panzermartin

Don't oversell AP landmines here. Having been in minefields and witnessed some of the carnage you describe personally - and a lot of years as a combat engineer, I think I can play the "expert" card here.
AP landmines were always designed to harass and attrit - both physically and psychologically.  The only ones that were approaching lethality level to be decisive are area systems like claymore or bounding mines (especially when in daisy chain...nasty).  So their utility in warfare is not zero but it is also 1) upside down and 2) backwards:
Upside down - like most engineer obstacles you are trading work for time.  A LOT of work up front to buy a few seconds minutes later.  Making those minutes second count is what all arms defence is all about.  AP mine as part of that overall system is a very junior player in the modern age.  The vast majority of AP mines simply are never detonated.  They do support force multiplication but pale in comparison to AT systems.  Main reason is that mechanized made modern warfare - we will see how long that lasts - so kill the vehicle and a modern army is back to WW1.  AP mines were there to make clearance of those AT mines difficult and to kill engineers.  In some conditions they were still used for final defence, but in order to really have an effect you have to employ a very high density.  Go read on the Falklands War accounts of the final attacks on the Two Sisters.  The Brits hit minefields on the assault, took hits and just kept on going.  So as the modern era progressed the amount of effort to put out enough density in AP became entirely secondary to the AT problem.  Back in training, before the Ottawa Convention, we would plan for a lone single strip in a massive AT minefield that was frankly an enormous pain in the a@@ and did basically nothing.  We did employ them for nuisance minefields but these were last on the priority list of engineer works.  AT, AT and AT was always the priority. 
So the value of AP outside of very narrow circumstances really began to drop to the point that when the landmine ban came up, we kind looked at it and went "meh".  We still retain the command detonated point defence systems, like Claymores, so the ability really mess people up is still there.  And boobytraps/anti-handling devices exist in a grey area so if we need to deny critical systems in a withdrawal scenario we still could.  The old AP mines - "toe poopers" - really kind became old-school extra work that we really did not miss.
Backwards - The other problem with the old dumb AP mines was the fact that they killed/injured more people after the war than they did in the war itself.  This drove the costs of these systems way outside the battlefield gains.  Cambodia was really the eye opener, and then the Balkans, Afghanistan etc.  We saw that the post-war impact was like GDP-level harming - the cost of removing these weapons, especially if they records are lost or never made, was orders of magnitude of the weapon system itself.  So from a military strategic perspective these were literally cutting off the nose to spite the face.  They were never going to be decisive on the battlefield, and the post-war costs were enormous as we were seeing large swaths of agriculture, tourism and development areas were totally denied for at least a century unless a nation in post-war recovery could spend millions on clearances that would take years. 
So frankly, AP mines do not make warfare economic sense.  They may feel good but Ukraine sticking its neck out on this one is not worth it.  They will kill a few more Russians, but not enough to balance the blowback or post-war impacts.  The RA has demonstrated a stunning ability to feed people into this thing, so they are simply going to ignore any AP minefields, accept the casualties and move on.
DPICM is fundamentally a very different problem.  The issue here is the "peace community" really functions by fund raising and to do that they need "wins".  The AP Convention was a big win, so they were searching for a high profile follow up - enter Lebanon 2006.  Israel in a bafflingly bad military operation - it basically killed the credibility of their famous design approach - decided to start lobbing old stockpiles DPICM at hybrid forces who were fighting from within communities...what could possibli go wrong?  Well the whole thing blew up in their, and our, faces...literally.  Old stockpiled DPICMs had embarrassing dud rates - although, reality check; those dud rates do not even come close to the numbers of AP mines employed in older conflicts.  More modern DPICM systems are seeing lower dud rates than the HE being tossed around the battlefield today...but if it looks like a landmine and can generate crowd funding like a landmine...
 So the Anti-Cluster munition thing was born.  We in military circles knew that it would really go nowhere because DPICM has far more battlefield utility and in many circumstances it could be decisive.  So they bolted together a convention but there are holes one can drive a truck through and all the major players simply refused to sign off - although the US made some hand over heart promises.  So what?  Well DPICM essentially takes HE and distribute it widely and more efficiently.  When shaped charge rounds are employed the lethality goes up as well - plenty of studies out there, and we read a lot of them for CMCW.  So unlike AP which is a nuisance to an attacking combined arms unit, DPICM can kill it.  For Ukraine, and the US, the employment of DPICM is entirely legal, even if it makes some people queasy.  Neither nation signed the thing in Oslo and can legally employ the weapon systems in accordance with the Geneva CCW.  Modern DPICM have extremely low dud rates as they are built to be self-neutralizing - we are talking 95% and above, far higher than standard HE.  Now as PGM enters the battlefield en masse, my bet is that DPICM will also go the way of AP mines.  If we need to kill 10 attacking vehicles, we fire 10 PGM systems.  DPICM cost/benefit will very likely shift- along with a lot of systems - after this war and into the future.  So the entire thing may become moot, but we are not there yet.
So DPICM will have political costs, but I think they are mitigatable and are outweighed by critical battlefield utility.  AP mines, no; DPICM, yes. 
 
 

IKR? And the A-10 even has two engines to the P-51's single Merlin. Still not enough though.

As a famous German soccer player once said: "Milan, Madrid, doesn't matter, as long as it's Italy." 😉

This seriously gets ridiculous. So now everyone who isn't firmly in the "Russia sux, lol, Ukraine has already won" camp is pro Putin? Really?

@chuckdyke seriously your behaviour is wild. Accusing others of holding putin sentiments for stating what is well regarded as historical orthodoxy in regards to the russian will to keep on fighting despite horrendous losses i think actually should garner some warning from the admins here.
You are poisoning the well imo and should probably take some time to chill out before posting again.

Well, which country actually has the same borders today as 100 years ago? If you go by that half of this thread, the one frequently doing historical comparisons is pointless. No country won WW2 all by itself and I don't think anyone said so. But it is a historical fact that the Soviet Union played a very major part in the Allied victory. By extension, since the Russian population made up roughly 60% of the Soviet Union, a large part of the credit goes to Russia. Denying that is a kind of historic revisionism that may be politically convenient right now but is factually wrong. Moreover, the tide was turned near at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, which, when last I took a look on the map was Russian proper not Ukrainian or Lithuanian or Kazakh or whatever. If pointing out that makes one pro-Putin then I think this thread is dead for all intents and purposes because then I can just as well go into any other echo chamber on the internet.
Btw. that wasn't even what @Seedorf81said. He just said that this is what Russians think and that is what influences their will to go on.

Saddam fought one vs. Iran for years. Then got wiped out by the West. Then got sanctioned. Then virtually lost his northern territories to the Kurds. Modern nation states have vast resources and are not easily broken. People on this board who know the world wars should understand this very well when you see the depths to which countries like Germany, Russia, and Japan went. I don't see Russian civilians dying. I don't see Russian cities getting bombed. Russian factories are untouched. We're talking about intangible economic strain via pressure on consumer goods. The slack was picked up elsewhere.
 
 
Saddam suffered far worse than Russia right now and he survived. He didn't collapse, either. Americans kicked his door in and hanged him. That was that. It's actually the main reason I drew up Saddam in the first place -- he didn't just face sanctions, he faced the physical dismantling of his army and severe losses of prestige.
Also, a full up Western anything is not the West, btw. Don't get it twisted on how armies fight and win. If you swapped the American military tech with Russia's, USA would still demolish the Russkies because things like training, discipline, communication, cohesion, etc. matter far more than tech specs. Putting Western tech in someone's hands hasn't been a magic bullet. Ever.

Yes I don't doubt they have been fighting in a more coherent compared to Russians in a situation of overwhelming enemy firepower that could otherwise lead to chaos and panic. And let's accept that last stands like Mariupol were probably not in vain. Bakhmut probably will be a case study in this depending on the outcome and the strategy Ukraine will follow till the end. 
But in general I doubt the losses estimates and the ratio with Russians is right. @MikeyDs 1 to 6,5 seems extreme. 1/2 to 1/3 as @The_Captnoted could be closer to the truth.
But even in this ratio and if we take the most pessimistic numbers and the UKR losses are over 100.000, Russians will have lost more than the whole original invasion force at best and at worse close to half a million troops. 
Anyway, the main point of my post was, there is a chance Russia could finally exhaust Ukraines effective manpower and maybe we will see less WW1 defenses from the high command as the war goes on. Ukraine will be more mobile with the new hardware anyway, we will see. 

My intention is not to equalize, but to question the decisions of an otherwise troop preserving top command. And we don't really know the actual casualties of UKR. 

Can they stop it with the Wehrmacht markings?  You can still fight the Russians.

She pulled the data from another report - https://www.4freerussia.org/effectiveness-of-u-s-sanctions-targeting-russian-companies-and-individuals/
To be fair to her, in the linked thread she also posted another graph from the report showing number of transactions, which is probably closer to actual numbers of electronic components than just value.
Again though, there are too many variables to draw firm conclusions, for example, maybe more but smaller in quantity transactions were made.
Take the case of China, which is now their main supplier by far: the value of exports to Russia went up over 2.5 times but the number of transactions went up by only twice. Given the numbers involved, I would guess that price gouging does not account for all the increase in value.
 

Oh cripes, we get tens of violations from turkish warplanes everyday for decades deep in the agean, that balloon story is almost cute. Poor thing got lost so many miles away from home 🎈

Strange nobody posted this:
She knew it 40 years ago!

Think it depends on setting, because on mine you did it.  Typical, upper management comes in just in time to cut the ribbon....

What are this groups thoughts?

Right now the Russians are attacking in the East along 3 directions.

DIrection 1: Russian Army pushing AFU back from Kreminna. I've not seen much information about this but this is a setback for UA who were closing in on the city over the previous weeks. I haven't seen much info come out of this direction.

Direction 2: Where all the news is coming out of. Wagner is gaining ground through massed light infantry assault waves supported by artillery. Bakhmut itself seems to be holding but the UAF forces N. in the Soledar direction are still unable to contain Wagner. Wagner has apparently pushed fully past Soledar and are in the river valley having crossed it at at least one location.

Does this mean that Wagner is fixing at Bakhmut and pushing around the Soledar area or is the UAF forces around Soledar less prepared, is the terrain better suited?

Direction 3: Vuhledar has apparently been the scene of heavy fighting. We have seen UAV video of destroyed RU BMP Company from this direction. Not sure how trustworthy Tom Cooper is but he claims major Russian losses and this is at least backed up by the UAV video. Its been quite some time since seeing such a concentration of destroyed vehicles and infantry (Failed fording attempt is the last).

So in summary Russians are succeeding in gaining ground in Direction 1 and Direction 2 but have suffered heavy losses in Direction 3 without gains. D1 looks to be going well and the UAF has been thrownback some distance. I'm unsure as to why and what the fighting looks like here. This might be the only direction where the Russians are having repeatable success? D2 Wagner is gaining ground at high human cost and is grinding forward. The UAF is ceding ground past Soledar but I wander how long Wagner can maintain this as its been continuing for many weeks now. This is not a sustainable way of fighting the war. D3 Russian major attacks are apparent outright failures with high losses and no gain. Armored/APC attacks over open ground that were stopped and destroyed by precision fire. Looks poorly on RUAF forces here. What makes them different than Direction 1?


Edit: I thought it was interesting that Russia is making these attacks with a hybrid force. Wagner doesn't seem to be just mindlessly slamming into UAF but the RAF is using this grinding to make attacks on the flanks.

Looks like it is about time for Battlefront to transplant the CM:SF2 NATO and UK stuff into CM:BS.

What a crazy war. Imagine this kind of footage from WW2 battles. We haven't grasp how erratic to the extreme everything could be. 
(And politely wishing for more uncertainty and randomness and a touch of analogueness in the inevitable digitalness of modern CM titles) 

Video from Russian side (sorry for Zoka, but this is very close encounter worth to watch). Russian tank passess near UA trenches, directed by drone operator. Katsap commander (not very wisely) informs his by radio that Ukrainians only have rifles...until somehow at 0:36 he sees rpg, shouting to tank crew to stop but machine is still going forward. Ukrainian soldier shots at muscovite armour from behind, but unfortunatelly missess/granate fail to explode properly/is not effective. Tank does not even seem to be bothered, clips stops.
CM tank situational awarness was usually much better than this Russian crew...
 

Last year, the Russian Federation significantly increased the import of microchips, exceeding the pre-war level. This was reported by Forbes with reference to Elina Rybakova, an economist with the Institute of International Finance, according to Ukrinform. "Russia significantly increased the import of microchips in 2022 - the figures exceeded the pre-war level. The value of microchip imports increased from $1.8 billion for January - September 2021 to $2.45 billion for the same period last year," the report says.
China in 2022 isn't North Korea or Iraq.
Who gets hurt the most if we throw up trade barriers with China? 
Who actually has the leverage?
 

While I don't disagree with the facts here, it does feel like an a-historical retcon to invert cause and effect.
I very much doubt that the Ukrainian high command deliberately allowed those forces to be cut off and isolated in Mariupol, even less with the intent that they'd turn the city into a meat grinder and hold the Rooskies up for three months.
I suspect that the Ukrainian high command was a little distracted by the concurrent knife thrust to Kyiv, and by the time they freed some headspace for other fronts it was too late to get them out of Mariupol. That they then went on to conduct the defence they did is little short of breathtaking, but I don't believe it was a 'gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette' deliberate sacrifice.

One thing I don't get is why Israel is let of the hook because 'interests', while other countries who also have 'interests' are bashed upon for doing the same. But I'll leave my opinions about Israel out of this thread.

@panzermartinMy impression of the last stands, especially Mariupol, is that the decisions were not fully made by Ukrainian leadership but by local commanders. This was during the period of relatively fast Russian progress and independent Ukrainian action to stem that progress.

And I've brought this up a few times but to reiterate it. Russia is attacking, and making progress, on relatively narrow frontages. Frontages that seem so small that they I don't think its possible for them to be attritioning the Ukrainian Army faster than it can generate new forces. Ukraine can only fit so many men per given kilometer of frontage and that is going to put some sort of cap on the number of daily casualties that can possibly be sustained.
Yes, I would say that the current fighting looks like an economy of force exercise for Ukraine. I would also like to ask... If Ukraine retreated X kilometers to a new position why would the Russians not follow and restart this grinding fight there or somewhere else along the line? What is the logic of pulling back?


Another thing many posts ago I converted WW2 loss rates to Ukraine's population size. (E.G. the US loss .5% of its population what would that look like for Ukraine). The U.K. loss .9% of its 1939 population and, as far as I know, faced an economic post-war crisis but not a demographic one. The equivalent for Ukraine would be 385.400 KIA and taking the worst numbers from wiki Ukraine has lost about 120.000 KIA currently. So at the current loss rate Ukraine would be able to continue at the current casualty rate for roughly 2 more years. Its an unpleasant thing to say that Ukraine can afford 240.000 more dead but the fact of the matter is that Ukraine could reasonable absorb that given its pre-war population.

I remember one basic argument of Russian military collapse a few months ago was that Russia was running out of micro chips essential for manufacturing precision weapons. And China would be too afraid to provide these because of West's reaction. Well neither happened, there is a surge of chip imports and China was more than willing to provide these. 
I have started to think It's a global war already that probably can't be won only in Ukraine. 
 
 

This, and the unspoken assumption, that because of losses and economic crises Russian governement will be under political pressure from the electorate. Except that Russia is a dictatorship and there are no meaningful elections there, so the major usual source of that pressure does not exist. Actually, pretty much the only remaining  kind of pressure from Russians on Putin's governement is threat of armed rebellion, and things need to be far worse for people to contemplate that. It took 3 years of constant hammering at the front, acute economic crisis and loss what was then considered Russian territory to rebel against the Tzar in 1917. Lowered living standards because of sanctions are not going to cause that.