dan/california

The only thing I am sure of is that he ground isn't dry yet. Beyond that there is proof that Ukraine and its backers will try to disguise what is going on, as they should.

I was pretty sure the original "yacht" story was BS within five minutes of reading it. It just reeked of someone falling for a Russian disinfo op. I am am a lot more certain of it now.

We seem to have had a catastrophic success. 100% agree!

I am quite certain that the people who run Grey Zone are among the worst human beings on the planet. On the other hand they do usually seem to have their perceptions anchored in reality, and understand Russia is losing this war.

In the very short term it just means war is n expensive business. Looking out further there absolutely have to be laser beam based solutions. The DOD gets this and is working hard on it. I would love to see some systems in Ukraine for real testing, but either they aren't ready yet, or they think they are far enough ahead of the Chinese they don't want to risk letting anything loose. I agree the whole foreign volunteer and charity funded war thing is a mess and was always going to be a mess. I also agree with cesmonkey that if this is the worst the NYT can find things are much better than I actually feared. It is more than a little silly though that the U.S. will supply billions in military equipment and real time targeting data, but can't manage to detail off some actual special forces types to get the foreign legion working better. The distinctions get absurd at times.

In 1905 the Czar had the Sense to cut his losses and make peace. Although the military parallels are tricky. The war with Japan was arguably an even worse military defeat, but it was also a great deal further from Moscow. There was not much question that the Czar could cut bait on his little Asian expedition and survive. Which is not to say he enjoyed the experience. And there was a a whole array of Revolutionary movements in 1905. The pressure had been building for the best part of fifty years. Lenin was sent to Siberia in 1897, and he was among the third or fourth generation of internal exiles, as the Czars tried to keep lid in the pot of modernity that was bubbling in the rest of Europe. On balance at the moment social media , and modern communication tools are working for the regime. There may be a tipping point out there somewhere where they suddenly cut the other way very sharply.

The possible, and I would emphasize possible , not probable, thing that could trigger it now is the military equivalent of the bank run that brought down Silicon Valley bank. On a Monday SVB's trouble were buried deep inside the business section, if you could find anything about them at all outside of very specialized places on Twitter. By Thursday afternoon of the same week it was simply vaporized. Cell phones and social media allow panic to spread at an incomprehensible rate, and as near as I can tell most of the mobiks still have their phones. Russia might try to simply turn of all service in occupied Ukraine, but that might just prove to everybody there was something to panic about. There is a huge scope for Ukrainian Psy-ops in this space as well, promote five fake attacks as well as the two real ones and so on. Do it in depth in the social media the mobiks are actually using, with hacked accounts and all the bells and whistles. Side note: Is there an equivalent of this board for banking geeks?

I want to see what happens when a whole lot of attention is focused on a unit like that, and a big piece of the Russian front line folds as surely as he Hungarians and Romanians did North and South of Stalingrad. Edit: My most optimistic scenario for the Ukrainian counter offensive is for the the AFU hit the the land bridge in two places about sixty or eight klicks apart, and shove both breakthroughs deep enough that all the Russian forces in between have run for it. Yes it is optimistic, but a guy can hope.

The scenario I have floating around in my head is the the Russian Army gets tired of dying and just pulls out of Ukraine without orders. It is an interesting question where the break in the chain of command is most likely. Were this to happen we get to the real decision point for the regime. Do they go so far as things like ordering airstrikes on their own troops, or do they have the sense to act like it was their idea and just try to frantically patch together some sort of negotiation with Ukraine to put a fig leaf on their effectively surrendering. When an entire army is made up of mobik quality troops with an utterly detached and distrusted command structure, things could get out of hand very quickly. Not certain by any means, but...

If Ukraine could get a whole unit to surrender in the right place and at the right time the big breakthrough would all of a sudden be moving at warp speed.

I don't believe a word Prighozhin says, but it is worth keeping track of what he is trying to convince various parties of. The bit about Belgorod is obviously B.S.. It would be brilliant if Ukraine could smash through the lines at Bakmuht, split the DPR from the LPR, and then drive to the Azov behind Donestk. This is , however, just about the most ambitious plan the Ukrainians could attempt. If they are strong enough to do it this thing is a wrap by July, because the Russian army will have just blown away in the wind. I am thinking that is a wee bit optimistic.

This really can't be over emphasized. You simply cannot maintain a mechanized force in the field without the ability to defend against these kinds of drones. Furthermore these drones are going to improve rapidly, to include autonomous operation and true swarming behavior. U.S. may be worried about the legal/moral issues involved, it is laughable to think the Chinese will pause over it for a second. We have talked a lot of different drone defense regimes, all of them, and combinations of all of them, need to be rigorously tested until we find something that works, and that something has to be produced at scale. By scale I mean the ability to protect your side of the entire FEBA for at least tens of kilometers in depth. Yes this will be heart stompingly expensive, but the alternative is losing the next war. We seem to have decent confirmation their are at least two fully trained up Bradley battalions in Ukraine. If they have not been committed it is pretty close to proof that the AFU staff don't see anything to really panic about yet. And if I were the Russians I would be seriously considering a bit of panic, if at least 50,000 casualties worth of winter offensive cant even make the Ukrainians commit their better reserves, It is worth pointing out that several recent deliveries/announcements include breaching equipment Last but not least the new Italian Prime minister is not without flaws, but she is extraordinarily solid on Ukraine.

We will know when Zaluzhny wants us to know. If things are going well that will be when Russian artillery parks and battalion command posts discover the joys of being on the receiving end of 25mm auto cannon fire.

This may also be relevant. If your ISR/artillery system is good enough you calmly watch the explosive mine clearance do its thing, and then lay artillery delivered mines in the newly cleared gaps at the exact moment of maximum exposure. The Russians don't seem to like the the trick very much.

Russia is failing utterly to negotiate with itself about an inevitable defeat. This may make the war longer, but it will also make the loss much worse.

You wrote a lot of eloquent stuff about how the Stryker's trades off tactical punch for operational mobility all the way back when CMSF came out. It is all still correct.

Bunching up anywhere, ever, period, is a bad idea. There are a LOT of more or less guided things out there that kill you, and the surest way to get one sent to address is to have enough targets in the blast zone to convince the FDC your spot deserves the love. The Russians have been extraordinarily slow to figure this out. In my opinion that is because a company grade officer is the lowest level that is able to direct anything whatsoever.

With all the other news this isn't getting enough attention. Ukraines new Shaheed copies working isn't the most important part either, although it is a significant new capability. To hit these missile in transit implies Ukraine, or its friends, are literally reading the Russian military rail dispatch schedule in real time. Or that our satellite observation of the rail system is so good we might as well be. Either way that is a huge signal the Russians ought to be quitting now, because tomorrow will be even worse. I wonder if the U.S. specifically forbade the Ukrainians from firing a bunch of them while Putin's body double was in Mariupol? I 100% agree with Ghirkin's bit about how to identify the real Putin by the way. Just examine the degree of paranoia on display.

Yeah but the Russian solution to thinking you aren't worthy is to invade the place, shoot everybody you really don't like, and send the rest of the population to Siberia to freeze and/or starve to death. The Balts know this, and that is why they have several percent of their GDP to Ukraine. Not several percent of the defense budgets, several percent of their GDP. They know exactly what the Russians would do if they could. It would be all the worse for them having the audacity to try and escape the Czars grip. I mean the U.S. has put up with them being idiots and worse for ever.

So far Xi seems to be giving maximum moral support without publicly announcing arms deliveries. Xi may or may not be planning to make those arms deliveries without an announcement, thoughts?

It is still an excellent example of non-combat attrition, though. As you just said, soldiers crash vehicles all the time. I doubt it is better in army famous for its vodka problem. It is just an example that happened to make Oryx's list. For an army that is already running short of most everything it matters.

The most informative sentence ever written was I might add that in Putin's Russia you might add his life to the balance. When you simply cannot figure out why something works the way it does, start here.

Just to reiterate, the Economist forecast is 100% the other way. They strongly predict Xi is going to back Putin strongly, and demand Russian technology and support over Taiwan in return. The Economist has real on the ground sources all over Asia, and has for decades. I am not saying they are necessarily correct, but it is hard to just dismiss them out of hand.

First and foremost Ukraine closes the loop quickly enough to be meaningful far more often than Russia does. To be militarily useful information has to go up the chain be transformed in orders and firing solutions and sent back down for prosecution fast enough to be useful. It isn't just that Ukraine is shockingly good at it, although I think they are. It is that Russia is really awful at it, at almost every level, almost all the time.

Long article, fairly grim conclusions, though I doubt many people on the thread will be surprised by any of them. Xi is obsessed with Taiwan and pushing the U.S. out of the western Pacific. A new cold war with China seems inevitable, and a hot war over Taiwan by no means unlikely. There are parts of the Chinese government that understand this is a terrible idea, but they are very much not the ones in charge. My two cents is that the U.S. needs to expand military spending massively and now to try and head off the worst of this. I would argue for a truly large scale deployment of U.S. forces to Taiwan. Strategic ambivalence has run its course. To his credit Biden has said this several times, but he is having to drag the blob along behind him . It would be a great time to offer the Vietnamese one heck of a deal. It would 80 years late, but still the worth doing. Edit: Cross posted with Steve, he is giving the optimistic scenario, the Economist is giving a very negative one, we shall see.