Vanir Ausf B

Hey Skeptical, I would ask him but I don't have a twitter account. I suspect most of these fortifications are unmanned or lightly manned. Many of the experts, or "experts" as the case may be, say it will come down to ISR and logistics, which is why some of them are predicting major breakthroughs. But they are guessing, like everyone else. _______ Western partners have told him, he said, that they now need a “next example of a success because we need to show it to our people. … But I cannot tell you what the scale of this success would be. Ten kilometers, 30 kilometers, 100 kilometers, 200 kilometers?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/06/ukraine-counteroffensive-expectations-hype-russia/

Rob Lee commented on this.

Reznikov said that Ukraine’s “first assault formation” is more than 90 percent prepared to begin but that some designated troops are still finishing training programs abroad. ... Russian forces in Kherson knew that Ukraine lacked long-distance strike capabilities, so “they withdrew all their command posts, fuel depots, ammunition depots, more than 120 kilometers away,” Reznikov said. “That’s why we need something interesting with a range capability of 150 kilometers,” he said. “It’s become more difficult for them logistically. But we need to push them deeper and deeper.”

India has surpassed China in population but it's economy is structured very differently. It's manufacturing sector is relatively small, which means it can't follow the cheap labor/massive export- driven growth model. It's female workforce participation looks more like Middle Eastern countries than China or the west.

Yep, not really anything new.

Depends on how we define cannon fodder. Publicly available numbers (which are probably less than half of the actual total) suggest about 31% of casualties Dec - February were prison inmates. Most of the rest were mobiks of various types.

Apparently those numbers were supposed to be for the whole war since December.

I don't expect to see many if any US forces stationed in Finland on a permanent basis. They would have to be pulled from elsewhere in Europe. Maybe a Patriot battery.

UK MoD on Russian missile strikes.

Rarely. In the early Combat Mission days circa 2000 he would pop in a little more often but it's never been his thing.

Payback?

They definitely are, and have been for a few months now. ________ At the time of the document's publication — which, for many of the documents that were leaked, is late February or early March — Ukraine's air force had dropped at least nine JDAM-ER bombs against Russian targets, but four of them appear to have missed due to Russian jamming. The confidence in this particular assessment was medium to high. The document recommended neutralizing the jammers as before JDAM-ERs are used for best results. ________ https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-jamming-maybe-interfering-us-bomb-kit-ukraine-leaked-documents-2023-4

How many purchase points is this worth in a Quick Battle? WAPO article on the situation in Bakhmut. Seems to echo @Haiduks comments above.

Def Mon mentioned something about this a few days ago.

For whom the bell tolls.

Marinka is an apocalyptic wasteland.

He actually does have a fairly specific time table, contingent on weapon deliveries.

I would speculate that Patriots are intended primarily for missile defense and may be too far behind the front lines to engage Russian aviation.

We now have the point of view from the FPV drone. Crazy war.

Not so much New Guinea, but definitely Indonesia and Malaysia.

Good summary of tactical developments, although nothing that hasn't been mentioned here before in some way.