LongLeftFlank

Worrisome.... Xi'an Bingo has reportedly agreed to manufacture and test 100 ZT-180 prototype drones before delivering them to the Russian Defense Ministry by April 2023. Military experts believe the ZT-180 is capable of carrying a 35- to 50 kilogram warhead. These things appear to be Shaheed equivalents, buzzbombs launched against a point target. They have yet to prove effective as battlefield weapons. However mass production of Lancets could be another matter.... https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/12/01/russian-loitering-munition-racks-up-kills-but-shows-limitations/ Supplying these things in bulk could allow RU to conduct behind the lines interdiction against UKR guns and LOCs that their air force has failed to provide to date. Especially if they became cheaper per unit than the Manpads and AAA needed to counter them. And even with huge defect rates, Chinese industry can crank out thousands of such weapons without breaking much of a sweat. So Western industry is likely already in a race against the mass produced knockoffs all time world champion. And I don't take much comfort in the threat of Western sanctions to prevent all this. I'd expect a certain amount of secrecy, obfuscation and denial; and then some acrimonious debate in the West, since the effects of sanctions cut both ways due to our continued dependence on Made in China. **** Also interesting.

Some folks here may be reading this fairly anodyne communique (translated from Russian/Chinese) a little too closely and seeing what they want/fear to see. That said, I have been worried from the beginning that Chinese support will allow Russia's 1940s dumb army to hold the field far longer and kill far more Ukrainians than it otherwise would.

I remember a shorter clip of the complete clusterflock at the hedgerow opening when the artillery zeroed in, ISTR it was a few months ago. This one is essential viewing for CMers IMHO. Long continuous shots and pans are priceless; too many jump cuts to the big booms make many 'Level 5' vids incomprehensible. Take a look at the 'map' size too.

Wow, I actually agree with @Aragorn2002 for 2 posts in a row. I hope it's not a sign of the End Times lol. ...Taking it further, preserving a free and independent Chinese democratic republic and indubitably Chinese culture that is un-gutted by Communism (and no, I don't idolize Chiang's rule, but in general he let his people live and trade the way they chose -- there is quite simply no comparison with Mao) would be the richest gift (or reparation, if you are really into colonial guilt and WW2 didn't settle the tab) the West could give the Chinese people and civilisation in general. **** Realistically, it's either Russians or Chinese who will dominate Siberia; there's no realistic way of projecting a third power in there (short of reuniting Korea next week). So the West were always natural allies of Russia, on that front anyway, for as long as the Red barbarians rule in Beijing. Putin could have aligned himself with the Germans, kept his interventionist habit within limits and done quite well out of it all, keeping Siberia as a dividend paying (and lootable) heritage asset for another generation of his Great Russian People (and varyag cronies) into the bargain. But noooo, his aging society of 145 million (oops, 144 million) is destined by Bog for far greater things. Thinking is for the Gloopy Ones....

https://cgrozev.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/putins-pickle/ (from 2014) ....More recent journalism (early Feb) on Girkin's monarchist sponsor, Konstantin Malofeev: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/11866 This source is definitely 'suss', but bio seems on target: https://news.russia.postsen.com/trends/192617.html 'The Grey Cardinal' (...I am not the biggest Harry Potter fan, but does this yarn diagram lead through House Slitherin to Lord Voldemort?)

Interesting OSINT

Be nice if the UA could track them to their new sector and broadcast surrender instructions. Frag your minders and come in, boys. Follow the drone to the yellow taped zone, stack your arms and await instructions. I'm sure the average Ukrainian grunt isn't in a hospitable mood, but a PW is basically a KIA for all intents and purposes (until swapped).

Xactly! As I think we've touched on before (and you mentioned you have spent time on the ground out here as well), I live this stuff on a daily basis. There's plenty of greedy and frustrating own-goals out here still (did I mention I live this on a daily basis?). But across the board it's dawned on ordinary people that their best years are still to come and that their children will live far better than they do. ....Sadly, I can't say the same about our own native lands. But I guess that's why I haven't lived there for nearly 20 years. But Ukraine (ironically for far rightists who idolise Tsar Vlad) may in fact prove to be the 'Great White Hope' and displace Moscow as the centre for the next iteration of 'Slavdom'. Culture follows the money. While there is a Core-Periphery dynamic, this isn't a 'Polish plumbers (with PhDs)' migrant/remittances multigenerational development model, it's a lot more direct, and based very much on home soil. ... and btw, Poles (and Czechs and Slovaks) with access to capital and ability to mobilise talent across borders will do quite nicely out of all this as well.

Also extraordinarily helpful and eloquent 'facts on the ground': 1. Black Horse HQ redeploys to IVO Izium, with cantonments and training grounds sharing defence responsibility with fully 'Westernised' UA mech forces deployed in the central Karkhiv-Izium-east Luhansk oblast 'bulge' of Ukraine. Think CENTAG -- UA [Bundeswehr] fully integrated with US commands. Fulda Gap. Whatever 'heavy' means, it is deployed at full scale right heah! Go ahead, make our day.... 2. Polish-Czech heavy armoured division IVO Dnipro and Poltava (which btw is also a forward TAC base and EW command centre). Attach heavily subsidised Romanian pioneer brigade (come on, you DID get your frontier restored to the Dnistr postwar in 2025, by popular referendum. Do your bit!) ....Here, my pathetic little US satrapy can even contract some cranky old EOD sea lawyers to manage private contractors (I could accurately name the nations providing the actual sappers, but it would be distinctly nonwoke) clearing about ten bazillion mines/UXO in Donbas... that is actually the most dangerous postwar work, no joke. 3. 101 AB RCT in Kyiv backstops UA forces on the frontier from Chernaiv to Kyiv. TBH, the UA has nothing really to learn about combat from the 101st, but it's always nice to professionalise and integrate the 'tail'. 4. Ideally, Anglo-US HQ advisory and training elements -- perhaps Étrangère as well? -- are based around Gomel, in a newly democratic but utterly Anything Goes Belarus. Minsk becomes the weirdest, edgiest and most violent city in Europe, the sole entrepot of the post-Soviet Mafiyas. Tombstone 1889, or Shanghai 1924.... Я твой Гекльберри. ...Notice that 'NATO' plays no formal role in any of this for 10+ years. **** So now we wander off the map of military into Emerging Markets possibility space. 1. By about 2032, Ukraine, Europe's GMP compliant manufacturing hub, has already reached middle income status on a national average per capita GDP basis. 2. Fantastic yakitori, chaat and vegan Texmex, plus gourmet coffee, is standard fare in youthful hi-tech edge cities exploding in quaint Old Town / university areas of all Ukraine's major cities. 3. Ukrainian biopharma / biotech eats China's (and India's) lunch with amazing speed, moving to the world's R&D leading edge (daily nonstop flights Odessa-Tel Aviv). 4. With avid lobbying from the private sector (fine, just say George Soros if you're into that kind of thing, but it's pretty ecumenical in reality), Ukraine achieves EU membership by 2028, well before NATO becomes feasible. 5. @kraze , realising that Living Well Is the Best Revenge, claims 'reparations' from ambiguously legal Muscovite massage therapists, one lap dance at a time. In addition to his tireless custom but stingy tipping, he also gains some notoriety in the trade by insisting the 'visiting artists' recite verses from Pushkin and Bulgakov on the karaoke machine whilst Performing, with the bass reverb cranked up to Eleven.... Ни мамы, ни папы, ни газировки с виски. Нет русской возлюбленной! 6. Coincidentally, rumour spreads that certain videos are embedded as easter eggs in CMBS2 scenarios. Shall we say, ahem, 'Enemy Condition' finally becomes meaningful in achieving Total Victory. Whose grass mod are you using, winkwinknudgenudge? 7. CM product sales soar faster than a Stalinist pig iron quota, particularly for the Professional Edition. Steve retires to Stalin's former palace at Yalta (several degrees warmer than Vermont) and makes bank as a docent, with the grudging assent of his wife, while obdurately refusing to fix the PzKwIII turret rotation bug, or sumfink. 6. Meanwhile, across the bristling 2023 frontier, maquiladoras flourish, first in Crimea and Kuban, then in Belgorod and Voronezh... and, wait for it, Chechnya (where Kadyrov has finally achieved martyrdom after enjoying too much lamb with apricots at the halal buffet). Bored, totally unfunded Russian generals are only too happy to put their mobiks/zeks/ fanatical brainwashed Third Rome Zoomers to profitable (for the generals) work in sweatshops, picking and packing pills and chips, since 'hohols' can no longer can be found to do those jobs across the (densely fortified and mined but increasingly porous) frontier. ....So yeah, about that combat Readiness for that Next War, against peoples who are presently funding your commanders' beach houses in Cyprus. 8. Sadly, the shattered and depopulated Donbas will take at least 12 years and billions in reconstruction aid and subsidies to start showing signs of economic life again. 'Clean energy' on the steppes is probably the thin edge of the wedge. (copains, please don't take this too literally, it's presented more as a counterpoint to the last 20 pages or so. But such trajectories did /are happening in Asia, in spite of dysfunctional rulers and seemingly shattered infra and social contracts. Take a look at today's Cambodia, which quite literally devoured about a third of itself nearly half a century ago!)

I already used the "I will take the Ring to Mordor!" meme last June. Plus ca freeking change....

I don't play Wordle, but I suppose the 3rd letter could be either "I" or "O". P.S. Our Thread..... [OK, looks like things got back on track on p2073.]

1. Unit deployments, Vuhledar (OSINT) 2. Note the rail bridge is still out. 3. Brain drain 4. ProRU Twitter having a sad

To meme is human (Anyway, Devo is exempt from sanctions). ***** Good!!!!!! In spite of Russian logistics being likely to b*llx it up, I have been deeply concerned they would get to The Thousand Drone Swarm Apocalypse first (with Chinese help). Yeah, Ukraine got yer 'corresponding inconvenience' right here, сука. More cause for cheer, though the Colonel is of course talking his book. Long interview, highly recommended, grateful for any comments, @JonS The fact that we had many IT people join us definitely played a big role. So it took them 2-4 days to explain the work specifics at the artillery reconnaissance and fire control points.... In Soledar, the distance between our fighters and the enemy was 100-200 meters, which is very close. In Zaporizhzhia, it was never less than a kilometer.... (I): What weapons does Ukraine lack to win? (O): We definitely need more guns. (I): What kind of guns? (O): It doesn’t matter, we will master any weapon and use it to destroy the enemy. [At Bakhmut] The weather also played into our disadvantage. Warm winters, low cloud cover, and UAVs that can fly long distances rarely work. Speaking for myself, I rarely have situations where I can see 15-20 kilometers ahead. ****** Oh, and warm fraternal greetings on Saint Valentine's Day.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/12/europe/wagner-convicts-eastern-ukraine-pleitgen-intl/index.html The first steps into the forest were difficult because of all the landmines spread out. Out of 10 guys, seven were killed immediately.... The Ukrainians were firing heavily on us, so even if their wounds were minor, you’ve got to keep going, otherwise you’re the one getting hit by the fire. Yeah, this topic again. Now sure, he doesn't necessarily say mines killed all 7, but still it seems clear mines (ok, maybe claymores, cuz forest) made a serious impression. Is their use going to get any panties in a bunch in the West? The CNN folks seem to take it in stride.

1. HeliosRunner seems of the view that Gerasimov's grand offensive has already shot its bolt, at least at the 'pincers' in the south (Vuhledar) and north (Kreminna). LITTLE SATURN vs. NORDWIND. 2. But NOEL, usually very rah rah , not so sure. 3. Shift of Russian focus (and seeming commitment of VDV) further up the line around Svatove could support this hypothesis. 4. And all this science I don't understand It's just my job five days a week.....

Well the Philippines is the best place to ease into that phase of life, mate. I see ugly old guys all around me like kids in the candy store. Not my scene personally, but yeah. My personal experience with mined areas is actually nonzero (Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar), but never handled the buggers, so many thanks for the info. I agree that it sounds like cluster/butterfly munitions do the nasty job I'm thinking of. ...Speaking of CM, I gained a new respect for AP mines when a 1/4 reduced Grenadier platoon stopped 2 fresh US companies cold in la Meauffe on 19 June 1944, with 3 HMGs, plenty of 81mm and about a dozen AP minefields/traps scattered in chokepoints and transit routes. Historical action, well documented and mapped out, and simple to recreate, though not much 'fun to play' for US so I never released it. First or second GI hits a bouncing Betty, the rest of his (Green) squad goes to ground and the stonking begins. Repeat, all effing day.

Hee hee, one moment I'm Cassandra wailing once a month about how all is lost get to the lifeboats and next thing I make @kraze look like a peacenik. They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'll have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a Fool.

Oh bloody hell, do we have to scroll pages and pages of blather about these kinds of empty headed attention seekers now? What the hell does this have to do with the war? This entire thread can drown very quickly in American and EU political yabbida yabbida yabbida. There's no freeking end to it. Go watch Tucker and Rachel or whoever.

Heavy air activity too, based on this anecdote: While underwhelming to date by Western standards, Russian CAS is among the things frontline Ukrainian soldiers appear to fear most. But there's likely another reason the Ukies are pouring so much cement in this sector.... This concentrated Russian thrust back along the Kreminna-Torske-Lyman road is constrained by the E-W Severski-Donets on the south, and by the Oskil - Zherebets - Krasny river lines, (with the land in between them deeply cut by E-W ravines and balkas), on the north. So not much room for flanking operations. This has the look of an EPSOM-GOODWOOD 'funnel', with 20th CAA advancing on a 'front' of a single vehicle, or else probing through woodlands filled with UA rocket-toting jaegers. This all has the look of another Russian operations-level debacle.

Enjoying these preview shots of the new CM engine!

It's sounding a lot to me like they have in fact accomplished the first item, using Wagner to force Ukraine to recommit its best formations to hold the lines. ...Now, about that 'main force' part. Is it yet to show itself, or are these 'shaping operations' actually the main effort? If we believe the thesis of @The_Capt (and mainly I do, although I give him a hard time), then C4ISR already knows the punchline. While all the recent will-they-won't-they? drama around Leopards and F16s and CIA blew the pipeline and Starlink and UKR gov falling apart and running out of hohols, is mainly trying to make Putin think 'it's now or never', so lean out over those skis tovarisch.... TL:DR: Maskirovka can cut both ways. All successful frauds rely on wish fulfilment delusion in the heart of the patsy.

Welcome mate, feel free to chime in. He's still active at BoardGameGeek, but hasn't posted here since 2016. We aren't friends per se, 'His Supreme Magisterial JasonC' treated me as haughtily as everyone else here. But yeah, he was very deeply read and a great macro (OR) brain, though not infallible.

Appreciate your experience, but I think you are dancing a bit around the use cases here (AT mines or PGMs focused on vehicles is NOT the tactical challenge under discussion here, nor counterinsurgency situations where mines are planted or scattered on supply routes also used by civilians). You have a particular frontline situation here where waves of assault squads are moving around in darkness in no-mans land filled with trash and flotsam (easy to disguise mines or bomblets). You want to slow them, hurt them, disorganise them, while you call in fire, shift reserves or just get the hell out. I don't get how this is so hard to accept as valuable. ...I don't know how the Tommies managed to ignore minefields in the Falklands; all I can assume is that not enough were laid. The Iranian revolutionary guards sure as hell had problems with mine belts. On the 'political price', maybe you're too close to the topic. I can certainly respect that, but the average person in the West isn't going to change their opinion of Ukraine over its use -- declared or otherwise -- of more stuff that goes BOOM on invading soldiers in a war that has an unprecedented volume of BOOM. So as far as I'm concerned, it's a red herring as I've said multiple times. Ukraine does not suddenly become a pariah over this, unless you're John Helmer. If there are PGM alternatives, well fine and dandy, but they ain't stopping Ivan yet.

Yes, and poor Imperial Japan was just nicely minding its own busines, rampaging across China, raping Nanking, cutting down all the trees in Korea, fortifying the entire ex-German Pacific islands mandate. Co-Prosperity Sphere, you know. ...and mean old Roosevelt needlessly provoked them with his metals and oil embargo, like a literal dagger to the throat of an oil poor maritime power I tell you! I mean, what else could they do? but rampage across the entire Pacific, mass-murdering civilians by the bucketload? Bring better arguments than drive-by Carlson/Buchanan retweets, mate. Otherwise, The American Conservative is over there.....