dan/california

Quite willing to believe the drone operator said "these guys are sleeping off the vodka, go, go, go!". A high risk move even so, but then war is risk, everymove made, and not made, has a down side.

Unhappy conscripts near Moscow have never caused any trouble before, by which I mean it was St Petersburg the last time..... I have to double down on our hobbit friends commnet. This could only work against troops who were completely at the end of their rope. No atgm/rpg, no mines on the road that leads straight to their position, no morale to even try to fight. I mean mean one sober and minimally competent guy with a light machine gun could turn this into a complete fiasco. I just wonder if the Ukrainians new they were that bad off, or were told to go find out?

This guy is edging towards inexcusable, I mean...

Is it just me or do his bodyguards look like the SERIOUS sort of fellows.

Russia gone is the number one, and Russia gone with lowest number Ukrainian casualties is number two. If talking to the Russians will help with this, by all means. And there are probably political benefits in the parts of the world that have tried to stay more or less neutral to at least appearing open to negotiate. Regarding Stremousov I still crack up considering the possibility it was actually a traffic accident, and absolutely no one believes it. This is interesting, and has obvious propaganda value. Unless the AFU got a solid enough hold to bring Himars over I am not sure of the military utility. Although it would limit the Russians ability to mess with grain shipping operations, which certainly isn't bad.. The Ukrainians want prisoners to exchange, one of their highest priorities. If they caught someone who was guilty of something truly terrible, my assumption is that they would be shot while resisting arrest or simply disappear. No need to mess up the public narrative.

Belarus would be the hail mary of hail mary's for the Russians. It is far more likely to Bring down Lukashenko and install a Western leaning government in Minsk than it is to seriously damage Ukraine. Among other things the border is the biggest marsh in Europe, and the Ukrainians have mined every bit of it you can stand on like the Korean DMZ. I think Ukraine will take one deep breathe and push HARD towards whatever spot of the Southern front line they think is the weakest. Melitopol is ideal, but breaking the land bridge anywhere is more than good enough.

Alot of brave people have died in trenches, and in worse ways. Many of them had not the slightest plan of being a soldier on 2/23. I think we should send them every single piece of gear they can physically crew to try to keep that number as low as possible.

Good thread, nothing we haven't discussed. But a nice compact summary.

Well the bleeping Orcs blew the locks.

The discussion about the survivability of big ships is not going away. And the level of security hassle for even peacetime operations is going to be painful.

It appears that retreating remains the Russian army's only actual military skill. Perhaps that is because they get so much practice. And while i am sure the list of revealed crimes will be nearly unbearable, Kherson does not look like Severodonetsk. A victory by any measure. Hopefully the Russians will get practice their one real skill again, very soon. Edit: I cross posted with the The _Capt, who of course said all of it much better than I did.

Third scenario is that this is the single worst military disaster anybody has suffered since 1945...

That would put 120mm MORTARS in range of the river. Fours rounds a minute per tube just raining down. Russians are almost getting what they deserve, almost....

No clue if the above it is true, but if it is this the moment for a general offensive everywhere west of Donetsk. I so want to see the Russians shoved into the Sea of Azov, and the Kerch bridge under a hail of Himars fire.

Fire, sword, Himars, and 155 until they fly white flags or take the cold water swimming test. This batch gets to pay its bill in full.

Good thread!

Proof they are less scared of counterbattery. The can concentrate like that. I hope there was a very croweded bunch of Russians on the other end.

I suspect we now know EXACTLY how long it takes to relad, aim, and fire something. Plus flight time for the missile.

Not the least of the reasons the Russians are losing is that they have not rotated units properly. Due to some combination of command incompetence and simply not having enough forces, they have left forces on/in line for far too long. At some point, The studies from WW! and 2 say somewhere between forty and eighty days, people just start to lose any combat effectiveness. Up to and including just total non response to obvious danger. I strongly suspect that the raging alcoholism among the Russian troops doesn't make it better. A number of Russian units might just be hitting the point of complete exhaustion. I suspect, but can't prove that mobiks who were completely unready in the first place get to this point faster Shook it off and kept soldiering. Very sad about the driver. Every hour of every day the war costs, why we need to send the Ukrainians enough equipment to END it. It seems like we need the new version of the game. Their seems to be enough info about the TO&E and how drones are are working NOW to make a decent pass at it. I realize that is not the only issue. I really think that "CM-the future" of war is probably one of the best ways available to evaluate the best paths for future development. Among other things we do, or soon will have enough data on real world, sort of even fights, to check the simulations results against. Just hoping that Steve's new military contracts are not so large the rest of us get deprioritized. Still like the idea of of doing the new game with a significant Ukrainian fundraiser, but it is Steve's business, might be completely crazy on that suggestion. And there is also some issue of the Russians using the new game to improve their competence in some marginal way. Anyhow, we will buy it when you want to sell it to us. We might even have something intelligent to say afterwards. Edit: I meant drones now in the technical/technology sense. We have a lot of evidence of what a DJI 300 ect can do. We also have a great deal of speculation about next generation military versions...

There is very clearly a peace faction in the U.S. government. Hopefully they keep on being the smaller faction. Russia has to lose and be seen to lose. It is the only way to discourage them from trying this again. How they can think Ukraine can't win after Kharkiv, and with Kherson in the process of falling is beyond me. The off the scale war crimes demand no less. Not to mention the entire non proliferation regime. I suspect at least ten or fifteen countries have the finger hovering over the button to start a maximum effort program to join the nuclear club if they decide it is the only way to avoid a similar experience to the one Ukraine has just had. That will NOT make the long term prospects better.

https://www.leonardodrs.com/what-we-do/products-and-services/m-shorad/ We need to send half the inventory of these new Shorad Strykers to Ukraine. There isn't anything supersecret on them that I can tell. It actually sounds like they are stop gaps until lasers, or some other technology matures.

That have blown dams on the Inhulets, and the Oskil. The haven't blown the dam on the Dnipro at Nova Kakhovka yet. The river and the dam in question are both ten times or more the size. The wrinkle is that south/Russian controlled side is lower, and blowing it will turn a big piece of it into impassible marsh. So they can't do it until they have everybody off the North/ soon to be Ukrainian side they think they can save.