dan/california

There is a very good reason Australia just committed a large chunk of GDP to a nuclear submarine program, and it isn't New Guinea.

Unfortunately it takes two parties to dial it back in a geopolitical situation like the current one. China's government is utterly amoral and expansionistic. The way they have crushed Hong kong, and Xinjiang is simply beyond the pale. The west can have arms race with China, or lose a war with China. I rely don't see a third choice, and a AI graded six month course in Xi Jinping thought every two years just to stay out of a labor camp sound like a lousy proposition, at least to me. And that really isn't a joke, the CCCP is just getting started with AI as an authoritarian tool. So at the moment an arms race really seems like the least bad choice, unless China comes up with a whole new government system. Which seems about as likely as my old, fat, slow, and broken self winning this year's Tour de France.

. It would be a fascinating exercise to let it loose on the whole thread, and see what it came up with.

The quality of your summaries is continually amazing.

These should be rolling straight to Ukraine. If they work as advertised they could just eliminate Orlans from high priority areas. It would probably help as much as F-16s would, and the logistical and training tail is a tiny fraction.

I got it on the monthly freebie, or something. Rest of the article is in the same vein. It is definitely on the Russia really can come unglued side of the debate. Very few , if any, specifics we haven't discussed here. Edit: Just realized The_Capt had already done a summary.

I have this vision of several trainees digging latrines for an entire division. At least if they are driving them hard enough to break one they are really training.

After two or three decades in the sandbox with no booze, I can only imagine how happy a bunch of grizzled sergeants are to be stationed somewhere with the amenities Poland has.

This came out a bit garbled, almost like I wrote it, but not quite as bad.

I cannot adequately express how much I wish this woman had Scholz's job.

This is the entire bleeping problem. A lot of people in want to let Russia down easy, instead of giving every Russian soldier in Ukraine a simple choice between leave, dies, and surrender. Russia has been turning down easy outs since the middle March 2022, it is time to believe them.

F-16s are the 37th thing that should have been started this time LAST YEAR. I can't find he exact article to save my life, but Biden and most of NATO did not accept that the Russians were not going to make a rational decision to cut their losses until the meeting between Spy Chiefs in Turkey in November. Unfortunately they didn't get serious about a great many things until that sank in. I am certainly applying some twenty twenty hindsight, I am also not saying anything I haven't been saying since last May.

Mr Teixeira, was a vey naughty boy, and is going to have the misfortune to pay his bill in full. However very little of what he leaked, at least in regard to Ukraine surprised any regular reader of this board. Brazil edging, perhaps more than edging, towards Putin and Xi is a real problem.

They should either go east of Melitopol, and the then straight for the approaches to Crimea, which would threaten to cut off all the Russian forces in Melitopol, and all of the forces along the Dnipro. Or, attack from near Vuhledar to one side or the other of Mariupol. That brings the Kerch bridge into HIMARS range and would make life very unpleasant for ALL the Russian forces in Crimea and the land bridge. Of course if they are strong enough, do both. It would leave the Russian forces in three different pockets with supply situations that would range from very bad to nonexistent. The Russians could retreat of course, it is the only thing they are good at. But that would mean the only thing the Russians have gained in this war is bits of Northern Luhansk.

Or pondering his risk of "falling" out of a window with morbid concentration.

And Ukraine still has the advantage of interior lines, and better logistics flow almost everywhere. Its second and third echelon forces for an attack somewhere west on Donetsk City can act as a strategic reserve for the entire line of contact right up until they are committed to the fight in the south.

Because you are out of bodies, the same way the German defensive lines failed in 1943-45.

Well, this could get interesting...

All I know is that the guy who it can be traced back tools going to have his life disassembled with tweezers. Which is better than HIM being disassembled with tweezers, which is what would happen in Russia. If these numbers are accurate I would like to put real money on the Ukrainian's parking HIMARS on the beach outside of Mariupol by July first. The AFU might even be able to attempt a simultaneous amphibious assault over the Dnipro. If, big if, Chinese missiles, radars, and son work as advertised getting there after the shooting starts will not be a trivial thing. We also dont want to kick off a war that wouldn't otherwise happen. But the lesson of Ukraine is to be there before.

Everything about the new pentagon leak reminds me of the Chinese leak about the type 99 KE penetrator. Someone, somewhere, for reasons that made no sense to anybody else did something they are going to regret for a long time.

Stealing this, also awarding joke of the day!

Apologies for quoting myself but this was worth adding. from

Various Ski resorts have tried to crack down on it over the years. They have uniformly changed there minds when they realized they could triple the pay or not open for the year.

Well, sometimes promotions can be quite rapid, but that is pretty much never good news.

I would argue we don't want Putin to panic just yet. The ideal scenario is panicked mobilization after the land bridge is broken and Kerch bridge is in the water. Let the security forces try to round up another three or four hundred thousand people when not even the Putin regime's propaganda can spin the SMO as anything but a feckless failure