downward and their last option of nuclear weapons is a dead end.
All the while the UA develops capability and a broader array of options in an expanding portfolio.  Simple equation that says a lot about this war:
Capability x Speed/Agility/Precision = Options.  Options x Cognitive Advantage (Information) = Outcomes.
A whole lot is trending towards zero  for Russia.  As to when the whole thing starts failing fast...l that is the big question.  My money is the next major move by the UA is flank pressure to pull the RA east and west simultaneously.  Lotta opportunity on that Eastern flank and keeping pressure up south of Kherson - in my dreams an amphib action is on the table, but that is likely asking way too much (now there is one interesting CM campaign).  And then when the the RA is stretched thin in the middle, they will try to cut that corridor and separate the two.  A drive to Melitopol is the most likely, but there are other...wait for it...options.
With the strategic corridor cut the two AOs are now connected by land only thru that bridge Ukraine already damaged, and air/sea but those are not optimal if the UA hold the North Coast of the Azov Sea.  All traffic basically has to go around the back across the Black Sea while that big bridge gets HIMARsed - Crimea basically becomes another larger Kherson pocket on the wrong side of a water obstacle.  The UA can then squeeze until things turn purple.
Will this be enough for the political house to come down - unknown, but I definitely think it has potential.  Someone in the Russian power mechanism, as ponzi as it is, has to realize that one 70 year old losing a major land war is simply not worth it at some point.  

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country."
 

At the very beginning of the war, former ATO participants were primarily taken into the territorial defense. When I tried to get there, they first of all asked me if I had combat experience, when they found out that I didn’t, they said that people with combat experience were needed now and that people without experience could only count on auxiliary positions in the rear without weapons (dig trenches , transport the wounded, deal with logistics).
When I was in hiding in Irpin, I met many men who were also not taken by the territorial defense due to lack of combat experience.
in addition, in the street battles for Irpen, the territorial defense acted in small groups, reinforcing units of the army and police special forces - these are guys who are specially trained for operations in the city.
 
I think that the territorial defense of Sumy is now located near the border with Russia and covers the border from a possible Russian invasion from the Kursk region

Happy New Year for all!
This night instead fireworks we had bright light&acoustic performance "Shakheds attack". 32 drones attacked Kyiv. Projectors beams, flashes in the dark sky, thunders of explosions and flaming debrises. On background of this hundreds of shouts from the windows "Putin khuilo!", "Glory to Ukraine!" and national anthem singing. All 32 drones were shot down (NASAMS participated too), fragments of one slightly damaged one infrastructure object. Recently more 13 Shakheds were shot down in other regions of Ukraine
PS. During the day attack Russia launched at least 6-8 Iskanders. Most of them on Mykolaiv. But one or even two missiles reportedly were intercepted - one Iskander was shot down over Kyiv and probably one in Mykolaiv.   
 

Two explosions in Kyiv sky. Also reports about AD work in Kyiv oblast. Russians continue to congratulete us.
Reportedly 6 Tu-95 and 2 Tu-160 in the air. Some Shakeds in UKR airspace. Awaiting of next launches.

Russian MoD claimed their troops captured village Dorozhnianka in Zaporizhzhia oblast. There are no visual confirmations yet, but some unconfirment RUMINT from UKR side tell this is true. As if two platoon strongpoints couldn't repell attack of reinforced company and next UKR counter-attack was unsuccessful. Dorozhnianka already was captured by Russsian in March, but since mid of May was recaptured by UKR forces. This is last village on the way to one of strongholds of UKR on Zaporizhzhia direction - Huliaypole town. 
 

This “where are the Leo2’s/M1s!!” is like a chronic cognitive yeast infection on this thread.  Does anyone actually still believe that 200 of either of these platforms would sweep the Russians from the field?
If one could get past the integration bill (training, organization and logistics), which is a pretty big hurdle in the middle of a shooting war - “what about the M777 and Pz 2000!?” well integration of a few dozen arty sub-units is one thing, and even with these we know there have been challenges.  Integration of a Bdes worth of armour which has to fight in close cooperation with a Ukrainian military organized very differently than the German or US Army is something else entirely.
But for arguments sake let’s bypass those issues and say in 6-12 months the UA can fully integrate these systems into their current battle order…ok, so what?  Last I checked both the Leo2 and M1 still run on the ground and are vulnerable to mines, which we know the Russians are planting everywhere.  They are big, fat, hot concentrations of steel that even the RA ISR will be able to find quickly.  The RA still has ATGMs last I checked, and a lot of them. And last I heard all western tanks run on gas…a lot of gas, and need ammo and spare parts.  So their logistics system will also be a big target.  In fact a lot of what we have heard and seen on tanks in this war makes little sense in terms of doctrine - “indirect fire role 10kms from the FEBA”, how are western tanks going fundamentally change this?
I get the sense that some still believe that 200 Leo 2’s or [insert my favourite tank from CM] would end this war by next Tues. Well that position is not supported by the evidence we have seen in how this war is being fought.  In fact the cost of a few hundred western tanks could be more than they return on investment at this point.  To wit The_Capt’s prescription for western support:
- give them all the C4ISR 
- give them stuff they can use, right now.
- prioritize supporting the big three - infantry and infantry support, unmanned systems (both offensive and defensive/counters), and precision fires.
- prioritize logistics.
- and once you have got all that, then send in limited complete tactical capability packages that the UA can operationalize.  So we are talking a western tactical system, top to bottom, that the UA can make best use of in how they are waging this war.  One that does not force them to have to shift entirely to a western based doctrinal approach that we have zero evidence would even work.
People want this to be a nice and neat western conventional war, over in a week or two…it is not, that ship has sailed. In fact the few western near-peer conventional wars we have had are terrible parallels to try and draw from for this war.  This is the real deal - brutal, grinding and drawn out.  This does not mean “frozen”, it means attrition is back in play - it is foundational in corrosive warfare. Fast, loose and easy manoeuvre warfare is sitting on the sidelines with a broken nose.  We all need to get used to that idea.
All war is certainty (a vision of how we want the outcome to be…we cannot lose this), communication (it goes slow…then fast), negotiation (what does victory look like?  What does defeat look like?), and sacrifice (what are we willing to pay?).

Russians decided to wish us happy new year  - 4 Tu-22M3 and 5 Tu-95 allegedly 20 minutes ago launched missiles in radio silence mode. Maybe its were imitation launches, but air raid alert already proclaimed on about half territory of Ukriane, including Kyiv 

Some more Vietnam vibes from Bakhmut area
 

Missile attack on Ukraine has started now. Two distant explosions already was heard in Kyiv, reportedly from western suburbs. Other wave of missiles is approaching from Konotop-Sumy direction. Also launches from Black Sea

The one item that might throw a wrench in China's relationships to any former Russian territories is their treatment of the Uighur people.  The "stan's" have every reason to be highly suspicious of and likely antagonistic. For the most part the present governments acquiesce for the money, however continued attacks by China on a Muslim minority could easily lead them to become the new great satan.  China's treatment of these people has been extreme, even to the level of competing with Russian barbarity.

Niiiiiiiice
Ankh-Morpork is good analog for Russia as a whole. Esp Wierd Regiments.... 

Dibbler cut his own throat?

I'm back. Week ago Kyiv and Kyiv oblast were under heavy attack of Shakheds. More than 30 in one launch. Alas at least five could breakthrough and hit several important substations in Kyiv, so our quarter for three days had only five hours with a power supply,mostly at the night. First day we also hadn't a water and heating. Latter was repaired on second day after the strike and this was in time,because we had -5 at that night. 
In other days electricity appeared some more, but anyway mostly at the nights or at the morning for 2-3 hours. So, we had opportunity to cook something and charge our phones. Several times we heated food in large can with dry spiritus and kept it in heating bateries. We were very angry, when have seen other districts around us with a light at the evening, but our several quarters were almost in full darkness.
Special thanks to Kinophile and other for notebook - it has powerful battery, so it's using as powerbank too ) 
Without electricity all cell towers around were either dead or had  so big abonents load, that internet almost didn't work. Sometime I cought Starlink, deployed by Emergency Service, but it was too far and connection was unstable - about 1-2 minutes. Single place,where I can catch cell phone internet was subway and streets, having power supply. But I had too much work out of my workshop, so almost hadn't time to track   news thoroughly.
At last at weekend, maybe in honor of Christmass our quarter got almost 24hours power 
Damn, I have to read a week of forum )

Please be advised, the pipelines from Russia thru Ukraine, and Russia thru Poland to the rest of Europe remain open and flowing, tho Russia cut off gas supply thru Poland but the pipeline is still good for flows to Germany if restarted. The pipeline thru Ukraine remains active.
If Germany decided to reopen gas imports, it can do so via those routes.
Be aware, Nordstream 2 Line B was not destroyed and Gazprom stated it would be able to flow gas thru in the aftermath of the sabotage.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-03/gazprom-ready-to-ship-gas-via-shelved-nord-stream-2-pipeline
Nordstream 2, mid-approval process was shut down by Germany at the start of the invasion as punishment by Germany towards Russia, however Nordstream 1 gas contracts remained in force, with Germany expecting the gas to remain flowing in NS1. Gazprom shut down the flow via NS1 claiming maintenance issues and the sanctions prevented their resolution of the issues.
When Germany refused to budge and insisted on continued gas flowing in NS1, lol and behold, NS1 blows up.
But NS2 remains functional with one line.
However, in contrast to NS1 which Germany can state that existing contracts must be fulfilled, NS2 requires the German government to finish approving the pipeline, thereby stopping Germany's own placed sanctions on Russia in response to the invasion.
Had Germany felt pressured by the loss of gas via NS1 such that NS2 would be approved, it would basically divide the Western consensus on Ukraine and Russia and mark a success for Putin and Russia in reducing European sanctions and pressure on Russia.
It makes perfect sense for Russia to destroy NS1 and half of NS2, one, they hoped to divide the West with the idea of Poland-Ukraine-UK-USA (the Anglo-Saxon alliance in opposition to continental Europe (GER/France), a common Russian talking point) destroying the pipeline to keep Europe and Germany freezing in Winter and stopping European independence, Two, by leaving only NS2 able to flow, Russia hoped that since Germany would obviously fight back against the "Anglo-Saxons" by asking for gas, incidentally, this gas must flow thru the shuttered NS2, meaning the clear end of German shift in policy against Russia, in contrast to the more muddled NS1 fulfillment of existing gas contracts.
 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/zelensky-congress-speech-us-ukraine-support/672547/
A most unpleasant might have been. To say we owe Zelensky and the Ukrainians a LOT is an understatement. Truly, some tanks and some longer range missiles are not even a tithe of what we owe them.

One, German industry is not built on Russian gas. It is built on cheap energy which is often gas, which often came from Russia.
Now we import 0% Russian gas and the industry is still working.
Then, Russian gas was out on February 25th. That was a political decision and there is no way back. Except maybe to pay for Russian reparations to Ukraine when the war is over.
The most convincing theory is IMO that Putin burned the bridges behind him with that. To kill any chance of disposing of him, retreating from Ukraine and buying the way out with gas.

So I am not sure the Americans would be able to “fight like Americans” in this war - air parity being a big issue, US has not fought in an air parity context since Korea.  Big formations manoeuvring might actually play to Russian strengths: they are large enough that even Russian ISR will spot them, and they are concentrated which favours Russian massed fires.
Russians are in bad shape but I am not sure they are in such bad shape that offering them big targets wont get a response. Now corrosive warfare and then an iron fist to really exploit the breakthrough may be a plan here.  It may accelerate Russian collapses, but then we get into the logistics problems.  One has to sustain those formations at 100s of kms as they blitz.   
I am still kinda at “dance with the one that brung ya” and “if it ain’t broke…etc”.  Does the UA need manoeuvre formations, yes.  Do they need to emulate the US or other western powers…less sure they should.  In fact we could probably take in a lot of lessons and adopt the Ukrainian ways of war in many ways - it has been tried and tested in peer environment. The western way of war has never really had that.  Persian Gulf was a close as we got but that was 30+ years ago and a very different war. Since then it has largely been COIN/dusty grudge matches or the tethered one eyed goat that was left of the Iraqi military in ‘03- hardly a stunning pedigree of victories to show for trillions in defence spending and fairly untried in the environment the UA finds itself within.

Interesting.
Ukraine has done rather well by specifically not fighting like Americans. Conversely, the ANA did rather poorly in large part because they did try to do that.

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above: How quickly can a target be identified and located?
It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to re-calibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.
The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.
Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.
There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.
None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.
How quickly can that be sent to a firing battery?
This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a per-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.
None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.
How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?
Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.
Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.
Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummeling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.
At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or plane that’s about to buzz overhead.
Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.
How well surveyed is the gun position?
This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.
So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.
How well known are the current met conditions?
Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.
You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.
Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.
Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.
 
 
So, all that’s to do with speed and accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery piece is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, exhaust products of burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.
Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependent on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.
Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.
 
 
Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like the two forces were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.
Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be going off over your head rather than the bad guy's. Good FOs know those considerations, and choose fuzes accordingly.
  Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing in what he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

Let's hope they are military Operational Analysis/Operational Research bean counters then rather than the treasury/management consulting type who decided that maintaining adequate national stocks of PPE or a domestic production capability was a waste of money prior to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
 
The phrase that has always stuck in my mind was the army officer who described military logistics as 'not so much just in time as just in case.'

Let's hope they are military Operational Analysis/Operational Research bean counters then rather than the treasury/management consulting type who decided that maintaining adequate national stocks of PPE or a domestic production capability was a waste of money prior to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
 
The phrase that has always stuck in my mind was the army officer who described military logistics as 'not so much just in time as just in case.'