yarmaluk

- In response to the current back and forth on the forum here -
With regards to certain enemy capabilities which we spend oh so much time discussing, I do not worry about it, though I respect it. It can be managed.  Personally, I (and many of my colleagues) are readier than ever to finally get into the fight and help win this. Everyday I wake up waiting for them to do something stupid and finally give NATO a clear, unambiguous, reason to intervene directly in this war. That’s the solider in me - - it hard to see all of our (combined) power not being used when everyday Ukrainians have to bear the burden alone (at least physically). That doesn’t sit right with me, never did. 
 
All of this to say I get it, it’s hard to watch this from the sidelines, whatever the reasons for that up to now. Still I read, learn about, and appreciate the challenges of leading the combined West through this crisis, with all of the diverse perspectives that it comes with. 
 
I trust the Alliance, and I trust the Ukrainian General Staff. I have my own opinions on what I would risk, which is more than current, but that isn't up to me. In the end, we are all on the same side here, let’s remember how important that is, even when it gets testy. 
 
 

Ok, well things are getting clearer.  Retreating Bradley’s are extracting.  One flies by, second one clearly hit a land mine.  Troops de-bus, no panic the take cover while the gun camera Bradley provides covering fire (ballsy not to simply bail).  Everyone starts popping smoke and troops jump on Bradley to get out of there.
First point shows why it is a bad idea to try to drive back out.  Always push, if you get hit at least you have cleared as far as you got. But I suspect things had gone so wrong they abandoned the mission.  Second troops were controlled and did the right thing post mine strike. Third, no RA artillery. Now I am sure they were very concerned it was going to start dropping but that minefield is not being effectively covered.  Those two videos are four minutes, RA mortars should at least be hammering them - and we are glad they weren’t but that is poor cover of an obstacle.
Lastly, no idea what they were shooting at but obviously in treeline in direction of gun and popped smoke.  So best guess, a recon in force got hit by ATGM from a treeline.  Likely lost breaching vehicles.   At least two Bradleys tried to drive back out (bad) other may have been hit coming or going.  Hit more mines because they were in a Devils OODA loop but that gun Bradley looks like it kept it head and got those troops out because we don’t see a lot of bodies in the Russian videos.  
So bad day in a minefield, looks like most of the troops out alive, so they live to fight again and have proven recon is a dangerous job.  RA still have tank hunting teams and their arty support is questionable (at least in this area).  Hardly a disaster, some AAR points but no need to start calling the Kremlin to discuss terms yet.

I have to say...and this is coming from the center left...that a lot of the antifa folks in DC were completely obnoxious. The BLM folks were what we would call around here 'good protesters'. They did their thing, acted coherently and didn't randomly attack whatever for the thrill of it...the burning of the lobby of the AFL-CIO being a particularly egregious example of the tendency to burn for the fun of it tendency of some of the Antifa folks. A lot of them looked like teenagers burning off covid isolation.
But...neither one had anything like the sheer nastiness of the radical right wingers. Patches like RWDS (that stands for "Right Wing Death Squad") and Confederate flags were routine and far more common than outright Nazi regalia. People telling my neighbors with a pride flag at their house that they "will come back for you later". Or the 100 or so Proud Boys that charged a police line my kid and I were behind because they were trying to get at BLM folks on the plaza on 16th Street behind us. Oh...and did I mention the guys with the long guns that got arrested at one of my places of business?
We got to see the monster with it's mask off...because they were sure that they were going to get a pardon sooner or later as they would tell DC MPD who had to deal with them...and I would strongly suggest you all take it seriously. Out of patriotism if nothing else. Nobody benefits more from it than Vladimir Putin.

The F-16 is not a panacea thread: 
 
 

And the bombing of Taranto. That did cause serious damage to the Italian fleet, but just as importantly the Italians reacted by rebasing their ships further away from where most of the action was happening, reducing the whole fleet's responsiveness.

Probably initial episode of video, where UKR soldiers seizing Russian blindage. UKR group suddenly encountered on Wagners position in tree-plant. Three minutes of FPV skirmish. Also you can see how hard to move in tree-plant, littered by fallen branches. Even in intact tree-plants it's hard, because its often overgrown with dense bushes. 
PS. Yesterday I mistakingly identified unit "Dyke Pole" ("Wild Fields") like a battalion of 1st Sp.purpose brigade. Indeed this is a company with the same name, but belonging to 1st mech.battalion "Da Vinci Wolfs" of 67th mech.brigade, which was formed on the base of Volunteer Ukrainian Corps of Dmytro Yarosh
 

What Aztecs has to do with US in 1800? Read the post again, carefully. Which native North American culture that colonists met was not predminantly stone based (ok, several more widely used some copper axes)? Btw. info for non-archeolgists: stone is determinate of predominant tools, not mark social or cultural sophistication- basically the ceiling what you can do with stuff. In agriculture, warfare, hunting, crafts etc. None of those folks developed significant iron on their own, and despite occassionaly very complex political structures (Mississipi culture or Iroqui for example) have no chances against colonists in long run. I think history of peoples in the North America would be roughly the same with deaseses or without them, disparity in population and mode of life simply massively favoured newcomers on every gound.
Ok, going back to main thesis: US version of ethnicity and identity is different than in most European countries. It could be extremely brutal on racial lines in USA history and had obvious Anglophone dominant, but in the same time most (white) newcomers did not find it too difficult to adapt and still retain parts of their heritage. There were some country-wide massacres of German towns or ethnic cleansings of Scandinavian farmers? Some massive pogroms of Jews I missed compared to what happenned in Tsarist Russia or Germany during WWII? Irish could get it rough at times, and Africanamericans and Chinese are separate matter in the context of the era. But this is nothing compared to what was happening in especially XX cent. Europe.
US project is genuinly a creation of emigrants, unlike Old Continent.
Who said anything about "inferiority" of anybody?? Musket, train, efficent agriculture, metal swords or this small thing called modern beaurocratic state that can generate and sustain armies hundreds thousands in winter does not care about your or mine feelings, higher spiritual values or that somebody make beautiful jewelry, sorry. This is pretty simple, observeable historical effect of meeting of cultures that have widely different tools and concepts of conquest. Btw. I professionally study these things in regard to barbaricum/Roman Empire dynamics. It's historical basics on level of first year of History, really. Only things that stopped Romans from conquest in long run was they were not profitable enough.- and  just purely technical gap between "barbarians" and Romans was way smaller than between native people of Americas and colonizers. Sorry, history is brutal, and it is very good we now try to give those people their place- but it does not change a fact that withing context of an era they have zero chances to survive as they were.
And what Aborigens even have to do with North Americans? Another storm in a cup of water.

This really is a “you guys” thing, so I am going to leave out any and all personal opinions one way or the other.  However what I do not get is that the US government is one of the most transparent governments in history.  
So if I am sitting on my back porch and someone in my sphere says “the government is spending all that money on Ukrainians and screwing Ohio-ians, damn [insert political party of your choice]”.  It literally takes an internet connection and about 10 mins to unpack this thing to a level that at least lays out some actual facts:
https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/quality-ohio/revenue-budget/budget-policy/review-of-ohios-2022-23-budget
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/assets/organizations/legislative-service-commission/files/historical-revenues-and-expenditures-table-1-grf-lpef-and-lgf-revenue-history.pdf
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/publications/historical-revenues-and-expenditures
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state
So the punchline is that the US federal government spent about $40B on Ohio alone in 22-23 (12B in grants which are code for “we never except to see them back”) and Ohio is in the top ten states to receive federal funding annually.
Yes, it looks like FEMA is being particularly dense and bureaucratic - and they likely need some executive nudging, however, we are talking about apples and unicorns here in both scale and funding streams.
And finally, there is a lot of some pretty convincing arguments flying around that said dangerous cargo was supposed to be off that train but…politics: https://apnews.com/article/wv-state-wire-north-america-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-2e91c7211b4947de8837ebeda53080b9mp-us-news-ap-top-news-transportation-1936e77a11924c909880f1ef014c7ca7
So what?  Well could the federal government be doing more cut through the red tape and support East Palestine Ohio - looks like it could.
Is the US government blowing all it money on Ukraine and therefore cannot support Ohio-eons?  No, that does not track.
Do US rail safety regulations look like they need a revisit - yes, probably a good idea.
Is there a direct link between East Palestine Ohio and US support to Ukraine - no.  In fact trying to find and indirect link is pretty hard.  The US federal budget was roughly $6.27T in 2022.  The $50B in aid to Ukraine comes to about .8% of that.
So for perspective if an average family income in the US is about 71k per year: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
So in parallel terms this would be the same as that family spending about $560 dollars, or about $46 per month.
And last point, one of those corrupt former Soviet republics is Russia, a P5 UNSC member and nuclear power, and is directly threatening US global interest and influence, on a great power scale - you wanna stay on top?  You have to fight for it.

 
 

Yes but at home they do it by getting out of the wet hole in the freezing ground, building a fire, and or going inside somewhere warm, at least intermittently. You can withstand things for twelve hours that will render you dysfunctional in 36. All of these fixes will get you killed in the mile or three closest to the front line. You just HAVE to have some combination of shelter and rotation.

Ok, let me hit this on the head one last time because it is going to a really bad place.  And I totally get the sentiment but we need to be absolutely clear on this point - being the 'good guys' and acting like a modern professional military means all the time, no matter what. 
No days off, no "revenge breaks" and definitely no "hey they are doing it."
Only a combat veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq can describe just how badly we wanted to call in an A10 and wipe out an entire grid square after one of your own goes home in a box.  Or retaliate when the insurgents did some really dark sh#t.
But that ain't the gig, ever.  The single biggest point civilians do not get about war is that 'killing' is not the hard part - the hard part is 'to not keep on killing'. 
We clipped guys for holding a cellphone in the wrong place for too long, chewed up teenagers digging hole in roads, and a hammered into meat a few farmers dumb enough to stick around.  We did it and high-fived when we dropped them.  We slept soundly that night and never thought twice about doing it the next day. 
But we never let that out of the professional box we kept it in - the second we did, and could no longer tell which way was up - even when the other team was basically operating on Genghis Khan ROEs - we would stop being soldiers and become something else. And then the whole thing starts to unravel.
The RA and Russia will pay for their actions for decades.  War crimes are one of the key indicators that the RA is in freefall and not a coherent fighting force - military discipline has fallen apart on a wide scale, and they are reaping that field this fall.
But we beat them by being better than they are, forever.    

I wouldn't say bitterness, but rather frustration.  Ukraine wants to join the western bloc and has had a massive amount of support even if many of us feel there should be more. That however means being held to the fire when standards go awry. Ukraine isn't the first to feel there is a somewhat double standard when compared to their adversary, but what their adversary does is not the standard... and with good reason.

And this should be taken into account as it may suggest they had capability but that is not enough, one has to demonstrate clear intent.   Combat episode was finished as soon as the RA soldiers came out with hands up, the question is who and if they were employing perfidy to cause further harm or re-start combat.
Nope, that is why professional militaries have Rules of Engagement, the review of which will be a major part of a follow on investigation.
And is currently bank rolling this entire thing so you remain a free nation - now if you would like to explore other options your nation is free to do so.  This is the club you are joining.  If that doesn’t wash you could try knocking on China’s door.

So my guess is you practice real estate law?  Uh, no.  Not even close in legal terms but it is complicated.
So let’s be crazy and post some refs:
https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/prisoners-of-war/
So this outlines all of the protections and definitions of what is and is not a POW etc.  
The legal term we are talking about with respect to a Russian POW tossing a grenade is perfidy - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule65. This is a warcrime in itself but does not immediately remove POW protections of the perpetrator- legally but practically there is a solid case that the individual still able to employ lethal force is no longer a POW.
Here we get into the LOAC and the right to self defence - https://lieber.westpoint.edu/understanding-self-defense-law-armed-conflict/
And not a bad opener on the whole subject here- https://www.genevacall.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2013/11/The-Law-of-Armed-Conflict.pdf
So what?  Well if a POW exercises perfidy during capture then technically they could be deemed as forfeiting their status is a POW, IF it can be proven that they intended to fight.  So whoever tossed that grenade was likely a legitimate target under both LOAC and the right to self defence.
Blanket wiping out that persons whole unit because one person exercised perfidy is well outside LOAC and it will be a challenge to sell self-defence.  In LOAC the principles of distinction and proportionality are likely the ones that are going to bite here.  Originally designed to protect civilians, they also protect POWs and a massive GPMG response on the whole unit likely violates both. Unless the UA troops can prove that the entire unit was exercising perfidy and a collective lethal force response was required then they are on very shaky legal ground.  In short the legal principal of “Shoot first, last and let God sort them out” does not stand under LOAC.
Now that all said - this is war and this stuff, on the line stuff, happens all the time.  You basically have a lot of emotions and ammunition in the same place so over-reaction is very understandable and happens. This one, from the photos and video may have crossed the line to an unrighteous shoot but there will need to be a full investigation to establish that and then a military legal process to prosecute any offenders etc, allowing them full protection of the law.  The Hague and international court will not be getting involved as this is 1) too small/not systemic and 2) Ukraine as a signatory of the Geneva conventions is more than capable of prosecution under national law. 
So to summarize - mass shooting of POWs is almost never warranted or legally supported even if one of their members exercises perfidy.  If a crime was committed by UA troops there is a process to establish this and deal with it. Until Ukraine demonstrates that it is not going to follow that process or the LOAC, which we have seen no real evidence of particularly considering the actions of the RA, then any international criminal process is off the table.
It does not help the Ukrainian cause in the least to have these sorts of things happen but these things do happen.  Why?  Because all war is personal. A Russia POW got sh#tty and UA troops took it personally…whether it was a crime or not is for the investigation to decide.

Well, to understand it was no false flag one need to look at mimic and voice of officials. If anybody knowing anything about PL politics observe reactions of Duda, Morawiecki, Spokesmen and chief of National Security Council I am 100% sure they will immediatelly realize they are scarred like s**t. They didn't expected that to happen, have no idea what to do with it politically so wait for "confirmations" while keeping people in the dark on PR front.
On totally personal note, our political class is  divided more than US-one, one worst in Europe in fact; we lack any person of universal public trust and normal personal integrity like, for example, Finnish president Niinisto. Such person would be priceless now, to calm population down; but instead Morawiecki is talking like bored village post official, people are uncertain how to behave and within a week we will see a surge of national machismo by PiS that will be entirely for domestic use. While international repercussions will probably be symbolic. Unless, of course, it was indeed deliberate. Actually, judging by amount of fear by main officials may point to last conclusion...because what happen if RU indeed missile deliberatelly hit NATO country?
Forget about those memes with winged hussars, Poles saddling horses and joining war just like that. It's not realistic at all; people hates muscovites, but our political class does not play in the same league as Putin when comes to gravity of international responses. Cautious Art. 4 will probably be main response.

I think this forum has a good handle on technical, tactical, and strategical discussion of events in the battlespace. But these discussions of NATO, Article 5, no fly zones, world politics, nuclear weapons, and so are usually weak and come to people just making gut feelings or wishes of events.

I think it would be good to step back from edge and think with a more sedate mindset about what might happen now. Or better to keep larger focus on this groups strengths

Russia did bunch of cyberattacks. Both over the years (they managed to turn off utilities in Ukraine a few times in last decade and there was the whole NotPetya thing - for details, I remember excellent podcast Darknet Diaries) and recently, they attacked Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_DDoS_attacks_on_Romania
I agree that lot of the cyberattacks are spent when they execute, so I would speculate that Russia attacking Ukraine over the last decade kind of served as inoculation of sorts.
As for cyberattacking the West, Russia is doing that - do not forget that Russia's strongest weapon is misinformation, media manipulation, changing scope and topics of public debate, what is trending, etc. Brexit, Clinton's emails, Wikileaks, Antivaxxers, and so on. It is happening now more than ever before. Here in Czechia there's presidential elections soon, the leading candidate is a former Chair of the NATO Military Committee and suddenly there's hundreds of comments under every article how terrible he is. I'm pretty sure it is going to work and we'll get another Kremlin puppet after the last two.
As for attacking utilities and so on, I think some NATO spokesperson said that this will be responded as to actual attack. I'm not sure it would be, but Russia is pretty scared of NATO so that deterrent seems to be working.

IRIS-T SLM almost in Ukraine:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-german-iris-t-slm-air-defense-system-arriving-in-days
I haven't seen anyone bring this up yet but these revenge attacks remind me of The Battle of Britain when Britain accidently bombed a German city instead of a military target.  Germany started attacking British cities and quit focusing on British military targets.  This allowed Britain to win this particular battle.  History seems to repeat itself.
 

2.9 killed/wounded ratio.
Interesting that refuseniks outnumber casualties, by a lot.

Going back to my previous post which mentioned the US withdrawal from the IRBM treaty, this right here was the entire reason for the treaty in the first place. The extremely short flight time of IRBMs to Moscow or European capitals required instantaneous decision making, which makes the weapons a destabilizing factor. IT was a good idea to eliminate them, and now we are back, with Russia with nuclear capable IRBMs and the US discussing nuclear warhead cruise missiles. Bad ideas all.

Dave

They know the details. The JCPOA was to prevent them from having enough material to enrich far enough for a weapon. The US withdrawal eliminated that restriction and now we're back where we were 5-6 years ago when they were 3 weeks away from doing so, and everyone was yelling to do something. 
 
As to the rest, the idea that there is some binary decision to be made, either put up with the status quo, or some variation of that, or turn the whole world into a smoking cinder, is just ridiculous. You all are not saying punish Russia if they use one nuclear weapon. You are saying **** it, blow it all up. All of it. Everyone dies because we couldn't do anything else about Putin.
Crazy talk. 
Dave

Two things are unassailably true: 
1. Russia is losing in Ukraine because of Ukrainian will and Western arms. 
2. Russia has 6000+ nuclear weapons and can initiate the end of civilization. 
The conclusions that I draw from those facts are that NATO *already* has the initiative.
Fact 1 is why Russia is fumbling around in the escalation drawer for less conventional ways to change the course of the war. Wrecking pipelines is about trying to affect ally unity and political support. Threatening nukes is about trying to destroy Ukrainian and Western will to fight. Cyber attacks are already in full swing and more extreme versions will happen. The course of the war is going our way and it's Putin who must regain the initiative or give it up.
Fact 2 is why we don't want to speed up the war's course. We can't militarily overthrow Putin. We *can* out fight his army while sanctions, political developments and battlefield losses erode his ability to continue. I get it, we want it over soon. But forcing it just increases the chances that panic or a mistake sends things into an apocalyptic scenario.
 
 
 
 

Then we would cease to exist as well. There's no realistic full nuclear war scenario where Russia is destroyed and the US and Western Europe are not. Even if we could somehow achieve some kind of surprise or their ICBMs are crap, their submarines still exist with enough warheads to destroy the US and a lot of Europe. Just as we have the same. 

Dave

Ok, so again, what exactly are you saying.  It appears that it is that Russia has a history of genocide - both cultural and physical?  And that somehow justifies...something?  You seem to be in line with kraze's direction, or are you just FYI-ing?  I can pretty much read between the lines - not a lot of nuance here, so let me respond:
Ok, I am going to call you out on this because this is just dumb, and frankly a bad direction this thread has been going since you and few others got particularly vocal.
1.  You are being pointed and vague at the same time - you pull out weird "facts" but place no context nor really any conclusions.  This is the playbook of many extremist organizations - "I am not saying anything racists but here are some statistics about [insert whoever], just saying"
2.  The "facts" you do pull on are a) pulled from Twitter echo chambers, and b) taken in isolation.  For example, if we are going to reach back into the early 20th century, or 19th century, find me a European power that did not have a history of genocidal behaviour.  By your logic we need to scrub Belgium because of the Congo, Spain for South America, UK, France and the US for North America, and  more than a few other really bad examples of behaviour that Europeans outgrew - including the Ukrainians themselves - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-1919-pogroms-ukraine-and-poland-one-hundred-years-later.  Cherry picking facts and stringing them to somehow make you argument for you is a long standing tactic by extremist organizations.
3.  You dance around it but you are in fact setting up conditions and in effect lobbying for a Russian genocide - as a solution to a genocide.  That is beyond a bad idea - it is phenomenally immoral.  I am sure as you are a Twitter expert on genocide you know the pre-conditions really well.
- Treat an entire society as a homogenous group. "They are all the same, no exceptions"
- Reinforce narratives that re-frame that society as culpable and non-human - plenty of that going on here.  Main effort here is to assign blame on a society, which you have now frames as homogenous and less than human.
- Frame a problem that can only be solved through the removal of the now-subhuman, blamed, homogenous society.
- Pretend to pursue policies that attempt to find way to do this with less violence, largely to reinforce a veneer of legitimacy - "we should deport them all".
- Find reasons why that won't work "they will still want to invade us in 5-10 years, no matter what"
- Deductively lead yourselves to the Wannsee Conference solution set - but hey you tried.
WTF?!
Firstly none of what you, or anyone that seems to be promoting line this is supported by international or humanitarian law - we can (and should) hold a nation state responsible for warcrimes and illegal invasions.  We do not arrest every Russian who crosses a border after the war and charge them for it.
Second, this narrative is monumentally stupid to promote, knowing that it will never gain traction - in fact it will do the exact opposite with respect to western support to Ukraine.  It will sour support to Ukraine when they need it most.  Nor does this nonsense reflect what we have been seeing from the Ukrainian government itself.
Three, it is monumentally immoral because to go through with whatever the hell this "de-something" is, which according to kraze includes the complete destruction of the Russian state - without a safety net, very likely leading to humanitarian crisis - but "who cares:, denying democratic rights to anyone who sniffs of pro-Russian indefinitely, the erasing of a Russian culture (if there is one, oh ya I forgot a sub-strategy of setting up a genocide is to try and pretend that "they are not really a people"), and a punishing the Russian people individually for the rest of time by the sounds of it.  Why? Because the effects of the actions you are promoting are going to negatively impact children who have not even been born yet. It is why we do not do this, the effects ands stakes are that high.
Oh but Russia did this to Ukraine!!  Yes, they did, or at least tried.  And those directly responsible will be held to account.  Russia as a state must be made to pay reparations.  Further Russia will continue to suffer sanctions and the full extent of legal punishments until the make up for this useless war.  However, nothing supports the full spectrum punishment of the entirety of the Russian people for decades - that is not how this works.
Do you honestly think that the mainstream western public are going to join you on whatever revenge fantasy is being cooked up here?  One shot of a starving Russian child and all that good will will evaporate, because people in the West want Russia to pay, but not kids who can't vote, nor pay taxes - I will note that kraze or anyone else spewing this nonsense have offered zero ideas on how to avoid Russian children also being held accountable for actions they literally have no say in - oh, wait don't answer that, I have a pretty good idea what you want already.
I am past asking you guys to stop - I am asking you go somewhere else.  Internet is big and full of other places where you can sell this drivel. 

My brother from another mother! 👍👍

As an American I love our Canadian cousins. After all they gave the world Rush. Which to me is the greatest band to ever exist.