LongLeftFlank

...The essential bottom line of mapping village/town fights is that a mix of hard cover (generally low down: walls, mounds, ditches) and concealment (clutter) should make it basically impossible to sit back and calmly shoot the defenders to death from long range, with AFVs or any other heavy weapon. That happens exactly never. I've lost count of the number of CM scenarios I've ditched the moment that dynamic became evident. That's glorified Battlezone, not a tactical wargame. Tanks, of course, can stalk and keyhole other tanks all the livelong day. And using MG fire lanes to check enemy movements are perfectly sound tactics. But the only way to clear infantry out of complex terrain in finite time should be with other infantry. /pontification

"Tokmak is now closed for Russian logistics" Does anyone have any idea why this took so long? Sure, HIMARS range, warhead sizes, etc., but one would think severing these rail lines, again and again, by whatever means available, should have been *top* priority for UA since at least last Sept 2022, knowing they intended to attack this front. Forcing Ivan to long haul truck in all the materiel, mines, etc. would have placed a further immense strain on them and perhaps made these defences less formidable. And this is not hindsight, I was deeply worried about this at the time. By the way, the latest Perun summary is essential listening; the density of the minefields is utterly unprecedented in history.

The barrels could work as a base texture. I'd dearly love to help you out mate, but my CM computer is on another continent at the moment, plus my work simply does not permit indulgence in the modding timesuck. I'm like an ex-smoker, gotta be damn careful about 'just one quick puff with mates in a bar.' ...Another quick thought on 'Koreanising' your maps (I know you have other priorities): in towns, many houses and shopfronts have eaves (roof overhangs the front). If you texture one of the shelter objects from H&E with the same tile roof, you can abut it to the front of a 1 story house pretty well. (those ones on the left, although you wouldn't see much corrugated metal in rural Korea. Outside large cities industrialised by the Japanese, 1950 Koreans still lived at best at 18th century level and metal is too valuable to the people for other uses. Thatching, bamboo or clay tiles, depending on where you are in the country. The above won't have any real LOS effect, but it will make the streetfronts seem less 'cookie cutter'. Drop some barrels and sacks and firewood in front too; not tires or metal drums, again, those would be too valuable to be 'waste'.

LOL, the Catan school of strategy (I embargo your Wheat Port). But if he's onside, great.

Ha ha, no, that's just fine. Most larger towns would have some electrification and telephony. Rural areas, less so, except when there is....

As in China, Korean graveyards are typically on a rural hillside (honouring the dead with an auspicious view); they wouldn't typically be within a village, or collocated with a temple. Each grave has a small mound (the dead are buried upright), typically overgrown by grass over time; stone markers for the affluent are a more modern adaptation borrowed from Chinese/Western custom. https://alotandacouple.com/2011/02/16/mounds-of-dirt/ Villages could have a spirit grove (maulsup), which Westerners might mistake for a churchyard, but is more a kind of shrine as well as park. Wooded and fenced in, it might contain some stone pagoda shrines or even clusters of wooden effigies (jangseung) representing guardian spirits. The grove is often near the village water supply (stream/pond or well). ...A general mapping comment, in cultivated (rice) zones, most village houses are going to have vegetable gardens around them, which in the summer would include climbing trellises and bamboo fencing (this is all tactical concealment). Koreans don't live on rice alone! Some liberal use of patches of tall grass might help abstract the LOS effects. Midden (organic trash) heaps and stacks of firewood would also feature, along with water jars. Obviously, in mountain villages and the north, and in winter, things are going to look different; more barren in general, less wood, more stone in construction, etc. P.S. This is terrific work, btw!!!!!

So the pro-Russia amen corner (tankies and wingnuts alike) are, predictably, howling that all the arms going to Ukraine must be diverted to Isreal forthwith. ....Except that if Israel seriously intends to conduct counterguerrilla warfare in urbanised terrain using large amounts of 155mm HE and cluster munitions, then, umm, are we backing the the right team? Because that's the Warsaw Uprising playbook.

If you Galeeeeev / they put a man on the moon (man on the moon) (btw for my money, THE best song lyric of all time, utterly Joycean) https://nitter.net/kamilkazani/status/1708491834253615405#m Oct 1 1. There is a high chance of the US getting into a military conflict with China 2. Likely resulting in a drastic collapse in the living standards 3. The only plausible scenario for the conflict *not* to happen is China thinking it can’t win 4. Improve your military efficiency Improve your military efficiency = improve your production capacities You will pay dearly unless you learn to produce a lot, quickly, and at a low cost (I think there was something similar once, written in Latin) ...Or alternatively, be able (*and* ready) to enforce your will on your globalised supply chain (said enforcement can be 'carrot' as well as 'stick', btw, which it always was in truly successful and long-lived empires). **** P.S. This is 95% OT, but anyone here play these boardgames? https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/692317/war-too-serious-matter-entrust-military-men-and-wa Primitive accumulation (and top hats), ftw!

Almost 3000 pages, and I think you have basically nailed it.... (1) never gonna happen. Option (3) is actually the far better outcome for the average Russian, compared to (2), which benefits absolutely nobody other than the walking dead figure in the Kremlin. ....However distant and unsavoury it may appear to us now, Russia *must* rejoin Europe, on Europe's terms. Their only other option is becoming fragmented vassals of the resurrected Chinese empire, with the first fruits of (resource) empire flowing to the Throne of Heaven, not Moscow.

I have been of this view since mid 2022. This labels me as a pessimist on this forum, although I have very badly wanted the Russians to hit their 'Uncle' point first, and quit, as they did in A'Stan, then Eastern Europe and then the USSR itself. Unfortunately, the Arsenal of Democracy doesn't exist any more. There are probably as many or more cheerful Ukrainian Vikings capable and interested in becoming skilled machinists (or CAD draftsmen) than North Americans today, at a 10x population delta. (And those in N.A. who do try to go into these fields are overwhelmingly Asian immigrants). ...The frat boys I went to uni with in the '80s who (unlike me, no I was the 'smart guy', too clever for all that) went to the elite banking jobs on Bay Street/Wall Street, and then on to private equity. Pretty much everyone else in our age group who chose a different profession has either struggled to prosper in a world shaped by these sh*theads, or basically become one of them, or served them. Time has done the rest, most of the folks who could recreate and manage the world we lived in as of Desert Storm 1991 are retired or dead. And they shipped all that Making Lotsa Stuff Better Faster Cheaper capacity and knowhow offshore, piecemeal and then in huge chunks, first to Mexico and then to China, the moment e-commerce made it possible to do so (c. 1998-2003, depending on sector), with the active support of pretty much ALL political parties. Took them about 15 years to bleed out the industrial base of the US of A (of which Canada is merely region 5 or 6 on most corporate logistical maps). Short of a mortal danger (i.e. invasion!) to North America, that capacity ain't ever coming back, no sense dreaming about it. Why would the finance bros give a rats, still less tolerate all the dot.Gov meddling, if they can't model 15% EIRR, with exit margin compression door-to-door returns of 24% within 2 years of FID? Lame! So we must pray that our Ukrainian brothers can maintain their qualitative edge long enough to break that "Russian Will", before waves of cheap-and-cheerful-made-in-China clones of last-year's tech takes 2024 to a Passchendaele level of bloody for both sides. I would love someone to convince me I'm wrong about any of the above, cuz I haven't found anyone, here or elsewhere. So I'm left praying for Russian weakness, or some hidden reserve of common sense, reasserting itself and ending this thing.

This imagery is really powerful, brother. That said, I take comfort in: (a) nearly all these wrecks do NOT look like brew-ups, which we like to hope lets the crews/passengers disembark to fight another day. (b) they are pretty much all pointed toward the front, which implies Ivan is not knocking off resupply or medevac. At a guess, these are mainly mine immobs, subsequently hit again by arty? Reading the expert commentary here (with thanks!) and viewing the latest anecdata (also, thanks to all!), it seems that ultimately, the breaking/exhaustion point for each side -- that is, the point where their formations simply become unable to accomplish offensive OR defensive tactical operations, regardless of Will or C3ISR, or congenital 'cursed capacity for suffering' / inbred desire to rape and loot .... will be measured in blood and not treasure. What's that tipping point?

Well give the propagandists some credit for sticking with Gravity's Rainbow (in Russian translation) for that long. Brentschluß!!!

...when Tankies.... https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09/poland-ukraine-have-plunged-into-a-full-blown-political-crisis-with-no-end-in-sight.html https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/16/ukraines-reconstruction-in-blackrocks-hands-gabor-mate-on-explosion-of-antidepressants/ AfterUkraine'sinfrastructureisdestroyedbyNATO'sproxywaragainstRussia,corporationslikeBlackRockandJ.P.MorganplantoworkwithcorruptUkrainianofficialsundermartiallawtoseizethelandandreapbillionsinprofit. All your base....

I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told I have squandered my resistance For a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises ...All lies and jest Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest Look, it's the same bloody macroeconomic data everyone uses, with all its limitations. Decent sliced and diced historical sets for countries are available at UNCTAD; I use them myself for work, and they are quite interesting for certain purposes (trends in aggregate supply and demand, energy intensity, etc.). Yes, some data could be falsified or misclassified, but even USSR or Mao's China didn't go to extreme lengths. ...And what it's telling Tooze is not to count on the Russian consumer blowing a whistle in the event of a 'long war' cuz too many guns and not enough butter are crimping his lifestyle. Which makes reasonable intuitive sense to me, unless China decides to side with the West or sumfink. He makes no claims though regarding the long term ability of the Russian economy to sustain the war machine. I don't get what people are so torqued about here.

It's perfectly ok to beat up on Pinker. https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf In his [2015] book The Better Angels of Our Nature, psychologist Steven Pinker made the case that everything from slavery and torture to violent personal crime and cruelty to animals has decreased in modern times. He presented masses of evidence. Such trends, it would certainly seem, are highly unlikely to be reversed. Nassim Taleb criticized Pinker’s arguments a few years ago, arguing that Pinker didn’t take proper account of the statistical nature of war as a historical phenomenon, specifically as a time series of events characterized by fat tails. Such processes naturally have long periods of quiescence, which get ripped apart by tumultuous upheavals, and they lure the mind into mistaken interpretations.

Rock it!

Good points, thanks for comments from an expert, but Galeev's feed discusses Germany+Switz.+Austria being unique today in terms of still having many highly skilled/artisanal (or even 'hobbyist') machinists. Russian industry today has far too few Poesels to make the quantities required! Top-20 machining suppliers 2000-2021: Galeev continues.... 1. Complex weapons such as WMD/delivery systems include precise parts 2. Production of precise parts relies on subtractive processes [machining] 3. Which [machines] had overwhelmingly relied on manual control even in 1991. In the Soviet era, military industry workers were aristocracy. They could be lavishly compensated, to the extent it created labor shortages in the civilian machinery (brains & hands drain to the military). 5. With the end of the Cold War, the output of weaponry dropped. Take tank production per year: 1985 - 3000 1996 - 5 2005 - 200, a very different scale of production. 5. Production at this scale has been radically computerized [using mainly Western European technology] 6. Labor capable of producing precise parts (-> weaponry) manually was lost [retired or laid off, without training up apprentices]. Once you lose the craftsmanship, doing it the old way again is no longer viable. 7. ...Resulting in a massive loss in production capacities and a surprising discontinuity in production processes. Soviet methods (accent on casting, pressing, etc.) require much, much higher initial capital investments. Also fixed costs were higher. But it produced weaponry in huge volumes unbeatably cheaply. Soviet Union had a huge machine tool industry of very uneven quality. Machines looted from Germany were still used in the 2000s in aerospace. Even today there is a huge park of Soviet-produced machines based on ancient German designs (1930s). But there is no one to operate them. Grandpas died and knowledge died with them 8. This [discontinuity] did not really attract public attention until this war ....The aircraft industry is atypical. Aircraft production for export fared well even through the 90s [exception: strategic bombers] **** https://nitter.net/kamilkazani/status/1675609243783667714#m Modern hardware and software allows to operate with poorly paid largely semi-skilled labor. There may be some destruction, yes. If an executive [today] spends money on machines, it's great. If he increases salaries, state controllers will devour him. **** https://nitter.net/kamilkazani/status/1679888626090487809#m [In contrast to Russia] Switzerland is a giant. Their industry is based upon: 1. Mature mechanical engineering 2. Innovative digital control technology 3. Continuous tradition of craftsmanship You [e.g. China] may try to develop (1) and (2). But you cannot acquire (3) anytime soon. That is just impossible ...Craftsman expertise is real, very difficult to pick and impossible to fake. One of the most destructive effects of the post-Soviet collapse on the Russian military production was the loss of craftsmanship -> tacit knowledge. Sometimes you can reverse engineer technology later. Sometimes you can't. Anyway, much of it has been lost irreversibly. ...So much of 20th c technology now appears to be a Black Box. While this effect is especially pronounced in the post-USSR that has gone through a semi-apocalyptic crisis, the Black Box pattern is in fact global. Making [factories] absolutely dependent upon CAD-CAM-CNC technology **** Seems word is getting out though, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-18/ukraine-asks-germany-to-halt-ammunition-tool-headed-for-russia

7 years of coaching rowing taught me that there's NO form of marine damage (usually novices running the boat into/dropping the boat on the dock) that can't be fixed up with duct tape (preferably black). ...My trademark was to assemble scraps into a little Grim Reaper, mounted above the bow ball of the most decrepit shell.

Kamil Galeev has been beating the drums on the importance of cutting Russia off from its longtime electronics suppliers *and* advanced tooling OEMs in the West since early in the war: When it comes to Russia/China, I feel that US analysts may: 1. Overestimate their capabilities. Especially at the high end 2. Underestimate their capacities. Especially at the low end They can produce terrifying amounts of "dumb" stuff e.g. artillery shells, while struggling with sophisticated products ....Another thing to consider is that: 1. Subtractive (cutting) operations were absolutely revolutionised in recent decades 2. Pressing/forging - not so much -> While dependency [on foreign suppliers] in (1) is nearly absolute, in (2) there is a far greater degree of self-sufficiency. Not that you should make artillery shells on mid-20th c equipment. But you can. With missiles it is very different. It is mostly machining and machining depends upon the modern CNC machines -> chokepoint. [Even if] there's a Chinese multi-axis machine in a Russian military plant, it will be almost certainly equipped with Fanuc/Siemens controller.... It is necessary to make Western machine tool producers stop support and maintenance of their machines in Russia. ...When envisioning an American decision maker, you can safely assume she or he is getting: 1) Lots of reports on [Russian sources of] microelectronics 2) Hardly anything on any other defence related industry, including machinery Most [in DC] genuinely don't have any idea and think it's all about microchips... But quite a few in Brussels do He goes into a lot of further detail on this if you read back into his feed. Also this, but no need to subscribe unless you want to support KG, the meat of it is in his feed: https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/who-produces-machine-tools **** This thread also touches on the forum comments earlier re Adam Tooze's take on Russian economic conditions, based on macro data. Is ZARA operating in Russia or not? is largely irrelevant But if Trumpf could stop maintenance and support of their machines in the Russian military plants, that would be nice. The most critical markets are often small -> you won’t even notice them in the aggregate figures

yeah, hohols are trembling in fear right now.

Not as much fun as Ed Luttwak at parties though (and that's no disrespect to the good fellowship of either gent).

...I suppose the general idea is that we must regretfully put a Russian Home Front Collapse (((((Dolchstosslegende)))) in the 'nice to hope for, and not entirely outside the realm of the possible, but I wouldn't bet on it', category of causative dei ex machini for an early cease fire. Until it happens, sure. Adam Tooze is pretty sound; no particular ideological brief I can discern in a decade of reading him, and his historical work on Weimar/pre-WW2 Germany political economy alone makes his views on these topics well worth considering... IMHO. But sure, he has no better direct line to Gawd than any of us mortals. YMMV. @billbindc (our go-to for the Permanent Establishment Party line ) Tooze is fair dinkum by you, amirite?

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-236-russias-long-war-economy Adam Tooze, from late August. Not optimistic about likelihood of Russian economic collapse. Setting aside the economist-speak, key points: - Emigration and mobilisation may have cost the Russian workforce c.2% of male workers aged 20-49.... [Up to] 10% of the high tech workforce left Russia in 2022. - Unlike Ukraine, Russia is running nothing like a total war economy.... [RU military spending] might be in the ballpark of US spending during the Vietnam war, at around 9-10% of GDP. This spending has provided a boost to some industrial sectors. - The deficit in 2022-2023 of 2% of GDP is a large stimulus but far short of the kind of deficit that would trigger hyperinflation and a currency collapse. Kremlin policymakers still have measures available to sustain the militarised economy. Their planning cooly estimates the probability of rising unemployment and losses of real income. - The war in Ukraine is woven into the fabric of public life in Russia....