Sarjen

Yes, the de-nazification of Germany could only happen because 1) Germany was utterly defeated all the way to Berlin, and 2) Germany was occupied by troops that literally could force locals out to take a look at the camps.
Neither of these things are set to happen in the current war.
I'm worried that this war might end more like WW1.. an economically devastated and empoverished nation free to brew up new "stab in the back" legends and elect even worse leaders than before.

slightly morbid but I've been trying to keep a running account
MG Andrey Kolesnikov, Russia’s 29th Combined Arms Army commander
Andrei Sukhovetsky, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army
Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, First Deputy Commander Of The 41st Army
Major-general Oleg Mitiayev, commander of 150th motor-rifle division
Guards Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky commander of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment 
Colonel Yuryi Agarkov, the commander of 33rd motor-rifle regiment (Kamyshyn, Volgograd oblast) of 20th Guard motor-rifle division
Colonel Andrey Zakharov, a tank regiment commander
Colonel Sergei Porokhnya commander of the 12th separate guards engineering brigade
Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov, Deputy Commander of the 11th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov, Commander of the 61st Separate Marine Brigade
Lt.colonel Alexei Khasanov, deputy commander of 31st Fighter aviation regiment
Guards Major Burlakov Andrei Petrovich, Deputy Chief of Intelligence Staff - Chief of Intelligence Regiment
Confirmed recently claimed death of high-ranked officer of 103 missile brigade (Iskander-M), Ulan-Ude, Buriatia, Esatern miliitarty district: the chief of liason, chief of staff deputy mayor Alexandr Fiodorov. So, this can be real, that Russian Iskander unit met with our SOF...

Wrong idea - ukr Need them to surrender/flee. That Golden bridge needs to stay up, otherwise they only have one option - fight, which, fine, I doubt they'll be highly effective but they will be a distraction of effort, resources, ammunition.
If they can defect they will:
1)decrease RuAF morale further,
2) open holes in the RUS lines / leave rear areas undefended
2)f#ck with Putin's narrative (always a good thing) 
3) reinforce the UKR/NATO/EU "good guys" narrative.
This is why "taking no prisoners" is only ever useful (?) in a tactical sense, and even then...
You want your enemies forces to melt away, for his own draconian efforts to keep them in line to be self defeating. If you are also uncompromisingly unwelcome then they might as well stay with the devil they know, whereas you want to say "hey, no devils here, just rainbows, bunnies and most importantly - pierogi!"

Personally, I think this thread is one of the better places processing information.
Artist twitter/socialmedia is filled with people with bad takes, people ignoring the situation, or people screaming about WW3 and we're all going to die.  My favorite however, is people begging for the sanctions to be lifted, because pretty much every Russian contract artist is now out of a job. which is very pitiable until those same people then start screaming about how this is NATOs fault (most of these people don't know what NATO is) and going on about biolabs or whatever this weeks excuse for the invasion Russia has cooked up. 

I have decided to quit my job in order to devote myself full-time to reading this thread.

So first, that is horrible and constitutes a warcrime reckoning. 
Second, it is the single worst way to try and manage local security when occupying another nation.  For every home invaded and people hurt  or killed, you make dedicated resistance go deeper and meaner.  Russian patrols start go go missing and sentries found dead.
Third, it is patchwork at best.  So I suspect that locals in these "red zones" still have the means to communicate.  Question is, do they have the ways.  Not sure if that Starlink thing every amounted to anything but unless the Russians have finally gripped the communications networks in controlled areas they are literally shooting themselves in the face.
Fourth, this control is porous, there is simply not enough Russian manpower to control this amount of area.  So farmers have cellhones, they definitely have reason to use them, the only question left is can they.  Regardless your original point that finding Russian command centers is very likely a level up from the local support networks...enter western ISR support here as well.

I don't think it's so simple. They've been brought up in a jar (you might even call it a psychotic one) - what better do they know? I can totally see why you're short on compassion for them, but they are no more than a product of their environment.
You know, there was some talk of Orcs earlier in the thread. It struck in my mind that Tolkien regreted writing them so one-dimensionaly evil.
But as i said, i can't actually put myself in your shoes right now. Clean hummanist hands are easier to maintain from distance.

Gents, I wanted to take a second to thank you guys. This forum has turned out to be extremely informative. I'm an old grognard from the dosomefink days who hadn't been on this site for years and it's turned out to be one of the better places to get unregurgitated info. Elvis, thanks for luring me back and thanks to everyone else for the cornucopia of excellent information. Slava Ukrainyi, etc and so forth.

Underrated? Personally I found some of what they had to say was guff! Just a few notable examples of crap (by no means exhaustive) that stood out for me:-
"Intelligence" was actually either non existent or fatally flawed - this partly explains why the Russians have ended up running such a bad campaign from the off.  Lots of examples!   I haven't observed an "initial recon in force" - from the off, the aim was to seize airfields with elite forces (which failed), and simultaneously assault along lines of attack with low quality troops, expecting that might be all that was needed for a quick and easy occupation of territory. Overall it looked unsophisticated compared to the pre planning and implementation of either of the Iraq campaigns, which are hallmarks in all respects here.    "Well supplied forces" - Russians have been vastly under supplied. there's plenty of evidence of this!  "Airforce involvement is low because Russia doesn't want to damage too much infrastructure" - huge, huge lol on that one! "Winter campaign chosen wisely to prevent potential allies intervening" - No one is intervening in UKR (regrettably) for "escalatory reasons". It's more likely Putin attacked at the end of Feb to take advantage of what appeared to him to be a narrowing window of opportunity, it was a simple "now or never" moment in his risk board-game world perspective.  Ethnic Russians make up 17% of pop, not 30% - these guys are NOT even in command of basic facts. 


I could go on...but no, this is a very unimpressive analysis in my view
 

Saw this the other day, gave me a chuckle
 

Doc844,

In some ways, Ukraine has practically become a temporary Sixth Eye in the super tight FIVE EYES (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ), with privileged access to Ukraine related ELINT shared among them, together with anything relevant obtained from pro-Ukraine countries in the area, none of which want a visit from the Bear. Ukraine  is operating sophisticated comms and ISR provided by the US.  It's been reported the US has recon sat teams in Poland, so would imagine that Ukrainian authorities are getting some sort of help on that end, too, whether IMINT INTSUMs alone or reduced res imagery and IMINT INTSUMs as well I couldn't say. And there is now a tremendous amount of commercial military grade recon sat imagery available, too.  It helps greatly, too, that the weather has been clear, for it makes it very hard to hide anything of consequence from overhead detection, targeting and destruction. The US has provided this sort of intelligence support before, such as it did to the UK during the Falklands War, though UK is a FIVE EYES member, but remember, that's for ELINT. In the Falklands, the British maps dated back to the 1800s, so it was US IMINT, not just of the Falklands, but the sea around it and the Argentine naval and air bases, that was crucial.

Regards,

John Kettler

sburke,

Sometimes I can recall a thing I read long ago, and other times I can't recall in which of, say, a dozen tabs I looked at within the last hour I saw something important. There are times when it's completely lost from memory in a horrifying 30 seconds. Brother George has seen just this happen to me with an extremely simple rule mechanic for a WW II skirmish game. For someone who used to be a walking threat encyclopedia with a cavernous highly accurate memory, this is immensely frustrating. Am trying to be responsive to suggestions, but they have to deal with the same memory problems, too! What I'm trying to do now is get the freshest info possible and/or provide supplementary material, such as the Stinger/Piorun comparison video.

Regards,

John Kettler

GODDAMMIT SBURKE STFU!  yes, Kettler double posts.  he is older and in ill health.  WTF is your excuse for posting about every double post he does?  Do you see how that immediately doubles the wasted space?  then kettler responds, tripling the pointlessness.   Do you not have a the ability to ignore or skim past something you've already see?  Jeebus, get a f-ing grip.  (And then I respond here, adding to the wasted space ) 
How about if someone double posts we all just ignore because we've already seen it?  Instead of adding more useless BS to what is otherwise the best source of UKR war info around.  And remember that folks are in different time zones and might have 5 pages to skim through from the night before.  So folks might miss stuff.

If this is true then excellent work 

 

So basically the greatest russian expert is completely clueless and if true - that explains why the West was literally blind for so many years.
Before NATO even accepted any single new member after USSR dissolution - Russia attacked Moldova in 1992, Azerbaijan in 1992, Georgia in 1993 and Ichkeriya in 1994.
That's FOUR wars russia started in just its first three years past USSR.
So, naturally, when future NATO members saw what Russia does to its formerly occupied territories - they rushed to join NATO - which is damn hard as it is. You have to work your ass to be accepted into NATO, it takes almost a decade for an average country.
So that "scholar" is either blind or stupid.
 

Hmmm, notice how the CM spotting model is NOT broken ! 😲
The first and 2nd vehicles drove past that ambush position which is no more than 10 AS's from the road and covered by only spindly trees and saw nothing !

We may be approaching an inflection point where the main objectives are in play.
IMO the Russians are probably going to go the siege route. The gritty and costly nature of urban combat will be too risky. Putin has already authorized the payment of huge sums of rubles for families of soldiers killed or wounded and even tyrants have limits placed on the number of young men they can send to the meat grinder.
I would guess If the decision is made to assault urban centers it will be after a long siege and those foreign fighters from Syria and other places, however many their true number is, will be sent in first to wear down defenders and make the defenders use ammo and other supplies before Russian forces are used...
I was surprised when it was mentioned the US Army doesn't have any guide to urban warfare. That may have changed. A while back though I did see a write up about how the Pentagon was allocating money to train in subterranean warfare so that may be changing.
For those interested in the nuts and bolts of what may face the Russians should they decide to take urban areas by direct assault here are some interesting links.
https://mwi.usma.edu/the-eight-rules-of-urban-warfare-and-why-we-must-work-to-change-them/
https://mwi.usma.edu/urban-warfare-project/
https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/MCWP 3-35.3.pdf
https://www.army.mod.uk/umbraco/Surface/Download/Get/11772
https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2022/03/08/russia-doesnt-train-troops-urban-warfare-its-about-learn-consequences-ukraine.html
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/urban-warfare-ukraine-russia
A couple of good books on the subject:
Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq
Blood and Concrete: 21st Century Conflict in Urban Centers and Megacities
I've yet to find a good sim that models urban warfare in great detail. Its probably a very difficult thing to do anyway.
 

Its the leased aircraft fleet that gets seized that is worrying to me.

yeah regardless of what you might have been told, there is a moment where you fire your weapon, drop that bomb, fire that rocket where you KNOW you are hitting a non combatant.  At that moment if you haven't realized you have committed a war crime, someone needs to point it out to you.  Hopefully permanently.

Air-dropped cluster tractors.

Already rehearsing it mate - sneak preview image ...

 

I'm also a Cold War kid, and I must admit that this feels different. The whole MAD doctrine is based on both actors being rational.
Two questions: How crazy is Putin really? Could he launch if he wanted to?

Me too. Just the mention of going full nuclear brought back childhood fears, nightmares and the looming threat of total annihilation. I can’t turn those emotions off even as an adult.

You're not doing your country any favors by insulting the West and belittling the impressive sanctions and arms deliveries the West (and not only the UK) has implemented in an amazingly short period of time. A Kremlin troll couldn't do any better. Food for thought.
2022 or 2025, fact is that we have to deal with the biggest nuclear power of the world. That's something to think about carefully.
The corruption and chaos in Ukraine has done as much against it becoming member of EU/NATO, as the caution of the West. Perhaps even more so.

😏 this is getting kind of old now.  You recall something about Javelins?  $350 million in weapons and supplies delivered in less than a week? Any supplies the US has been giving for a couple years now?  Massive sanctions beyond anything with the possible exception of those against Iraq when it invaded Kuwait?
The West is doing a balancing act.  We are giving as much equipment as we can without providing Putin with any pretext to widen the war which frankly would play well for him at home and give him an out better than having to say the UKR kicked his ass.  We appreciate you'd like us to just go all in and crush the Russian military.  That isn't going to happen.  Poland jumped the gun here and likely made a hash of the plan.