Pete Wenman

So this was from this board on 26 Feb:
"Overall Summary:  As of the first 72 hours of the war, it appears that the Russian military has overestimated its own capabilities and/or the capabilities of Ukrainian resistance and has not likely met the timelines it had set during pre-war planning.  The assessment is that the next 24-48 hours will be critical in the outcome of this war and if Russian forces are not about to take Kyiv and inflict some serious damage to the Ukrainian people's will, their own strategic center of gravity will become more vulnerable. "
That was 2 days into the entire thing.
Since then we have heard a lot of pundits and retired military folks try and wrestle with this whole thing.  I am not surprised formal DOD, MOD assessments are showing what they are to be honest because pretty much from the start of the this war just about everyone has been using macro-quantitative calculus to try and predict/model what has been going on. 
On a CNN video just a few days ago Gen Petraeus was describing the situation in Mariupol and why it matters.   He did a pretty good job describing the drive for a "land-bridge" between Crimea and the Donbas and why the Russians are trying so hard in this area.  Then he slipped right into the old macro-quantitative thinking.  He outlined how once Mariupol was taken it would free up Russian forces to advance north and cut off great swaths of Ukrainian in the East.  I have seen various predictions of Russian "pincer moves" and the like.  This all makes perfect sense if one is applying conventional warfare metrics, all largely based on macro-quantitative calculus of force sizes/ratios and combat power.
What they are missing, and frankly it is not surprising to see it emerge on a wargaming board, is a view through a lens of micro-qualitative calculus; playing CM, in all its versions, has changed the way we see warfare.   All CM veterans see the signs of something different at a micro-level: abandoned vehicles, loss of high value assets, loss of high level commanders, videos of embarrassing Russian cluster-f#cks and evidence of UA successes just about everywhere.  A lot of these metrics are qualitative and when combined with the macro-quantitative they create a very different picture. 
Social media has allowed us to see a macro - micro-qualitative view as well; we can basically upscale our micro-view through very wide sampling.  By doing this, a lot of us have noted that the texture of this war is looking very different.  It is one, for the Russians, of extreme friction caused by the UA approach.  The Russians are fighting in an operational tar pit, the entire battlespace is sticky for them.  Some of this is by their own shortfalls, while in many places it is by design by the defending forces. I do not know who the military master-mind is on the Ukrainian side but he has clearly been reading about Finland, Giap and the Comanches.  The UA has not only stopped the Russian military, they changed the fabric of the battlespace for them.
This thing is not over yet and will likely continue to evolve.  I am not entirely onboard with the Russian collapse scenario, but we are literally a couple key indicators away.

Ah, now that I have recovered from busting a gut after that post re: Orville Peck secret identity....
Great stream of (mostly) curated picks from social media. My favourite today is this one by @Haiduk. I find remarkable how good UKR is at using conventional artillery as a stand in for eye wateringly expensive PGM. It looks to me that since UKR had to rebuild its military from scratch, had an opportunity to adopt new ideas and technologies dealing with little or no institutional inertia.
I wonder what the process is for those arty strikes, maybe something like this?
1. Drone controller has UAV loitering on suspected area of RF activity.
2. Controller spots location of RF assets, then registers the location by taking snapshots of target from several points and angles (see this for instance https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926580518308641)
3. Photos, along with camera parameters and geo location info forwarded to fires coordination center. Firing solution calculated automatically and fire task assigned to friendly asset.
4. Fire task executed, drone controller reports damage assessment.
An iteration over the above wouldn't take very long at all, the most finicky part being that of maneuvering the UAV to take the measurements you need for registration.  And that could be automated too (the controller activates the "registration" behaviour and that's it).
The workflow above could be implemented with very few fancy equipment/algorithms, you just need good software and network engineers using pretty mundane hardware.
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On another topic, I am glad to see tactical psychology being used... the most efficient way to defeat an adversary is to destroy its will to fight. So far UKR has been fighting smart, they just need to keep doing so!

What a state the RU forces must be in, if this is true, that one man can be in a tank on his own, and then just drive off in it.
 

Its a science, if you forgive the pun, in itself.  Blood agent, nerve agent, choking agent, incapacitating agent, persistent agent, non-persistent agent are just a few variables for starters.  Generally you need mass, so MBRLs in battalion handfuls should be the preferred method of delivery.  Then of course there is the weather factor - wind direction, wind speed, temperature and humidity.
In terms of effect, it is going to depend on whether the folks on the receiving end have equipment to protect themselves against it and, where applicable, have taken drugs to ameliorate the effects of certain agents, and have the means to decontaminate.
They generally work on the basis of being a terror weapon so there is potentially a huge psychological effect but also as just a means of causing casualties that the medical chain has to deal with.  Combine that with AFVs operating closed down and just the rigid PITA of performing basic tasks with a bulky suit on, your view of the world being restricted to two pieces of glass, your ears covered by the suit hood and wearing two pairs of gloves.  Shooting, which I learned was a vaguely important soldiering skill during my time in two armies, in NBC kit is an art in itself.  Now try and write on a log sheet, type on a computer, twiddle the dial on your radio or even speak, listen and be understood/understand on the radio with those gloves and that mask on.

What a state the RU forces must be in, if this is true, that one man can be in a tank on his own, and then just drive off in it.
 

In what world would a website called "anti 5g" be a remotely credible source.

Mr Picky would also say that Calvary is where Jesus was crucified or something like that 😜

The help of our ancestors. It's became knowingly, several days ago Russian forward groups, searching the ways couldn't overcome ancient Serpent Ramparts (ukr. Zmiyevi valy) near Bilihorodka village,west from Kyiv. Theese ramparts were built in 10-11th centuries against steppe nomads attacks on the base of more early fortifiacations.
They girds Kyiv outskirts from the west to southern east in several lines. This was huge alot of work in that times. Now many of them plowed up, but theese save itself and came useful again since 1000 years
   

Maybe not quite as close to Brest as first suggested

This one looks like normal artillery fire - stated to be Location 50.58601019062369, 30.838783548950353 - NE of Brovary
 

This one looks like normal artillery fire - stated to be Location 50.58601019062369, 30.838783548950353 - NE of Brovary
 

This one looks like normal artillery fire - stated to be Location 50.58601019062369, 30.838783548950353 - NE of Brovary
 

The sound on backgroud is a Russian commanders talk about this shelled unit  (intercepted by SIGINT):
-  Nitro, I'm Udar (eng. "Strike")
- Allo
- Nitro, I'm Udar, I listen you
- Udar, I'm Nitro. I almost lost 6th regiment
- What?
- 6th regiment! I can't report for now! I'm rallying them. Too much of losses... We awaited... The head of column was ambushed. The commander of regiment get lost. For the rest - I'm still figuring it out...
- Now, when will rally of all, when understand situation, you have to report me. 
- There was artillery hit! Tanks! UAV! As I see Bayraktar is flying! I'm figuring out with a losses
PS. Location is almost the same place that Shiled of Kyiv campaign, but some SW %)

Heh, I have an already pretty active day job.  Think of this as bonus customer service - check out the gift shop while you are here!

A well-written and cautious summary of developments (in Spanish)
https://www.revistaejercitos.com/2022/03/01/guerra-de-ucrania-dia-6/
of most interest for folks here are the three situation maps shown in the article: the first one which comes from a Russian source and looks very optimistic, another from the Institute for the Study of War which seems to underestimate the progress of the Russian Armed Forces along the coast of the Sea of Azov, and the third one, which neatly interpolates the 2nd with clear reports of Mariupol having been encircled (and fierce fighting around the city).
Also very useful to make sense of the stream of videos and photos is this website 
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
that works quite hard to geo locate videos/photos/claims and cross-reference all that data. A few days ago I was wondering about where was the "top-end" Russian kit, and it does seem that is starting to appear in the lists of confirmed destroyed vehicles.
I am with @LongLeftFlank and other OSINT people that these supply raids and interdiction may snowball and become a very important factor in how things play out over the next few days. What we're seeing is very much in line with the analysis of the article from War on the Rocks that I (and probably others, this thread is a monster) shared a few days ago. From that analysis the most sensible strategy was to avoid a "decisive" engagement in the frontiers and go for the supply lines, and it seems that is precisely what the UKR forces are doing for the moment.
The other very significative thing that many of you have raised is that there's seemingly a lot of open radio comms that are being snooped by radio aficionados from around the world. I look forward to see if someone can make sense out of all that Russian armed forces radio chatter. There are also several reports of equipment being just... abandoned.
I am also very much horrified by seeing the effects of Russian artillery on civilian areas, again, after what transpired in Aleppo (or with less means, in Sarajevo, going back in time). I have no words for that.
To all the Ukrainian friends here, please take care of yourselves if you have not already joined your army. To all the peace-loving, decent Russian friends here, I am not going to ask impossible stuff. I just remember this quote from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:
A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

Stay safe mate
P
 

Hi everyone. Nikita here.
I'm still in Crimea. I have to be careful with every word, especially after being detained on 24th by police and FSB, so I will be brief. I am literally shaking as I type due to adrenaline, but we all need to be strong these days.
1) Ukraine will be free. The bastards will fail. I can clearly see it.
2) We witness an insane amount of heroism. Which is truly inspiring.
3) Thanks to Steve and other people from here who were kind to me in the past and took time and patience to communicate with me. It made a lot of difference in the end and made me a person who I am today.

I'm ok. I just too tired about all these news monitoring, so I havn't enough energy to write here. Today I tried to depart my wife from the city to her parents in more calm Cherkasy oblast, but we can't reach to railway station. Municipal transport stopped on the left bank of Kyiv, though on the right it works like and subway. 
All day from my balcony, wich exits to Obolon' and Vyshhorod periodically heard a sounds of shellings. Now I heard outcoming shots of our 2S7 Pion guns, located in 5 km from my house close to city limit. They fire somewhere to the west, where Russian troops concentrates to attack on the city. All day there were periodycal clashes on the line Irpin'-Bucha-Vorzel-Hostomel. There was attempt of Russian tank attack from Chernobyl zone through Ivankiv on Kyiv, but because of we had a time to demolish the bridges through the Teterev river, they halted. 

Yep we have all been there, done that. Never good
P

Why is CM great?  Good question to be honest.  But maybe the question should be "why is CM great, for me?"  Clearly there is a gaming population out there that love the franchise or it would have gone out of business years ago.
CM has its quirks and every game is an abstraction so I guess it all comes down to what gaming experience the player is looking for, and enjoys.  Lotta wargames out there that span the old school hex based, turn based "chess with guns", to the RTS click-heavy affairs.  CM, and a few other titles, kind fall right in the middle of the spectrum [aside: been seeing comments on micro-management in CM, yeesh try playing Steel Divisions 2].  It has a mid-level pace (WEGO slowest, RT quickest), low-tactical level scale (Bn and below for the most part). 
The issues that get raised in CM, spotting and unit behaviour tend to get the most ink, when these come up the first question we ask ourselves in the back "is this a feature or a bug".   First off, players need to re-visit "what they think should happen".  Pre-conceived notions drive a lot of the negative feedback which is to be expected and frankly if a player really does not like enough of them then one has to ask if "CM is for you?"  That said, we have a lot of veterans in the back room -the last 20 years has provided plenty of them- so when we analyze combat behaviour we do have people who can carry it over to RL.  So when a player asks:
I get the question but I can also tell that this person has never actually had effective fire pointed at them.  Green inexperienced troops may believe this and they do not live long enough to become "battle hardened".   An MG in a turret is an exposed position and once you start taking fire from multiple directions and incoming is bouncing off around you, battle hardened troops duck...fast.  Why?  Because at this point someone else's fire is all that will save you; veterans are veterans because they know when they are suppressed and know what to do.  There are times when you get off the X and shoot your way out and then there are times to get your head down and call for support, try very hard to avoid situations that lead to that first one.
CM has a lot of what I call "chaos features", at a micro level individual behaviour follows a set of standard rules but embedded in that is a level of chaos.  Units will cower at odd times, miss something right in front of them (trust me this happens in RL all the time) run away or not run away.  This chaos is the essence of tactical warfare. Atypical behaviour is the norm as combat is an atypical environment.  People crack, shock and fear have really strange effects.  It is that chaos that makes the game realistic.  I often say that many players do not want full "realism" because if they find the game frustrating at times now...
Why is CM great for me?  Well, I do enjoy the realistic tactical level but what always hooks me are the micro-dramas that pull one in.  That last Dragon missile, holding off that last T64, a crew, down to pistols, that hold out for just one more minute and that stupid APC that zigged when I told it to zag.  But every devotee to the brand probably has their own reason and hopefully the OP can find his/her own, if not, well then keep wargaming at least and thanks for trying.   

About 7 degrees is the best you can hope for ...

Same map, for **** n' giggles.
Blue vs Red AI Attacker in a QB setup.
I as the blue player had just gained 2 contacts (and the only contacts so far in game), one of which firmed up as a T-55, at which point the M60 with the sighting blew up, much to my surprise and lost the contact (not a surprise).

All fun stuff
P
 

Same map, for **** n' giggles.
Blue vs Red AI Attacker in a QB setup.
I as the blue player had just gained 2 contacts (and the only contacts so far in game), one of which firmed up as a T-55, at which point the M60 with the sighting blew up, much to my surprise and lost the contact (not a surprise).

All fun stuff
P
 

Same map, for **** n' giggles.
Blue vs Red AI Attacker in a QB setup.
I as the blue player had just gained 2 contacts (and the only contacts so far in game), one of which firmed up as a T-55, at which point the M60 with the sighting blew up, much to my surprise and lost the contact (not a surprise).

All fun stuff
P