LongLeftFlank

Great synthesis, @Kinophile, in addition to the engineering points. It seems Ukrainian losses have indeed been heavy, albeit no evidence of a breaking point. Transcarpathia declared a day of mourning for 7 KIA. There may be a great deal in the earlier discussion about UA 'middle management' still being a work in progress. ....Perhaps commands remain a little too slow at battalion and brigade level to 'flow into' openings their tactical light units create opportunistically. ....Or else they go by the (pre-Feb) book, get stalled or merely snarled, and then the Russians call in their (still) heavy guns on the idled mass that has obligingly formed? (I am speculating here, based on the bits and pieces above. Squinting at the flames dancing on the wall of the OPSEC cave) **** And yes, historical analogies predict precisely nothing, but hey guess what? this is a wargaming board.... This 'feels' a bit like the July 1944 bocage push above St. Lo. Simply put, after a month of near deadlock, 352 Division, which is already a Frankenstein made up of other bled out German units, simply runs out of landser to counterattack US penetrations, even though their mortars and mediums are still raining a drizzle of hell to the end. Yes, a lot of progress was made tactically by the GIs (Rhinos, rifle+bazooka+MMG teams etc.), and that mattered, sure. But the key thing for the attacking divisions writ large was to stay in the ring, keep up the pressure, and keep killing the enemy. ...And so from 12 - 15 July, it went from '3 hedgerows per day' agonising slogs to a broad German withdrawal (albeit still orderly, no rout). They vacated Pont Hebert and their key OPs, and couldn't even contest the ruins of St. Lo at any scale.

Meanwhile, in the topsy turvy world of Russia's Western fanbase: Ukraine military command opposed this disastrous offensive of diving deep into flat open land and allowing themselves to be cut off The estimated force was 12,000 per Colonel MacGregor, “three brigades.” Ukraine government is throwing untrained men into a meat grinder Ukrainian casualties are huge. Reports speak of thousands of wounded. Many more have died. Russian MoD claimed 3000 “destroyed” over first 2 days, 1200 day 1. 1700 the second Hundreds of Ukrainian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed or captured The 128th mountain brigade from Transcarpatia region got destroyed, 50% casualties. They were the last unused professional troops in the Ukrainian army Kraken and similar units are shooting men who try to desert. Since the start of the war, young men have been fleeing, mainly to Poland, to escape conscription "The words of this wizard stand on their heads!" - Gimli

Wondering if halal buffet boy is looking nervously at the Chechens who are actually fighting P.S. been seeing the Byzantine 'Chi Rho' cross on a lot of imagery lately (superimposed on the arty vid above). All your Third Rome are belong to us! P.P.S. Full mobilisation....

Nope, the Android device I use only offers a very few formatting icons. And nothing additional appears when I highlight text.

Nice on the ground reporting, though dated 18 August, from the battered Black Sea city of Mikolaiev and the nearby Kherson front. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/james-meek/blast-effects (I have no idea how to insert a quote box unless it's a quote from another post)

Yeah, Twitter has turned the screws again: first they disabled the icon to shut the 'Sign Up Now' popups but you could still get around them by clicking through and then hitting Back. Not any more. https://nitter.net/ seems to be the next best option, although it can be slow.

Agreed. Here's the meme I would have mobilised personally, although I don't Tweet.... https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0715/15/little-orphan-annie-poster-tribune_1_3e99246f2adc43390d0038fb1227187f.jpg

1. Collapse comes in many forms. Hmm, has Uber pulled out of Russia? Should it be boycotted? 2. More quality after-action forensics by Danspiun.... 3. Wow, pretty heavy stuff to be calling down on a tactical formation.

If you stare long enough, eventually Godzilla appears. Just like magic!

Hey, let me post something actually OT. Just read an interesting piece by an author I respect (though often differ with) on the idea of Russia-Germany as a historical counterweight to the (perfidious!) Anglo-Saxons. Which purports to explain some of Germany's diffidence toward Putin. https://policytensor.substack.com/p/the-moscow-berlin-line ... I mean, other than some slight unpleasantness in 1914-18 and 1941-45. As a longtime Diplomacy player, I find this thesis interesting, but it doesn't in fact flange that well with history, and kind of ignores other major players like France and the non-Russian Slavs.

Serves me right for trying to be humourous and snarky when a skull shooting freeking laser beams from its eyes is patrolling the thread.... I once had a high concept gourmet dinner (on a client's dime) in Barcelona. One of the 8 courses was rabbit paired with stingray (chased down IIRC with a mellow Tokaj). So I mused aloud whether the rabbit was fed on stingray, or the reverse, or whether they both got starved, tossed into a shallow pool and left to fight it out.... Sorry, where was I again? Shall I tiktok a few bars of 'Farewell to Nova Scotia' over to you? ... And btw Sir, you really do need to get an avatar. That generic "T" just doesn't cut it any more. Unless you're a Toronto grad, or like yodeling (not that there's anything wrong with either....) Suggestions follow: And here ends my OT catechism. The Ignore button is over there.

"If Putin invaded the Dalek Empire, I would belt out at least one Ex-TERRRRR- mi-NATE!!!! in the Citadel of Gallifrey." -- The Eighth Doctor

No doubt some corpses will be conveniently found. Perhaps garbed as sinister British commandos! ....And in the pocket of one will be found a droll note from Lord Mountbatten: "He might bring some sardines with him - they are 'on points' here!" Jolly good!

EDIT/ Removed as off topic and nobody wants to go here. Figure it out.

But I think that's the thesis of 'fog eating snow' that's being discussed here (aside: that's either 'snow that eats fog' or 'fog that eats snow', or maybe both, I dunno). Punctuated equilibria or sumfink. .... Trying for that Big Buildup (Mass!) followed by that 1944 or 1991 'Big Push to the Green Fields Beyond' at this time in miltech only seems to bog down in a bloodbath of more-or-less accurate heavy artillery. Neither side has really made it work since Feb, or not at an acceptable price. So it seems better now on the attack to eat the elephant one bite at a time: avoid presenting dense targets by sending only enough forces into close contact to force the defender to reinforce (it's also possible some of them may crack and rout). Then whack those noobs while they're still on the move and not dug in. Eat the snow (or the fog)! ....If you're HIMARs-rich, you also whack their entire LOC as far back as you can, railheads, airfields, HQs, etc. There are several variants on that theme, but that's my current dumbed down grasp of it.

Amazed nobody's posted any Bairnsfather yet in this thread.... My personal favourite....

Even the most generic looking terrain can be geolocated by a savvy analyst. (Hopefully this video is stale dated)

Have a blast, kid.... **** Things happening on the 'quiet front' between Dniepr bend and Donetsk? Hulyaipole.

MOD Defence Intelligence 'probably' showing some attitude.... Interesting backstory: Since his father was one of Tyva’s major party bosses, Sergey Shoygu knew many important people. From 1987 to 1989 Boris Yeltsin held a similar position in the construction committee. In 1991, Mr. Shoygu became the head of the Russian Rescue Corps, which, after a series of reorganizations and name changes, became today’s Ministry for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, internationally abbreviated as EMERCOM.... In the aftermath of the worst disasters, Mr. Shoygu was always sure to be seen managing the recovery efforts. However, EMERCOM’s structure is peculiar in that it is heavily militarized, which prompts many questions. Why does it count over a hundred generals among its staff? ...President Yeltsin was proactive enough to create a trusted, alternate army – a personal guard that would be able to intervene in case of a political “emergency.”

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:noaa20-viirs,viirs,modis_a,modis_t,countries,landsat_human;@33.6,47.4,11z Intense fires raging southeast of there, I know it isn't a perfect map of artillery bombardments. **** Also, a few less infantry. Either a very precise first hit or someone planted a remotely detonated mine in that trench.

Quoted this before but.... “If this nice friendliness would spread out in Mordor, half our trouble would be over.” - Samwise

Thanks. My profanity ahem sources tell me that 'чурки' (literally 'wood chips' or sumfink) is technically the crudity for Asiatics (of Siberian origin, go figure). But they also admit the nastiness is interchangeable....

Isn't that traditional Red Army era SOP for MR platoon 'advance to contact' though (yes, I get these are UA troops, but I'd guess this is a training/prop shot)? ...In a combined arms platoon attack, tanks go ahead, while the dismounts follow up 'next to or slightly ahead of' their IFVs (c11:50 of this well done video) ... But where there aren't tanks available, the IFV goes ahead in the tank role, while the dismounts move to flank and envelop. Proliferation of modern ranged ATW since the 1980s makes such tactics rather hazardous of course -- recon by death -- for the IFV crews. The Afgantsy abandoned the idea pretty quickly, in favour of keeping the vulnerable IFVs back as suppressive fire platforms. ...But it may still be on the books as SOP.