LongLeftFlank

Yeah, very important point here. In rasputitsa season, heavy trucks have big trouble offroading. But roads are not rail lines. I'll ask the pros on the board to chime in, but it seems much harder to outright knock down rail and road bridges and overpasses with artillery shells/rockets than using (much bigger) aircraft bombs. IIRC, even the Antonovskii bridge needed a lot of hits to make it unusable. Plus Russian pioneer troops seem reasonably efficient at repairing, or laying detour pontoon/corduroy sections (for roadways). But if you can create traffic holdups which further strain the extended logistics chain (and might also provide juicy targets on occasion), that's all to the good. I guess it's really a question of what you spend your heavy rounds on.

The facts we hate We'll never meet Walking down the road Everybody yelling, "hurry up, hurry up" But I'm waiting for you I must go slow I must not think bad thoughts What is this world coming to? Both sides are right But both sides murder I give up Why can't they? I must not think bad thoughts I must not think bad thoughts I must not think bad thoughts The civil wars And the uncivilized wars Conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace The food cooks poorly And everyone goes hungry From then on, it's dog eat dog

Four man SSO team whacks a RU truck behind enemy lines. Location undetermined. Nice long drone shots of (night) tactical movement.

The vatniks are seriously assaulting across open, mined terrain mounted in softskinned trucks? (first :30) Wot he said.... ... although Tatarigami_UA notes that some of these wrecks are from earlier attacks.

Don't recall seeing this posted yet. https://nitter.net/wartranslated/status/1712794208883351965#m Ukrainian Special Forces compromised the Russian supply of fuel and ammo in the Zaporizhzhia frontline this morning. "This morning, a unit of the SSO "Rukh Oporu" carried out a successful operation in temporarily occupied Melitopol. Thanks to the sabotage actions of our soldiers at 07:30 in the morning, the railway track was blown up. As a result of the explosion, the railway track and the train that delivered ammunition and fuel for the Russian army were damaged.

Fair enough, and I'm really not inclined to counterargue in the smashmouth Taleb style either. Plus, OT.

Interesting. Of course, one could argue in turn that the political power of the Athenian oligarchs as well as the Roman Senate (don't know about the Phoenicians) was actually rooted in rural landholdings (worked by slaves), not so much in burghers. In contrast, 'mercantile' powers like the Venetian Republic or the Dutch Republic derived their political power from gains from trade (backstopped by naval power). While Great Britain later overtook all its rivals by combining elements of both military rural aristocracy and mercantile savvy. .... But sure, this topic goes down an OT rabbit hole fairly fast. I might not be so quick to dismiss Taleb's nugget out of hand though. Tying it back to Ukraine topic, I was thinking about Putin's roots in the St Petersburg mobbed-up political machine, and how the oligarchies in Russia (and also in Ukraine, at least until lately) reflect competing extractive and mercantile interests, and metropoles.

Aphorisms, especially Taleb's, should never be taken as literal ironclad truths, but there's often something worthy in them.... https://nitter.net/nntaleb/status/1712591137951645880#m Peace is an urban, city-state thing reached through (non-zero sum) commercial interractions, not signatures at the top. Commerce breeds tolerance. #Phoenicians #Dubai #Singapore War is a peasant-driven zero-sum thing w/closed-minded Muzhiks hungry for territory. City states & federations like peace & commerce. Large countries with centralized national identities are designed by war and conquest, and for war and conquest. *** Back OT, infrared imagery linked by "Special Kherson Cat" show the mindboggling density of minefields on the Zaprozhe front (EDIT: If I understand SKC correctly, this may actually be a Ukrainian minefield near Verbove) https://t.me/ukrbavovna/11133

Just to add, David Glantz made a career out of digging out and chronicling (in English) the countless failed Red Army offensives of the GPW, some of them quite huge, and lasting up to the end of the war. In short, for every Sandomierz or Korsun pocket, there were about 3-4 'neverwozzers' that yielded little more than another heap of dead T34s and Ivans, generally piled up at some river crossing and then plastered mercilessly by German artillery. Since May 2022, the Russians have yet to show anything more than a few shattered factory towns that took them literally months to pry away from the defenders. But their command staffs seem doctrinally willing to continue launching these forlorn hopes, presumably hoping that one Big Win will make up for all the failures.

Man, all kinds of doomers coming out of the woodwork. Gonna have to work my connections at the Consulate to secure enough smokes and brandy for the club.

Come on 'fess up, this guy is basically you, isn't he?

Another turn of the screw by MuXk? ...Today it appears you can no longer search for a Twitter user by name on Nitter and call up their feed? https://nitter.net/search?f=users&q=%40DefMon3 Can anyone confirm this? TIA

Nope, further inquiries are unnecessary intrusions, cheers mate. Carry on!

I say, the Scotch stands by you, fellow hand-wringer! **** As a squad-level antidrone alternative to AA cannon airburst shells, how about resurrecting shoulder-fired recoilless rifles and cannister/flechette rounds? Like the 90mm M67. The Antipersonnel (Canister) Cartridge M590 (XM590E1)... consists of an aluminum cartridge case crimped to an aluminum canister. The canister consists of a thin-walled, deep-drawn, aluminum body that contains a payload of 2,400 eight-grain (0.5 g), low-drag, fin-stabilized, steel-wire flechettes. When the canister leaves the muzzle, the pressure ruptures the canister along inscribed score marks to release the flechettes, which disperse in a cone angle of approximately 8 degrees. Cartridge weight: 6.79 lb (3.08 kg) Projectile weight: 3.97 lb (1.8 kg) Maximum effective range: 328 yd (300 m) 300m seems about right to whack a quadcopter, and some tweaking might extend the range. This also sounds like something the Ukes could fabricate themselves. There's also the smaller FV442 flechette round for the 84mm Carl Gustav RR, already in UA service, although effective range seems to be only 100m. An American soldier interviewed about how the round killed 25 Afghans referred to the rounds as "the meat grinder". (I think flechettes were also banned by some pantywaist treaty or other, but we don't go in for that kind of whinging here! Anyway, one could always go back to cannister balls. https://www.thelocal.se/20110306/32424). PULL!!!!!!

Since we can't have incontrovertible data, then we can only go by the results we see, which indicate quite clearly that Russia can't take meaningful amounts of territory from Ukraine. (We haven't yet confirmed the converse is true -- not sure I can endorse that Ukraine is 'getting better' at attacking tbh). ...The only way Tankies can rationalize this demonstrated reality away is to claim, on no evidence at all, that: Since Russia launched the SMO to denazify/reclaim wayward provinces to the Union State, its forces are exercising great restraint to minimise damage and rebuilding after joyous reunion. At some opportunity cost to themselves, perhaps, but grinder has been working hard and Banderonazis are now fast running out of conscripts, while effeminate NATO bourgeoisie is already getting bored. Ergo, time is on side of patient, chess playing 3.5x bigger Russian Bear. QED.

OK mate, so while I greatly enjoy your commentary, and (like Martin Q. Blank and his cat) also respect your privacy, by your own account you are a (former/current) volunteer medic (in Ukraine?), seemingly of Eastern European origin. But (duly accounting for 'lost in translation'), you're asking us to 'take your word for it' (cuz you can't share your sources or you'd go to Federal prison or sumfink?) regarding some high level assertions relating to US/Western vs. Russian production capacity. Sure, we rando gamer geeks can all express our own opinions here (within reason), and even occasionally float BS we heard in a bar (Spetsnaz on the tundra, anyone?). ...But it's probably best not to pretend to an authority, still less classified insider 'Red Pill' knowledge you don't actually have. Unless you really *do*, of course. But then you'd have to kill us (In my particular case it's easy, poison my San Mig).

["Don't forget to turn off the globe!"]

...Well, I got no response at all to my earlier reference to Beyoncé in biker leathers, so I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Is 'meming like a mofo from my couch' a legit use of 'the time that is given us', O Mithrandir? Asking for a fiend.... *** P.S. I think Carolus has politely said you may be a guest of the Club, with the cigars and the overstuffed armchairs. And the map table.

You had me at brandy & cigars bro, but you kind of lost me after that. I'm not at all in the space of 'the cynical West, fighting to the last Ukrainian', which is a tankie favourite. Limiting the casualty rate is ultimately in Ukraine's hands. I don't think Russia can inflict debilitating losses on UA as an attacker, barring WMDs. ...or barring someone deploying that miniature autonomous drone @Battlefront.com Steve once mentioned a while back, IIRC a softball-sized charge with the approximate 'IQ' (and flesh sniffing ability) of a mosquito. If so though, I predict Ukraine gets them first (the Chinese typically need a year to knock foreign tech off in volume, but then watch out!). However, Ukraine is going to need propping up as a going economy, and society, if it is not to become in large part a gypsy nation of metics.

Don't put words in my mouth, please, or drag me into this 'Who's Winning' stupidity [which btw was either /sarc or /trolling]. The 'shattered shell' appears to be continuing to put substantial forces into the field, so I'm not sure how useful that choice of wording is. ...But sure, I'd agree at this point that Russia's *offensive potential*, whether as a 1940s infantry army or anything more modern, is increasingly a 'shattered shell' that will take Moscow decades to revivify, if ever. That is owing both to the altered offence-defence dynamics you have been describing for thousands of pages (many thanks!), and to a steady erosion of support capabilities and near-irreplaceable stocks that we cannot yet see more than the tip of the iceberg. All solid points Ergo, we will *not* be seeing the UA overrun by white clad Siberians (or swarms of white clad Chinese drones) in the dead of winter. So let's put that one away, can we? **** At this point, I'm far more concerned with the price Ukraine must pay to keep up this fight at its current intensity (or even at a lower level of intensity, along some 1200km of front) for another year, or two. Fine, there's 'a lot of ruin in a nation' and nobody (not me, anyway) is questioning the Ukrainian will to fight on. There's no option to 'accommodate', never has been. But 'the moral is NOT in fact to the physical as 3 to 1' when talking about sustaining a war economy and some 2+ million Ukrainians (?) engaged in the war effort full time, over time scales that run into years. Think of the WW1 and WW2 home fronts; a lot of things wore thin over time, probably different things than today, but they did. (TL:DR, I might Will Beyonce in biker leathers to lech on me, but Will alone doesn't make it happen) 1. The Ukes carefully mask their personnel and material losses, but given the nature of their assault operations since June, these must be quite substantial. 2. And (hey @Haiduk, chime in here please), Ukraine's civilian economy, at least east of Dnipro, has got to be largely suspended? Are payrolls clearing? Are there ration books? Or is Ukraine somehow running a guns-and-butter economy? If we are now talking about a Long War, with timeframes measured in years, it is hardly cheese-eating-surrender-monkey defeatism to be looking for more hard data on what's happening on our stalwart Ukrainian allies' side of the hill. CAN they keep it up? What. Is. it? (It's It!) WhatisIt? You want it all, but you can't have it....

Sure, but you don't need to hit the locomotives while they're moving. Cut a rail (or a trestle or an embankment) in front of them and even if they can stop in time, they will sit stock still for quite a bit. Anyway, I'm sure there are plenty of Ukrainian officers who have noticed this. Just trying to better understand the 'why not'....

Well that's the thing; the Russians DO have rail logistics kinda figured out, rail is what has held Russia together since 1860. And as you say, they just 'brute force' the rest, or make themselves do without. ...So why not beat the living hell out of that resource from the first day you possibly can? Using that superior Western C4ISR that can, well, spot trains unerringly....

No intention here to order you around bro, or to dictate your priorities, your creative efforts here, as elsewhere, are utterly fantastic. My point is that all the map clutter isn't just about making it look 'authentic'. ...Yes, we are quite of the same vintage, and yes I'm Canadian originally and always in my heart, although I've lived over half my life outside the True North Strong and Free and am now on my seventh country. Cheers!

Agreed, but I am specifically talking about rail, not trying to interdict the 'last mile.' It is simply bizarre to me that the Russians have been able to run steady rail shipments for hundreds of km, parallel to a hostile front since UA reclaimed the initiative last fall. Millions of landmines and cement barriers, plus sustainment for 3 armies didn't just appear there; it was all carried. Mostly on trains. If HIMARS couldn't reach, hit the bastards with something else: commandos/partisans on a one-way-trip if you have to. Sacrifice aircraft. Bridges, embankments, locomotives. They fix one, blow it again. Interdiction. That was much of the advantage of forcing Russia to defend this long 'land bridge'. Can you cut supply off completely? Hell no. Can you substantially reduce the flows by forcing Ivan to run a Red Ball Express from Rostov or Kerch? I don't see why not. What am I missing other than 'well shucks, they didn't do it, so there must be some reason'? Like what?