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Holien

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  1. Like
    Holien got a reaction from LuckyDog in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    As a wise man has already mentioned we (all of us outside of the Kremlin) have no idea what the real turn out was...
    But we can clearly see that it wasn't an election. It was a PR exercise...
     
     
  2. Upvote
    Holien reacted to The_Capt in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Considering that he basically: controls the media, makes real opposition disappear (or kills them outright), has central control of internal security who are arresting anyone who even has a whiff of real dissent, and anyone running against him is basically approved by him - Russia isn't even close to a functioning democracy at this point anymore than North Korea is.  To come here claiming otherwise is disinformation of the worst sort.
  3. Upvote
    Holien reacted to The_Capt in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    BS of the highest order.  You have zero proof of this and just about no one who knows anything about election processes outside of Russia agrees with you.
  4. Like
    Holien got a reaction from The Steppenwulf in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Latest Perun video and nothing we don't know, Russian Arms Exports are in the toilet being flushed down the swanny...
    Quite a good analysis and some detail about the deals with India and China.
     
     
  5. Like
    Holien got a reaction from The Steppenwulf in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    BBC had a page on Macron and his volt face...
     
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68575251
     
  6. Like
    Holien got a reaction from CAZmaj in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Latest Perun video and nothing we don't know, Russian Arms Exports are in the toilet being flushed down the swanny...
    Quite a good analysis and some detail about the deals with India and China.
     
     
  7. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Kinophile in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Yet more? 
     
  8. Upvote
    Holien got a reaction from Kinophile in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Latest Perun video and nothing we don't know, Russian Arms Exports are in the toilet being flushed down the swanny...
    Quite a good analysis and some detail about the deals with India and China.
     
     
  9. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    The drone, launched allegedly from Odesa oblast hit not operational Mi-8 helicopter in unrecognized Transnistria, Tiraspol airfield. 
    Transnistria had 5 Mi-8 and 6 Mi-24 helicopters, but as claimed Moldova they are all in poor conditions.
    So, what a sense to strike broken helicopter it's unclear - either this was "false flag", but what consequenses after this? Transnistria will attack Odesa? It's ridiculous. Or this was probe of Budanov to see reraction. About year ago unknown drone already attacked some object in Transnistria, but nothing apocaliptic happened.   
     
  10. Upvote
    Holien reacted to billbindc in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    I don't have a Telegraph sub so I can't read the article but while Macron's shift is surprising...LePen's is far more surprising still. If I were a betting man, I would throw some kopecks on the square that says that the French government came into possession of some information regarding Moscow's efforts to undermine the government that shocked and that information exposed the LePen and her cohorts in such a way that they had to make a swift and decisive choice. 
    Watch this space. 
     
  11. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    "Liberty for Russia Legion" and some pro-Ukrainain Chechen unit took over control Gor'kovskoye village on the border in Belgorod oblast
    Russian milbloggers in hysteria write "this is Photoshop, because since 2018 there is no Gor'kovskoye village settlement (like has written on the table, as if teared off from administrative building), it was transfrmed into Gor'kovskoye village territory (it includes five tiny villages around and Gor'kovskoye is an administrative center), so the table in hands of LRL fighters either old or just photoshoped. Of course, when video was released they came to next study - anger. 
     
  12. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Russian officials claimed 39 UKR UAVs tried to attack nine Russian regions, including Moscow oblast. Of course, "all were shot down/supressed". As we can see above - oil refinery successfully shot down all UAVs buy itself. 
    Here is attack of UKR UAV on Domodedovo airport near Moscow - it hit at some storage facility
     
  13. Like
    Holien got a reaction from The Steppenwulf in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    This really helped me understand the Russian pyramid problem. 
    Also touched on why Ukraine is protecting its younger generation from recruitment. 
    Imo worth the 30 minutes watching as he explains the issues really well.
    Ties into Russian increase of invalids...
  14. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Operation in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts still under a fog of war. 
    Today we had only free-Russian fighters "presentation" of 25 captured enemies, among them was platoon commander of 45th engineer-sapper brigade of Western military district, which unit set minefield, was attacked and destroyed. 
    Free-Russia fighters wrote, Russian aviation is dropping many KABs/FABs on own villages and settlements, and its number is more that was in Bakhmut.  
    Russian milbliggers became more pessimistic (therea are no more reports about completely repelled attack) - they report  about fierce clashes, especially in Kozinka and Spodariushyno. Graivoron is under artillery shelling. Belgorod is under periodical MLRS strikes and... under fallings of Pantsyr S1 launch stages. For today more than a dozen buildings got damages, were destroyed and damaged more than two dozens of cars
      
  15. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Free-Russia fighter from "Liberty for Russia Legion" checks captured Russian recons in Belgorod or Kursk oblast - Typhoon-K MRAP, using by recon brigades is in the cadre.

    Russian Volunteer Corps uses captured BTR-82A to fire on the enemy position
     
  16. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    The story with 250 US M117 APCs, which US offered in the end of 2022, but it's turned out they need in repair, upgrade and additional arming with AGLs, so terms of delivering was shifted on 2025, at last came to finish. These APCs now arriving to Ukriane. First units, which got thm on armament became 425th separate assault battalion "Skala" ("Rock")
     
  17. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Haiduk in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    About 1-1,5 month ago video, how Russian "tankodesant" tried to burst in UKR trench on Kreminna direction. Three soldiers of 1st National Guard Presidental "Bureviy" brigade destroyed the tank and enemy infantry in the trench fight, one Russian surrendered
     
  18. Upvote
    Holien reacted to chrisl in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    It's awfully close to what the US experienced in 2002 in the Millenium Challenge wargame, where the Red Team used an armada of small speedboats to get inside the pickets and first spot all the ships to hit them with cruise missiles, then later used more small speedboats on suicide attacks.  The Red Team sank 16 ships. If you don't have to find suicidal volunteers to drive the motorboats, it's easier to put more of them on the water to overwhelm the defenses.  The Navy's first response to the Red Team win was denial.  Not denial of the motorboats the ability to get through, but denial that it  was a valid and effective tactic.
    As for the detection problem that he describes, I suspect the problem is worse than he describes.  It's not obvious that the US has really solved it with technology, particularly since there have been a few high profile major collisions at sea not all that long ago.  They depend a lot on the age old Mk I Eyeball all around the ship, and use further out ships and aircraft to extend the range of the eyeballs.  It's why big ships have historically traveled in fleets with smaller "sacrificial" ships spread out around them.  I've seen various systems for repelling the little motorboats (some of which depend on them having people in them) but not a lot of detail on detection systems, which I suspect are still hard for everybody.
    I'm not a radar person, but a lot of the same things apply in the optical.  He doesn't go into technical details, but I suspect part of why the surface clutter problem is reduced at longer range is because the size of resolution elements gets bigger as you go farther (same angle per element, farther away), so it gets averaged over each whole element.  Plus the smaller reflected signals may be below a set detection threshold.  That all makes the screen look clearer at a some longer distance, but if the target you're looking for is down in the same size range and radar reflectivity as the clutter, it's also going to get averaged down and you're still not going to see it when it's far away.  The most effective way to see the little boats far out is going to be with a picket of helicopters (or now drones) that fly around and watch the sea far enough out to spot them from above at what is relatively short range for the pickets.  
  19. Upvote
    Holien reacted to The_Capt in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Not really but maybe half way there….?  My point was that a societies military is a lot more than a lone political ideological data point.  If we somehow built a perfect Afghan military that aligned with their society and culture the outcome would have likely been the same.  This is because the issues with Afghanistan were deeper than defence and security.  The ANA was very often a domestic army of strangers because the locals were voting with IEDs. No equipment or training was going to solve that. Maybe a couple hundred years of social evolution but it really wouldn’t matter how we built a central military in that nation because it did not want to be the nation we wanted it to be.  Hell the Taliban do not have full internal security control and they are far better aligned to Afghan reality.  The failure to “graft” an Afghan security force was a symptom of a larger disease, not the disease in itself.
    My larger point is that there is a link between a society and its military (obviously) but we should avoid oversimplifying that relationship or ignore a lot of other factors as we apply a nice neat template to the war in Ukraine.  When one is doing Military Assistance, you definitely have to take into account “how they fight” but one cannot bet on that single pony and expect success.  “How they live”, “Where they live”, “How they pay for it”, “Who they fight and fight for” and “Why they fight” are much larger than whatever political ideology is in play.
    In reality this entire discussion is not about building militaries around the world, it is about intervention as a broader strategy.  Based on the last 30 years it has been the major strategy of the Western world, we are doing a version of it in Ukraine right now.  However, our successes in employing this strategy are spotty at best, with many high profile failures.  How much longer we are going to keep trying it?  Well that is a very good question.
     
  20. Upvote
    Holien reacted to cesmonkey in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Interesting post by Rybar on the current situation near Avdiivka. Some excerpts below:
    https://t.me/rybar/58209
     
     
  21. Upvote
    Holien reacted to JonS in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Despite your effort to boil the ocean here I think we are in pointed agreement once again, albeit coming at it from different directions.
    If I read you correctly, you're saying that trying graft a western style military onto Afghanistan didn't work because their government wasn't compatible with that style of military. I agree with that, and if I'm understanding him correctly, so does @Kinophile. That is actually his main point, despite your effort to disagree with it.
    Anyhoo, I agree. However, in Afghanistan's case I think the original sin was trying to trying to give them a military that looked like some weird amalgam^ of western expeditionary-ish doctrines that was never going to work in their context. The Afghan people can obviously fight, really well and really effectively, when they fight in ways that suit them. In other words, like you, I think there was a mismatch between the civil/political milieu and the indigenous military forces in Afghanistan, but unlike you I think that effort should have gone into creating a military that fit that milieu, rather than trying to impose or import a political ideology that would have been able to support "our" way of fighting.
    Hopefully the relevance to Ukraine is obvious. And I think on that we definitely agree.
     
     
    ^ given the number and variety of different training teams from different nations they weren't even trying to adopt a single doctrine. Instead they had to try and make sense of all the doctrines at once.
  22. Upvote
    Holien reacted to chrisl in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Yes. Images like that exist for both sides.  That’s datum, not data. It doesn’t tell me anything about how numerously or effectively Ru is using FPVs.  If it takes them 100 FPVs to inflict the same damage as Ukraine does with 10, then they’re using them 10x less effectively. (Edit- I see the link below went to plots on attacks. It didn’t display inline on my phone.  Thats number of attacks, but not effectiveness)
  23. Upvote
    Holien reacted to poesel in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    That's 500 mil just for ammo production, out of a total of 2 bil for defense spending.
    But more important than the actual numbers is the fact, that the EU as an entity is spending money on defense. AFAIK, that is unprecedented.
  24. Upvote
    Holien reacted to The_MonkeyKing in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    The sum was 500 million euros...
    Finland made the same investment last year to our own plants alone
  25. Upvote
    Holien reacted to Carolus in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Quite a historic move for the purely economic union. 
     As I thought in the past, the EU should not be completely underestimated, although it is an entity without an army. 
    It's a financial juggernaut and some EU parliamentarians are idealistic people (in a good way), motivated by the idea of a transnational effort.
     
     
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