LongLeftFlank

(That will teach Steve to twist my flattened tail! Bares powerful incisors) As to the young lady in question, the aesthetics of the younger generation are... different. Although her eyebrows are a little Brezhnev retro.....

Yes, I mentioned that although he's a well known Russia booster, his feed occasionally has interesting stuff that gets RTed by the good guys.... But heck, what's so propagandistic about the General taking a selfie with a supermodel? (it's not like our Mutha Beautiful Thread is being inundated with this stuff, and the tank pr)n tweets get kinda dull after a bit. Man doth not live on tank pr)n alone....)

Hey, I hope you're right for once Zoker....

Reasonably long steady shots, give a good sense of the Bahmut battlescape (1 minute only, 2nd minute is blank screen) https://samf.substack.com/p/makiiva-and-bakhmut-the-impact-of There are not many places that can accommodate large numbers of troops with some provision for food, sleep, and hygiene, so it is not surprising that they end up in public buildings such as schools. P.S. Clever.

I assume the caption is an accurate description of what transpired (interesting also that it was released), but more interesting is that Putin shows no visible signs of (a) dying of some wasting illness (b) mental illness. But fine, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. FWIW.

dupe

Well thank you so much for tolerating us. In fact, you ask 'simple' questions but don't really seem to give a rats about listening to answers or accepting feedback. Every response is just to give yourself a springboard to post yet another wall of text, making very bold but highly debatable assertions. ...Plus, at last count, you've managed to ad hom about a dozen of us here already. So let me ad hom you right back, you're coming across right now as a superbly intelligent, well read 18 year old. One of many who have graced this fine Forum over the years. (I have a 16 year old at home here). ...And while I think it's fine you are stirring the pot and challenging us, I predict a rage quit soon when we crusty groupthinkers fail to bow down before your high energy debating style. TL:DR you are really going to need to give and take a little here, or this will get tiresome. But of course, as Steve properly reminds me, it's his living room, he sets the rules for decorum. My views are my own alone.

Haha, no, others on this board are a lot better informed tbh. That's why I'm here personally (besides being a 23 year CMer, when work allows). But I do try to document when I make an assertion and it is always with the expectation that I could be mistaken, or overgeneralising. And I don't want this to put Khalerick off; I am very interested in his views, and sources. But he may need to talk TO us a little more, not past us.

Hey Khalerick, welcome to the thread, and it's always good to have a team B / devil's advocate view here.... I and others have played that role on occasion over the last 2000 pages. But you have now left us about a dozen wordy posts over the last 2 pages in which you have laid out some *extremely* confident statements as to facts, only some of which may in fact be true. A bit of a Gish Gallop debating strategy. ....And now you seem to be saying 'take it or leave it' on your thesis. I'm not tone policing -- we have some *very* cranky regular posters here, some of them in the emerging Western democracy that is fighting for its life. But nobody is going to make it their business to parse and debate each one of your assertions. Especially if your response to being challenged is simply to double down and say 'I thought I made myself clear.' And then seem to suggest that the people posting on this thread are more preoccupied with confirmation bias via Tweet or giggling over war porn than understanding the ramifications of the struggle. Because if that's really your impression of this community, you might want to take your opinions elsewhere.

yes indeed, fight aggressive wars to toughen the Russian people into.... fighting aggressive wars. QED

Noted, thanks. All the more argument for UKR (and your own army for that matter) to keep itself largely organised as 'flat' light infantry battalions with lean logistical tails to hold a 'denuded front', drawing on small mech units as needed for counterattack / fire support. But maintain a small number of heavy tank + sapper brigades tasked with breaking into and dismantling enemy prepared defences once fire superiority is gained. ...Could that in turn imply that about 150 current tech Western MBTs (with 100 deployable at a given time) could be about all Ukraine really needs? (and can probably sustain at present btw) (apologies if this is blindingly obvious; I've had a long week at work)

Yeah, Kofman continues to underimpress me with his analysis. So let me see if I have this right? A long range first-shot-kill-precise artillery system that 1. gives Ukraine the equivalent of tactical air superiority to a depth of dozens of kms, 2. forcing Russia to (inefficiently) disperse, well, pretty much everything, totally screwing their already b0llxed logistical chain 3. is yesterday's news? because it didn't also provide a Swiss army knife tin opener to level the VDV hedgehogs around Kherson?

All hail Soviet time travel genius!!!!! ...So the Bradley is living logistic-free inside their heads now.

Speaking of 'progressive ammunition shortages....

Another great thread from ChrisO, on Wagner and the MOD.... His prior thread

Red meat for the CM faithful! Not sure whether this is brave or foolish, probably both, but if the latter the poor guy won't know it. Any evidence that it's a 777 though? (ZOKA is a virulently pro-RU Serb but occasionally posts interesting stuff)

Shameless self-bump, from last time (Sep) the Kremlin-watchers counted Shoygu out.... That guy is as wily as any of the Great Khans. HE could be a 'Russian' ruler the West (and that includes Ukraine now!) might be able to do business with.... In fact, he could prove quite adept at playing us off against the Chinese, which frankly is the only card Putin and his Leningrad cowboys have left Russia to play internationally. And he has his own deeply loyal private army (bodyguard) as well. Or maybe I've been reading too much Galeev (actually, he's been kind of quiet lately) .... oops I spoke too soon LOL!!!!! ...I think every Canadian will quietly murmur amen to this one.

Like the (possibly apocryphal) 'Red Team' F5 pilot who, when they first set up the Top Gun school in the Seventies, installed a 49.95 'FuzzBuster' in his cockpit and was able to totally dodge the state-of-the-art 20M (add a zero in todays greenbacks) F14s.....

So here I am again, wondering whether the next wave of counters to minidrone warfare world includes brobdignagian amounts of hi tech fabrics, whether it's kevlar/mylar cloaks over body armour or in this case, acres of nylon overhead nets, similar to the driftnets used (illegally, but don't tell the fish that) on Chinese supertrawlers. Sure, cope cages are useless against top-attack shaped charge missile warheads; they probably make them more lethal. ....But these little Lancet-Switchblade things are basically upsized hand grenades, correct? Pure HE charges? So force and lethality drops by some exponent of distance (I'm a finance w@nk3r, not an engineer, somebody smarter please speak up). So, nets, lots of nets?

Ha ha, like many academics, Doc Luttwak was always stronger on strategy than actual execution. He could have ended his Tweet at 'Of little use.' Good fun at parties though, @billbindc ...Now if the Russians wanted to put these coffins to actual battlefield use, they'd pull off the 12.7mm turrets (stick them on bunkers or sumfink) and turn them into mortar carriers. Low tech tactical firepower is all they can build in volume for now. Mortar tubes (and rocket rails) and ammo are a lot easier to machine than 152mm/203mm tubes and shells. 1930s tech.

All the 'numbers' cited here are rubbish (Roepcke is a goof in general), but the demographics chart of Ukraine is interesting. Russia and Belarus are similar.

Yes, in business it is far more usual than not that 'strategy' becomes an exercise in C-level groupthink and empty sloganeering. The 'how do we get there' thesis is rarely quantified, still less actionable. **** More tunnel complexes (from Strelkov), but less valuable against Wagner infantry tactics than against saturation artillery or even AFV direct fire. OK fine, it's the other side's planes, but cool camouflage.

Eggshells with hammers though. I'd guess they end up in an indirect fire role rather than head to head against anything with antiarmour capability.... A decade ago I played MGS in a reverse slope QB vs. a force of Syrian T62s (I was trying to model a possible French QRF intervention in Libya). Didn't end well at all.

There's something about these pieces I find unsatisfying though; not quite Monday morning quarterbacking, but something akin. It isn't about Moscow's offensive potential any more; everyone not named McGregor pretty much agrees that is defunct. Can Ukraine finally find a way to dismantle an army-sized Russian formation that is positioned for defence? **** ....Especially now that Russian bayonet strength and overall combat effectiveness at the infantry squad level is showing signs of improvement, or at least stabilisation. Has anyone else here noticed that at a CM scale, pretty much all the (drone videoed) combats these days resemble clusters of Tiny to Small scenarios, with seemingly little synergy among them? They look more like patrol actions and trench raids than battalion assaults. Now and then a mech force of 5 or so AFVs moves against a tree line, or a couple of tanks move up to bombard a building while everyone else watches. And then artillery zeroes in and everyone scuttles back to cover (or brews up). (and yes, I know drone footage doesn't see everything going on, jump cuts to just the big bangs, is often edited to be misleading, etc. As a lifelong ASL/CMer I have been watching out very carefully for clips that are tactically coherent) ...So if this war is now atomised at that level, what's happening to the effective man or vehicle killing power of the Russian squads (and their company-level supporting arms) over time? And what's the future trajectory for that, up or down or both? **** https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/2023/01/08/it-got-all-but-one-of-them-killed/ P.S. All that stuff about adhering to the mine warfare treaties? Yeah, whatever. AP mines are just too useful to take a pass on. On skis, the enemy can follow faster in your tracks and catch up with you, so you mine your tracks. But, in frozen snow AP (anti-personnel) mines do not always work well, so you cut out a piece of track, set the mine, then place the cut piece back. Lot of common-sense stuff like painting claymores to match trees or snow, and painting the forks of bounding mines white for snow. Great stuff here on winter warfare, at foxhole level.... One of the things we assume, is as we get closer to the main enemy forces, the use of drones with thermals imaging will be more prevalent. Our only real defense is the heavy clothing we are wearing, the use of wool and mylar blankets, and natural stuff like leaves and limbs.