dan/california

Would we be seeing this in the overall price of crude? Is there enough slack in the oil market this not moving the needle? Have the Saudis belatedly decided to play nice with Biden and opened the taps? Will hammer Russian income if it holds, obviously. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil Chart above isn't displaying the way I want it too, but the price hasn't moved the way you would expect for one to two million barrels coming off the world market.

High of 31F, Low of 29F, in case the whole thing isn't displaying... The same warm weather that is confounding Putin's strategy of freezing Europe into submission is bleeping up Ukraines ability to get a real offensive underway. These temps are not going to result in the hard frozen ground that is needed for a real push.

All but the the smallest drones should have an accessory met package that feeds met data back to a brigade level server or similar. If it could be made a small as I think it could be you could use a standard package across most of the drone fleet, and the cost per piece therefore would not be that high. You would need some sort of comms protocol so it didn't broadcast when it was supposed to be radio silent, but I think that is doable compared to the general electromagnetic insanity on the modern battlefield. Chrissl might have a more informed opinion on the practicality of the idea? https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/15/russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-putin-attack/ Murz, and the gentleman who wrote the FP article seem to have RADICALLY different opinions of Russia's prospects....

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/15/russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-putin-attack/ The author seems to think Russia can keep doing what it is doing for quite some time. Including further rounds of mobilization and 500 kia a day becoming the new minimum. There is going to be a little test of that theory this winter...

https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/sites/default/files/Spotlight_Brief_3_22_Russo-Ukraine Lessons Learnt_accessible_reduced.pdf The style is a bit dry, but it is an excellent article. Has some excellent and detailed Russian TO&Es.

Worth pointing out that the Russians are desperate enough to actively recruit middle aged men with families. They always make the best soldiers right?

Sometimes, and only sometimes unfortunately, the Russians are just incomprehensibly bad. My working assumption is that is some combination of literally no training, and vodka. Several hundred pages ago Steve mentioned there need to be a new bottom tier of troop quality in the game. This would a case study in support of that.

There are some Russian agents running around Europe who need finding...

Well that is just a tad embarrassing...

Now imagine being shot at while having this wonderful experience. There is a reason Ukraine is waiting for the ground to freeze.

OMG, OMG we got bone! OK it is a micro fragment, but beggars can't be choosers.

The most disturbing bit of the article is that General Milley %100 bought the pre war analysis that Ukraine was going to get steamrolled. If he had been more perceptive a lot of things might have gotten done sooner.

I think the bigger problem is that EVERYBODY has camera. So all the stupids pranks, and even worse ideas get recorded. Since the worse the idea is the more likely it is to go viral, it is sort of a snowballing problem. Can Ukraine get a handle on the problem? I wouldn't want the job... The NYT article is a huge rundown on the whole war with an emphasis on the legion of Russian mistakes that got us to this point. I suspect at least some Russian officials/apparatchiks gave reasonably honest backward looking commentary just to get that one line in about the Russians not quitting. We will be able to judge if Putin was happy with the Result by the prevalence of the that strange window falling virus in Moscow over the next few weeks. The information war is almost as important as counter battery in the war, and both sides are contesting it vigorously. I also suspect certain bits of the shambolic Russian state apparatus used it too communicate with other bits of the Russian Government.

I really want to see it, and a lot of ideas like it in "Combat Mission: The Future of War"

Times article has very little new to the board, but it is very well done. If are trying to persuade relatives at Christmas it would be the place to start. There will be no hope, right up until the Russian army dissolves, when is a hard question, though. People in combat for long enough literally go more than a little nuts. The was a scandal during the Korean war where U.S. soldiers had taken to putting the SKULLs of North Korean soldiers on their tanks, they were quite pleased with the effect. The Pentagon was much less so....

The guy at 14 seconds into the second video will a weather casualty by morning. He looks like he is wearing some sort of cheap sweatpants. I am assuming they are spending the night in the open. It isn't AS bad if they have a half wrecked village to hide in. Absolutely none of their foot wear looks up to the task either.

It should be costed in detail both ways. I strongly suspect though, that the lowest cost/lowest risk way to deal with the problem is just accepting that very large ammo stockpile you might not use all of is not that much more expensive, and furthermore is an insurance policy worth having. It isn't that much money in the overall scheme of the defense budget.

Everyone's goal in life should be to NOT wind up as an internet meme, he seems to have failed in this endeavour.

It will be a high risk investment initially, other than things essentially guaranteed by the EU/US. There will be real opportunities though to buy in cheap Hryvnias, and get get paid back a decade later in expensive Euros. It will take patient and risk tolerant capital, but the potential upside is huge. Dear Lord how do I explain this $5000 dollar flyer to my wife.... Sorry Capt, the internet has made me an emoji user...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/resurfaced-video-ukraines-zelenskyy-spoof-034106999.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABOstI7wutPrUvKoo7xW1QYOWr5ha2212sIzAMBZpIZP_XUqYGHnuIjhLuUW0X0MgkkC1NR8dto-QkPmm9XqV8BLV3nSMyGAQJY_-5IEyrkhCZv3VpFiRuS_afmNqRSoK5KuTqvOQjT7ptIxW64ssiVnQigaJFUWF23SVmC0vOWF On a happier note, since it is almost Christmas, this is a clip from the TV show that made him President.Which he pretty much wrote, produced starred in, and so on. He has been thinking about, and pushing for Ukraine in the EU for a LONG time.

In due time the EU needs to find Zelensky a truly high level job in Brussels. The only people who have done more for the IDEA of the EU are coming home from the trenches in flag draped coffins. And if you tell me Zelensky doesn't feel every one of them I will post the clip of him greeting/honoring the families again.

I think this war is going to make Ukraine a far less corrupt country in a several ways. First a truly significant fraction of the entire male population is experiencing trench warfare, and they are not doing for the privilege of being messed with by corrupt traffic cops. Secondly, Ukraines connections with Russia in general, and corrupt Russian oligarchs in particular are just gone. I don't think they are coming back anytime soon. Third, Ukraines homegrown oligarchs have mostly had their empires, be they economic, political, and/or criminal crushed by the war. The guy that used to run Azovstal being the most obvious example. Every single pillar of the power that once made him untouchable in, and nearly as strong as, the Ukrainian Government is just gone. So if the EU stays involved, and Zelensky stays long enough, but not too long, it really could all come good in the end. They have beat the Russians too obviously..

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/12/15/a-looming-russian-offensive They read the thread...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/world/europe/bakhmut-ukraine-russia-war.html This article gives an example of how dependent the PGM based approach is on good communications. The guys with the high grade thermal imager just couldn't get and keep good communications with the battery they were working with. And they were trying two or three different ways, including Starlink, which by the way the Pentagon needs to buy. So by far the biggest reason too still have tanks, or something, capable of significant direct fires is that it eliminates one kind of failure point. Of course it creates a bunch of others with tankers full of fuel, and so on. I am envisioning a everything old is new again situation where an entire element of the signals corps is devoted to laying temporary fiber optics, and various kinds of laser based systems to avoid such problems. Just like they once laid telegraph, and then telephone lines. Edit: the example above is from Bakmuht, and presumably the jamming there is turned up to 11, by both sides.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/09/ukraine-is-using-mine-rolling-tanks-like-this-to-ram-russian-armored-vehicles/ Not sure about the details of this article, but the Ukrainians are clearly thinking about the mine issue. The rollers are probably less effective that plow, but much quicker.