LongLeftFlank

No, but it makes all the other problems much worse. The details of the math matter here. If you have ten brigades and you utterly wreck two or three of them to get the other seven loose in yours opponents rear area, and they do enough damage that the enemy has to retreat tens or hundreds of miles, with mass surrenders and such. Then you have just achieved a major military success, albeit an expensive one. I have essentially just described the battle of El Alamein, which despite very high losses is considered a huge success for the British by almost everyone.
If you launch an attack with ten brigades and seven of of them get shredded, and the other three have to retreat, well you have just lost rather badly. I have just described the battle of Kursk, and NOBODY thinks the Germans won that one. They were both set piece attacks against prepared positions. One of them worked and one of them didn't, because the details matter, and the current beyond enormous minefields in Ukraine are very most definitely one of those details.
Edit: The basis of the current disagreement between the Ukrainian and U.S. militaries is that the U.S. thinks Ukraine could have achieved an El Alamein style victory if they had stacked everything into one maximum effort push instead of spreading out there efforts in hopes of finding a seam in the Russian defenses. The Ukrainians are absolutely convinced that if they had done that they would simply have would have had the same kind of disaster the Germans experienced at Kursk, and the Russians have recently demonstrated at Vuhledar and Adviika. Trying five times as hard in spot where the defense is truly solid, relative to what you can bring to bear, just gets five times as many people killed. So what we are talking about, with varying degrees of sanity, is how to move the math in Ukraine favor, just enough.

It could grip it by the husk!

Hmmm, yes, flying (light and heavy) drone use expanded beyond ISR and PVR attack into other missions, breaching, counter ISR, infantry transport, casualty evac, resupply, etc... and anti-infantry (link), this one, machinegun armed, 200 rounds, allegedly 100% accurate on human sized targets out to 200m. Critically no mention of endurance. 
https://futurism.com/turkey-buy-drone-machine-gun
From the article:
"But as more and more armed drones emerge, it seems like just a matter of time before militaries decide to remove human operators from the equation altogether. In fact, that may already be happening as United States Defense Secretary Mark Esper accused China in November of selling autonomous killer drones to nations in the Middle East.
So, while the drones that Asisguard plans to sell to Turkey later this month might require a human operator, there's a chance the next armed drones the nation adds to its arsenal will be autonomous — and that'll be when things get really scary."
Are we seeing the early signs of two tracks and two legs being replaced by four nacelled rotors? My opinion, near future, next 50 years, replacement no, major supplement yes, maybe something like the tank joining the infantry-artillery team 1916-1945, potentially a whole new arm, perhaps a new, 'arm of decision,' as well as a new form of vehicle mobility in many existing arms.
'And discuss,' this last quote attributable to others, LLF I think.

Wonder if Kiev Independent is following this forum. Eerily timely and well worth a read.
Editorial: Why we don’t avoid ‘unpleasant’ stories about Ukraine
December 22, 2023 9:23 PM
https://kyivindependent.com/editorial-why-we-dont-avoid-unpleasant-stories-about-ukraine/
"Falling out of touch with reality is dangerous, especially in times of war. We saw how this disconnect with reality has been the reason behind some of the Russians’ failures. Thanks to their bad intelligence and corrupt leadership, they walked into Ukraine thinking they would take Kyiv in three days and be met with flowers.
We can’t afford to fall into the same trap of ignorance."
 

Latest comedy of errors. At some point these numerous catastrophic failures (which we do NOT see mirrored on the UA side) have got to sum to a force-wide loss of operating capability, offensive and defensive alike.
 
 

Latest comedy of errors. At some point these numerous catastrophic failures (which we do NOT see mirrored on the UA side) have got to sum to a force-wide loss of operating capability, offensive and defensive alike.
 
 

It could grip it by the husk!

Latest comedy of errors. At some point these numerous catastrophic failures (which we do NOT see mirrored on the UA side) have got to sum to a force-wide loss of operating capability, offensive and defensive alike.
 
 

Latest comedy of errors. At some point these numerous catastrophic failures (which we do NOT see mirrored on the UA side) have got to sum to a force-wide loss of operating capability, offensive and defensive alike.
 
 

Are you sure this is not some kind of "Ender's Game" situation and by "playing" it you are actually blowing actual katsaps to the great kolkhoz in the sky?

His lived experience there and what that means is something that I would be quite interested to hear. Leaving his defeatist perspective aside, that experience does not, imho, confer moral authority from critique especially when the attitude is "why do I need to prove anything?" when discussing things like US political processes, Russian jet production, etc.
Put another way, if he won't play that ball himself than how can we? 

That’s the point. I don’t debate with folks on here about things I don’t know and I actually come here to benefit from those who do. Worth trying…

Bro, if you really want to drive this thread into the ditch once and for all, just keep on posting this stuff.
It's turtles all the way down, there is literally nothing you or anyone else is going to get out of pursuing this subtopic.

 

Regarding the recent news about the death of Chinese citizen Zhao Rui, who participated in the Russian Army, renowned pro-Russian war correspondent Lu Yuguang has compiled and published the following article based on accounts from Zhao Rui's teammates.
Translate with ChatGPT
 
永远留在顿巴斯的老乡：赵睿|中国体育联赛|中国职业运动联盟|乌军|俄军|副司令|莫斯科|顿巴斯_手机网易网 (163.com)

I was wondering one thing. Even if magically, all western companies start to send all materias to Russia, how can Russia use these tecnologies at best, considering they sent almost all skilled men to the front? Also assembly all tanks, apcs, ecc, how can they manned them, if they are short of (good) soldiers? I don't think giving a t-90m to 3 soldiers that barely knows how to start it, can make huge difference.
I'm just curios, I'm not an expert

So I am not sure everyone understand the problem with these minefields.  I mean yes the splodey mines are bad but what is stopping the UA is a combination of things:
- minefields in depth.  High density monsters about 500m deep and laid in belts.  They no doubt have AP strips and combinations of mines - pressure plate, tilt rod and likely some magnetic impulse.  On their own midfields can be breached with some risk but what makes them harder are stuff like ditches and dragons teeth - we call these complex minefields.
- ATGM teams.  Even RA ATGMs are long range, small and relatively portable and able to take out western gear.  The RA are using these teams to cover the minefields and counter breaching attempts.  The UA are doing the same thing as was demonstrated in that interview with the Bn commander a page or so back.
- Artillery.  Even though it has been blunted, artillery is still a major killer particularly in minefields.  This is due to the fact that breaching forces an opponent to canalized into a narrow column.
- Unmanned.  UAS are able to see far and from a lot of different angles.  This makes them really hard to smoke off.  These systems basically become a tactical ISR net that can queue all the defensive systems across a minefield.
- Other support.  Here sniping tanks, IFVs and even AH can be pulled forward (based on ISR queuing) to pre-sighted positions.  AD of course is denying the airspace above 2000 feet.
So you add all this up and breaching becomes near impossible.  The layering of system’s guarantees the breaching team and covering forces get detected well out and engaged.  Lone columns of vehicles get picked off.  Lead breaching systems taken out and everyone else gets taken out by mines and artillery.  So how does one try and solve this problem?  Well the breaching is actually the last step in the process, not the first.
- Recon.  One needs to be able to see and identify as much of the defence as possible.  And in depth.
- C-artillery.  The UA was and will need to do a lot of CB to suppress artillery and  artillery TA systems.
- Deep strike.  Look for and find the supporting systems, like sniping tanks, before they can get into position.
- ATGM teams.  Suppress with artillery and drones as much as possible.
Ok, the UA likely tried all this and still went nowhere. Why?  “Because infantry protect tanks!”  Kinda hard to do when one has to cross a half a kilometre of open minefield to even get at the problem.  Enemy UAS can pick up sapper breaching teams trying to do it silently but very slowly.  Bull charging on foot is a good way to get a bunch of people killed to no effect.
So the problem is getting a bridgehead force across the minefield to clear those ATGM teams, counter against any armor and push any C-UAS capability forward.  That force will likely be infantry heavy but should include a mix of UAS and UGV.  Air Assault with helicopters is suicide because they are too big, hot and denied.  So one needs speed and a way over (or under) the minefield because there is no “around”.  A major airborne operation is not crazy but once again you need air superiority which is not likely.
So we are at: how does one get a bridgehead force across with enough eyes and firepower to protect the breach?  In a perfect world the breach would go in, reset push forward and one would redo the entire process at the next minefield as quickly as possible.  So you don’t have to do this once, you likely need to do it a half dozen times…as quickly as possible.
No bad idea time.  But trust me, there is no real conventional way around this problem.  A massed UAS strike that includes c-UAS systems appears to be a start point.  But there is little room for error.  A single ATGM takes out the lead breaching vehicle and an entire platoon/company crossing may fail.  The consequences are high - as in, the UA does not advance in 2024 - high.
Discuss.

Drat, I should have done it that way. It would have been so much easier than it was to sew those little uniforms and then train the badgers to fly jetpacks so I could snap the photo with my iphone. Oh well, lessons learned I suppose. 🙂
(Okay, a more talented person than I am could have drawn it. But it was AI).

So as the Chairman exhorts us to 'seek truth from facts', 'learn from the peasants' and 'conduct rigorous self-criticism', I visited a  pro-Russian feed to see what they are showing lately in the way of hohol doom and destruction that has been hidden from we bourgeois dupes and stooges in our echo chamber.
Hilarity ensues (for some definition of hilarity).  Yes, there's also some destroyed equipment but no context (where, when, how much).
1. "Training of Belarusian military personnel with soldiers of the Wagner Group continues."
2. Wot, behind the rabbit?
3. Dumb alligator tricks
4. OK, some beardos talking and walking is the righteous fist of Allah or sumfink?
*****
Zoka got outed and his site was repurposed, but Geroman is still on the job. The footage is not without interest, but hardly supports the claims in the caption (that's true of UKR footage of course at times).
Here too.
Not sure I've ever seen a UA soldier in a steel pot with no helmet liner though, so not clear these hapless hohols aren't Russian or separs.
5.  OK, this does seem to be a UA road column being shot to hell but jump cuts make it hard to tell what's going on. The drone strikes clip is actually more interesting to me:  I know it's very much 'anecdata' and this is a built up (rubbled) battlespace, but do the Rooskies lean toward using SPV drones and Lancets in clusters as ersatz mortars, as opposed to the more curated strikes we see posted by the UA? (no firm conclusion reachable here, just something to look for)
Anyway, for what it's worth.
 

There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....

*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/

There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....

*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/

That said, dividing all the above figures by 2 *may* yield a credible estimate for AFU losses since the start of the war.  Perun talks a little about this in one of his recent vids.
2.  Maybe some NAFO fellas could generate a long festive video of RU vehicles blazing like torches to play in place of those Yule log videos.
 
3. Short but interesting clip of UA drone strikes on RU emplacements. No gore, but good details. Note covered trenches. A couple months old based on foliage.
4. 14 minute BBC doco on the fate of Russia's 155th Marines. Probably a little dumbed down for this board but well done for lay audiences; core of the tactical analysis is minutes 8 - 10.
 

There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....

*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/

And the 1st prize goes to …… Robert Heinlein again!

There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....

*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/

Ha ha, you ninjaed me by like 30 seconds!!!!
(PS, it is WAY better in German)