Pete Wenman

Tom Cooper thesis that it was "too many chiefs in one tent" is interesting, albeit difficult to evaluate (46th announcment seems to be in that spirit of some intra-unit quarrels as to the situation assessment). If true, it would be next case of AFU suffering in defence of an urban area due to inadequate C&C coordination. Perhaps that's why Sirsky was there 2 days ago?

Some thoughts from Tom Cooper - posted at 19.45 last night so already over 12 hours out of date. My bold 
 
and his update from this morning can be found here
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-11-january-2023-soledar-cf0cf0e6d5b7
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Some thoughts from Tom Cooper - posted at 19.45 last night so already over 12 hours out of date. My bold 
 
and his update from this morning can be found here
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-11-january-2023-soledar-cf0cf0e6d5b7
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Putting the "butt" in the butterfly effect

I asked Domfluff to help me out in creating a video about Soviet military doctrine in the Cold War era, and how those principles can be applied in a Combat Mission scenario/QB. He played a game against me as the Soviet Army, gave me an arse kicking, and then sat down with me and explained why he did what he did. The result is the video down below!
 

Absolutely.  All war is sacrifice.  I use that term deliberately and it does not mean to simply be willing to "give something up".  Sacrifice actually means "to make holy" or "sacred".  This is a point Clausewitz completely missed.  War is extremely personal as we literally sacrifice people for something bigger.  The real question is just how much we believe in that "bigger" thing.  This is more than "cost", it is the fundamental changes that happen at both macro and micro cultural levels as a result of any war.
Ukraine is sacrificing - making holy costs - in defence of their ability to be free to chose their own future.  Russia is sacrificing - making unholy costs - in defence of some false vision/narrative being sold to them by a kleptocrate and his cronies to stay in power. Sacrifice negotiates with Certainty, now whose certainty is more righteous?
No society can withstand endless sacrifice without breaking.  However, when I see Ukrainian boys holding wooden rifles better than a lot of western soldiers, I can only see a society that has a pretty deep cultural zeitgeist right now - killing Russians.  The Ukraine that went into this war, will not be the one that comes out.  Russia and Putin have likely created a regional power pole in all this that will change the face of Eastern Europe, just to add to the bafflingly bad strategic outcomes they constructed in all this.   
However, after all that we are back to "when does it end?"  Well I think that is directly tied to the point when the Sacrifice gets close enough to the Certainty.  Kherson was painful.  There will be other operations that are just as painful.  Hell we may see a Ukrainian defeat before this is all over.  But to my mind, the average Russian's ability to "change the channel" is waning everyday - e.g. a lot of the middle-class Russian's left.  And the Russian Sacrifice-to-Certainty equation is very different then Ukraine's - time is not on Russia's side. 
This war will end when Ukraine and the West have won enough, and Russia has lost enough.  A lot of people post that "this war will end when Putin decides", or "it will end when Ukraine decides" - this is incorrect.  A war is a living breathing entity, it carries its own weight and influence.  History is filled with wars that should have stopped but didn't.  Or ones where the job was not finished but stopped anyway.  Wars have stopped on executive decision.  They have stopped on broader public decision.  They have also stopped because of weather events and eclipses.
In the end this war will end when it makes sense to end it. The "making sense" part is the hardest thing to determine as it is filled with relative rationality, emotion, power, culture, relationships and human failings/strengths.

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

I'll make this one comment on the topic. (Some of) You US forum members comment on politics in other countries like you are automatically right because you are the grown-ups and the rest of the world are just squabbling children. And yet you can't even discuss something as disgusting as the words of this Carlson guy without being at each other's throats.
And I wish I could blame you for it but we are no better. The thing is, we discussed more than once that the current conflict is a clash of systems. But what good is democracy when we can't actually discuss politics?
*sigh*
Anyway, Merry Christmas, all of you.

Thanks, it was an interesting map to build, but I do love the end result 
 
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A selection of snow-covered flavor objects for CM:FB.
Includes: Petrol Pump, Post Box, Barrels, Water Pumps, Wood Piles, Tires, Some Sacks (from Santa!), Fuel Drums.
I was able to duplicate models for barrels and drums, but use a different texture if they are sideways or upright.  This way they look nice with snow added, but it means I had to include the non-snow versions of these too otherwise it all gets messed up.
They may work OK in other titles too but I haven't tested them there.
Download link: Mediafire
Might also have a dig around in my folders and scrape together a few other bits and bobs I've made for the other CM titles.
 
 

Use the quote tool     

 
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You need to scale the overlay so that it matches the editor. The overlay image therefore needs to be a known size. Easiest way is to use grid square on maps, or the ruler on GE. If the overlay image covers an area 4k x 2k, that is then the size of map that needs to be created in the editor. 
If using an aerial photo then you will need to scale that correctly. This can be done by measuring the distance between two (or more) visible points on the photo and then measuring that distance on map. This will then let you scale the map. Otherwise you can overlay the photo over a map image and tweak the layers until they match. You can then take the scale from the map and it will also apply to the photo.
Note the layers used here -
grid, the purple squares being 1k x 1k, 
layer1 the GE image (erased in part to show the layer below)
layer0 the map image

 
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Thanks @BFCElvis.  Private message sent.
 
And thanks @Pete Wenman for bumping Elvis

Sorry for not being present for some time (had, and actually still have, issues in IRL).
The execution video is an LDPR fake. It's an LDPR-style execution - these morons have no idea how actual Soviet-based militaries carry out any types of executions, so they imitate their own mob-like executions.
Apart from that - due to vastly enhanced UKR anti-drone defenses, actual RU drone operators stopped flying like this in August. But here RU operator literally flying over UKR heads for some time, risking extremely valuable asset, just to watch bunch of unimportant UKR troops doing some unimportant stuff. 
Go home, Ivan, you are too drunk to make believable fakes. 
Bakhmut's situation is gradually deteriorating, but it is far from grave. It's the standard RU bragging that we're all used to hearing.
In the north, after months of battering Yakovlivka village (northeast of Soledar), RU eventually flattened it, and it appears UKR defenders abandoned it. It means the Northen pincer is now sort of free and moving. Except that it does not give RU much - without Soledar, they are still a long way from surrounding Bukhmut.
After loss at the Industrial Zone, RU decided to shift the axis of assault to Pidhorne village on the outskirts of Bukhmut (northern outskirts of Bukhmut, between Bukhmut and Soledar). Important village, but aside from several talkes, I have yet to come across credible information, implying that things are not going well for RU there.
The Southern pincer is the most alarming. There are no significant UKR defenses there, so RU is gradually grinding toward Ivanivka. They're probing Klishiivka, the last settlement before Ivanivka. That's bad, but the first part of the Battle of the Bulge was also bad. Essentially, we are waiting a UKR counter-attack aimed at destroying the Southern pincer. Question is how far UKR will let RU penetrate. 
Bukhmut itself is not in grave danger, and there is no threat of it collapsing (yet). Fighting is taking place at the outer defenses, and it is not yet dangerous.

You must be new around here 😉 
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After all this time I would have thought you had worked out how to use google translate by now
 

After all this time I would have thought you had worked out how to use google translate by now
 

and for giggles
 

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and for giggles
 

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Some front line reporting - worth a watch
 
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and for giggles
 

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Some front line reporting - worth a watch
 
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Some front line reporting - worth a watch
 
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Some front line reporting - worth a watch
 
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Ok, let me hit this on the head one last time because it is going to a really bad place.  And I totally get the sentiment but we need to be absolutely clear on this point - being the 'good guys' and acting like a modern professional military means all the time, no matter what. 
No days off, no "revenge breaks" and definitely no "hey they are doing it."
Only a combat veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq can describe just how badly we wanted to call in an A10 and wipe out an entire grid square after one of your own goes home in a box.  Or retaliate when the insurgents did some really dark sh#t.
But that ain't the gig, ever.  The single biggest point civilians do not get about war is that 'killing' is not the hard part - the hard part is 'to not keep on killing'. 
We clipped guys for holding a cellphone in the wrong place for too long, chewed up teenagers digging hole in roads, and a hammered into meat a few farmers dumb enough to stick around.  We did it and high-fived when we dropped them.  We slept soundly that night and never thought twice about doing it the next day. 
But we never let that out of the professional box we kept it in - the second we did, and could no longer tell which way was up - even when the other team was basically operating on Genghis Khan ROEs - we would stop being soldiers and become something else. And then the whole thing starts to unravel.
The RA and Russia will pay for their actions for decades.  War crimes are one of the key indicators that the RA is in freefall and not a coherent fighting force - military discipline has fallen apart on a wide scale, and they are reaping that field this fall.
But we beat them by being better than they are, forever.