dan/california

U.S. and allied countries are having recruitment issues.

I want to see the wrench. I am also pretty impressed by who ever is doing that with that equipment beside a barn somewhere.

Ukraine and the U.S. certainly ran a successful information operation before the Kharkiv counter offensive. Also It is noteworthy that the numbers quoted are not all that different from the ~consensus estimates bouncing around the thread and other places. A lot of people have been expecting the Ukrainians to take a swing as soon as the ground was truly dry. This just seems to reinforce that. Beleg, does your estimate the Ukrainians are short include the the hundred plus Rosomak AFVs Poland just donated?

This is how Ukraine can win the war this year. If one on target JDAM and a couple of Excalibur rounds can send whole battalions running, Ukrainian HIMARS will be lining up on the beach just east East of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov for the Kerch Bridge turkey shoot by the 4th of July. It would be the best fireworks I could possibly ask for.

The only thing I am sure of is that someone set her up. It looked to me like some of them were recent, and some of them hd been there quite a while. Which says some pretty awful things about the Russian army. Holy bleep is my congressman getting a nastygram

Interesting graphics lay out how little Russia's winter offensive gained.

Every single point you make is correct. No one has more to lose in this than the Taiwanese. I sincerely hope Xi decides he has enough problems ,and Taiwan just gradually fades out of the news. But if Xi has all but decided to go for it and the planning process is under way, nothing short of an ironclad guarantee that attacking Taiwan means war with the U.S. and all our Asian allies is going to dissuade him. Two U.S. brigades parked outside of Kyiv in January 2022 might have averted the entire tragedy in Ukraine. I assume Taiwan probably has better intelligence sources in China that anyone else. I would simply state that if the Taiwanese Government asks for U.S. forces to be stationed there, The U.S. should have them the in days not weeks. Which implies all the prep, and all the planning have already been done, on both sides. Because we have seen Ukraine, we have seen Hong Kong, and we have seen Xinjiang. We all really want war in the Taiwan straight to remain a fictional scenario. Taiwan most of all.

Which is why I saw strategic ambiguity on Taiwan has Run its course. Put enough of a U.S. military presence on the island to make things crystal clear.

Thoroughly reported article that attempts to take every possible point of view on the upcoming Ukrainian counter offensive. There is a fascinating bit about a veteran of Mariupol with a prosthetic arm who is a senior trainer. I am betting he gets very little crap.

Forgive me for quoting myself, but if my specific proposals for more support are going to receive this level of response, I should make more of them. . GO POLAND!

If we really are going to let Amnesty and related organizations scare us out of using cluster munitions there is a lot of utility going forward for a very fast firing 105mm SPG, and a self propelled medium mortar, preferably breach loading. With fully automatic gun laying and and loading they could pump out ten rounds in less than a minute in whatever pattern the was preselected, and be going somewhere else while the barrel cooled off to repeat the trick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS Oh look, the Finns and Swedes have a system in service. Now that Finland is safely tucked under the U.S. Air-Force umbrella that comes with NATO membership they need to celebrate by getting several batteries worth worth of these off to Ukraine soonest.

We are about to get the clearest test ever of what happens when you take a very good, and very highly motivated army, and add a medium sized dose of NATO combined arms special sauce. Infinitely better than the guy who bulldozes the trench in a fit of pique. But I am again seized by the thought that every tank in Ukrainian service needs a 40 mm grenade launcher bolted on top, RWS or simple pintle mount either one. Hitting trenches with 125mm HE at point blank range is using a hammer too drive a screw because it is all you brought along. I suspect it is even worse because T series tanks have such a limited ability to depress their main guns. And once again every one of these clips makes the case for that new programmable airburst round that is coming into service for the Abrams. I seems like they would be five or ten times more efficient than point detonating shells. Doubly so since you could actually stand off out of accurate RPG range in most cases .

Sulla's rather serious problem was that after winning a nasty civil war, and quite few foreign ones as well, he was in charge of an army and an incipient empire Rome couldn't afford to pay for. He rather ruthlessly extracted the the money from the losers of said civil war. The historians have not been terribly kind about that. Fortuitously for Rome it conquered a lot of very profitable territory shortly after that, and was able to fund the Empire for a couple of reasonably pleasant centuries after that on the backs of people who were distant enough their dissatisfaction could be ignored. There are some similarities with how Moscow treats the rest of Russia. How far you are from the imperial center is directly correlated with whether or not the government gives a bleep if you freeze or starve to death.

Yes, but they seem to use all of it to produce artillery, and IFVs that are shipped from the factory straight to the Ukrainian army, so it is ok. They don't whine about it either, They just keep adding shifts and whole assembly lines and SHIP the bleeping stuff with greetings for Ivan already neatly inked on the shells.

If Russia finds this massive new border with NATO to be beyond its ability to manage, all it has to do is Give Murmansk Oblast to Norway, and return most of the Republic of Karelia to Finland, their new border with NATO would be less than a third the length, and run through some of the worst swamp on earth. Even the current excuse for a Russian army could probably hold the Finish boy scouts there for at least a week. Norway would probably want monetary compensation though, for taking on the nuclear waste dump the Russians have turned the port of Murmansk into. That is a first class environmental disaster. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Republic+of+Karelia,+Russia/@62.5136575,29.9863192,4.7z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x4420bc810d4b716d:0x102a3a583f194b0!8m2!3d63.1558702!4d32.9905552!16zL20vMDFjOTN6 Approximate new border to relive Russia's NATO anxiety

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/03/pentagon-looking-make-sure-spacex-doesnt-abandon-them-war/383837/

No such thing as enough grenades,

This seems to greatly overestimate Russia's ability to just keep this war going forever. The Russian economy is slowly melting down. Putin seems to be unwilling to call another round mobilization, not least because it would make the economic meltdown even worse. Putin might be willing to fight this war forever rather than admit error. How many more hundreds of thousands of Russians want to get killed or maimed in the endeavor remains an unanswered question?

Is this likely to be so bad the West is better off with extremely difficult scenario of Russia breaking up? Because a generation of Z, Z, Z, Z propaganda seems awfully likely to cue up another war. Putin has already gone completely bat bleep with indoctrination in the schools.

The short term lesson of this vid is that you really need to try and bring something with a 40mm AGL when you are assaulting a trench. The longer term lesson is that the programmable air burst rounds for tank main guns are worth the expense and in increased complication.

The thread always gets wonky when there isn't enough real news. Add in the fact that Putin's last, fractional excuse for hope is cracks in the coalition backing Ukraine, and that involves working preexisting political fault lines.

Ukrainians are literally fighting and dying for the privilege of EU membership. It seems like a pretty strong endorsement of the idea to me. I have posted this before but it merits rewatching

Russians have detained someone. It being Russia, she is the only person in St Petersburg I am sure DIDN"T do it. Edit: For blowing up Tartarsky, that is.

So when do we get "Combat Mission Supply, Logistics, and Replenishment"? Given the possibly not trivial way the game has affected this war, imagine the effect that could have on the next one.

Dumb mass turns into scrap metal rather quickly.