Roach

Nope, no straddling involved, that's firmly on the insane side of the line.
Now, a robot dog that cleans up after your live dog, that would be genius.

If I did this right, I gifted the article and it gave me a gift link (I think), for those who want to read it. If it doesn't work for you PM me and I'll try to get it right.
https://wapo.st/3vZhk1f
Dave

US design for maintainability is generally pretty excellent. It makes for expensive procurement and high maintenance budgets (ie, swap the entire Abrams power pack rather than fix the fault lòcally) but it does that in order to increase availability rates at the pointy end.
Given that general approach, I'd be surprised if the Patriot was an exception. Given *that* I'd assume there is more internal damage that both can't be seen in a photo and can't be fixed in Ukraine.
Or, alternately, the priority to date has been on pushing end-user equipment into Ukraine, and not on the support systems that keep them operational and in users hands. Edit: So what would be a simple field repair for a US unit has to go back to the States when its operated by Ukraine.
But weighing against that second conclusion is the existence of USAREUR; if it was conceivably fixable forward at Grafenwohr or Kaiserlauten (or by any of the European operators of Patriot) then they would. That it wasn't suggests significant but non-obvious damage.
I think.

I take offence to the term "research".  I have reviewed your thread and clearly you had a conclusion and then set about picking information to support it.  This is not "research" it is "spinning" - I have failed staff college students for doing what you are proposing as "research", applying half the facts, largely out of context.
For example: "Russia already controls large swathes of Ukraine with valuable minerals..."  and linking this back to Chinese motivation to keep Russia in this war.  This is one enormous theory hanging on very little substance.  We have been through the "Ukrainian goldmine" theory before and it was categorically debunked.
Let's take Metals:
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/72-83_Metals
So before this war Ukraine was already selling Russia about $1B a year in metals and about 345M to China.  A quick scan says it looks like Ukraine was doing about $10B in metal globally.  
Meanwhile China is importing $144B a year in metals globally. Mostly from Indonesia, Congo and Japan:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/metals/reporter/chn?redirect=true  
China does not need Ukrainian metal, they already have global access an order of magnitude beyond the entirety of Ukraine production.
The we get into detail like Titanium.  Yes, Ukraine has got healthy Titanium reserves:
https://inventure.com.ua/en/analytics/articles/titanium-in-ukraine:-military-and-economic-context#:~:text=What are the reserves of,%2C rutile – 2.5 million tons.
About 8.4 million tons.  Wow, sounds like a big number and no doubt Russia and China want to get their greedy hands on it.  Whoops:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/titanium-reserves-country-10-biggest-155049656.html#:~:text=China is the largest producer,largest vanadium-titanium magnetite deposit.
China is the global leader in titanium production. Why on earth do they want more Titanium from Ukraine on the market?
Lithium? Yes. Ukraine has about 500k tons which are largely untapped. Wow that is a big number:
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/lithium-the-link-between-the-ukraine-war-and-the-clean-energy-transition/
Well unless one considers global Lithium reserves - Ukraine has about half as much as Canada:
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/mining-data-statistics-and-analysis/minerals-metals-facts/lithium-facts/24009
You will note that China is sitting on 2M tonnes.
And then there is the thorny issue of where that lithium is located in Ukraine:

https://www.renewablematter.eu/articles/article/ukraine-all-lithium-reserves-and-mineral-resources-in-war-zones
This is where these wingnut theories really break down.  Russia was already occupying a couple of these deposits in Donetsk.  Lets be generous and say they took enough to grab 4 new deposits.  Woo-hoo.  Now a few thorny questions:  what shape is the infrastructure in these areas look like right now?  How much is it going to cost Russia to get these sites up and running?  How much actual money are they going to make from this sweet lithium?  When can they expect to see any money?  And finally, the big one, how much does all that compare to the costs of sustaining this war?  Last count the war in Ukraine was costing Russia between .5-1 B$ per day. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=In November 2022 it was,%24500 million to %241 billion.)
So your theory here is that China is going to spend effort, money and diplomatic points to secure access to lithium, which they do not need and is costing Russia likely far more than it is worth at this point?  In fact the same could be said for just about all Ukrainian metals.
Comparing modern day China to Nazi-Germany is just plain dumb.  Maybe pre-WW1 Germany - ignoring socialist ideologies and about four thousand years of history and culture.  The idea that China somehow masterminded this whole thing (with zero proof, I might add) is laughable.  China is stuck on the other side of this mess and is trying to deal with it on their end. They are going to pursue and promote their interests, just like we are.
Russia and Putin are throwing up all over themselves in some weird attempt to rebuild an Imperial Russia...and are failing brutally.  Sure, Russia could "hold on" until we see some sort of Armistice.  They will have gained a grand total of an additional 6-7% of Ukraine from what they controlled on 21 Feb 22.  It only cost them around 500k men, most of their modern military equipment and diplomatic/geographic isolation that may last several decades....brilliant. 

Here's my take from reading the thread and a bunch of OSINT:
This is one where I think it's meaningful to separate "Russia winning" from "Putin's regime winning". I'd suggest that on day 1 of the war, those two were in alignment: Russia wins by absorbing a large neighboring state into its sphere of influence with only targeted bloodshed (at the ruling elite). Putin's regime wins by propping up a vision of pan-Russian nationalism and empire building that cements Putin as Czar.
On day today of the war, those visions of victory are no longer in alignment. Russia has lost - they will not absorb Ukraine into their sphere of influence with only targeted bloodshed, and have actively reinforced the global ruleset by pushing Finland and Sweden into NATO and reawakening Europe to the necessity of self-defensive capability. They've also offered the west a huge opportunity to figure out what fighting a 21st century peer war looks like.
For Putin's regime, victory looks like staying in power. And he's been far more successful at that than we collectively predicted. Even Prigozhin's coup-like thing proved a manageable threat (for reasons that are unclear to me). Somehow recon-by-meat-assault isn't provoking civil unrest, &c. &c. So that one's not a loss for Putin yet. Economy still appears to be sort of functioning? Though it's hard to see how he can keep it that way indefinitely?
For Ukraine, the day 1 objective was "remain an independent and free society". That still appears to be their objective, and they're doing a yeoman's job of that. Jury's still out, though, on what the end state looks like.

Well, I don't have a ban stick and you didn't answer my queries either.
Barely even queries, more like requests for elaboration. I'd like to think I was polite about it.
It's back on page 3361 if you care to have a go.

So out of that entire wall of text this is really the only point made about the core subject of this entire thread.  The rest is as was noted, “meta”.  Again, no citations, no analysis, no insight…simply “wot I think”.  Fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how well or poorly informed.
Let’s unpack this one kernel of an actual relevant opinion. First off “absurd”.  So this statement appears to suggest that anyone who thinks otherwise is lost in a sea of misinformation.  It is clearly “obvious” that Ukraine is losing, or at least Russia is not.  You seem to be referring to the recent retaking of Adiivka and Russian winter offensive as proof of this. You also seem to infer that we are deluding ourselves otherwise - hence this whole “what is the truth?” thing.
So, if you have indeed been following this thread, you will have noted that the state of each party of this war has been a subject of intense debate. We have had plenty of injects that Ukraine is losing, on the edge of collapse and Adiivka is the “beginning of the end”.  We have had the counter opinion as well.
But let’s just unpack your central position: advancing while your opponent is retreating is a clear sign of winning. [note: you do see the irony of your heuristics argument here, right?] Any student of warfare can come up with dozens of historical examples of this position being simply untrue. A military is a very large complex machine that can still conduct offensive operations even though it is fundamentally broken - Germany 1918, Germany 1944-45, US 1950, US 1969 to name but a few.  So to take one tactical offensive, which has been gained at very high cost (or were all those casualties a “false-flag” operation with crisis actor tanks and IFVs?), as “absolute proof” that Russia is indeed not losing this war clearly demonstrates that you are taking a single phenomenon out of context and drawing a broad conclusion.
So rather than us trying to prove to you, which is always how these things tend to go, let’s go the other way. Why don’t you do the work and prove it to us?  What is the state of the Russian military? Tactically, Operationally and Strategically?  What is the state of the Ukrainian military?  Based on your assessment, how will the war likely progress?  How do the answers to those questions inform future policy?  What should those policies be? Most importantly, how can this war end positively for the West?  What are the risks and opportunities?
Now before you start typing, and I am betting you already think you know answers to these questions, we are going to need to see proof of work.  No more vague, “but the truth is unknowable” smoke screen.  You clearly have an opinion and one would hope it has been informed.  So state the facts you are employing to come to it. Cite some expertise beyond your own that supports your position.  Even those trapped in that damned cave have shadows they can make reference to.
I am very doubtful you will do any of this to be blunt. The fact that looking up a legal definition of genocide was somehow “only for lawyers and too much work” kinda situates the depths you are willing to go in all this:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf
(that took about 2 mins).
So to echo your own sentiment - I really do not care what you think you know or don’t know at this point.  You have demonstrated no expertise, or leveraging of expertise in any of whatever this has been about.  You have employed classic use of “empty uncertainty” by throwing around some pretty junior philosophy and zero actual facts. You are not a military or political analyst, that much is clear.  And you do not contribute by pulling in new information.
So far you have come onto this thread with “doubt” as a form of offence - you really have not come with honest questions in search of answers…you already have all the answers you want. You basically attacked the regulars on this thread with this uncertainty and then have done the “wounded dove” act as you get pushback. You have to be at least the dozenth person to do this, and you did not even come up with an original spin. Same pattern as every other time - throw out an inflammatory unsupported counter opinion, dance around facts and dress it up as “being real”, act all hurt when you get mauled.  Now you will disappear into the woodwork to avoid the ban, or jump off the bridge because this is your hill to die upon for some reason.
Or maybe, just maybe, you will go away for awhile and come back with some new facts that create a coherent argument we can actually debate.  I would be both shocked and delighted of this were the case.  

Putin's invasion plans were formulated on Hunter Biden's laptop.  They were created while he and George Soros were vacationing at Jeffery Epstein's place at the same time that Hilary Clinton was discussing a marketing plan with Epstein to use a Pizza place as a front for child trafficking.  I seem to remember this was close to the same time Jewish Space lasers were lighting up California forests because we hadn't properly raked them like they do in Finland.  I remember all this because right about then I was sticking light bulbs up my anus to kill Covid.
See it all makes sense now right?

This theory holds basically zero water.  So the fact that Putin has been framing almost every Ukrainian deep strike action as "terrorism" since Day 1 was not enough?  He needed to stage or let a "real terror attack happen" to get "average peoples [who] don't know **** about politics and war" onside?  He already freakin had that according to "experts" on this forum because Russians are all sheeple who massively voted in favor of him.  Posters here who live in the region declared loudly that "all Russians really support Putin and the election shows it."  But now Putin needs to stage a terror attack to...do...what, exactly?
Oh wait, Putin didn't have massive support for this war - even though he got massive support in the election - and needs to stage a terror attack to drive it into his arms because all that other stuff was not enough?  If Russian's are that micro-social centric then 200 people getting killed in downtown Moscow is not going to change that.  In fact, as we have been told repeatedly, Russians simply do not care about each other: widows dancing on RA soldiers graves, mothers offering up sons, Moscow not giving two ****'s about rural Russia and vice versa.  So now a single shoot out at a concert in Moscow is going to override all that "who gives a f#ckery?"
I am sorry but this is all sucking and blowing at the same time.  We can stop this crap right now.  In reality this was very likely a terror attack by a known VEO, that US intel picked up ahead of time.  Russian distrust and dysfunction created conditions for a security failure.   Now if we want to have a real discussion on the event let's focus on the real questions:
- Why did ISIL-K do this now?
- How is Putin going to spin it and why?  Because I strongly suspect he got caught off-guard as well. 
Any bizarre conspiracy theories on "false-flags" and/or "crisis actors" can go in the bin with "bio-black sites" until someone can come up with any real proof.
 

We actually have no idea what Putin’s real base of genuine support is or is not.  First off he controls any and all “polls” either directly or indirectly so trying to gauge who really supports him, who is pretending simply to avoid trouble and who opposes but is afraid to say anything, in real terms is basically impossible to do inside Russia, let alone outside looking in.  “Look a bunch of people lined up to support him” is not a viable basis for deductions.
Second problem is that support, in a functioning democracy, is founded on a basis of “informed decision”.  This means that all sides can spin, argue and slant but in the end the news media and objective journalism is supposed to provide a voter with a range of diverging viewpoints and facts.  Voters can then decide who to support, or not support based on their own personal perception and understanding.  This is damned hard to do in a functioning liberal democracy; however, in Russia it is likely impossible.  Putin controls the mainstream media - we have heard endless stories of dissenters being arrested or charged, hell he passed laws making criticism of this war illegal.  He also has a lot of control within social media, suppressing sites and flooding the RUSNet with stooges.  We have seen enough outright lies and insane claims out of Russian media in the last two years to know that the average Russian simply is not able to access much beyond what Putin wants them to see and hear.  Under these conditions “real support” is nearly impossible because no alternative facts, ideas or even options are ever presented.
Finally, as our Ukrainian friends like to point out continually, the average Russian is poorly educated, poor wealth and largely ignorant…this is why they keep signing up for this war.  To now accuse these people of “knowingly supporting Putin” as if they have access to alternatives is short-sighted at best.  Further, Kraze’s continued insistence to call every living Russian on the planet as vicious war loving murders is not only disingenuous, it treads dangerously close to genocidal narratives that have no place on what is supposed to be a rational objective forum.  We know Russians opposed this war, a few hundred thousand ran away.  Others are resisting passively.  We also know that many really do not even understand what this war is or is not because Putin is preventing them from seeing any truth but his own.  We also know some Russians also buy into this war and Putin fully even knowing the reality.  In the end we are going to have to deal with all of them in some form or another because as much as some people are acting out emotionally here, we are not going to wipe Russia off the face of the earth and salt the ground on their mass graves.
So be pissed off, but do not come here and promote outright disinformation in some sort of weird attempt to get us to all buy into some “every Russian is evil and must die” nonsense.  There are all sorts of sites on the internet where people on both sides can engage in that emotional orgy, but it should not be here.  The second this forum becomes one of those places, I for one, am out.
 

Ok, well now we know which camp you are in, and it definitely is not the "liberal peacenik" one.  Hmm, and I wonder which presidential candidate should be best qualified to flex this immense political power and which one is "weak and indecisive"?
Regardless, we are talking about negotiating from a position of strength here, which runs directly counter to your original position of "Ukraine is out of all options, therefore should sue for peace."  In fact you have been arguing vehemently that there are no military solutions left...and now you want to make some?
But, ok, lets put that all aside.  So if the US is going to "threaten" it must be ready to follow through.  What you are proposing is on an entire different scale than the support we have seen.  First problem will be getting the US political machine to agree to these levels of spending, and very fast spending - cries of oversight and corruption will ring.  Next problem is putting the UA in a position where they can actually absorb, integrate and operationalize these levels of support; not insurmountable but no small challenge.
Next, Ukraine will need to demonstrate military victory on the battlefield.  One cannot simply "threaten" with the Russians, we tried that.  One has to demonstrate.  So we are back to creating viable military options.
And then there is this part: "In negotiations, West agrees not to take Ukraine into NATO, but accepts into EU, and makes concrete security guarantees to in any case. UN peacekeepers in along border. Russia gets symbolic non-NATO status for Ukraine. No future invasion of Ukraine for Russia."
That is weak.  EU is an economic and diplomatic union, not a military one.  UN peacekeepers is actually an idea I have floated but one would definitely need a new Russian regime to even get Russia in the room to negotiate.  Ukraine outside of NATO would need binding security bi-lats with western troops in Ukraine a la South Korea as a minimum.  I think Ukraine outside of NATO leaves too many dangerous mouseholes open - this is why Finland and Sweden jumped in.  NATO is the one thing that appears to deter Putin and Russia and I suspect it will be the only way to actually secure Ukraine in the long term.
You are also pretty weak on reparations and war crimes.  Maybe it is the medium but your position kind of feels "oh well...watcha gonna do?"  There can be no road to renormalization with Russia without these conditions being met, that much must be clear.  If we go soft on this, certain political parties will try and weasel back to "business as usual". 
The only way the US can use its power, short of an all out war, is to push support into Ukraine in order to sustain resistance until Russia falters - we can definitely agree on this.  The idea that "this is easy" and "could be done tomorrow" is dangerously amateur and short-sighted thinking, currently being expressed by some sectors of the US political landscape...and not new to this board. 
Russia must be in forced into a position of "had enough?"  and not "hey can you please?"  At least under this regime.  This cannot be done "overnight" or "easily" under the current constraints.  This is in fact threading a pretty tough needle.  Too much and one faces uncontrolled escalation, or a full on Russian collapse...both of which are worse that this current war.  Too little and things drag on too long and western resolve and attention slips again.  This is a tricky and challenging situation in that the US cannot employ its immense power to the fullest without making thing worse both internally or externally.  This is also a pretty high stakes proxy war that must; stay limited and result in the slow death of the Putin regime and doctrine, create a secure and stable Ukraine, and somehow set the conditions for future broader regional stability.  This is not a "deal" one can make in a weekend. 
 

Kinda looks like you have constructed a fortress of opinion.  As I noted, almost every major military water crossing in history has been led by lighter forces establishing a bridgehead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Badr_(1973)#:~:text=Operation Badr (Arabic%3A عملية بدر,Peninsula%2C on 6 October 1973.
So the ability to push light forces across a water obstacle and support them is not new or novel.   Nor are commando raids.  Combining these two into sustained effect is the question - again, I assess as not only possible but plausible.
As to UA light forces “buzzing around RU LOCs = fanciful”, they have already demonstrated this on repeated occasions in this war.  First at Kyiv and then later at Kharkiv and Kherson.  I think the issue here is you appear to have a bias against what light forces are capable of accomplishing.  You then are combining this with over-subscribing their logistical and support demands.  This is conceptual model that is pre-disposed to a “too hard for too little” frame which frankly appears unassailable even in the face of counter facts.
You “think” Russia has created sufficient defences?  Again, you appear to be enamoured by your own opinion here.  I laid out the likely force-to-space issues Russia is facing.  Even accounting for modern ISR and fire power those troop densities will be challenged to do much about a sustained Ukrainian force on their side of the river…like they already have had for months at Krynky.  But you blow past that with the power of “what I think”.
As to effect on “reserves” well time and place matter.  Right now those Russian reserves are supporting Russian attacks and c-moves up near Adiivka as they try to gain more ground.  If the RA has to pull them all the way to Kherson it will impact the RAs ability to exploit or make new gains.  Further pushing support down to Kherson and sustaining it causes lateral friction over several hundred kms which is never a bad thing.
I think it is your last sentence that clearly demonstrates your position.  You are not here to discuss the viability or pros and cons of a possible UA operation.  You have already answered that question and locked the cognitive door.  You are instead here to promote the futility of Ukraine continuing this war and are instead pushing the idea that due to that futility they should sue for peace.  This is the line from several parties on this forum before and really adds little to the discussion or analysis.
However, on this “all is lost Ukraine, beg for peace” (which is a pro-Russian narrative), for that to be true Ukraine would need to be completely out of strategic or operational options.  In addition, Russia would also need to be out of options or content with whatever gains they have to merit a “good enough” endstate.  None of those conditions are clearly proven.  Ukraine still has one big strategic option - defend and bleed the RA out.  Russia has given no indication of what its negotiated end-state would look like.  So as to “call it a day”, I do not think we are there yet by either pre-condition metric.
As to Kherson and a possible light operation.  Well no point discussing because you have already made up your mind in support of you larger argument…which is also, to be frank, fundamentally flawed.

Ok, well let’s start there then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_crossing_of_the_Delaware_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plunder
And of course the big one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord
And let’s pull some doctrine in: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-90-12/fm3-90-12.pdf
So adding this all up, essentially it has and can be done but there are a lot of caveats.  Ultimately it is a question of weight.  How much weight is being projected across the river as combat power?  How much weight is needed under combat conditions to sustain the weight of the combat power on the other side?  There are multiple ways to get that weight across a river other than a fixed bridge.  Fixed ferry, unfixed ferry, tac aviation and now, UAS.  Forward foraging and cannibalization etc.  
Now doctrine agrees with you, the best is solid fixed LOC bridging but any crossing operations, even conventional ones come in phases.  The opening phase is very often lighter more mobile resupply methods until the bridgehead force can push the enemy back far enough that it is safe to build a series of fixed bridges.  Essentially almost every opposed military river crossing in history began with what we are describing south of Kherson - light forces establishing a bridgehead, sustained and then heavy force link up once conditions are established.  D Day being an exception as were other amphib operations which all had to be sustained by air and sea.
So “sustaining a scale of operation” without a bridge is not only possible, it is really the only way to get many water crossing started in the first place.  Now as to “how long and how far?”  Well that depends on a lot of factors.  If the UA stays light it keeps the logistics bill low.  They might not need a fixed pontoon bridge if they can advance - as you say - “10-30kms”.  Pontoon ferry’s might be able to sustain them as they did for the RA for quite some time before the RA withdrew.
So basically as an engineering and logistics problem what we are looking at south of Kherson is not new or novel.  In the current environment it is going to be challenging and dangerous but it is not the thing being invented from zero in all this. 
 
Ok, so this one opens up the question of how well prepared are the RA forces on the other side?  Light forces have proven pretty important in this war.  They were critical in the first month pretty much everywhere and at Kharkiv constituted the breakout force.  If the RA has built a heavy line of defence as you seem to indicate then you may be correct.  But have they?  We really do not know, but the fact that a small bridgehead at Krynky for months - no massive RA armoured c-attack, and a few maps of force lay down estimates may help:
https://features.csis.org/ukraine-war-map/
https://militaryland.net/maps/deployment-map/
These seem to suggest that the RA have accepted risk in this sector exactly because there is a river there.  So how dense are those RA fortifications?  That map appears to show roughly a single Division covering off 100 kms of frontage.  That is - and let’s be really generous and say that RA division is at full strength - approx 10,000 troops, or 100 troops per km..which is extremely thin.  Estimates of the rest of the RA line are around 300 troops per km.  100 RA troops per km means that there are massive holes in that defensive line.  Light troops can not only cross, they can infiltrate between forces and get into rear areas, which will force the RA to react.  So we are not talking the Atlantic Wall here, we likely have RA hard points on obvious crossing sights, small c-moves forces and a bunch of RA ISR.
So indications are that RA force density is quite low, which makes the light dispersed option a good fit.  Now the UA has much better intel and will have to plan according to that but based on what we can see, the employment of light forces over that river in strength is not only possible, it is viable.
An and now we get to the crux…but you kinda answer your own question here.  “What can these light forces actually do?”  Well at Kyiv they stopped the RA cold.  Elsewhere they have been instrumental in causing the RA to collapse - please find me one major tank battle in this war?  Hell it is hard enough to find a decent mech battle.  This is a war dominated by fires, not manoeuvres.
So the answer to your question is right in your post:
”RUS regroup, reassign reserves to the zone, pile on the drone/artillery/aviation support”.  
That is exactly the objective of a bunch of light forces running rampant in the backfield.  Why?  Because the RA will have to pull these (shrinking) assets from somewhere else.  This is the minimum objective by the way.  If the RA cannot or does not have “reserves” then an opportunity to redraw the lines south of Kherson presents itself.  If those light forces can actually establish a bridge head then options open up for heavier forces and other crossing options.  By that point the entire left end of the RA line is in trouble. But let’s leave that all as a branch plan and stretch goal.
So the real question is not in your response or reasoning.  They are not “can it be done” or “will it do anything?”  The real question is: does the UA have the forces and capabilities to do it at scale?  This we do not know and will have to simply wait and see.

We have GrigB Intelligent Translation Services. During next week, the Russian Statistical Service will release a fresh report. Over the weekend, Russian opposition economist Milov will assess the campaign's strategic impact. If nothing bad happens on my end, we'll have a summary by Sunday night.

Well they would need to field an offset, which would be FPVs or some such.  No one has ever achieved firepower superiority (let alone dominance) using UAS but if it is going to happen anytime soon it will be in this war.  It will be a test of “massed precision beats everything” if the UA can create and project the mass.
Or we could stop with the jerking around and simply send more boom-boom.  Or, crazy idea, we do both and really light a fire under this thing.

Fellow forum readers, you only have one life (probably). Do not waste any of it reading this absolute bollocks.. I will summarise:
Premises:
A minister went to HMS Clyde on a super secret mission, taking a reporter with him! The UK has a submarine called HMS Ambush that the minister visited The submarine had a tarp on it The UK has trained underwater bomb disposal divers Liz Truss said something     Conclusion: The UK blew up Nord Stream.

So a complete withdrawal to pre-2014 lines and a lasting peace agreement that allows Ukraine to enter NATO.  You are on and I earnestly hope I lose this bet.

See my other post.  So Ukraine has lost?  We have definitely been around that tree a few times.  Is it right?  Well ok by what metrics has Ukraine lost?  You contradict your own position by stating that we have doomed Ukraine by not giving them enough weapons.  Ok, so if they had enough weapons they could win this war?  So winning the war is possible, except for the part where support to Ukraine has been hijacked to create a self-fulfilling prophesy - “you are going to lose this war, while I ensure you don’t get the support you need to win it.”
As to the war itself:
- Russia has failed to achieve any of its political or strategic objectives, with the lone exception of that land bridge, but until there is a ceasefire, I am not willing to call that one.
- The Russian military is a broken shell of its former self.  The damage done to its Tier 1 military is going to take a decade to rebuild under normal conditions, let alone long term sanctions.  I read a source that notes the Black Sea Fleet is not only denied but down 20%.
- Russian foreign influence has completely backfired - see Finland and Sweden in NATO.  NATO funding will be secure for a decade at least…and frankly we were half way to letting it die before this.
- Ukraine remains and independent sovereign nation.  It has distance to go but it will very likely be western facing for the next century.
- The Ukrainian military is about as battle hardened as it gets.  To the point they could make bank training us.
- Russia chances for serious operational gains remain low.  For all the reasons laid out in the last couple thousand pages.
- Russian internal stability remains highly suspect.  Hell they almost had an accidental coup last year.
You are correct, China is dining out on this and will continue to a point.  The war could end right now, Korean Peninsula style and Ukraine will have won this thing.  Of course Ukraine needs more support, as much as they can get.  I highly suggest you use your democratic rights this year to vote for the party and candidates that are trying to sustain that support, not shut it down.
Is it hard.  Damn straight.  Is Ukraine suffering, absolutely. Are they having force generation problems, very likely.  So what?  What is your answer?  Sue for peace?  Surrender?  Seriously, how on earth did the children and grandchildren of the generation that went through the Depression and WW2 come to this?  “Aw it’s too hard so we should just look away.  Stick to the easy ones so we can score political points.”  This was is not about politics are power.  It is about right and wrong.  What I find so shocking is how the USA, leader and symbol of “right”, is floundering now that history is watching.  How sentiments like yours can be so widespread.  Frankly, if this is the trajectory of your nation, China will be running the planet by 2050.
You want to Make America Great Again - start here and support a nation of people who just want to be free and democratic.  A nation that has been invaded by a brutal authoritarian regime.  Stop hand-wringing and doom saying “Ukraine has no avenues to win this war”…and do something about it!

The depth and breadth of what you have zero idea upon but insist on running commentary is quite astonishing.  This little “blip” just allowed a small nation to stop the second largest military (now third) on the planet cold.  This little “blip” is much more than “drones” in need of “anti-drone gear” it is a level of artificial processing power that is 1) illuminating the battle space, 2) connecting X’s to shooters faster than we can really keep up with, 2) creating precision effects so inexpensively that denial is dominating.
But that, you reduce down to “well just wait until we get more ‘anti-drone’ gear to shoot all them thar annoying toys down” and “then we will have all the drones and them none”?  Ignoring the fact that drone costs are likely to plummet as everyone start making more and more of them.  “Shooting them down”, gee now why didn’t we think of that?  After two years of warfare in Ukraine neither side - with access to the entire Western sphere of technology and equipment on one, and Chinese technology on the other - has been able to solve for hundreds of bird sized UAS able to spot kms out.  As these systems become more autonomous EW won’t work.  Lasers will not work beyond static installations and maybe ships (but they have a whole other problem).  And the big one - we can’t be invisible, the ISR value of these systems alone is warfare breaking.
Why am I not surprised that one of your openly declared ilk would find a driving shift in warfare the likes we have not seen since the invention of the machine gun as “an easy fix, but we will be just fine because…’first world’?  But in your expert opinion “we will show them Middle Easters a thing or two once we get all them drones”.  Missing the point that other opposing powers are in fact leading on a lot of this technology, not us, and are more than willing to arm asymmetric opponents (see: Houthis).
The gulf in effective firepower has shrunk dramatically.  And it has done so by denial.  Because our opponents are not stupid or lazy and spent 30 years developing counters to our military power.

Oh good this guy came back.  It was getting slow in here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States  
Just going to leave this one here because it is a slow Tues.  Anyone who wants to go on a learning journey can start there.
If only things could get back to the way they were:

Oh wait…they are.  
[Sorry couldn’t resist.]

Yes we are all aware of the Ella Fitzgerald school of political assessment.  I have brought up states removing Trump from the ballot, Ukraine war and various other red lights.  The response has been “sure but XYZ checks, balances etc etc”  Now suddenly Trump is going to take over and rule you all like Stalin?  I am getting whiplash here.

Nah it will not. If Trump get elected he can delay decision makings and troop deployment enough to get Europe tangled in a war alone. I don't understand how an idiot like Trump can compete in the race to white house but i'm not American.
The whole russian strategy is to isolate the USA, and i cant understand how are they that successful with it. It almost feel like you guys wanna lose the next major conflict of the human history.
NATO is a sheet of paper only held together by trust. If you guys betray that trust than you global hegemony will be lost. As soon as peoples around the world get a whiff of cowardliness from the USA they gonna look for other partners. Everything that makes you live on the level of standards that you accustomed is based on your country's hegemony. Once things go down they go down quick.
 
I don't know what you guys doing on the other side of the sea but everything seems messier by the week.

Afghanistan is a perfect example of what I am talking about - political jerking off:
https://apnews.com/united-states-government-fd2ec2085b0b4fd3ae0a3b03c6de9478#
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/US-Withdrawal-from-Afghanistan.pdf
Obama slashed US troop presence from 100k in 2010 to 10k in 2015 - the war was basically over by 2016 but he could not finish the job.  
Trump gets in and initially increases troop strength  back up to 14k so he could be seen as doing the “art of the deal” with the Taliban - who sat back and rolled their eyes the whole time.  And then drew down to 2500 by 2021 - which left him the option to declare “peace with honour” in a second term or stick Biden with the job and use it as an attack vector.  Which is exactly what he did.
So you see my point - the whole thing is a game for domestic US consumption.  Not some deep foreign policy or strategy.  Trump is a master at getting nothing done and blaming someone else.  Major muscle movement in Europe will only come if he can look good doing it.  Some sort of rapprochement with Putin angle, but of course even he is not dumb enough to trust Putin now.

Amateur historian chiming in, so take it for what it's worth: yes with a but.
I'd suggest that there are two kinds of war, the second of which is relatively uncommon. I'd distinguish them based on what the victor gets at the end of the war.
The first kind of war is a war-for-things. The aggressor wants to take some things (which can be abstract things) from the defender. The victor gets to keep the things. For example, when the United States fought Mexico in the 1840s, that was a war for things. The victor kept Texas and California. Or the Roman conquest of Gaul: Caesar plundered everything that was not nailed down, and functionally annexed modern France to Roman rule. These are pretty common, and World War II was, from one side, a war for things: Germany wanted Lebensraum, Japan wanted the rich resources of the indo-pacific region (particularly oil). Note that I'm defining wars-for-things in terms of the spoils, not the rhetoric that surrounds the spoils. I'd note that modern war is so mind bogglingly destructive that rational actors have concluded that protracted war-for-things is a suckers game. There are no things you can get that are worth the destruction on the things you want!
The second kind, which is relatively rare, is a war-for-rules. The aggressor wants to impose (or maintain) a particular rule set on a collection of polities. The ancient examples of this would be Roman expansion in Italy (which ended with the defeated state bound into a treaty structure rather than obliterated) and the inter-Polis wars in Greece (which were by and large prestige competitions). The victor incorporates the defeated party into a particular rule-set. The objective is not to take things away from the defeated party.
We've also seen asymmetric combinations of the two. For example, Gulf War I. Iraq was fighting a war-for-things against Kuwait, but the Coalition was fighting a war-for-rules against Iraq (we did not annex Iraq at the end of the war, we said, "no annexing neighbors, bad Iraq").
So the war in Ukraine is a combination of these two. Russia is fighting a war-for-things against Ukraine. They are attempting to take the whole of Ukraine's territory, and stealing grain and people. Simultaneously, Russia is fighting a war-for-rules against the Status-quo Coalition. The rule change they're attempting to effect is a return to the "annexing-neighbors-is-ok" rule set that preceded WW2. Ukraine is fighting an existential war-for-things against Russia, and wins if they exist as an independent state at the end of the fighting. The Status-quo Coalition is fighting an existential war against Russia as well: the absolute lynchpin of the status quo is that annexing neighbors is not OK. If that rule falters, it will blow up the international order and allow a renegotiation of lots of the status quo by actors not enamored of the status quo (the Baltics, Taiwan, Africa, the Middle East, &c.). Victory of the Status-quo Coalition is deterrent: showing everyone that attempting to violate the international rule set is *just not worth it*.