The_Capt

The actual RUSI report is so good I am citing it twice (have not watched the video): “This report has sought to outline Ukraine’s foremost tactical requirements if it is to be able to retake the ground lost to Russia and thereby achieve the operational defeat of the Russian Army. First, Ukraine must suppress Russia’s artillery advantage by destroying the logistical enablement of Russia’s massed fires. Second, Ukraine must employ its own fires to prevent Russia concentrating to achieve positive force ratios. Third, the Ukrainian military must be able to strike Russia’s EW architecture to enable the kill chains to win the fire fight. Fourth, this should enable Ukrainian offensive ground manoeuvre, but will require large-scale training in infantry skills, support to Ukrainian brigade and divisional planning, and the provision of protected mobility. Finally, Ukrainian training bases, critical national infrastructure and population centres need greater protection from Russian long-range precision strikes, which demands the provision of support in tracking cruise missiles and point defences.” I fully concur with almost all of this and this is one of the first “ground truth based” analysis I have seen - but remember, validate. My one caution is on the push to create western based mass as the solution to offence at scale. The reports on RA success with small “storm groups”; however this does not fully translate as RA rate of advance has been abysmal. If the UA can establish pre-conditions then old school combined arms mass may work, but a central problem remains unsolved: how do you hide/protect it long enough for it to do the job? UA mech and armor will be just as visible as RA’s, and the study already notes that the UA cannot mass due to Russian artillery. Massing a UA combined arms formation will be highly visible and make it a target for RA deep strike - it is a western biased solution, which we have assumed will work…and I am not so sure. I am still thinking that an up scaling of dispersed infantry in a hybrid warfare fashion, supported by precision fires, effective C-EW and ISR/TA superiority- “fog eating snow”, may be a better solution; however it also comes with the limitations on speed - how does one upscale this at speed? I am not sure; however, unless the UA can really establish air, fires, EW and info dominance, massive a western-looking combined arms formation could end very badly; as it has very just about every Russian attempt at it. That said everything else in this report is right on point. Note the beginnings of the pressure to move to fully autonomous unmanned systems on page 11.

That Rusi piece is really good, reading into it now: “The reliance on railheads and civilian vehicles, which are largely restricted to road movement, makes key bottlenecks in Russian artillery highly predictable. Moreover, the ammunitions dumps at the divisional and brigade level are large, distinct, hard to conceal or defend, and slow to relocate. Given Ukraine’s limited capacity to strike at the Russian military’s rear echelons and fight a deep battle, this is a weakness that is yet to be widely capitalised upon. Isolated strikes on ammunition dumps show what is possible but given the disparity in guns and the shortage of Russian precision fires, the fastest way to level the playing field is to enable Ukraine to strike Russian artillery logistics. The critical factor in this is precision, range and payload. Ukraine needs strike systems with a sufficiently powerful warhead to ignite stored ammunition or damage key logistical infrastructure, accurate enough to hit these targets precisely, and with the range to do so from beyond Russian howitzer fire. The best system for this is MLRS, although with a more powerful munition than the UK’s reduced lethality unitary warhead GMLRS. These capabilities need to be provided at scale.” So this was published on Jul 4, and written likely before the HIMARs arrived. It explains the exploding ammo depots over the last couple weeks quite well. The UA can see the entire RA logistics chain, it is big and cumbersome, but could not hit it…they can now - last puzzle piece.

That’s it. Time to break out the gas cans and burn this thread to the ground. You all might also want to tuck your pants into your socks. Been great, time of our lives etc but we have got about 5 mins here. Cut and paste what you can, and run for your lives!

I thought we were unpacking someone’s analysis of the economic dimensions of this war - real economy vs “fake” (still not sure what that means)…but now I am starting to wonder about this lemming ass in my face and a deafening sound of weightlessness out front. Throw back - “This is my lemming, I squeezed him so he would show his teeth”

Ok, I will bite. Given the impact of disruptions in global supply chains, the evidence is against your position. Largely because economies are an interdependent system, much like a human being. Saying truck drivers are “filler” is akin to saying blood vessels are “filler” in a human being. So what do you mean by “computers do it better?” Do you mean automation? Even then transported goods will still be critical, it just won’t be humans doing it. Until we get universal low energy manufacturing, the ability to move a product to market will remain - when that technology does arrive, information will become the new “truck”. However we are talking the Diamond Age , which is cool as hell conceptually but not really a basis for a position, at least not now.

Well at least people in my business are going to be in for a Bull market. “We are in the war business and business is booming! Contract work for all!” News for everyone else…not so good. So this is where I am leaning but with a slight spin. Based on how “other means” work, I think Russia ran out of manoeuvre room in this space. Ukraine was pretty much united in 2014 and Russian influence at a micro social level was extremely constricted. The opposition guy, who was the likely puppet-in-waiting (the sad sack the captured about a month in), bolted early because he likely knew it too. So the thing about “grey zone” is that it is not wizardry, it is just another strategic options space. A space with rules and human physics like any other, even if they are different from mainstream warfare. A primary requirement of grey zone operations is that they are primarily inductive not conductive. Reflexive not coercive. So one basically has to work it so that the target employs its own energy against its own interest, often all the while leaving them thinking it was their own idea. It is subversive jujitsu warfare and can do a lot, but it has severe limitations as well. For example, it is almost impossible once you become the boogie man under every bed. If attribution becomes automatic one ability to subvert gets much harder. If they can name you, they take away your power. I cannot “undecided” you if I become your certainty. So what? Russia ran out of options and they knew it - here we agree. Then I think we are seeing 3rd order chaos at play (see Harari for the other 2). We have a non-linear human system that reacted to imagined stimuli - more simply put, they talked themselves into it. This has the hallmarks of an autocatalytic loop built within a small power echo chamber feeding on paranoia in multiple dimensions. Pandemic, NATO, Putin and the Grim Reaper playing ass-grab, the unstable state molecule that is Russia, autocratic reality as being only as good as your last trick. This looks like the perfect condition for a small group of insular elites talking themselves into increasing crazy. We have seen evidence of similar phenomenon all over the place, “Freedom Convoys” & “Social Justice”, small sub-groups convinced they need to do something. I am not laying this on the doorstep of the pandemic but it did strain social bonds vertically and horizontally, and in Russia that is a bad thing. The elites in power appear to have talked themselves into all of this in a spiral of progressive unreality. The big issue is “how does one negotiate with that?” I am not sure one can because every action reinforces that spiral. They only plays are unacceptable; agreeing and supporting Russia for example. That action may take the air out, but c’mon, not realistic. I avoid predictions but one is jumping out at me again and again; this war will break a lot more than Ukraine before it is done.

None of this is good news for what likely happens next. If this is a manufactured crisis in the heads of the Russian leadership built on paranoia - and there is evidence this is true- how this ends gets a lot dicier; paranoid people do not negotiate with anyone but themselves and their own paranoia. This means that the foundations of this war are objectively irrational, or at least very relatively rational on the Russian side. This is akin to a King seeing a blackbird pooping in the pool and taking it as an omen to wage war. There is only one end state to this and one one way to get there under these circumstances ; a war to the end of that king, and a strategy of annihilation to do it.

Oh man, it has been years since I have had real pierogi...was in Poland.

That is really interesting and I agree there has to be a deep underlying cultural issue here as well. However, Andropov did not pull the trigger, yet Putin did. Further, and we covered this before, why now? Ukraine was not poised for entry into either the EU or NATO. A NATO application, if it happened at all, would have taken a decade and likely would have been slow rolled for the exact reasons we are seeing here - "You know fellas, letting Ukraine into NATO is going to cause problems with our gas:. Where is the crisis? If it was in the collective heads of the elites who actually run things, what was it? Any other options "for what?" What was the forcing function? I mean if this was the Baltics back in 2002, it would make total sense but Ukraine in 2022 was not poised to do anything as far as I can tell...so why throw the red dice?

Not sold. Deny cheap gas? Europe had cheap gas...they were buying it from Russia. Ukrainian gas was not (nor is not) competitive. Unless someone can point to a natural gas competition crisis, with Ukraine ready to hit the big red button to undercut Russian supply (was there a Nordstream U we don't know about?), then an immediate conventional invasion to stop it from happening makes zero sense. 3% financial gain. It is an enormous leap to go from an additional 1T m3 of natural gas and a 3% profit. Sure it has worth but what happens when it costs more to access and sell than the value of the gas in the ground...and for Russia that is exactly what is happening. You disagree...lets do math: Ukraine has roughly 1T cubic meters of natural gas (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-gas-proved-reserves). Its dollar value in the ground is currently 160 Euro per MWh (https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas) which translates to roughly 160$ USD per 95 cubic meters (https://www.calculat.org/en/energy-fuel/gas-consumption.html. I rounded up from 94.79). So in the EU the value of the reserves in Ukraine equate to roughly 1.6T dollars...oh my what a big number...must be why Russia invaded...but: The cost to Ukraine is already over a third of that number: https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/05/04/russias-invasion-has-cost-ukraine-up-to-600-billion-study-suggests/?sh=152876fd2dda and that article was from May. So what? War is just about the most costly business humans can undertake. But what is the cost to Russia? So up front costs estimates are in the $900M per day range (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383) which add up to (by day 142) to roughly $128B, and this thing is not over yet. But wait we are not done yet. The damage to the Russian economy over time is significant (https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/adding-up-the-global-costs-of-putins-war/). With an 11% GDP shrinkage as forecasted that is another 166B in losses...and those sanctions along with EU gas weaning is going to last for years. So let's just add up the cost to Russia of a single year of this thing: $900M per day for 365 days = $328B. An 11% GDP shrinkage is roughly equal to another $166B (Russian GDP is at 1.47T annually), which takes us to a grand total of about $494B...in the first year; and the gas is still in the freakin ground. How much to get it out? How much to sell it around sanctions. I am no economist, and am sure I am missing stuff...this war is going to quickly cost more than the Ukrainian gas is worth. Russia is sitting on approx $59T dollars with of gas right now, as it was on Feb 23rd - which they are now going to have to sell at less and less favorable conditions. The upfront cost, opportunity cost and position costs of getting Ukrainian gas out of the ground is going to leave them upside down on the whole venture in a very short time. Like most of these theories this is a Rube Goldberg strategy...extremely convoluted, expensive and illogical. Military action to grab "land, precious land!" is one of the worst ways to go about thing. Military action to pull another country into ones economic orbit makes a lot more sense, so perhaps it was the Ukrainian markets that Russia coveted? But wait...Ukraine was already one of their best customers (https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/2018/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/by-country#:~:text=Ukraine trade balance%2C exports and imports by country&text=In 2018%2C Ukraine major trading,%2C Germany%2C Belarus and Poland.) So 1) Russia did not need Ukrainian gas in any meaningful way before this war, 2) The impact to the Russian economy, even if they had done a "clean war", outstrips any profits from that gas fairly quickly, 3) the other strategic costs that hit Russian bottom line also far outweigh any resource gains, and 4) Grabbing gas one does not need while cutting off ones customer base on many level is not a reasonable strategy either. I think we can put the "resource theory" on the shelf next to "black bioweapon sites". Now, like a lot of other bovine scatology the Kremlin puts out, it may be how it was sold to some people but it does not add up.

So let's discuss these in greater detail: - Ego and one old man's fear of mortality. A possible factor, particularly given the nature of the Russian political power regime; however, war is a collective undertaking and is rarely boiled down to the perspective of a single individual, at least in the modern age. During the age of supreme god-king rule perhaps, but those days disappeared as soon as we started mass printing of books and literacy. This war, like most wars, had to be negotiated with the micro-social elites, and they had a lot more to lose than one old man. War is negotiation internally as well as externally, and the hypothesis Putin's driving motivation does not carry forward into negotiating it with Russia itself - "We are going to war because I am old and scared". The people who make up the power blocks had to buy in, and I sincerely doubt Putin's control is so airtight that there were not other "sellable" reasons beyond the mass consumption nonsense coming out of the Kremlin. - Demographics. Well Russia is kind of upside down on demographics: (source - wikipedia) And Russia is actually in a fighting-age male surplus right now, but not what one could call extreme. For example the female surplus after WW2 was much larger. An argument could be made that in order to shore up fading national power based on shrinking demographics Russia determined that pulling Ukraine into its fold tighter was required. However, they could have done this a number of ways other than conventional warfare, and just about all of them would have worked better. The Russian brain-drain, Ukrainian refugees and losses from the war, are going to make the problem worse, not better in the long term. This is like solving your termite problem by burning your house down. Finally, Russian demographics may be an issue, but it is not an immediate crisis that requires drastic solutions. - Resources. I did a long post awhile back on this and the entire "resources stupid!" argument simply does not add up. In sum, Ukraine did not have enough of anything to make this war worthwhile to Russia. Ukraine has about 3% of comparable Russian energy reserves - going to war over that is like going to war with a poorer neighbor for the change in their couch. Further, let's say the Russia does take all that precious Ukrainian "stuff". They 1) have to pay for the repairs/construction of infrastructure to get at it, 2) Somehow find people to work that infrastructure (see: fleeing from war) and 3) point it all east because their best customer just got covered in Ukrainian blood splatter. Finally, if you want the stuff...why go conventional now? They could have played the same backfield games they have before and been patient...where is the crisis? Resource wise there isn't one. So unless Putin has attained the centralized power of a Pharaoh, which we know he has not or Russia would have fully mobilized right now, then none of this makes any sense. This war looks more like a geopolitical "suicide by cop" scenario than a rational action or "last argument of kings". Clausewitz may be right in this war is an extension of Russian policy...but he does not answer "why now?" and "why by these means?" Or at least I can't see it. Why does it matter at all Capt? Who cares what the Russians think. Well until one can figure it out, this war remains largely unnegotiable in any arena but violence and that is a dark equation that is getting dimmer by the day.

You and me both; it is a riddle that I cannot solve either. I cannot see the crisis that forced the hand. Russia under Putin had demonstrated deliberate actions and nuance in its strategies up until now, it is one of the major reasons they kept getting away with it. We remained in a null decision space on Russia, it was undecidable. In many circles people were openly talking about “simply accepting Crimea and moving on”. Russia looked to be the masters of the chess game. Subversive warfare, hybrid warfare and “grey zone” had led them to a string of strategic coups that we were all admiring and referring to as “Gerasimov Doctrine” and such. Some forays into the near abroad that were pretty scary examples of reflexive control. We scared ourselves with wargames that saw Russia tearing through the Baltics in hours. And then a major conventional action against a sovereign nation that went pear shape in the first 72 hours…sure why not. An invasion that looks like its primary fuel was hubris and progressive unreality - far too few forces, zero operational pre-conditions and an joint warfare cautionary tale that will be in the history books for at least a century. Why? Why now? Why not stick with the A-game? Why throw it all away on as poorly weighted dice throw as we have seen since Saddam’s Kuwait gambit? Perhaps a historian will give us the answer one day, but until then this war will remain a mystery to me.

Very interesting, but I agree with you it is perhaps a bit simplistic. The idea of a trans generational trauma that has become inculcated into a cultural foundation is not new and does hold water. However, it is inconsistent as well. Why have the Russians gone this way, while other cultures that have suffered great crisis have not (Irish, Indigenous peoples of NA, or pretty much all of Europe for that matter)? Perhaps it was the combination of trauma and “bad boyfriend” monarchy that solidified it as you note. Perhaps liberal freedoms do equate to “hollowness” in the Russia psyche, it does line up. I also think there is a level of “outsiderness” at play as well. Russia has always been “in-between”, not fully Asia, not fully European, never Persian. So a condition of collective paranoia in what is an unstable state molecule (radioactive apparently) may also be a factor. This combined with trans generational trauma leading to a predilection towards strongmen that lean on all that to stay in power, starts to make sense. So we are basically in a proxy war with a nuclear nation whose starting point is “don’t try and fix me, I like me broken”….great.

Interesting. Most feedback we have received has been the opposite - the upper glacis of the T64 being too good at resisting the 105mm. At what ranges have you seen this?

Absolutely. It is the contract of warlords throughout history - “I will abuse and terrorize you but they will do much worse”. Certainty beats uncertainty almost every time. In Putin’s case it appears as though the deal was “I will keep you safe, fairly well off -compared to the post communist crisis of the 90s- and you slowly give me ultimate power, and totally dismantle any chance of democracy.” It is funny, in Max Brooks’ “World War Z”, he has the Russians re-installing a monarchy (the Czar) after the zombie war. Made me wonder if it is possible for a nation/culture to become addicted to autocracy? History has shown that democracy is rarely lost, it is simply more often abandoned. Often due it failing to yield results in context, but perhaps some cultures are simply allergic to the idea - takes me back to Afghanistan and our failures there.

The interesting thing about Russia in the war is the ideological vacuum. There are not great ideas here. They definitely have nationalism and a weak tea “I will protect you from NATO” but lacks the power that communism or monarchy had back in 1917 by a wide margin. Putin has worked hard for over 20 years to build a personal cult but he in nowhere near the level of the Kim King’s of NK. Nor does Putin have a religion to hold everything together because it is the “will of God” such as they have in theocracies such as Iran. Nor does Russia have democracy or an idea of liberal freedom. So what ideology does Russia have beyond paranoia and a general zeitgeist of revelling in misery? Maybe that will be enough but I think it is weak glue in the absence of an existential crisis. Putin has, and will continue to make the argument that this is an existential crisis but it is a weak argument. As the social lattice in Russia comes under increasing stress I have to wonder how long the social contract will hold. Russians have proven they can take a lot, under the right circumstances; however, without a crystalline idea to hold them together outside the bonds of their intimate communities and micro-social spaces, I think they are in fact more vulnerable than many think.

You guys remember that quote from the UA solider in the field early on in this thing? "I can't believe how f#cking stupid they are?" I keep coming back to this at a strategic level. I have gone on at length that the Western Strategic Centre of Gravity (CoG) is unity and resolve, if that falters this could all end badly. So, Russia being a sophisticated nation and a master of the art of strategic narrative would try and take the high road with respect to ROEs in this war. To demonstrate that they will play by the rules even if the Nazi-whatever-the-hell-Putin-was-going-on-abouts are the true villains. This play could plant a small seed of doubt that if nurtured could erode the Allied CoG - "look this is an Eastern European border skrimish" etc Or.... Toss missiles around like a drunken frat boy demonstrating that he can both hurl empty beer bottles and throw up on himself simultaneously. Now maybe Russia is full-on "no body likes me, everybody hates me, so I am gonna eat worms...and commit egregious war crimes anyway." But all of this is actually reinforcing their opponents strategic center of gravity...it is shoring up the resolve of the West. A dead soldier is supposed to happen, a dead little girl with blue running shoes is not. Russia's inability to "get with the program" is frankly baffling. Collateral damage happens, it is the tragic truth of warfare since the beginning; however, nations are judged on how hard they work to avoid it. And as far as I can tell right now Russia hasn't tried at all. This on top of the pretty obvious war crimes that happened already in this war is literally guaranteeing that 1) more weapons, money and munitions keep flowing from the West, and 2) there is no renormalization after this...so enjoy being a rump state of China...seriously, start teaching your kids Mandarin. I can't believe how f#cking stupid they are, indeed.

Ok, time to swing back to this one. This guy sounds like he knows what he is talking about to me. A few points that I am not sure I am comfortable with: - He does not really use "shaping" correctly, or at least in terms as we understand the term in the west. Shaping operations are defined as "an operation that establishes condition for decisive operation through effects on the enemy, other actors, and terrain." (https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf) What Russia did at the beginning of the Donbas phase does not really fit any of those criteria. His description sounds more like positioning. - Three guys walking down a road, somewhere, is not a rout. The UA had weeks to decide to get out of "the cauldron" as the RA was moving by inches. If units got caught or were sacrificed, that is one thing, but nothing in the RA rate of advance speaks to conditions for an uncontrolled withdrawal. Nor have we seen any evidence on open source to back this up - large amounts of Russians with trophy equipment, or PoWs. So I challenge that assumption right up front. - The defensive lines he draws pretty much match our own here, and make sense. - I am allergic to bold drawn arrows in this war; I have been let down too many times. Neither side has been able to make large muscle movements since March (with the possible exception of Kharkiv), so the idea that "this is it, the Russians will now spring the trap!" is not credible until we see some actual success. - Force ratios. Seriously, what is wrong with the professional military community? They keep turning to these quantitative-only force ratio assessments, even though they completely failed us in this war to-date. And here on an analysis/assessment video on 08 Jul , I am still seeing "this many Bns vs this many BTGs" and we are supposed to take something from it. What is the qualitative assessment? I don't care if Russia has 4 times the numbers of troops, if those troops are all old men and scared kids with three weeks training, no radios, no cas evac, scrounging locally for food and unable to employ heavy weapons effectively; those are not troops, they are a uniformed mob waiting to die. The good analyst here even points to the increasing "Russian forces vs dwindling Ukrainian ones" as a concern...but what are those increasing Russian forces made up of? Other points: - M777 losses are concerning as they are supposed to outrange Russian guns for the most part. I have to wonder if there is a problem with positioning within the UA, or is this just the cost of doing business. Russian c-battery seems to be pretty quick, which leaves me wondering why their offensive fires are so "not". From what we have seen the Russians have basically gone WW1 on massed fires, while c-bty in seconds minutes takes pretty powerful ISR (detection and ranging) support; however, I would let the arty specialist weigh in on this one. I also take UA messaging carefully, at the levels talking there is a strategic narrative to continue to push the west to strengthen support and provide help. Problem is that if Ukraine cries for help too loudly, or amplifies things, the West will get nervous and wonder if we have backed the right horse...and we have a bad history with backing the wrong horses. -This video is from 08 Jul, so we now know that Russia has been in at least a week long operational pause. We have yet to see Russia able to keep anything that resembles a threatening operational tempo, this is a very slow grind. It works, but so slow and costly. As to long war, short war. Well at coming up to 5 months, this war is already longish by western standards when compared to its intensity. The answer is that both are possible at this point but there are a lot of unknowns. I would boil it down to Western Will vs Russian Will - and here I mean the will of actual Russians, not Putin and his cronies. Western Will is fiscal, self-centered and frankly has the resolve of a skittish milk maid on a good day. I have zero doubts about Ukraine, it has mobilized, to the point that killing Russians has taken on cultural significance - the Ukraine after this war will not be the same one that went in. The West, if it keeps pushing weapons, ISR and money, can keep this going forever...but, it may have to actually make some sacrifices to do so, and that does have me worried. We are not really good at sacrifice on a large scale right now, and have not been since the 60s in reality. We got burned, and lied to by leadership back then, and ever since we have a weird relationship with sacrifice. "Sure I support Ukrainians...just don't ask me to do anything about it." is a disturbing trend. This is not new, just look at GWOT and how the US had to tie itself in knots to avoid anything that hinted at conscription in Iraq and Afghanistan (e.g. stop-loss, etc). At the beginning of this war the amount of unity was refreshing but whether we have the attention span and will to keep doing this is not a done deal. I suspect we are in too deep to pull out now and every time the Russians are dumb enough to commit war crimes it helps us keep that unity; however, as the costs continue to rise, it is a concern moving forward. That said, some things are already too big to back away from, such as the momentum NATO has right now. So if asked I will always list Western Will as a concern but signs are pointing to us remaining unified and "all in", at least for now. Russian Will is another beast altogether. Putin and his gang are like the US back in '06, they are doing everything possible not to mobilize, while mobilizing. They are doing so for a reason, and that reason is that Russian Will for this war is very likely not homogeneous, not solid across the entire federation. Russia has almost adopted a Western proxy position by pushing as many LNR/DNR conscripts, and contractors into the fight as possible in order to minimize the effect on the Homefront. But high intensity warfare is just to big to hide, the losses from this war already make it the most high intensity conflict of the 21st century, so how long is Russia willing to do this? How long will they support Putin in doing this? This is the calculus that is not on Putin's side. So back to long vs short war. My guess is that if this war does not slow down, it will likely still be short; either the West or Russia (likely Russia) will run out of runway on this thing at this rate of burn. [Note the Ukrainians are not part of this calculus as far as I can tell, they are totally in it regardless...and who can blame them]. If this war slows its burn down, say to the sort of thing we saw in the Donbas before this whole thing, then long becomes a real possibility. If the UA cannot solve for offence, that is a real possibility...but I am thinking that once the RA runs out of gas, or calls a political "win" the UA will then start going to work on them. Of course, back to a point we have made from way back...at this point when the war ends is really moot, which is sad really. Russia has already lost any initial strategic objectives except regime survival, which is also a maybe. In fact it has lost so much political strategic ground by this point that even if they somehow took all of Ukraine, this would still be a loss (see: loss of credible power, sanctions, isolation, Sweden and Finland/NATO, etc). Which makes this whole fiasco so tragic as people keep dying, well past a rational point.

My addendum to Arquilla’s three new rules of modern warfare: Mass beats isolation; connected precision beats mass; Integrated mass precision beats everything. My sense drawing from both this war and the Nargono-Karabahk is that we have entered into an age of Firepower dominant warfare, not unlike where we found ourselves in WW1. The ability to Find and Fix has far exceeded abilities to counter, combined with the ability to Finish at trending 1:1 kill ratio capability rates, is transforming our concepts of mass on the modern battlefield. The only forms that have worked so far in this war have been overmatch-mass of the Russians in a very small area at Severodonetsk, which was extremely costly and slow. And the distributed mass we saw employed by the UA in Phase 1, which was highly effective in defence/denial but we have not yet seen it effective at scale in the offence. Integrated mass PGMs/Unmanned swarms on the offence employed at an operational level would be a revolutionary moment in the history of warfare. We can see it from here in this war but we will have to wait and see if it actually happens.

Correlation does not automatically mean causation but this is interesting: This was passed onto me by a student at our Joint Staff college, we are all watching this thing with high interest right now.

It is ridiculous that anyone would prioritize a PC wargame over the events we are seeing unfold on the ground in Ukraine. These events have global impact - we have seen this already, and it is just the start, and merit staying informed about as much as possible. Why? Because if you live in a democracy in the western world, at some point you will be asked to use the phenomenal power of your vote to influence this war and it is your responsibility to understand what that means...or at least it should be. The lack of sacrifice I am referring to is on anyone who is not willing to put aside hobbies and free time and actually devote that time to staying informed about this war as much as they are able. Everyone on this thread is willing to put that work in, and yes, sacrifice time, in many cases money, and it at least one case volunteer for military service. These are very small sacrifices compared to what the average Ukrainian is going through (Haiduk's dedication and ability to keep us informed while his country is being torn apart is frankly humbling) but everyone here is at least willing to do that much, along with personal donations etc. Based on your posts, you are not even willing to sacrifice a distraction from a wargaming hobby. Now, I do not know your personal circumstances - perhaps you are a humanitarian aid worker who has to deal with the cost of this war on a daily basis, and just want to come here to get away from it all. I get that, but for the rest of us here this is where we go to put the time in and do our small part. I appreciate the shout out for CMCW, we had a lot of fun doing that title and have future plans - trust me. However, right now I would prefer you respect what is going on here as something more than a bunch of "war-porn voyeurism"; it is a communities' efforts to understand what is going on and support each other while it happens. We did the same after 9/11, and Iraq '03, and Afghanistan, and the Crimea...and now the Russo Ukrainian War. CM will be there after this war is over, it has survived a lot in the last 20 years, but for now this is bigger than my hobby. If it is not based on your personal circumstances, hey we get that, however, there is no need to come here and make trouble for those that are just trying to sort through the mountains of information (good, bad, and ugly) and make sense of it.

War has four main components: a certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice. This is what happens when sacrifice hits the wall of "Gen Me".

Ho man, that is the God of War’s red right hand. Not sure about the CDA but given the amount of civilian damage in Ukraine right now I am betting they have widened the meaning of “acceptable” somewhat.

It is not an issue of “winning” it is more one of Russia “losing by too much.” A Russian Civil War is a very bad outcome, we covered this previously (e.g. loose nukes). The endgame of this thing was somewhat easy to see a couple months ago, both sides posturing for a best position - Russia contained but claiming victory and Ukraine westward facing but living with minor territory losses. However, this war has definitely become more existential for the Russians, or at least looks that way. And the appetite for negotiation in Ukraine is drying up. Now it looks more like the endgame might be far more tricky.

My growing concern is that a full collapse, if it happens, will be extremely ugly. Historically when a government has propped up a system with that much weight on an increasingly creaky scaffolding, when it breaks it breaks badly. This and external pressure from the UA is increasing, not decreasing. As more trained troops and western equipment move into theatre the strain on the Russian system will amplify. So what? This is not a guarantee of a nightmare scenario, Russia may be able to contract in good order and somehow hold onto something. However, if a collapse is uncontrolled or cascades, this is when very bad things happen. I said it before, there very well come a time when we will have to try and pull Ukraine off of Russia in order to avoid an uncontrolled escalation. But that is one eventuality among many right now.