Rokossovski

Sorry, missed your plea. I agree - nationality is a construct, shouldn’t mean much.
I similarly object to reading bile throughout the thread. I mostly lurk for the actual news but sometimes the non military commentary just gets too much.

Ok, I know what is being said at many levels on "what we think about what Putin is thinking" and it plays well in political theatre, but any professional military assessment is going to be very concerned with what the other side is thinking, why they are thinking it, and how they keep thinking it.  The only exception is a war of extermination where your opponents frameworks are completely irrelevant because you are aiming to completely erase them from the books.  Neither side in this war is at that level, in fact that level is very rare - think Mongols.
This is also much bigger than "Putin".  For all we know he is already in favour of WMDs to "solve this" and it is the domestic response, linked to military response that is keeping him in check - despite the noise, he is not a god-king - and sustained attacks on Russian homeland, especially when a missile goes off course and hits a school, is strategically risky.  I say "risky" because obviously there are benefits in sending a message but potential costs as well...all war is negotiation as well.
"Maximal support for Ukraine" - no, because that would include us attacking Russia directly up to and including nuclear weapons.  I am all for Ukraine an this one but we are not "all in" on this one.  One needs only go online and read the predictions of a full nuclear exchange and you can see why.  We may even be "all in" as a proxy war, for the most part (e.g.  I don't think we will be sending WMDs to Ukraine) but direct confrontation with between two nuclear states has only occurred a few times since we opened that box and every time it was like a barfight when someone pulls out a gun...a "whoa" moment.
Finally, this is not about "Putin desperate", he is already there.  This is about "Russians desperate" and any realistic assessment of this thing needs to separate those two concepts.  Go check the history books on what happens when the Russian's get desperate, nothing good.  The strategy being employed here is "poison-perogy-to-induce-vomiting", not to destroy Russia in fire and righteousness.  

The instant Mariupol falls Russia will demand an immediate cease fire and negotiations. They have to have something to parlay with as they haven't by any means crushed the UA. Their intent will be keeping the land bridge and as much of Kherson Oblast that they can while backing out of the rest of the territory they occupy. I can see the west trying to make that stick through pressuring Ukraine to compromise to end the war. Right now that is the best possible ending Russian can hope for and it is why I say Ukraine needs to do everything it can to not let Mariupol fall.
With that said, I don't think Ukraine will agree to a cease fire as they know they have the RA on the ropes. They will continue with the negotiations but keep eating away at the RA. Hopefully settling for nothing less than get out and stay out in the end. I can see the US and other western nations trying to pressure them by discontinuing support in arms and supplies but I don't think the other border nations will stop giving them whatever they can to the bitter end. I believe that several of the other border nations see Russia and Putin for exactly what they are and they know that their priority will be to make sure the UA wins no matter what. They can always repair their diplomatic relations with the US and whatever other countries decide to puss out, but the biggest threat to the sovereignty has always been and always will be Russia. 

I dont think it will be back to the status quo after. China will not want to have the possibility of those sanctions, so they will start to create alternative institutions to the IWF, world bank etc. (already have their own SWIFT like system in place). If Ukraine wins this war, which seems more and more likely, it will still in hindsight be seen as a zenith of western power and the end of western led globalization.

ammo is harder to sell than most things I would think. Unless of course they were selling to the Ukrainians. 🤣

I really think if they had landed the planned forces, even in a chaotic drop, this war would have looked much different in the Russian's favor. 
Re what happens next who knows? As I just posted above to Capt, I think a lot of the troops shifting out of the Kyiv direction now are probably in bad shape. Low morale, low supply, bad equipment situation, heavy combat losses. Are these forces going to really have the drive to rotate to a totally new direction and fight? If the answer is NO!, then Russia is going to need every able bodied soldier its got left to push into the Donbas, including the VDV. 
If it were me in Putin's chair, the question I would now be asking myself is what will set me up for the longest possible lifespan. Is it winning in the Donbas, or abandoning the rank and file and pulling the elite back to the Kremlin. Could be some logic in supporting the regime and holding off challengers. But brining the VDV home is a double edged sword, as the elite can also be the core of a dissent depending on who leads the coup. Marshal Zhukov, for example, used his own elite cadres of trusted troops to oust Beria, et. al. in the 50s. And the Krondstat sailors in 1917. And the Army in '93. Bring the VDV home, then what? What if a few pissed off Cols, mad at their 'stab in the back,' get together and try to off the old man or back a competitor? Playing coup and countercoup is a dicey game, ultimately its about who you can trust and who betrays who. 

+1 Steve (I mean Charles)!

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

I loved the quote in the comments, allegedly by Vasilly Kim:
"Countries with a chicken in their flag shouldn't invade countries with a fork on theirs" - Vasily Kim Mayor of Mikolayv

Three key things: 
1. Biden is the first American President who came into office with zero illusions about Putin/Russia.
2. The people Biden appointed watched 20 years of mistakes, magical thinking and missed chances. 
3. More broadly across the foreign policy establishment there was bipartisan support to take on the task. 
Putin was entirely unprepared for what the meant in terms of applied full spectrum American power.

Well, they called Shermans "Ronsons"... Colibri is a brand name for (cigarette) lighters, at least that's where I think I've seen it before. But taking that approach to naming your own tank seems a bit fatalistic, even for Russians.

Amassing an invasion force on the border of another country is “we will make B.”
EDIT: and now they are moving out of assembly areas into attack positions, very diplomatically no doubt.

John, 
 
having read your last post, I’m sincerely hoping for a vacation coming your way soon.
 
the crisis actor “application” regarding the Boston bombing (for those of you who understand Reddit, read the section it was posted to) is the final straw for me. 
 
You truly are acting like a buffoon. 

Ok, so I think we are miscommunicating here, what do you define as a "drone"?  UAVs are an entire suit of unmanned aerial systems, from the size of a very small bird/large bug to global hawk.  The TB2 is a MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) which we would call a Class 2 UAV.  These things are literally everywhere and every service has Class 2 and Class 1 UAVs as organic systems.  The really big stuff HALE like Global Hawk are held as strategic assets.
So the TB2 might have a higher profile but a handheld but smaller Class 2s and Class 1s are like the small UAVs you can buy commercially which have much smaller profiles than any AH.  
So we are talking about a layered system of separate classes all plugged into a C4ISR system here. So even if you do managed to shoot down a larger Class 2, good luck with the smaller systems.  Worse, those smaller systems include the NLOS smart ATGMs like Spike and self-loitering like Switchblade (which is about 2 feet long and weighs about 50 pounds) which you can fire into the air all day and not hit.  Put this system into the air and link it to artillery and you basically cannot hide, or run for that matter.  Your LOCs are very vulnerable - how do you knock down a 2 foot flying Javelin warhead that can hit a target at 80kms?  How do you knock down 100 of them?
And we have not even started in on unmanned ground vehicles, which are not that far off.  Now you get a small, very low profile cross country rugged vehicle that can operate at distance...with a Javelin on it.  It can not only park and wait like a lurker, it can move and re-position as well.
If this was only about TB2s or even MALE UAVs it would be challenging enough, as aptly demonstrated by this current war, but add in all the smaller systems and self-loitering munitions and that is what we are talking about as a game changer. 
Finally even the Class 2 TB2 types are no where near the WW2 prop driven attack planes.  Why?  Because a WW2 CAS aircraft couldn't stand off 11km away and kill you with a Hellfire.  That is farther than most MANPADs and even SHORAD systems so we are talking IADs, which the Russian had and they did not seem to do much for them.  So western militaries are investing a lot to try and do something will all these systems but we definitely live in a gap right now.  We will see how it goes.

your comparing an apple to an orange, the TB2 is considerably smaller than a mq-9 reaper and Super Tucano. and sizes are only going to get smaller still. this is the issue, not just thing is sky does thing in sky things.

Think drones the size of dragonflies, with cameras and low-power transmitters. They'd relay signals from one another until a ground station gets it. Try finding those at 100m.  That is one idea that has been forwarded. 
Pervasive observation of the battlespace is a dominating concept. It has already been advanced far beyond what "reasonable" professionals imagined it could do when the idea was first put out.  It will only get more and more powerful, useful, and survivable.
Counters? Vehicles that don't look like vehicles, or one other (every vehicle is unique, so pattern recognition algorithms won't be able to spot them); emissions controls; kinetic and EW attacks; APS; etc.
Anyone thinking UAVs aren't going to be a fixture for every future conflict is seriously deluded.

Are we past the fog-of-war for Gostomel at this point? Initially we heard of one helo-borne wave. Then there was alleged more waves. Then we were told they were smashed and dispersed by a counterattack on the first night, but the information never confirmed that the Russians ever lost control/abandoned the airfield. I'm still not sure what really happened there, would love for someone to lay it all out and show the receipts to prove it. It is high on my list of events in the war that I want to see properly debriefed at some point in the future.

A bit like in WW2 where they kept adding more armour, torpedo nets/bulges, and huge amounts of AA guns to their big battleships in order to protect them from aircraft...

I love you too Warren.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/ukraine-air-force-pilots-fight-russia/

Yet? Lets GOOOOO

yeah I just saw that headline from your post and damn near had an orgasm.  Visions of Belarus falling apart and the Russian army being cutoff.  You spoiled my wet dream...  I'd say you owe me but .. well.. let's just not go there.

Not my graphic work, but just seen it and I could caption it Steve and his wife in Bed?
But it could equally apply to me and everyone else on this thread...
Please don't put me on a vacation....🥺

NS1 is operating, there was one crazy bastard that said that Germany was considering shutting that down. But that seems unrealistic, Germany will not shut it down. Certainly not until the summer when they dont need it. NS2, OTOH, is dead for now. In a post sanctions world we might see it make a return (my own prediction) as its virtually complete, but with Nord Stream AG out of business thats going to be painful. So probably a longer term (more than a few weeks) project. 
@General Jack RipperI think people may be a bit put off by the attitude youre showing in this thread. Seems like youre coming from a good place, but you've missed out on a lot of previous conversation and ought to get yourself better up to speed before you start throwing hands with people who have been through all 281 pages now. You ought to follow Institute for the Study of War if you haven't already, and on Reddit (that is the Reddit Institute on Russian Studies and Foreign Relations, not accredited) youll find good recap threads on r/WorldNews. I believe r/CredibleDefense has been keeping up with the war as well. You may find that they have materials in a more digestible format for a working man such as yourself. I think you might understand that some get frustrated when you make long winding posts about how you've realized what everyone figure out a week ago or more. You ought to give some understanding to the fact that the conversation has evolved in ways its hard to keep track of unless you've read it. My own thoughts on the war, for example, are shaped not just by hundreds of great posts from @Haiduk, but from very thought provoking analysis from @The_Capt @BletchleyGeek and @Battlefront.com. Thats not to say a lot of other people havn't said very important and meaningful things, but just that if you go back and just read some of their posts, especially Capt's earliest posts here, you might find you understand the conversation a lot better.
Importantly, I dont think youre wrong about airspace. UA has not taken superiority, as evidenced by Russian jets continuing to fly sorties across the country. But they have established an effective deterrent AD net which has been imposing serious costs on Russian strike planes, as evidenced by all the RAF attacker aircraft getting shot down. I would dispute the idea that Helos are playing a meaningful role now, I havn't seen a heliborne assault in days, and attack helos have also been MIA. Likely the strong UA AD response has cleared the skies to all but high level fixed wing aircraft, which they can sometimes intercept. Thats a huge denial and a big win right there. And then as Capt has pointed out, UA does actually seem to dominate the skies below 10k ft, or about drone range. UA drone warfare has been very public in terms of their successes, but I tend to agree with Capt that their battlefield surveillance role is actually much more important right now. All this leads to your #1 assumption, that Russia can eventually grind through and win. I believed that myself from pretty much day one. Russians, I thought, did manage to get by typically on a shoestring logistics budget. They could make it work even in tough situations. But I've slowly gotten the feeling that this is something different. UA counterattacks in certain areas have furthered this feeling. This is not a 'tough but winnable' war. I increasingly do not believe that Russia has the capacity to wage the kind of war it would need to win even in the short term. Turing Kyiv into Grozny is possible, IF you have the arty shells to do it, and IF the enemy isn't constantly dropping RPGs and Hellfire's onto your batteries, and IF you have enough gas to get the tanks and IFVs where they need to go. Tactically, Russia might still have what it takes to win. But on the operational scale their logistics situation is bad, and the UA is only making it worse and worse. Russia needs to pull increasingly large numbers of forces off the attack and into convoy protection, when of course the road isn't gridlocked, because UA AT teams are just wreaking havok on everything they see. And UA SOF seems to be headhunting BTG commanders and arty batteries. It would sound unthinkable on 2/24, and I hope I am not jinxing things, but I think Ukraine has a realistic path to an operational stalemate here. Well see how powerful their counterattacks will become. But even a stalemate along these lines would be strategically disastrous for Russia.