Holien

Other missile hits in Kyiv
Tall building - I think, it just turned out on the way of missile, which had flight route through it. Despite this several appartments were destroyed, there were killed and wounded.


Old "Khrushchovka" section just collapsed to the ground after direct hit of the missile. At least seven killed here, including three children.

And most painfull look - how six Russian missiles hit military plant Artem one by one. This was already foutrh or fifth attempt, but only now such huge impact.
Total number of dead in Kyiv -34. Today 2 y.o. boy from Okmadyt clinic has died
On this background the report of Air Force command looks very... unrealistic. 
Here their statistic (and strikes were not only on Kyiv in that day - Kruvyiu Rih with 10 killeld and Pavlohrad too)
1 Kinzhal - 1 intercepted
1 Zirkon - not intercepted
4 Iskander-M - 3 intercepted
13 Kh-101 - 11 intercepted (really?)
14 Kalibr - 12 intercepted (really?)
2 Kh-22 - not intercepted (Pavlohrad?)
3 Kh-59/69 - 3 intercepted.
Also there were reports about S-400 fragments indentified in Kyiv, but this wasn't reflected in this report. Either not confirmed, or...
You can see Kyiv was hit at last with 10-11 missiles, but Air Force Command report gives us only 6 "options". Shame. 
Experts found in Kh-101, which hit Okmadyt clinic mucj more western electronic components, than in previous versions. Air Force Command explains own failure, that missiles approached on extreme low altitude, so it was hard to detect them timely. 
Russian Kh-101 fly over Caspian sea to Ukraine
 

Initially I thought this was close interception and the building was hit by fragments of the missile. But on next day I've seen this video with this strike. There wasn't interception. This was deliberate strike by Kh-101/Kalibr. What they targeted there? Open subway line? But no. They targeted this area of small clinics and offices.
I've visited a doctor in the small clinic in neighbour building. I went off for 20 minutes before the strike from there. I watied city train in 1 km from there, heard air raid alarm sound (1,5 hours already passed after morning heavy strike) and since 3-4 minutes loud explosion. Before this I read Russian UAV was spotted over northern part of the city and thought this was a missile launch on UAV. But it was a strike. In this clinic "Adonis" were killed 7 people - 5 medics and 2 visitors. Probably somebody was killed or injured on the street - there are many open caffees there.  
Before I've seen this video, I thought Russian strike on Okhmadyt happened because of missile flight programm mistake with coordinates - the building of Infrstructure and Transport Ministry is in 100-150 m from the clinic and was a suitable target, espacially since the missile hit the place on clinic territory almost closest to ministry building, destroying a part of 2-storey building of toxicologic department and unique oncohematologiuacal labioratory for kids treatment, though could hit one of several main clinic buildings.
But after the video on strike on Adonis clinic and what happened on next day - I am sure this were deliberate sanctioned attacks which had to cause not only some victims, but heavily strike on public opinion. And yes - suddenly dozens of our insta-bloggers, with huge auditoiry (in hundred thousands and millions of subscribers) like on command became to post "We need a peace for any coast! We must stop this war immediately! Peace will be our true victory! Enough childen's deaths! Ukraine hasn't a chance to win this war! Our corrupted authorities led us to Paraguay war scenario to last Ukrianian!" (I bet these stupid luxury blondies even don't know where is this Paraguay and about which war they write)
Simultainously army of anonimous bots and MAGA idiots had started a message "Ukraine hit own children hospital with AA-missile and blames Russia!" 
Yes, Russians now more skilled in huge-scale information campaigmns, than in war on the ground.  

No, indeed. Our microdistrict has a shedule 8-9 hours guarantied without electricity, 6 hours guarantied with electricity and rest 9-10 hours are a "grey time", when electricity is mostly present, but in some situations this time can be used for cutting off. For today we had electricity since 9:30 without cut off. 

Why can we not upvote your posts Steve! Why! That is pure gold.
+1

Grabbed them by the oil and gas orders and squeezed.

Thanks 👍 

Thanks 👍 

The new British Defence Minister is already in Ukraine meeting with Zelensky:
 

This is really the heart of the problem.  The technology to counter multiple incoming drones effectively - to detect, track and engage, is directly linked to the technology to detect, track and engage the platforms that would carry this same c-UAS system. So effective fully autonomous PD is going to use the same technology as those fully autonomous UAS.  In fact the technology to stop all those small fast moving drones will need to be more robust and complex by virtue of the difference in target profile.  C-UAS is shooting at a small bird sized target, those UAS are shooting at a large metal vehicle.
So what?  The asymmetry in target profile creates asymmetry in targeting technological requirements.  One cannot say that the defensive technology is right around the corner yet offensive autonomous UAS/UGV are over the horizon…because they have shared technologies.  What is fundamentally different is the targets and those target profiles.  So if we invent a super guns system that can detect and effectively engage a drone swarm, we invent the same technologies to make those drone swarms more effective…and very possibly cheaper.
The problem this entire debate is that one side has an open loop - things are changing and we do not know how to adapt yet. The other is a closed loop. - things are changing but we do know how to adapt…make things like they were before.  So defensive technology looks promising, while offensive technology is “far off and risky”.  This is inconsistent and frankly makes no sense as both offensive and defensive share the same technological base.
We have seen the exact same thing happen before. The sensors and targeting technology for direct fire systems became and arms race with our opponents.  Soon we had all sorts of fancy optics and computers to make a first round hit. Then someone figured out we could put the same technology on a missile and the modern ATGM was born. It is far harder to stop an ATGM than it is for the missile to kill a vehicle.  Further the missiles can be wrong multiple times while the vehicle can only be wrong once.  “Ah but we have mighty APS!”  Sure but it uses the same technology base as the missiles themselves - sensor to shooter. So if we invent a super APS, we also invent the technology to make those missiles better in the overlaps.
One cannot choose which technology is going to have an impact, they all are.  The problem we are facing now is not one of asymmetric technology, it is of asymmetric vulnerability.  A small drone is small and low weight, so it is fast and can hide in environmental clutter.  It uses a lithium ion battery (most of them) so is relatively cool. It makes noise but low energy noise compared to background.  It is agile, because it is small and has high energy to weight. It is smart, mostly because we stick a human brain on it, but that is changing.  A military vehicle, pick any of them.  Is large - weighing tons, hot - see internal combustion and relatively slow and non-agile.  They are also very dumb and cannot operate without at least one human brain onboard. So based on simple physics - the vehicle is much harder to protect than the drone.  It is much easier to find and fix. And as we can see in thousands of examples in this war, they are easy to kill or at least damage. Now drones are too but they are also cheap and easy to mass produce, vehicles are not.
So what people, like ATH are chasing is battlefield symmetry.  At that point qualitative aspects such as training, morale and technology advantage matter. The problem is that we do not really know what battlefield symmetry looks like right now. We cannot simply pretend to erase what is happening - but some people are trying very hard to. We cannot pick from the menu of emerging technologies and only see that which will lead back to symmetry and ignore those that reinforce it - this is not how technology works. Miniaturization, low cost light computing power, sensors, energy storage and materials have created this situation.  And they are not going away, in fact they continue to accelerate. These trends are likely to drive asymmetric force development- the capability to defend and deny is higher than the ability to advance and attack. We have been here before.  But like last time, the technology to create communications, machine guns and artillery, also led to the same technologies to build lighter engines that made mech and airplanes possible.
What we do not know is what technology will bring symmetry back to the battlefield.  But history is pretty clear it is not going to be found in the past. We did not need a better protected horse…we needed a new horse. So we do not need better protected mech, we need new mech, or something that will do what mech used to do. The lesson from this entire discussion is not in finding a solution, it is in just how entrenched thinking can become.  If someone fields a super defensive system that can sway drones from the sky, blind ISR and make PGM imprecise…well we are back in business. The doctrines of the last 30 years still apply and we stand a chance at controlling the situation.  In short, I actually hope ATH is right…life would be so much simpler.  But I strongly suspect he is not.
The fundamentals are broken. Nothing he is pitching is a viable solution for this war, let alone the next one. The burden of proof is on his point of view, not mine.  We can see evidence of my viewpoint here on this board daily.  Mass is broken.  Mech is broken.  Offensive is broken. Surprise is broken. So if he wants to hang onto some vague future tech as able to solve all this, well I am going to need more than a corporate video…as I watch FPVs fly into a doorway.  He is selling hope, but I will need actual proof.  If APS is the answer, why is not working for either the UA or RA right now?  If sexy guns blasting at the sky are the answer, why are they not at the front end of mech assaults for either side right now?  In short until he can actually prove elements of his thesis in this war…well it remains hypothetical. While the observations we see daily are not.
I guess for me this got very easy suddenly - “hey that is great but unless it can solve for Tuesday in this war we can put it on the shelf next to jet packs and power armor”

Today's Gallioti, he says the British election is unlikely to make much difference. His far more interesting point is that there are only two conditions where Ukraine can truly quit fighting, at least this side of more or less total defeat. Either it smashes Russia out of every inch of Ukraine, and breaks the Russian military in the process, or it gets admitted to NATO with full article five at the peace conference. There really is  no third choice for a good outcome. To clarify he say that NATO membership would allow Ukraine to agree to a settlement where it gives up territory. Nothing else really will. So if we want this war to stop anytime soon...

But the question really is how much direct line of sight fire is needed. Isn't it a lot better to fire from further away? Provided you get similar effects with other weapons. So what do you want to shoot at with your tank? Houses and fortifications? Those are fixed and drones and artillery work quite fine against those. Infantry? Those are inside holes a couple meter underground 99% of the time while under attack? Other vehicles? Don't like sticking around either. So please say what you want the tank to do when it gets to the front line and list a couple of alternatives that could do the same job. 
The other part that is very unique about a tank is the protection. All the examples you are showing is that tanks are more survivable than other vehicles on the front line. But that argument is mute as they were designed to be more protected. So the real question is can a tank be made protected enough to increase the survival rate enough to be worth the cost. What is in development on that front right now? The material side is in a dead end pretty much for half a century. So thicker armor, different material, different spacing is not getting substantially better in the last 50 years. So the other option is active systems like trophy that shoot at the threat. In the end it's a defensive shield with missiles. There are lots of ways to reliably defeat such a system. For example. Shoot more attacks at the system than can be engaged at one point of time. Drain the system of all interceptor missiles. Use attacking characteristics (speed maneuverability direction ) that can not be defended against. So no active protection systems can never be a good solution when attacks are cheap and many. 
In conclusion there is currently nothing that can provide adequate protection on the modern battlefield. That's why survivability,the problem you actually want to solve, is not solved by protection. Instead we use concealment. Something that is not seen by the enemy is not being attacked. Range. Something that is far away can not be engaged although it is seen. Small / unimportant. Although the enemy can see and engage me he doesn't because there are other things to hit or he doesn't have economic weapons to do so. 
Now to the last point of a tank. Mobility. It's in this role we don't have any successor or alternatives currently for the tank.  In the end I think driving over land is way too slow in comparison to how fast information and strikes move. That's why offensive maneuver is dead on the current battlefield. 
To summarize. The current tank does not have enough use for its main armament. Can not survive long enough and can't outrun the things that are trying to kill it. Like the battle ship it's dead. 

Yes, the Russian disinfo campaign was good, nobody thought they were insane to try it. And yes, Hostomel was a very close run thing, and the actions of a handful of troops, along with Zelensky, an actor and comedian who turned out to have a backbone and didn't run at the first sign of trouble, probably did turn the tide and prevent something approaching a fait accompli in the early days.

Nope.
Even a simple and small amount of anti satellite work can create a total no go space in orbit that no amount of "I can put my satellites up faster than you can knock them down" will overcome. We are not far away from having no satellites in the most useful orbits if someone starts attacking satellites. After that well have to put things lower and have them fall out of the sky much sooner or put them higher and use more power, more complex coverage issues.
@LongLeftFlank I think it was touched on this but the issue is even more acute than that. 
Consider this article: https://aerospace.org/article/space-debris-101
The section "Are chain-reaction collisions or cascades real?" seems ominous - because it is.
 
The section "Will space debris make it impossible to fly or operate in space?" seems kinda OK - but it's not really, because this article is talking about how things are now and assumes more of the the same.
Now consider this article: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/debris-in-brief-factsheet.pdf
In that you can see that just one major satellite being destroyed would create as much debris as is already up there. Star-link satellites are 1/4 of a ton so that amount of debris would take the destruction of 40 of them. So, for every 40 star-link satellites that are wrecked we get and amount of debris equivalent to all that is up there already. For every 10 gps satellites the same and for each tellecom satellite the same. There are over 6000 star-link satellites up there. 
Even a few attack incidents makes things very hostile. A serious effort to disable a network would quickly lead to a cascade of debris generation in the orbits we need to use. It would not take much to leave us all blind and out launching the other side would not fix it. And EMP would not be better because all that uncontrollable stuff would eventually collide and create the same situation.
 
 

I do not disagree that the RA had counted on one war but got another.  Nor that the lack of dismounts and infantry hurt them as the BTG got pulled into a fight it was poorly designed for.
However, my point still stand...how many infantry are enough?  Further, this lens really misses how badly positioned and spread out the UA was along a front over 2000km long at the opening of this thing.  They were thin and strung out as well, in fact it was likely a core planning factor for the RA.
Read this for an idea of just how chaotic and close run a thing the fight was:
https://chacr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BAR-187-compressed.pdf
My point is that trying to clear ambushes along 100km when the ambushers can stand off 5000m instead of 500-1000m makes a major difference.  Once you add range the infantry bill goes up dramatically.  And the UA was not optimized for this sort of work in those initial days.  They were plugged in and had effective ISR but they were caught wrong footed north of Kyiv.
My problem with "well the RA needed more infantry" is that it does not recognize that the RA were going to need an unsustainable amount of infantry...and so would we.
How does one screen a Combat Team when the effective small team threats are now 5km out?  How about 20kms out with NLOS Spike? I am not sure why people keep thinking that we can somehow screen against this.  Or maybe they do not understand what screening and defile drills really mean.  It means dismounts screening and sweeping ahead of vehicles in close terrain to sweep AT teams and protect vehicles and armor. OK...so what is "close terrain" when an ATGM or FPV team can see, fix and hit at 5-10kms?
The reality is that ISR and range have changed the game.
 

You completely miss my point, as does Kofman - no one has “the infantry they are supposed to have” to try and secure a corridor fully illuminated by enemy ISR and harried by precision weapon systems with ranges 5-10kms.  That corridor in my example is 1000 sq kms that needs to be defended from small ATGM teams with NLAW and Javelin…that know exactly where the Russian are.
There is no military on earth that can deal with that right now.  Finally, the other big problem with this entire theory of “not enough infantry” is that the RA has definitely had plenty of infantry since Summer of ‘22.  The UA had western based formations summer ‘23.  And they did not solve the same fundamental problem the RA had on day 1 - ISR + Range = broken mass.
In fact this entire BTG = not enough infantry is a myth/excuse not a sound observation.  The BTGs as designed is basically somewhere between a western battlegroup and ACR Squadron.  They are modular and lighter on manpower but upgunned by firepower significantly (no surprise there being Russian).  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_tactical_group

Advantages and disadvantages
The combination of different weapons systems including heavy ones at a low organisational level allows heavy artillery bombardments to be laid on more easily and makes them available for use tactically. As such, a BTG can engage opposing units out to a longer range than, for example, a US Brigade Combat Team (BCT), which does not have heavy weapons devolved down to it.[29] Up to two BTGs can compose a brigade in the Russian army. Divisions and regiments have been superseded by brigades.[30]
However, the basic BTG's relative lack of manpower (they deploy with about 200 infantrymen) means it is not designed to hold ground but to continually inflict casualties while remaining mobile. This makes it reliant upon Marines, VDV and other troops such as paramilitaries (pro-Russian militias in the Donbass war) to hold ground or provide security along the flanks and rear.[5]: p. 3  That said it is a flexible tactical formation and additional infantry can be added if needed/available as the mission requires.[31]
So if you are planning a fast offensive war against an opponent with a fraction of your force - and given the ridiculous frontage that Ukraine had to defend along its entire eastern border, they did not have enough infantry either - they make a lot of sense.  What they are not built for is trying to hunt down two man teams with a 5km weapon system backed up by ISR everywhere.
But the “not enough infantry” has become and easy button excuse that makes us feel good but really avoids the uncomfortable truth of how much the battlefield is changing.

He does a nice job on battlefield transparency starting at about 10:39 - basically anything you do anywhere (even far back from the FEBA), you'll be seen within 20 minutes.  And I can assure you it's only going to get worse.
Then he follows it up by pointing out that if you're seen, your enemy can send a precision weapon to kill you.  Probably on the first shot.
So it's basically borg spotting for tens (or hundreds) of km providing targets for long range precision weapons.  
I'm only about 20 minutes in so far, but skimming the labeled sections it looks like he covers all the things we've been talking about here.  And what he's discussed so far is pretty accurate.  It's good that when talking about fires he takes a broad view of delivery systems.  

My working theory is that the central Russian failure was not lack of infantry, roads/mud, or poor combined arms.  Nor was it lack of air or sea superiority, as they had this in this early days of the war, before Patriots and western support kicked in.
It was a failure to isolate. Ukrainian resistance could see and talk to each other.  They could see cell phone video of resistance one town over. They could see Russian forces struggle. Ukrainians that could still see and talk to each other continued to resist with everything they had. The first time I was convinced that something was very wrong for the RA was when we could see video feeds of this war all over the place. Russia failed to make Ukraine go dark.  And once all those lights saw and connected to each other, the RA was in real trouble.
Remember western support really did not gel until later.  The first few months of this thing saw contributions but the most important was C4ISR.  The UA was plugged into US architecture and that made a real difference.  The impact of seeing the entire battlefield in real time and being able to react to that is game changing.  It made drones and HIMARs able to do what we see in videos everyday.  The ability for the UA to target any and all RA concentrations continues to this day.
Without that, I am not sure how long the UA would have held on.

There's a very obvious reason for the difference in your prediction vs. the predictions of the so-called experts: you've been doing quantitative modeling of actual combat capability for 20 years, including models of most of the forces and equipment involved in this war.  The framework for that modeling has been validated on older equipment by comparing outcomes of scenarios to real battles that are well documented.  There's less to validate against for the more modern equipment, but there's still some info, and lots of details of equipment became available after the end of the USSR.
I've been reading Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" on and off and he points out why experts like Kofman are often wrong - for the most part they don't get feedback on their predictions because they're either dealing with things that are very fuzzy and they can claim "I was close" or they're very long term and they just get lost in time.  By doing quantitative modeling you've had a ton of practice in making predictions of how things should happen in a peer conflict like this and then seeing if your model plays out as expected. 

Too much credit is given to Putin for these things. All Western populations have varying degrees of people with these attitudes brought about by our own government policies and wealth distribution.
You don't have chunks of Western political parties praising/making excuses for Putin because he has conned them. They are simply the same type of people. Democracies just do a better job overall of keeping the rabid communist/fascist/klepocrats out of power and more under control if they get there.

Hmmm really...
That's like me losing all my money at a casino and saying at least I won the napkin & free box of matches they gave me while pissing away all my life savings....
 

It is almost like signing up to be cannon fodder for an utterly amoral and autocratic regime is a bad idea. Who knew.

Hmmm really...
That's like me losing all my money at a casino and saying at least I won the napkin & free box of matches they gave me while pissing away all my life savings....
 

Hmmm really...
That's like me losing all my money at a casino and saying at least I won the napkin & free box of matches they gave me while pissing away all my life savings....
 

It is claimed that Ukraine used an F-16 for an airstrike for the first time.