dan/california

There was some mention of of bone about the new game a week or two ago? Or at least a bone about Battlefronts plans for the year?

An actual open war between the Israel and Iran is a net negative for Ukraine. The combination of dividing the worlds attention and higher oil prices would not be helpful. It is POSSIBLE that Russia is at least discussing giving Iran nukes. I agree with billindc that it is extraordinarily unlikely. For there to be the slightest possibility that this is true several things would have to be happening in Russia. First Russia is actually losing this war MUCH faster that we think it is. Second, someone took their life in their hands and explained this to Putin bluntly enough the he believed it. Third, whatever Russia is getting in return would have to be credibly capable of reversing the situation. Unless their is evidence that half of the Iranian army is going to be shipped across the Caspian Sea to join the war, I don't buy it. And given the state of things in Iran I think that sort crazed escalation might precipitate the revolution the regime is trying to avoid.

maybe Israel decided to supply the Iranian opposition with some new toys? May Israel stole some of Iran's OWN toys, and supplied them to the opposition? Maybe they just.... helped the opposition steal them? Also possible the opposition found a weak link in the drone shipments and stole them themselves? No evidence to speak of yet, but it will be a real test to see who the Iranians blame it on, regardless of what actually happened.

Things appear to have gotten even livelier. May you live in interesting times really is a curse.

An excellent thread. Hopefully both of these truly unpleasant people will be casualties of the eventual Russian power struggle. We should try rather hard to ensure neither one of them is the next Czar, they both Think Stalin's endless slaughter was merely a good start.

We spent a fair amount of time a month or three ago discussing a video where a Ukrainian unit charged straight up a road at a Russian unit in a single APC. The move should have been suicidal, but it worked because of some combination of truly awful Russian troop quality, and possibly crap supplies. Everyone was sort of amazed that it worked. I have a sneaking suspicion that both sides in this war do a fair amount of attacks like that. Just assume the other side is incompetent or shelled into complete in incoherence. Sometimes, maybe even usually in the Russian case, they are wrong. Hopefully the units being trained up on NATO kit all over Europe will finally achieve the coordination to do things more coherently.

If you surrender to the Ukrainians you are unlikely to be tortured to death slowly. Wagner....

Nothing we didn't know, but a lot of detail if your interested. I would just add that an elite that can do this good a job of ignoring a catastrophic war could do just as good of job ignoring Ukraine in NATO and the EU.

Baerbock may have had one of those little errors where a person says what they actually think, as opposed to the official line. The larger issue is that Micheal Tracy is a Russian stooge, consciously or or unconsciously, paid or not, the mans output is indistinguishable from Russian propaganda outlets.

We seem to be working on a new version of the Drake Equation... Just like the original every term is its own rather large discussion. I really wonder how this plays in Germany. Could it be good timing for Scholz? In that Ukraine will simply do whatever he wants done as a thank you for the Leopards? Yeah this is the next fight, and not just with Germany. Hopefully at least some people have hopefully learned that saying yes very quietly is the best way to respond. I think Turkey already sent some. Spare a tiny violin of sympathy for folks in the Chinese military logistics system. Their inspections are being inspected, and doubt the inspectors have much of sense of humor.

I think one of the The_Capt's larger concerns is that current NATO equipment and, to non professional observers, doctrine Are working just well enough in Ukraine that that West will draw the wrong lessons from this war. Or at least it won't draw the right ones throughly enough completely rearrange how the next trillion in defense spending gets spent. That could be unfortunate if China does learn the right ones.

It is all about convincing the Russians they have nothing to gain but but more dead mobiks by staying in this war. Ukraine seems to have done a fair job of stacking bodies yesterday, but the bleepers morale hasn't given out yet. So yes, send more, and then send more than that. Until whole brigades and divisions of Russian troops would rather shoot their officers and any Chechens they can catch, than fight the Ukrainians. That is how this war ends, barring an attack of sense in Moscow. Between cocaine, vodka, and God knows what synthetic drugs, I don't know if Moscow has enough brain cells left to figure out it ought to quit.

Russian casualties in this attack on Vuhledar are rather high. Or they are getting hammered somewhere else even harder than I thought.

All of this applies to fighter jets as well, except you have to be able to do it right the first time upside down while pulling seven Gs.

Yeah, but Ukraine dries out in summer in a way Sweden doesn't. And when it is muddy in Ukraine, NOTHING works apparently.

We COULD put or big boy pants on a give the Ukrainians tanks with the latest Trophy derivative APS. From a purely military standpoint it would be awfully good to really test those systems against a minimally competent threat before go all in on them as a war winning weapon. The Russian issue isn't that they don't understand how the systems work. It is that they can't make the machines to make the machines to MAKE the systems. Some broken bits of the final product are not that helpful from a reverse engineering standpoint when that is your problem. It still doesn't solve mines and artillery, but it all about reducing the number of losses it takes to crack the outer shell just enough. They would be VASTLY helpful against hasty defenses if Ukraine could achieve a real breakthrough and get a real exploitation phase going.

One possibility is that they are holding their armor as an emergency reserve, and really don't want to commit it until they are SURE there is more coming. Something like this happened with the Ukrainian Totchka-U missiles. They had moderate number of them they were holding back in case something truly went south on them. When they got HIMARS in meaningful quantity we didn't just see the GMLRS itself come raining down. The AFU also used all their Totchkas as fast as they could fire them basically. It was a notable addition to the fireworks. Armor could work the same way, emphasize could. But with a couple of NATO standard units as a strategic reserve the AFU might finally be willing to attempt a truly massed armored attack against whatever piece of the Russian line looks weakest.

The aversion to shipping Ukraine every cluster munition in inventory ought to be the next political battle.

The Israelis have been a great disappointment throughout the Ukraine situation. Although some corners of the internet are convinced they are doing more than they are saying. A guided 120mm mortar round makes so much sense you would think that there would be a dozen different kinds in common usage, but it seems to have repeatedly been that next thing on the list that didn't get bought.

I poked the internet in general, and Wikipedia in particular rather hard on this and I cannot find a reference to the program later than 2017. No clear indication of what happened. I think a guided 120mm mortar round makes a LOT of sense. Either they hit some sort of engineering road block they didn't think was worth the time and money to get past? Or it is so amazing it has been classified top secret? Or the wrong congress-critter lost an election and the contractor hasn't rounded up another one? Or? I would really like to know...

Listened to a speech by Mitch McConnell on the radio taking a kid to school. He was trying to be more pro Ukraine than the Polish President. That isn't possible, but by God he tried, MORE, FASTER, why not six months ago?! everything but "Muscovy delenda est."

i suspect they were quietly given a list of various profitable businesses practices that could become far less profitable if the EU and US really wanted them too. Bleep me I hope so! The sonorous tone of not quite sorrow does have a certain ring doesn't it. Been thinking that for at least two weeks. I need to look this up again but I am almost certain I saw an article at some point in the last five years that the U.S. was not particularly happy with this round/system. And that they therefore hadn't REALLY invested in it. I need to look at that again, to the extent possible without any clearances to speak of. See below... No sane person/country gets into a grinding, even fight like this intentionally. The Russians got into it because their pre war assessment of pretty much everything was in fact clinically insane, and the Ukrainians are here because their other choice is annihilation, or near as makes no matter. All which brings us back to things we wish had been started six months ago. But in this case things have gone just well enough that there will be a later, in better late than never. As NamEndedAllen has eloquently stated maybe we are now past the point of arguing about what we are trying to do. It is time to put together a coherent, logistically sane overall plan and follow it. I concede it is possible there has been such a plan for a while, and this whole political thing was for show. But all we can act on is what we at least think that we know.

This new U.S. light tank is basically a VERY modernized Leopard One. Same basic weight, a modernized version of the same gun. Infinitely better optics/thermals/FCS/ect obviously.

You know Strykers and Leopard Ones would make a pretty good medium force. Especially as a defensive reserve for a broader area of the front, or for exploitation if the door was really kicked open. Both are more mobile than units based around Abrams/Leopard 2/Challenger 2.

My ideal scenario, and this will take some time to get working, as the General just pointed out, it isn't easy from a support standpoint. Is that the U.S./NATO finally get their coordination worked out so that every month or six weeks a new fully equipped mechanized brigade rolls across the Polish Ukrainian border ready to make the Russians very sorry. So there might need to be as many as three brigades in various stages of the training process. While every brigade might not be equipped the same, they should do EVERYTHING they possibly can to make each brigade as uniform as possible. Similar model IFVs, very similar models of whatever tank the brigade is using. So if the Bradley unit that is working up in Germany right now can get Challengers faster than anything else, great. But that unit needs to stay Bradleys and Challengers. Abrams and CV90s make a certain amount of sense.. We could see Strykers and Leopard Ones before it is over. Just make it clear to the Russians there is an avalanche of metal headed their way, with no end in sight. If the Russians realize that the taps for Ukrainian arms and support are truly, finally, wide open there is at least a microscopic chance they might have the sense to quit. And if they don't, well, even bad trenches make pretty good mass graves.