LongLeftFlank

For the future scenario design files.

I was just thinking about that. Great Helmsman Xi could probably use a hundred billion in USD denominated overseas assets right now, although only a fraction of that would likely be practically recoverable.

Exactly. Bottom line: it ain't their motherland, no matter how much the keyboard warriors say it is. So why the hell should they dig? If it turns out the 'hohols' have you zeroed (again), you run the hell away.

Yup. Our revels now are ended. 1. Decapitation, or near as dammit.... Thread shows how all the targets were selected. This is an *urban area*, and well behind enemy lines. Just amazing C4ISR! I am the eye in the sky, looking at you.... 2. French media is chuckling about General 'Lapin', Russia's fearsome 'Killer Rabbit.' ...There's a double entendre around lapin: cuckold / complaisant / clueless / feckless, etc., but I'll leave that to an actual Frenchman to explain. 3. Looks like some TikTok fedayeen finally ran across some traffic lights that shot back... Run through the jungle.... 4. Good old American snark

Hoom haroom! Also, the Entwives didn't go far....

Looks like others have noticed the half-assed nature of Russian defences in this war. I think back to 'Suvorov' (Razun) rhapsodizing about how each Soviet soldier's most important weapon was a little green spade, or the +1 modifier the Squad Leader Russians got to entrenchment attempts. Nope, sometime in the 1960s the Russian soldier became wedded to his BTR or BMP and decided that was all the entrenchment he needed. To hell with digging or wiring in, or perimeter patrolling, or infiltration. Cuts into the sergeant's drinking time. Leave the mining to the pioneers. Even the mujahideen noticed in Afghanistan how the Russians just wouldn't come away from their vehicles. ....And seriously, if there's anything all those mobiks ought to be good for, it's digging holes. Except for all those over-40 guys with bad backs and shot knees.

Borova looks like it's being vacated soon, before it becomes another pocket. More from that thread.... Move over, snow-eating-fog, and meet flesh-eating-tungsten!

Great, cheers, you can clearly see all those stream cuts. And they are deeply eroded (no wonder 'Board 5' in ASL Cross of Iron prominently featured 'gullies') .... It seems clear that Zherebets river is already a dead letter as a defensive line, even with RU forces supposedly still clinging to the Oskil at Borova. It looks like we can 'bank' the Lyman pocket as a win, ignoring RU hopium about 'relief thrusts' and look ahead to the next push. Strong probes into Kreminna from the forests are great, keeps them tied down, but it's hard to approach from the W/NW (very boggy ground). So a left hook into north Luhansk oblast centered around Krasnorichenske (?) looks like it's the logical next phase. Already being set up?

Great work, thanks for sharing! HeliosRunner is also back on task, and I am studying the NE quadrant of his latest topo together with your map here to try to visualise a credible Russian defensive line along the Krasna river (Svatove-Kreminna). But all I can see are yet more isolated village hedgehogs, dominated by higher ground on the west bank, and readily bypassed / infiltrated via the ubiquitous ravines and gullies. Others speak up, please, but the only way you make this kind of defence work, even temporarily, is with firebases (efficient medium artillery) backstopped by air strikes. And even then, you lose eventually if you don't have your own infantry platoons out there aggressively contesting the infiltration. Otherwise, it just gets chopped systematically into pieces and the next fallback river line is at Misky. Same bloody thing. FWIW, I dislike maps visually dominated by big red and blue front lines and giant Arrows of Doom. It all implies some kind of contiguous trench line or front which has nothing at all to do with the tactical realities of this war since Day 1 except maybe on the 2014 Donetsk line. @Grigb does a much better job IMHO of showing the realities of the situation, with controlled/contested towns and roads uppermost. Even worse are the Giant Red Zone vs Giant Blue Zone maps, as if total acreage under 'control' is some kind of relevant scorecard of 'who's winning' (looking at you, ISW and sometimes DefMon3).

1. So a dear but wiseass American friend, taking the piss (as ya do), once described Canada to me as "America's hat". So what is America to Canada? I asked. Unwisely. "Canada's pants." Ouch. 2. Another Yanqui friend shut some Brits up good and proper when they pompously razzed him about 'improper' American spelling. He pointed out that the original Latin words 'labor' and 'color' did not in fact contain 'u' and that all they were really doing was advertising that a thousand years ago they lost a war.... to the French. Touché. (yes, fine, Normans, but it was rather clever)

Dry on Likes again, but many thanks for this, again. They are really only left with a defensive capability set.... So as we are presently seeing in the Kherson bridgehead, their defensive capability appears to rest mainly on heavy artillery on call, just as it did when they were still on the offence in the summer. And if the UA (or air force, hint hint) can find a way to disrupt that 'on call' part, the scheme largely collapses into isolated and doomed redoubts. While they've indeed made broad use of mines, the famed (historical) Russian ability to dig in deeply and strongly without any special instruction to do so, and to stubbornly defend to the last man has been AWOL in this war* (Lyman/Yampil may be a recent exception). They seem to act like a few hull down AFVs at the edge of a village equal a fortified position. They should have been pouring cement like madmen all along the 'land bridge,' especially where the Dniepr doesn't present a barrier. But I'd think satellite imagery and OSINT mavens would pick it up were it happening. I periodically search 'Volnovakha' and 'Polohy' and there's bupkis. * Except on the Ukrainian side! P.S. If you stroll around Wikimapia in these steppelands, you frequently run across Курганы Могилы Рясные.... Scythian kurgan burial mounds, with the farm fields skirting arouund them. Ancient history, visible from space.

Plus ça change....

You canny Gaelic person, you have cracked our secret code! Being 'sorry' is the rest of what it is to be a Canadian. There is nothing more, other than Keiths and Don Cherry.

Mainly not being American, while not being a jerk about that fact.

Anything is possible, I suppose, including 11D Chessmaster doubling down on this stupid on stilts..... W: Basically the largest mobilisation is in Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh oblast, the bordering territories.... From Moscow, 50 people went. Yet just from the small Rossish, 300 people went, in one day.... Because Moscow will immediately start a strike, on Red Square.... The order by Voronezh oblast governor was signed, no one can leave. Something terrible is happening. And only border territories are involved.... But we, we are not needed by anyone. And we are being sacrificed. Hmm, perhaps ATACMS won't be needed, railwaymen in these 'bordering territories' could provide all the disruption required. Perhaps Ukraine could end up increasing in size by 20%? Would the above Oblasts, plus Kuban make adequate reparations? (And YES, you need to take the people).

Wow. This is so.... whiny. Stalin or Hitler, hell even Mussolini, would have b**ch slapped this yutz. 'Razor' Tojo would simply have lopped off his head without comment. As for Timurlane or Batu Khan.... bring me the boiling oil. But the cheap stuff. (Too. Many. Memes. Must. Resist.) Not with a bang, but with a whimper?

Yes, that drill will certainly ensure they break Marshal Grouchy's cavalry, or the levies of the Khedive. ...assuming that they are down to issuing 18th century muskets by then.

https://jamestown.org/program/lessons-of-the-ukraine-war-thus-far/ Russia has fired more than 3,800 missiles against Ukraine ... in large part, by so-called “theater of operations” missiles—mid-range missiles that can strike targets thousands of kilometers away (e.g., Kalibr and X-101). But such a quantity of missiles, which is much more than the United States has launched in total in the past 40 years, did not allow Russian forces to change warfighting dynamics in a favorable way—by failing to paralyze railways logistics, interdict Western military supply flow to Ukraine or gain air superiority. The Ukrainian experience has made clear that precision missiles of lesser range combined with accurate intelligence can make a world of difference on the battlefield. Primarily, this concerns the employment of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) projectiles guided by GPS with an 85-kilometer range. The US has provided Ukraine with at least 2,100 projectiles of this type.... Basically, successful mass employment of GMLRS by Ukraine has proven the validity of the US Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine of the 1980s.

It's buried a dozen pages back now, but I posted some stuff and maps about how limited the approaches are to Kreminna, and how it might be better to go around the north (south is the Sivierski Donets). But obviously, the guys on the ground might prove me entirely wrong! P.S. If Steve or @BFCElvis gives me a holiday for the (buried link) above, it will be worth it. I regret nothing. Make it loud! And for our map guru @Grigb , this one's for you!

I continue to think that the next Ukrainian master stroke will be a 72 hour air and drone campaign that systematically destroys these Russian guns, forcing the survivors into mainly ineffective 'shoot and scoot' mode. While the RUAF flails helplessly, flying from distant bases.

Another good quick summary assessment, in translation (from Czech) from ChrisO. @The_Capt, I think you've said some of the same.

Happiness is a warm gun.

Great piece. 'Icarus reenactments' is a keeper. And using the mobiks to cull potential pool of malcontents is a GoT worthy move, also used by Franco to ship off his hardcore Fashie wingnuts to expend their life energies on the Volkhov front. Prigozhin looks more like a Yezhov to me though, a thoroughly unlikeable fall guy (and an amateur, to boot) to be purged in turn once he has purged the others on behalf of the Dark Lord.

Yes! which is why CM scenario designers should be able to: a. assign default 'execute until interrupted' AI plans to player side units, or b. allow some player side units to be not under human control! [/wishlist] (do you now regret stopping me posting harmless memes?)

It's not contempt, not at all, sorry if it comes off that way. I should probably have been an academic too. (And here I am spending my nonwork time on bloody wargaming boards for 25+ years, so I don't mind intellectual rabbit holes or overthought puzzles). ....It's just a realisation as I go through life that (respecting Steve's admonition, I shall not post the relevant Dilbert cartoon) 'intelligence has far less practical application than you'd think.'