dan/california

Great vid The lower one gets the hardcore dude of the day award.

The articles headline. Contrary to what this article says Russia is losing on the battlefield, rather badly. But the fact the article exists, and was published in the NYT represents a disturbing trend. Russia has gotten its bleep together on the information warfare front to some extent. I do hope Naftali Bennet got payed for pushing the Russian line here. Maybe he was always getting paid by them, it would explain a great deal. The semi consistent line these stooges are pushing is that Russia has been punished enough, and that it will cost too much to kick them out of Ukraine. They just ignore the whole thing with the concentration camps. A couple of hundred ATACMS with the clearance to hit any military target they can reach would be an outstanding response to this ^%^# *%%%&. The endless dirge that the front lines are frozen and there is nothing to be done would shut right up.

One of three things is going to happen, this will discovered to be a fake. He will get killed, or "killed" if they are trying to wind it down quietly. Or this will be one the three biggest book deals to come out of this war. We will find out eventually.

The question of course is will Putin allow the MOD to recalibrate? Or he so desperate for something, anything , by the one mark that he smash what is left of the semi-competent bits of the Russian army a hoping once again that sheer bloody mindedness will be enough.

Excellent podcast about the risk of war in the Taiwan Straight. We need to spend some money and stop pretending it is a long term problem, if you want the short version. Speaker believes Xi would consider trading half the Chinese Navy for the island to be a success. He has to understand he just isn't getting it, period.

This article is a well thought out place to start. The link has a screwy title but it goes to the right place. Then read this one... and explain to me why Ukraine does not already have 600 155 tubes, 500 Bradleys, 250 Abrams, and every ATACMs in inventory. This sounds like truly excellent news to me...

It appears the continued integration of Western kit has made Ukraine even better at smashing Russian armored formations. Now we just need to bump up the priority on the Banzai charge>>>>>slaughterhouse bits. This would belong in The_Captn's power point about mass. Is all mass obsolete? or just incompetent and outdated Russian mass obsolete? On a separate note, stop, drop, and roll needs an hour of coverage in Russias non existent military training regimen. You never want to be the star of the lead slide in one of those segments.

On general note about the threads value and possible long term utility for studying the conflict after it ends, is it being archived in a relatively secure way? It isn't one bad drive in one random data center from being corrupted? There are probably a couple of Phd theses, and quite a few staff college article to be extracted from it all. Edit: I mean the first step would be to throw ninety nine plus percent of my stuff right out, but still..

The Russian's have higher volume of fire, their fire control borders on laughable, for most of their guns, most of the time. That is before we discuss that they are mostly shooting forty year old ammo out of worn out barrels. The Ukrainians are not running into anything, they are holding the front with the absolute minimum troop density they can. Precisely so they can put a force together to do some thing else. The Russians can advance over of a carpet of their own dead for this very reason. The Ukrainian system is designed to give ground under truly maximum effort attacks at just the ratio that gives them the best casualty ratio. Yes mistakes happen, yes squads fail to get the word, it is an unpleasantly even fight and bad things happen. Occasionally the Russians spot something with a drone that is actually in communication with a battery that can hit the designated square kilometer at least. But all of that just proves that there is a war on.

Nothing will get the government changed faster than an offensive that fails horribly.

Saddam didn't have to fight what is rapidly becoming a full up NATO army, and come up with half a million shells a month just to lose slowly. Bankruptcies , and regime disintegrations happen very slowly, then all at once.

War translated doing great work! So is Zeleban! Many thanks!

China is not our friend, the attempt to get them to join the modern world on decent terms failed. We just need to systematically act on this conclusion.

I am guessing it is unpleasant to be the person that gets the blame for embarrassing Xi...

Every tube, every shell, and every counter-battery radar in Europe needs to be headed to the Donbas. from 60mm mortars on upI. If Ukraine can finally achieve real artillery superiority nothing else the Russians are doing is going to work. Western IFVs popping up to put down accurate auto-cannon fire ought to take the starch of any axis that is looking truly dangerous. There was a picture a week or two ago of a 50 caliber machine gun on some version of a flat bed truck doing the pop up duty some where around Bakmuht. We can do better than that.

I have repeatedly asked people if there is some sort of tethered balloon that could get the Ukrainians some sort of airborne early warning radar, but there just doesn't seem to be anything ready for prime time. If the assault Vuhledar is the new and improved version of the Russian army?! Then this war is going to be over in August, and not with a Russian victory.

Pre production prototype

Google translate has had a major effect on this war...

I would be truly shocked if this were actually the case, if anything I would expect the Poles started training Ukrainian tankers months ago. Now I am quite prepared to believe Poland is trying to stick Germany with the bill... The larger issue with western tanks and IFVs though points out something a lot of Ukraine's supporters have been saying since March or April of last year, if XYZ system takes months to spool up the training and logistics train, START TODAY!

The AFU needs to find that unit that is on its fourth batch of Mobiks, and quietly enquire if they want spend the rest of the war someplace warm and safe outside of Lviv. Might create a nice little hole to drive a brigade or three thru.

A coupe of random thoughts about the balloon. Clearly the U.S.is treating it as a dig deal diplomatically. We could demand the Chinese land it immediately. Although I don't think we would do that publicly unless they had already said yes privately. Of course it could "malfunction" and land after private communications. Assuming non of these things occur it will inevitably move out over water eventually. Do you gentlemen think we will shoot it down and recover it then? Or just let it go.

This is the tail end of a nearly endless thread of Lancet videos. They seem to be one of the more effective things in the entire Russian arsenal. Steve if you want to get an announcement about the new game on page 2000 that would now. Wishful thinking, I know but...

This is the tail end of a nearly endless thread of Lancet videos. They seem to be one of the more effective things in the entire Russian arsenal.

Just to note, cause we apparently tend to forget those- daily claims of muscovite lossess by UA are almost certainly inflated. Trends can surely be observed, but not casualties by themselves. I am sure that is true to some extent. I always assume it is dead and seriously wounded for starters. With some reasonable assumptions about how abysmal Russia's KIA/WIA numbers are You can pretty quickly get to ~70k KIA, 70k Severe/permanently unfit for service WIA, and another ~70 K WIA who could return to service in some number of months. This brings things nicely in line with the numbers the NYT just gave. The Russians are so dysfunctional, not to mention intentionally trying to obscure things even from themselves, that we will never get more get more than a guesstimate. Edit: The only meaningful metric is have enough of them died that the rest decide to leave. Sadly we aren't there yet.

The power move would be to sed something up to grab it intact. That vehicle may or may not exist.