Fat Dave

This sort of narrative reminds me of WW1 generals who also thought the airplane was a fad.  First off Russian glide bombs need to carry so much HE because they are inefficient and imprecise.  A whole lot of HE is not necessarily a good thing.  For example, if I have 10 enemy in a build I can use a large 500lb HE munition to drop the building.  The energy it takes to get that heavy munition to that building is significant, costly and has a high ISR signature.  If I have 10 micro-drones with a .45 cal round that will not miss, that simply fly into the building and kill all 10 enemy, I am using far less energy and cost to deliver the same effect.  I am using precision and processing as an offset.
So the Russian AF lobbing large glide bombs is not a sign that “big booms are back baby!”  It is a sign that 1) Russian ISR is still fairly low res, 2) Russia does not have a lot of higher tech precise munitions and 3) we should really be worrying about air denial for Ukraine because if that fails then a whole lot of this is largely academic.
As to “someday soon C-UAS will make this all go away and we can go back to Grandpa’s war” - there is a lot of hand waving on “someday C-UAS”.  Yes, counters will be developed but they will likely reshape the battle space in doing so.  For example, let’s say we invent a nifty micro-smart missile or laser that can blast those pesky UAS out of the sky, even when they are in swarms.  “Huzzah!  Now that is over with, let’s roll out the tanks and do this Persian Gulf style…USA.USA!”
Well except for the part where we have operationalized a technology that can find and hit a flying target the size of a bird with a very small munition at crazy scales.  What do we suppose the impact of that technology is going to have on conventional ground units?  That level of ISR alone means nothing can move without being picked up for kms.  Individual infantry are screwed, vehicles may as well be battleships.  The changes such technology would bring would be f#cking profound.
So there is no going back after this with or without UAS.  Unmanned, plus ISR, plus processing power, plus miniaturization, plus cheap production are all conspiring against our entire current theories of warfare. They have been for decades while we tried to ignore them.  So we can do “hope and denial” or we can can see the shift for what it is and adapt.
 
 

Interesting post from Russian telegrammer:
https://t.me/rogozin_do/5657
 
 

I take offence to the term "research".  I have reviewed your thread and clearly you had a conclusion and then set about picking information to support it.  This is not "research" it is "spinning" - I have failed staff college students for doing what you are proposing as "research", applying half the facts, largely out of context.
For example: "Russia already controls large swathes of Ukraine with valuable minerals..."  and linking this back to Chinese motivation to keep Russia in this war.  This is one enormous theory hanging on very little substance.  We have been through the "Ukrainian goldmine" theory before and it was categorically debunked.
Let's take Metals:
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/UKR/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Export/Partner/by-country/Product/72-83_Metals
So before this war Ukraine was already selling Russia about $1B a year in metals and about 345M to China.  A quick scan says it looks like Ukraine was doing about $10B in metal globally.  
Meanwhile China is importing $144B a year in metals globally. Mostly from Indonesia, Congo and Japan:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/metals/reporter/chn?redirect=true  
China does not need Ukrainian metal, they already have global access an order of magnitude beyond the entirety of Ukraine production.
The we get into detail like Titanium.  Yes, Ukraine has got healthy Titanium reserves:
https://inventure.com.ua/en/analytics/articles/titanium-in-ukraine:-military-and-economic-context#:~:text=What are the reserves of,%2C rutile – 2.5 million tons.
About 8.4 million tons.  Wow, sounds like a big number and no doubt Russia and China want to get their greedy hands on it.  Whoops:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/titanium-reserves-country-10-biggest-155049656.html#:~:text=China is the largest producer,largest vanadium-titanium magnetite deposit.
China is the global leader in titanium production. Why on earth do they want more Titanium from Ukraine on the market?
Lithium? Yes. Ukraine has about 500k tons which are largely untapped. Wow that is a big number:
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/lithium-the-link-between-the-ukraine-war-and-the-clean-energy-transition/
Well unless one considers global Lithium reserves - Ukraine has about half as much as Canada:
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-mining/mining-data-statistics-and-analysis/minerals-metals-facts/lithium-facts/24009
You will note that China is sitting on 2M tonnes.
And then there is the thorny issue of where that lithium is located in Ukraine:

https://www.renewablematter.eu/articles/article/ukraine-all-lithium-reserves-and-mineral-resources-in-war-zones
This is where these wingnut theories really break down.  Russia was already occupying a couple of these deposits in Donetsk.  Lets be generous and say they took enough to grab 4 new deposits.  Woo-hoo.  Now a few thorny questions:  what shape is the infrastructure in these areas look like right now?  How much is it going to cost Russia to get these sites up and running?  How much actual money are they going to make from this sweet lithium?  When can they expect to see any money?  And finally, the big one, how much does all that compare to the costs of sustaining this war?  Last count the war in Ukraine was costing Russia between .5-1 B$ per day. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=In November 2022 it was,%24500 million to %241 billion.)
So your theory here is that China is going to spend effort, money and diplomatic points to secure access to lithium, which they do not need and is costing Russia likely far more than it is worth at this point?  In fact the same could be said for just about all Ukrainian metals.
Comparing modern day China to Nazi-Germany is just plain dumb.  Maybe pre-WW1 Germany - ignoring socialist ideologies and about four thousand years of history and culture.  The idea that China somehow masterminded this whole thing (with zero proof, I might add) is laughable.  China is stuck on the other side of this mess and is trying to deal with it on their end. They are going to pursue and promote their interests, just like we are.
Russia and Putin are throwing up all over themselves in some weird attempt to rebuild an Imperial Russia...and are failing brutally.  Sure, Russia could "hold on" until we see some sort of Armistice.  They will have gained a grand total of an additional 6-7% of Ukraine from what they controlled on 21 Feb 22.  It only cost them around 500k men, most of their modern military equipment and diplomatic/geographic isolation that may last several decades....brilliant. 

On victory and defeat - because it is the basis of so much “proof” on the opposing sides of this thing.  In warfare victory and defeat are very slippery concepts.  One can win a war by all metrics and wind up losing in the long run (see European Allies after WW1 and 2).  The vice versa is also possible (see Japan).  So whenever someone jumps in with the “Ukraine is obviously losing, Russia is winning” or vice versa, without clearly defining what that means, I get suspicious.
For now the best way to try and determine what victory/defeat means in this war, one needs to come to a common understanding of what the initial political and strategic goals of this war for each side were and were not.
When I am looking at the “winning/losing” equation I am using the following objectives.
For Ukraine:
- the survival of the state as independent and sovereign.
- the creation of a narrative of effective resolve and resistance that draws in international support.
- shape and set the conditions for enduring security integrity at wars end (this one is key to effective reconstruction and recovery).
For Russia:
- the complete political absorption control of Ukraine as a vassal state or sub-state.
- a clear demonstration of Russian power within its Near Abroad designed to push back on Western encroachment and reinforce the notion that other states within this region need to “stay in line”.  This one plays to both external and internal audiences.
- any and all erosion of NATO unity and resolve, as well as a draw back of US influence in the region.
For the West (we often forget we have a win/lose calculus here as well):
- A clear demonstration of the western rules based international order.  Russia must be forced to get back in line and face punitive measures for an illegal invasion that violates the rules we constructed.  To this end we support Ukraines objectives; however, we do not need all of them in full to achieve ours. We do need a clear demonstration of western unity and resolve as a foundational underpinning for that western rules based order.
- Any opportunities to expand western influence and control - see Sweden and Finland.
- the reduction of Russia as a security threat to Europe and globally.
- Avoid a catastrophic collapse of Russia at all costs as it would make the overall regional situation, and possibly global one much worse.
You will note that for me none of these are tied directly to lines on the ground.  I do not believe that where this war ends drive those strategic objectives (within reason of course - if Russia takes Kyiv the viability of Ukrainian state is greatly diminished).  
By my metrics, Russia has already pretty much “lost” this thing.  They can hold onto to what they have now but none of their strategic objectives are accomplished.  They end the war in worse position than when they started it.  Their only Hail Mary is that western support and attention dries up over time and they can exploit that to try and pull this one out of the dumpster.  The odds of full Russian control over Ukraine by this point are pretty damn low.  Much worse than at wars beginning.
Ukraine has two out of three, that last one of setting conditions for enduring security has not been accomplished. Ukraines long game is to enter into western economic and security mechanisms.  They definitely have earned that but we have the thorny issue of Russia still able to make trouble and project that into Ukraine.  We can live with a level of this a la South Korea, but I suspect we will need this thing to hold more water to work.
The West is doing well but we are not there yet, and things could still go bad quickly.  We definitely have shored up influence, control and unity. And we have managed to reduce Russian threats pretty significantly as the Russian military has been shattered. What we do not have are the conditions for long term stabilization. Russia is neither a zero-threat nor stable in the long term.
So to summarize…on victory/defeat so far:
Russia - nope.
Ukraine - OK, but not there yet.
West - meh, so long as we don’t blow the whole thing up.
I hope this is useful for the next time someone rolls through here with “well obviously Russia is winning” due to some headline about a tactical twitch somewhere.  They likely are not using the same metrics I do and in many cases have ulterior motives for painting this war in a certain light.

Considering we have SMART and BONUS rounds which prove that a tiny paragliding object is capable of carrying an EFP projector, drones could get a massive upgrade with this if the trigger mechanism is adapted.
Remove the need to hover and for a human to pull the trigger.
Place an EFP projector under the drone, have it circle or lie in wait (flying up based on a movement sensor), have the EFP trigger as soon as it recognizes a vehicle or person from above. It will happen in the blink of an eye.
There could be different versions with different target data, though the miniaturization of systems could mean that each drone is multirole.
After burning a hole through either turret or helmet, fly back to a save pick-up location for recharging and attaching a new EFP projector in a can.
This is pretty close to the intelligent, self-replenishing minefield and it is not unfeasible at all with tech which exists right now.

I am honestly amazed that anything I write causes anyone to think about anything “all day”, but that must be the pressure of Canadian culture.
I think “unmanned” as a phenomenon is the continuing emergence of something larger within warfare.  What you describe here would be big enough to drive significant re-thinking of how we wage war.  Since the beginning of this war, I have noted how many really fundamental concepts are being impacted: Mass (density, concentration of force), Offensive, Surprise, Connections, Speed (space and time) and Friction, to name several.  These definitely signal a shift in the character of warfare.  A change to the fundamental capability of infantry is enormous - on par with shifts we have seen in the last 200 years.
But I honestly think it may be bigger.  Most military technology has been developed to better project or protect human energy in the use of violence to shape human will.  Rocks, spears, bow/arrow, horses, armor, chariots, walls, siege weapons, guns, artillery, air power and seapower - all designed around the human being.  However, as Clausewitz (and others) have argued, these are all shifts in the “character” of warfare, not its fundamental nature.
A shift in the nature of warfare has occurred at least twice in human history.  The first time was when we invented civilization and made warfare an extension of human politics.  Before, in pre-civilization, warfare occurred for what could be considered micro-political reasons but was also occurring for many other reason as well, the largest being survival.  By upscaling warfare..in fact as a direct result as a pre-condition to upscaling itself, warfare changed to become an “act of violence to force political will”.  Political will changed with civilization and so did war.  
The second time the nature of warfare changed was in 1945.  The creation and operationalization of nuclear weapons changed the nature of warfare forever.  The nature of warfare became “an act of viable violence to force political will”.  War became bounded by the nuclear equation.  Unlimited violence meant mutual destruction, so we were forced to view all war through a different lens. This new nature of warfare exists to this day.
Now we are staring down the barrel of something else.  And what this is exactly, I am not sure.  We are essentially seeing technology augmenting and replacing human cognitive processing power.  This has been happening for centuries but “unmanned” by definition is about replacing human beings.  The larger question with “unmanned” is how far down this road does that replacement go?  At a very high expression, unmanned can become a WMD and create a new mutual destruction spin.  Even further down that road we are looking at warfare becoming a blend of “viable violence to force hybrid political will”.  What “unmanned” really is about is creating and weaponizing artificial-human capabilities.  We can see things like “synthetic mass”, “virtual manoeuvre” and of course the autonomy debate.
So, “how far?” Is quickly followed by “how fast?”  And based on this war…damned fast.  It took roughly 2 million years for the first shift in the nature of warfare.  Another 10k to get to the second.  And now it looks like we could be at a single century for the next one.  This is not to say that humans will be left out of warfare completely, but how we wage war shapes (and is shaped by) why and what.  I suspect we will see an evolution as you note, towards human effort focused on creating “unmanned superiority”, yet this will include more than explodey stuff.
At its fullest expression we get into things like predictive analytics that actually work.  This puts one at temporal advantage over an opponent.  We see AI commanders, maybe?  AI staff is already happening.  I strongly suspect there will be a race to see who can get the most unmanned, the fastest.  I honestly do not know where this ends, but one thing this war is teaching me is that this entire thing looks and feels real.  What we have seen in the last two years alone has been stunning.  The fact that the character of warfare is changing is really moving past a debate.  What we do not know is whether there will be a shift in war’s nature.  But I am getting a weird feeling about the whole damned business at this point.

I've been thinking about this post most of the day, and keep coming back to "Neat. Now what?"
Which got me thinking about how other step changes in military capability were handled. The two obvious ones that come to mind are tanks in WWII, and airpower during the Cold War. Now, clearly, in both cases they existed early, but they only really became effective/worrisome/"game-changing" some decades after their entree to the battlefield.
For the infantry, in both cases, the response became basically the same: very small infantry units became fully capable of anti-ing the other thing, either anti-tank or anti-air.
During WWII anti-tank rifles, bazookas, fausts, shrecks, Piats and hearty grenades gave platoons and sections an ability to defend against or attack against tanks, pretty explicitly at the detriment to the nominal role of the infantry, which was to oppose and defeat enemy infantry. That trend was significantly enhanced during second half of last century with things like RPGs and M-72s. This is at the point now where with weapons like Javelin tanks perhaps have more to fear from infantry than the vice versa, even though lugging Javelin around is a royal PITA especially for light infantry.
The introduction of air power, and especially effective CAS, started us on the road to the fully illuminated battlefield, where nowhere is safe and to be seen is to die. During WWII the only real counter that the infantry had was to dig on, or hide, or both. But during the Cold War a lot of effort went into MANPADS, resulting in the Stinger in the 1980s and with other systems following soon after. Just like their anti tank weapons, lugging around anti-aircraft missiles is a PITA which detracts from the nominal role of engaging enemy infantry, not to mention the drain on budgets and training schedules. But on the other hand now every platoon and section is capable of destroying any tank or aircraft that wanders into it's little tactical AO. And once the air and armour battle is won - either locally or globally - then the rest is just mopping up. The degradation of the infantry platoon and section's ability in the infantry-battle doesn't really matter, since while that bit remains hard and unpleasant, it is incredibly harder and more unpleasant in the absence of either air or armoured support.
So you can probably see where this is going.
Assuming UAS remains in play (and why wouldn't it?), then the role of infantry platoons and sections will change again. Instead of being little nodes of anti-tank and anti-air goodness,with some residual anti-infantry capability, they will become little anti-UAS nodes, with the weapons, training, mindset and purpose to defeat enemy UAS in their local area, and also protect or project friendly UAS capability around themselves. If an enemy tank or aircraft turns up then the section or platoon mightn't be able to deal with it themselves, but they will be networked to someone who can - guns, missiles, friendly armour or air, or friendly UAS. And they'll still, you know, carry rifles. Mainly out of habit and tradition, as well as giving the NCOs something to inspect every day. But most of their weaponry, and sensors, and just the general claggage they're carting about will be geared towards winning the UAS fight, because winning that will mean that the rest is just mopping up.
In other words, the infantry will be able to concentrate physically and cognitively on the UAS battle because it won't be their role any more to win the tank, infantry, or local airspace battle.

It's torpedo boats and quick firing guns all over again... more dakka seems like the solution. Still, the Tarantul that was sunk before (Ivanovets) did have turreted 30mm gatling guns for close in defence and it didn't help -- that system is maybe suited for aerial targets only in automatic mode but per Wikipedia it has manual operation mode as well, but again, didn't help. Either the targeting system doesn't work with sea targets, guns don't depress enough, gunners were drunk, or somefink. Heck, maybe someone sold the ammo in port for vodka money.
 

I have never fully subscribed to "LOLZ Russia" or "Russia Sux".  Nor does a steady stream of one-sided war porn change that.  As to the second point: a major personal gripe on this forum is "Monster Russia!."  Undersubscribing Russia is as big a sin as oversubscribing Russia.  We have posters who need to continually take the worst case for Ukraine, and best case for Russia at every instance.  This is not healthy or useful, and as harmful as the overtly "LOLZ Russia" narratives
I gotta be honest, I am astounded on what is still holding Russia together.  As I said, I re-visited Oryx after a long absence and for tanks and AFVs, Russia has lost 3x what Ukraine had as their entire fleets at the beginning of the war.  We have continually seen signs of Russian strain: lower quality equipment showing up at the front, conscription of excess human capacity, mass migration out of Russia, buying ammo from NK (FFS).  However, one has to simply shake ones head at the level of Russian obstinance in all this.  I am not sure how they are holding their military together right now based on these losses.  Further, the shock of this war on Russia cannot be understated.  Does anyone think Putin planned for all this?  That Russian society was ready for this?  No western nation would be ready for something like this war, the shock would cripple us.  Imagine if Iraq in '03 had turned into something like this war; it would have broken the West.
So what?  Well first off, Russia clearly is not in great shape and their performance in this war compared to the advertising has fallen woefully short.  Russian resilience is high, I will give them that.  Yet we do not know where that breaking point is for them - further, they could have already crossed it...these sorts of things do not happen fast, until they do.  But...and it is a big "but", Russia does have a breaking point.  Every nation/society/human collective on earth has a breaking point.  Russia is not invincible and homogeneous.  Under enough stress it will fracture - economically, militarily and socially.  What we have is a competition of breaking points - ours, Ukraine and Russia's.  Our "breaking point" in the West (US in particular) is laughably low.  I suspect Ukraine's breaking point is further out than Russia's as of all the parties to this conflict, only Ukraine is facing direct existential crisis.  The question really is: can weak western will plus desperate Ukrainian will defeat Russian (??? metric ???) will?  One can immediately see the two major variables here.  Western will and Russian will are the two players on a Ukrainian fulcrum.  The location of that fulcrum depends on how much western support we provide to Ukraine.
I stand by my position that militarily this war has already been won; however, that does not mean it cannot still be lost.  If the West totally fails Ukraine, Russia will take ground - it, in effect, expands Russian option spaces.  Russian airpower seems intent on flexing, perhaps eyeing air superiority again.  A complete withdrawal of US support is a strategic mistake of historic proportions.  It is essentially ceding a proxy war and Ukraine could enter the annals with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan of lost US ventures.  The rest of the West will need to step up.  If Ukraine falters, as some have insisted, then the whole conversation is moot.  If the fulcrum shatters, there is no war.  The West will write it off to "bad investment" and re-draw the lines.
The longer I watch this war, the more in awe of what the WW1 and WW2 generations went through.  We see those wars through the safe lens of history.  It is another thing entirely to be in the middle of one with the future unwritten.

True, but I suspect this is where things are at.  Any ISR on the breach will mean PGM artillery and long range loitering munitions.  A lone ATGM team with a modern system can take out lead vehicles.  And standoff tac aviation has demonstrated what it can do.
To be perfectly honest our entire mechanical/explosive breaching tactic has only ever been done in one war that I can think of, Gulf War.  And we essentially did all the pre-conditions I am talking about with air power…and Blind Pew and his dog rolled right through them.  We never actually did live opposed minefield breaching operations.  We exercised them for decades and always “won” but never under real battlefield conditions, let alone modern ones.
The very uncomfortable truth of this war is that there is a whole lotta stuff we have only ever exercised going back into the Cold War.  ATGMs, air parity, denied environments, firepower parity, EW.  All things we practiced but never had our assumptions tested.  Gulf War looked like a validation but that war had specific context.  We assumed every war would be like that one and ‘03 reinforced that idea, even though the hints were starting to show up.
Then this war comes along and presents some major counter evidence that our tactics work at all.  So we say “Russia Sux”, “Ukraine Sux” “but we are good” like a benediction.  Worse we are tying the narrative to all of this.  If Ukraine can’t “win like we would”, well then it is on them.  The reality is that we had (have) a bunch of assumptions that have never really been tested and I suspect they are being tested in this war.  Some are enduring, like training quality, infantry and precision.  Others are not holding up too well at all, and it is making us very uncomfortable.  “Well we would roll over those minefields just like we did back in ‘91”.  Well this is not ‘91, and it is not that war.  This one has the look and feel of Korea, with 21st century technology.  

Our tactics underpin our operational constructs (manoeuvre and Mission Command), which all support our military strategy (short sharp wars of massive overmatch), which all feed into funding and spending in the trillions.  So when a war comes along that suggests we might be in the wrong movie, you can easily see people start getting their backs up. “Aw unmanned is a flash in the pan.  Someone will invent counters and things will go back to the way they were.”  But the evidence is piling up.  It is not just unmanned.  Precision weapons like the Javelin or artillery fires.  C4ISR that pretty much anyone can cobble together, including the Russians.  Denial, which will impact us as well.  It is all adding up to something shifting but most do not want it to shift too much.
Basically we are at the situation where if the enemy Blind Pew and his dog can see that minefield while we are breaching it, and they have a few precision smart weapons in range…the breach will likely fail because that breach is reliant on maybe 6-10 critical systems that can be hit very accurately by a number of systems we cannot fully deny.  We put APS on the breaching teams and PGM artillery drops on them.  We push back the artillery and UAS come in with more mines and reseed the breach.  We do everything right and the enemy has c-moves ready to bottle up the breach.  And this is before the real stuff that can defeat our defensive systems has even shown up (stand off EFP, ATGM sub munitions and mines with legs).
We need to start coming up with new ideas, not stuff to bolt on our old ones to try and keep them alive.
 

This is a cop out line that gets tossed when people cannot think of anything else to say.  Training can always "be better" and combined arms "better coordinated", this applies to any military on the planet and you are going to see it in AARs almost universally. 
Problem is that it is essentially meaningless.  So what is the training standard that will guarantee UA success in their current situation?  "Well more until they succeed..."  I also suspect it misses the new realities that the UA (and RA) are facing, instead clinging to a superior way of western war that has never been tested in the environment these two forces find themselves within.  These narratives completely miss the trees because all they can see is forest.

The two of you have two narratives -
The Russians are savages who will stop at nothing to destroy Ukraine.
And
The West is sitting around and do nothing while the first one happens, and will continue to do so no matter what.
So if these are true…why hasn’t Russia simply used nuclear/chemical/whatever since day 1?  Why is this war even still happening?  Is Ukrainian resolve and resistance an effective deterrence to strategic nuclear strikes?  
If the West is so useless and, clearly ready to let Russia do whatever it wants (and you can come read justifications of this right here on this thread)…why do we even still have this thread?  Russias are genocidal savages who are being deterred from escalation…by what exactly?  Because we certainly know it is not the bumbling western powers.
Of course if this is the case then why are we spending billions to assist Ukraine?  Symbolism? Boredom?
Look, if you guys want to go bask in narratives that call for bloodbaths and holy crusades/WW3 there is a big ol Internet out there that will tell you exactly what you want to hear.  
If you want something that resembles a grown up conversation, stick around. But if you are advocating that we all jump on whatever crazy train that seems to float your boat right now: nope.
What is it gonna take for the West to directly intervene in this war?  You do not want to know.  And frankly this thread won’t matter if that happens because a lot of us will already be dead.

This thread?
One side is able to and is advancing, and it isn't the Russians.
One side is about to take Bakhmut after about 10 months of nearly constant fighting there, and it isn't the Russians.
One side is constantly improving the quality and quantity of its military, and it isn't the Russians.
One side has strong and cohesive internal social, political and military structures, and it isn't the Russians.
One side is winning this thing, and it isn't the Russians.
It's a bit like the Second World War. The Allies had won by late-1943, at the latest. There was still a lot of fighting and dying to go, in fact *most* of the fighting and dying was still to come. But the outcome was clear.

The power structure:
1. Kadyrov is a warlord with a defined territory he controls as a palatinate of the Russian Federation. He has intense local ties, a populace and geography that is quite difficult if not now impossible for the Russian army to subdue and an army that is loyal, personally, to him. His power is interleaved with Putin's but negotiated and inalienable by the Kremlin. 
2. Prigozhin is a functionary without any defined territorial control and thus no independent logistics, manpower sources or arms. He is, in essence, the appointed head of a quasi-state enterprise without a stronghold in any institution, region or ethnic group. He can be subdued by the simple expedient of cutting him off, trumping up a tax charge against him and tossing him back into the Russian penal system. His power derives from favor only, is alienable and only negotiated with difficulty.
What you are witnessing is the interplay between (in order of importance) the large institutional powers (FSB, MoD), the regional warlord (Kadyrov), the disposable functionary (Prigozhin) and the system created by Putin in which all must vie for his favor in whatever way they can. The  FSB/MoD are in daily contact and have the greatest access to Putin. They don't need to shout to be heard. Kadyrov mostly boasts but more importantly he withholds his forces in order to gain concessions and preserve his own strength for the aftermath. Prigozhin is much more marginal and so he must go public and make dramatic gestures for Putin to hear him. That's what you saw last week. 
The larger point of course is that Russia is run as a semi-mafia state primarily concerned with safeguarding Putin's power. Putin is the arbiter of the factions who must appeal to him in order to protect themselves and receive decisions and resources while their competition keeps them from uniting against him. And that creates inherent weaknesses...like divided command, conflicts between military needs and domestic power struggles, etc. 

I think the problem with this sort of point of view is that it still assumes that annihilation through manoeuvre was possible. And even if it was, would it have been worth the costs at that point in the war? 
Russia got itself out of Kherson; however, 1) we do not know the full scope of attritional losses over time - how much critical equipment did they leave behind? and 2) how do those stack up with Ukrainian gains compared to their loses?  This point of view mirrors more than a few western pundits as “lost opportunity = loss”, but skips over the cost-benefit equation on retaking a regional capital essentially unopposed.  I strongly suspect that the UA looking to a longer game was not interested in bagging whatever was left of the RA at Kherson because the cost was too high for the gains.  Worst scenario for Kherson was a large urban battle that would still be raging.  If Ukraine had boxed the RA up into that city that is what likely would have happened.  Instead Ukraine left the back door open so the RA would simply leave - it was less about killing Russians there and more about liberating Ukrainians.
We keep making the error of looking for a western style victory in this thing.  I have seen more bold offensive arrows, both red and blue, being drawn all over the place.  What we have seen though is bold arrows of red collapse, with a blue follow up.  This is a war of Russian collapses and contractions, some better controlled than others.  This is what victory looks like, yet we keep demanding a Gulf War metric as an indicator of success, which does not track in this environment.  The losses are over time, erosion, not fast forced crushing.  It is the environment that drives this - death of surprise, mass dilemmas, long range and precision.   We are talking about a war where both sides have had to relegate their armor to indirect fire roles - something is happening in a fundamental way.
So what?  Well this does not mean that the 30k prisoner haul is impossible in this war, or the bold strokes we all want to see.  However, I strongly suspect that they are going to be a finishing stroke/final note at the end as a result of corrosive warfare, not the cause of the end itself.  The core warfare principle we in the west adhere to will become a punctuation mark, not the primary means of delivery of victory.  We should not hold Ukraine to a standard of success that I am not sure even exists anymore in this sort of operating environment.  This war is still about killing Russians, but it is all over the place, all the time, not in a single concentrated area.  Why, because concentration kills in this environment unless you have already eroded an opponent into collapse - be it slow or fast.
In the end Kherson along with Kharkiv were major corrosive warfare victories.  At Kherson the UA with nearly 1:1 force ratio pushed the RA across a major river because they made their position untenable.  They retook a provincial capital of 300k taking very few losses which was a major strategic blow to Russia - no one could call this war for Russia after Kharkiv and Kherson (or at least no one credible).  We should not apply our own western experience to this war because we have not fought one like this since Korea, and the rules of the game have shifted dramatically since then.
I for one am surprised that Kherson did not turn into a protracted bloodbath, there was a lost RA opportunity that speaks to an idea that perhaps Russian Will is not made of steel.  Now if Russia is finally so badly beat up that the old rules of warfare apply - a la Iraqi Army - then yippee!  But that 1) does not validate our western doctrines as “right all along” because that final stroke took a year of broad scope high speed attrition pruning ops and 2) will be a signpost, not a decisive point.  The result of months of shaping and eroding that has already occurred over the winter. 

You doing that thing again where you dance on the edge of the argument that this war was somehow a discretionary strategic diversion that we could have avoided.  Further glancing off the idea that this war is also somehow the West/US fault because it got involved in containing an obvious genocidal dictator.  
It is the part where you conflate isolationist foreign policy advocates with the whole US, as though support of US involvement in the broader planet - one which is largely engineered the global order thereof - and pays for their lifestyles, is itself "Anti-American".

My overall impression is of a disciplined and competent unit. Everyone was clean^, and actions were carried out deliberately and without stress or haste. Everyone appeared calm and relaxed (except that one guy), and they were all comfortable with each other – some banter, but a lot of pretty frank comments about how they’re feeling. The new guys seemed a little stiff, but that’s probably to be expected.
The fact they had some new guys was interesting in itself. Why are the new guys needed - casualties? Promotion? Courses? Relief for leave periods? Siphoning off some experience to raise a new battery?
A lot of the guys seemed pretty old, and kind of chubby? I guess that’s to be expected with mass mobilisation.
Overall this was a very tidy gun position with no trash or dunnage to be seen which is a sign of good discipline, and also an fairly comfortable looking position which is a sign of good morale.
They are carrying personal weapons at all times, which struck me as odd. Could be for the cameras, or could be because of the local ground threat.
I think they’re using encrypted radios? The blerp at the start of each transmission is a bit of a give-away. That’s not super surprising, other than that encrypted radios are not available COTS.

From a specifically gunnery perspective, they were firing at a very low trajectory, and with a time of flight of 29 seconds, which implies they were firing at around 10km (29 seconds time of flight, firing Charge 1 so probably around 300 m/s). But that’s a hearty guess since I don’t know the specifics of the gun/round/charge combos for the D-30. Low trajectory is good practice since it makes it harder for the enemy to sense any outgoing rounds.
The battery was set up in a woodland, which was unusual since it severely restricts your traverse - you can’t just bang a round away in any direction since it’ll probably slam into a tree a few 10s of metres away and really ruin your day. Given a static front that kind of makes sense – “all our targets are in a narrow arc in that direction” - but it does mean that this battery can’t really support any units to the flanks of the one it’s been assigned to.
It looked like they were using time fuses, although again I’m not really familiar with Russian ammunition. There was a shot where a guy was fiddling with a tool on the nose of the round at around 6:39, and the tool he’s using appears to have calibration marks on it. On Western ammo that’s the kind of thing you’d use to set the time fuze length^^, whereas switching between PD and Delay is a simple screwdriver turn between two positions and would be a completely different fuse (you can turn a time fuze into a PD fuse by zeroing the timer, but they usually don’t also have a Delay setting. Also, time fuzes are relatively rare, so you’d only use them when air burst was called for.)
It seems they are concerned about counter battery (CB) fire, since they moved into a shelter immediately after the mission, but not THAT concerned since they’ve been in the same positions for several months. There also didn’t appear to be much ground churn (from incoming rounds) but that could be due to fresh recent snow covering any wounds to the ground since there also didn’t appear to be many random tracks about the place. Mind you, that – the lack of tracks - could alternately be due to really good discipline and morale, and the guys really sticking to the track plan. Or discipline + fresh snow.
I didn’t see any evidence of vehicles – either trucks dug in or hiding under cam nets, or vehicle tracks anywhere. That implies the battery isn’t moving anytime soon, and also that the guys are having to hump ammo in from some distance away. It also implies that they – or rather their higher command – are confident that the Russians will not be breaking in or through anywhere nearby anytime soon. Raids; yes – they specifically talk about that. But no movement of the FEBA.
Given they’ve been there for a couple of months, I would expect that they have a very long list of pre-registered targets, which greatly reduces (effectively eliminates) the need to adjust before going to fire for effect (FFE).
Although only one gun was show I would expect that there was a whole battery (probably 4 guns) hidden in the trees thereabouts, although probably very dispersed. I think that because the battery commander was there, and the command post (CP) looked fairly substantial for something that was only controlling a single gun. I am assuming here that the film crew walked between the gun they filmed at, and the underground battery CP and the underground CB shelter. If, on the other hand, they drove between CP and the gun then all bets are off, but I think driving is unlikely given the radios being used – those small handhelds don’t have great ranges, especially in trees.
All the round detonations you hear are of single rounds. That suggests that this gun could indeed be a pistol gun off on it’s lonesome away from the rest of the battery, OR that they are engaging a very small or point target like an isolated building, OR in response to a very local probe. But given the weather – bright sun, middle of the day – I’d be a bit surprised if the Russians were up and moving about with small numbers of light infantry, so my guess would either be a destruction mission on a building or the like, or they’re doing a technical shoot to figure out exactly what the weather conditions are doing to the flight of the rounds right now. Those technical shoots are important since it means that engaging any targets off the pre-registered list can go to FFE immediately, which decreases the response time from ~5-10 mins to ~1min including time of flight. That would also explain the generally unhurried and relaxed attitude of the guys – when a battery is firing in support of friendly forces in contact there is a certain ... tenseness, which is absent here.
Jon

^ that could also be because they tidied up the house, washed and had haircuts before visitors came over. But I don’t think it’s just that – you can tell a soldier to go have a wash, but that wouldn’t explain the calmness.
^^ although the fuzes I’m used to have the time setting marks on the fuze itself, rather than the adjusting tool, so … ?

Ah so onto REDDIT tactic #2, treat the other poster like your personal information waiter.  I spent nearly a half a page answering your post but this is the “soup you do not like.”  This is exactly what I mean by obtuse flanking - I do all the work and you sit back and nit pick from the high ground of ignorance.  “Prove to me that the earth is indeed round!”
You need a few more years on that learning journey because you do not even know what you are looking at.  
All of this research is by-design trying to figure out how to overcome the attacker-defender problem.  It has been central to warfare, pretty much from the beginning.  The problem is pretty simple, attacking is more costly and dangerous than defending but it is the only way to get things done.  So how do we overcome that?  Force ratios is one way, but there was a lot of research on speed, tempo etc because we were all up in manoeuvre warfare back in the 90s.  All those force ratio studies were reinforcing the western myth that attrition was dead.  It was all the rage right up until this war where clearly attrition is back on the menu.  Of course there are other factors in the force ratio equations, now you can go look up what force multipliers really mean.
The bottom line is that if you look at highly attritional battles against prepared defences losses ratios at the tactical level can get very high - the the opening of the Somme.  However, over time those ratios tend to settle into around 2-1.5 to 1 losses agains attacker…until/if the attacker achieves break out, then the ratio will flip pretty fast. The major weakness of defence is that it is more rigid system, more tied to owning terrain in land battle. Once that system is cracked it can fall apart pretty quickly.  However clearly the UA has not suffered this yet.
But hey if you want to cling to the idea that at Bakhmut the RA - throwing literally waves of untrained convicts and poorly trained and supported conscripts at prepared UA defences, should be seeing 1:1 loss ratios because you haven’t seen a curve on a graph…well I cannot help you.
I can tell you that if you dial in a solution that does not take into account the fact that attacking is more costly and dangerous in the short term in any professional military school, from junior leadership to joint staff college, you will fail.
 

Don’t disagree here, not sure why a UA offensive did not happen.  Ground conditions, or maybe they simply were not ready yet?  Or maybe the UA figured it was a better deal to let them smash out at Bakhmut.  Regardless the signs are definitely there that they are planning an offensive this spring or summer.
Having been the guy who has had to babysit battlefield tourists, it is nowhere near over the top.  In fact it was the main point they were bragging about and are now going to use it as “cred currency”.  If Kofman had written “been to Kyiv and met with strategic staff” I would be a lot more willing to lend credibility.  But I have seen this too many times in person to not call it what I think it is.  Even if Kofman et al had come back with tactical observations, but no we get “loss ratio was 1:1”, which sounds more like a conclusion they had going in as there is no way to determine that on the ground at Bakhmut.
Trust me this happens a lot more than people realize.  These guys show up for a weekend.  We get told in no uncertain terms “do not get them killed”.  They glad hand, maybe get mortared once or twice, and then get on the chopper and go back home to stick it on their Facebook page.  We watch them fly off and do another ramp ceremony.
Seriously?  So you want me to prove that attacking is more costly than defending?  Look this is what I call “an obtuse flanking”, where in a debate/argument someone demands that one has to prove first principles.  This is a lot of legwork and frankly drifting into unpaid labour. 
So instead why don’t you go on your own learning journey.  Start here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA302819.pdf and then use an internet search engine.
We build entire military offensive doctrine around the idea that we need to concentrate more force at the point of attack to overcome the benefits of the defence.  We also expect to take more losses in the short term, to achieve breakin, through and out, which sets up for annihilation through dislocation (some more stuff you can go look up).  The UA broke this rule regularly in this war by being either upside down or near 1:1.  How they did this is still a big question.
The RA has not demonstrated the same ability, in fact quite the opposite, they have had massive force ratio advantages (e.g. 12:1) and still failed.
This has been the underlying argument of pro-Russian “experts” (go online and Google anything by Col Macgregor) and the fears of mainstream analysts.  The narrative is that the UA cannot fight a war of attrition with Russia for various reasons.  We have repeatedly seen people point to tactical battles of attrition as proof that the Russian “strategy is working”.  Yet the UA keeps getting stronger while the RA erodes.  You can scan these pages to see it echoed at times.
Not really sure what you mean here.  I think we are agreeing loudly.  I am stating that Russia is not coming back from its losses in this war.  In fact some of this is not losses, it is shortfalls it had at the start of the war that it would need to build from scratch.
No it wasn’t. The significant contribution was C4ISR that allowed those munitions and boots to be used to effect.  Russia can get fancy self-loitering munitions, and they will make life difficult in some localized regions, but they do not have the operational level ISR to plug them into.
So the balloon saga was hilarious and an example of ISR pivoting going very wrong.  Pivoting strategic ISR is incredibly hard unless you have constructed a global architecture upon which to pivot from.  Take space based, those satellites are in specific orbits designed to fly over specifics target areas, reorientation is not easy or free - it spends fuel on birds that do not have unlimited supply.  So the answer is put enough up that you need only swing feeds to a different bird.  So China may have some ISR constellations up there but their orbits are aimed at covering the South China Sea.  
Other Strat platforms such as high altitude aircraft or UAS are pretty limited and need to be supported, so now we are talking about extending their range, so more fuel and support with the infrastructure to back it up.  China is still regionally focused so asking it to retask platforms designed to focus on Asia all the way over to Eastern Europe (and not get detected) is well outside of any capability they have demonstrated - perhaps you can do some legwork on that and come back.
Finally, even if China could pivot there is not evidence that the RA can plug into their systems.  A lot of this is crypto and link systems.  The UA trained with the West for 8 years and likely got a backbone up and running quickly.  Not so sure China and Russia are tight enough to be getting that intimate with highly classified systems.
But hey, trying not to talk myself into “safe spaces”.
Then I would say you have a lot more reading to do.  One of those “things” is logistics and sustainment and Russia’s failure to master that led to the entire northern front collapsing.  
Seriously, every now and then some clever academic poses that the operational level “is not a thing”, which sounds cool until you ask “ok, so who is going to do all the operational level stuff”?  Most of the operational level is marshalling and distribution of enablers that provide and sustain tactical advantage, linking tactical actions together into a coherent campaign and shaping effects to set overall battlefield conditions - but hey, what do I know?
So what I want you and everyone to do is measure the length of the RA front, from the tippy tip of that thing past Kherson to the far right flank at the border in the north of Luhansk. Now take that number and divide the number of Russian troops in-country by it.  Now take that number and divide it in half.  Ok, now that number is the total number of troops per km the RA has to defend what it has taken. That number includes any troop rotations and counter move forces.
Now take 20k off the overall number of the RA and plug it in.  What does it do to that troop density per km? Now do 30k.  Now 40k.  This is the RA problem.  Now before anyone pipes up - no, it is not that linear.  The line will need to be much denser in close terrain and less in the open.  Water obstacles will help as well.  But if you want to get technical this also does not allow for a lot of depth, and a 50-50 tooth to tail ratio is extremely generous.
Further, the RA does not have ISR that allows them to leave part of the line unmanned - the UA does because they can see and react before the RA crosses the start line.  So the RA has to sustain that troop density, they have to enable it.  The UA needs only to find the holes and make them worse.
Once you have done the math in the previous step, rethink this last part.  
And this is a military that was very badly mauled last year.  It does not have a western-backstop.  It was missing what it needed for a job this size from the outset.  It has not solved for AirPower (that is a big one).  It has not been able to attack UA C4ISR directly in any meaningful way.  It has not been able to erode UA LOCs.
So, yes, I am sure things are very bad at Bakhmut but until we see something that say all that is changing, or failing more quickly on the UA side, this thing is still going in one direction.

Ouch, words hurt.  Well the RA did collapse as predicted, it just did not translate into a full strategic collapse.  Seriously - "what have you done for me lately"
To be fair to us, Kofman and others were all sounding the drums of doom back then as the Russian military was "just getting started" and drawing big red lines all over Donbas.
So who was less wrong in that little situation?

Pearls are just glossed oyster poop. 
Ah, well perhaps I see the problem then.  In military parlance we get into J35 versus J5 space.  Step 1 - is likely in the J35 space, while Step 2 - Crimea is in J5.   We do both at once, not liking to plan things just before we do them, we push planning out and adjust as required.   That, and there are capability/force generation decision that will need to be made now to support Step 2 - so it behooves to have an idea of what one wants that to look like. 
For example, if the west gets all scope eye on tanks (and we sure as hell did here), they could wind up short-changing the actual capabilities needed for Step 2.  We will have mountains of steel and a 10km nightmare corridor without an ability to choke out the peninsula.  Of course you need to balance with Step 1, but how can you balance if you have no idea as to Step 2?
To my mind Step 1 is pretty much a done deal.  If it is not well then we have a much larger problem on our hands. 
If the UA cannot re-take Melitopol and/or a good chunk of the Northern shore of the Azov then their options space starts to shrink.  Ukraine could try broad corrosive warfare along the Donbas, surging and pulling to try to accelerate RA collapse.  If we think choking out the Crimea is a tall order, doing it along the entire Donbas, and southern front is even harder.  The RA supply lines get shorter with more of them in Russia, which opens up the potentially nasty eventuality of sustained strikes inside Russia itself.  I think the odds of this conflict freezing go up, unless the RA fails completely which is not impossible but pretty hard to predict.  Frozen conflict will only shaken western resolve as this thing drags on, it kinda plays into Putins gambit, so not optimal.
So the UA needs to cut down center.  It dislocates the two theatres.  It takes away a major strategic objective (the land bridge) and sets the conditions for what happens next.  If the UA take Melitopol, they threaten the back end of all the forces still on the south bank of the Dnepr.  They will have to turn and fight - and face northern pressure and crossings, or pull back to the Crimean choke point.
The UA slugging it out in the Donbas could get very expensive and end up going nowhere.  I think we may see diversionary ops in Luhansk but main effort will likely be Melitopol.  That is not going to be easy and will have to be a hard going assault, I suspect this entire defensive dance at Bakhmut and surrounding is trying to bleed the RA white to set up for Melitopo, much in the same way Severodonetsk did for Kharkiv. 
So the UA pulls off another major offensive gain at Melitopol and establishes conditions for the battle of Crimea, or this thing might just stall pretty close to where it is now.  We can hope that broad corrosive warfare will continue to collapse in the Donbas and lead somewhere.  I think even at Melitopol there will need to be an element of corrosive warfare but how much is anyone's guess - it may be happening already.
So Step 1 is already written, or start making "other plans".  I mean if anyone else has any ideas shout them out - but we are talking about the road to a UA victory here.  RA collapse could happen at anytime, so lets just put that one up on the "hope" COA.
The good news is that the RA already looks kinda strung out in the center compared to what is going on further east:

(Thank you Jomini of the West)
So Step 2 - Crimea or Donbas...pick your poison.  To my mind it is Crimea, (and apparently Gen Hodges as well).  So start thinking about what that is going to take, and begin to build it now.

lol.
Maybe, I don't know ... travel a bit?

As a Russian commentator said (before they realized it was happening) Biden going to Kyiv is saying that Biden expects Kyiv to win. That is exactly how it's being read in Russia. That it was timed to big foot Putin's speech tomorrow, that it was done with Israeli cover, that the optics were superb are all bad enough. Biden walking nonchalantly through an air raid alert with a subdued Secret Service detail is an absolute kick in the nuts to Moscow's propaganda.
Also: https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/02/one-year-after-russias-invasion-of-ukraine.html
 

These are the real dividers in Europe:

 
and of course this:

 
From: https://atlasofprejudice.com/

I went to see Return of the Jedi when it came out.  Was all ready to go, dropped some acid and settled in.  Then when the fight started on Endor my buddy leaned over and whispered "sir, sir we are being attacked by muppets".  I had to leave the theater as I couldn't stop laughing.  That was the end of Star Wars for me.