dan/california

They could sell it to the Chinese. That would be fun!

Chinese ammo or peace on Ukraine's terms then? Don't see the third choice.

What was the actual munition? FPV drones of some kind? You can see them coming in slow in a very flat trajectory, and then diving. Visible across several frames, so not super fast.

That also implies Wagner is committing it most experienced fighters to take a town that just has no major weight in the outcome of this war. It means a lot of those better troops are not going to be available to oppose Ukraines spring offensive. As measure of combat power this is still a good trade, probably, because we still don't know anything about Ukraine's actual losses.

Interesting clip in a lot of ways. What struck me was that despite relatively accurate fire from the IFV, the troops in the trench were surpassed but not obviously hit. Am I correct in thinking this is one of many cases we have seen where an auto-cannon with programmable airburst would be vastly more effective?

Keeping in mind the zillion things we don't know, one of two things is happening. The first is that Ukraine is content to lose Bakmuht, albeit as slowly as possible. The second is that there is a certain place they want Russians to reach before the really counter attack. There were reports today of the Russians pushing again at Avidika and Vulhedar as well. My opinion, worth what you paid, is that Ukraine is willing to give very small amounts of ground to keep the Russians attacking in horrible conditions. There really is no easier way to eliminate them. For all that we have seen announcements about reserves being committed, we haven't really seen much. It is possible there is a real counter attack waiting in the wings, But Bakmuht would be a difficult place to exploit even a large scale early success. I think Ukraine wants to use its best troops in better weather, somewhere with more upside. I mean it would be brilliant to smash a full up combined arms east attack from Bakmuht, and then split Luhansk and Donestk, turn south and cut Donestk City off from Russia. If Ukraine was strong enough to do that though, I think the war would be over already.

The French intelligence and forecasting apparatus has not exactly shined in this war. This is one hundred percent the other way from where they have been though, if I understand their previous positions. Alternatively, Macron has concluded he can't get a deal to let Putin off the hook by pretending Russia is strong, so now he is trying to exaggerate Russian weakness for the same purpose.

I would add that third possibility is that these guys were literally fresh off the mobik bus, and were photographed in the three hour window between their delivery, and their suicidal assault. The Russian command structure may have realized that only way to get a new batch of mobiks to do the required suicide charge is to throw them straight in before they can talk to the survivors of the last five attempts.

More than ample evidence of a full up thaw, at least in places. Isn't Russia continuing to push when any real attempt at a breakout is going to end in a bottomless bog just nuts? I mean maybe Gerasimov has some semi miraculous plan he has been holding back until Russia has half a million casualties for some inexplicable reason but???

Drones are an expendable munition, I might put that in my sig.

That seems significant to me...

It is entirely possible they are fabricating them from scratch. The fact that a drone dropped munition never sees a high G load makes the fuse a vastly simpler thing to build. The very first time it gets hit hard it is supposed to go bang. It might be a little nervous to arm and launch it. People develop a tolerance for things like that when there is a war on. A basic shaped charge is just a copper disk, a chunk of C4 and a fuse. All the tech at this point is getting the fuse to survive being launched in some violent manner, and then bounced through the atmosphere at 100s of meters per second, or more. Drone delivery solves all of that.

I still have very strong impression that the Ukrainians are trying, and the Russians just aren't.

I blanked the profanity. Russia simply doesn't have a CASE EVAC system to speak of. This how you get one dead for every three casualties. I think the Union Army was better than this by 1863.

Now THAT is a rumor! I saw a photo of his son with Putin recently. Will a monarchial succession succeed? If it doesn't does the FSB have a plan B? Sort of an inconvenient moment for a full scale war in the Caucasus. Georgia is already at the tipping point...

Any decent translations?

I think this is the third or fourth TOS-1 Ukraine has killed in a week. I think better ISR of some description is starting to be felt.

Various takes on piping a scopes image to a set of goggles have been floating around for a decade if not much longer. Given that Ukraine has proven again how useful it would be, I assume someone give it another go. The little bits to make it work get better all the time. There was also a interesting video/story where a Ukrainian had rigged up a vehicle turret in a trench with remote control. It seemed very successful. There are a zillion prototypes for versions of that, too. with and without mobility. Forgive the sci fi reference, but there is a ton of potential for a shoulder mount basically like this one. You could go prone in a slit trench with nothing but the gun showing.

A few minutes of googling has made it clear i know even less than I thought about Spanish history from 1815 until 1937... It is basically a question of which century and decade Russia has to be rolled back to to become a rational enterprise.

Britain and France basically learned that colonial wars were too expensive, and you usually lost anyway. They were democracies so the amount of pain they were willing to tolerate, was a fraction of what Putin is prepared to put Russia through. They cut bait... Britain losing to the U.S. Colonies definitely changed the way it dealt with the other Colonies where the native population was mostly replaced. that is its own special case. I am not sure that I understand the process in Spain all that well. But it is wroth pointing out Spain did most of its losing considerably earlier.

The whole era needs a good historical novel or five. A ton of conflict and history that gets zero exposure in English, and apparently not enough in Ukrainian.

I am going to give RAND and the others who wildly overestimated Russia's capabilities prior to the war and guess the single biggest reason for their errors was adopting the "assume the worst case and plan accordingly" mentality rife within the defense industry. Even with this mindset people are running around with their hair on fire trying to find a few thousand more 155 shells random countries might have bought and forgotten about thirty years ago.

Someone needs to sue him, and get discovery. Interesting question who would have standing to do that? Fox's epic mistake was to get in the legal version of a razor blade cage match with someone who had very clear and obvious standing to claim injury, and enough money for a real legal team.

There is a rather good argument the the credibility of Russia's nonnuclear anything is pretty much gone...