dan/california

A dam of Russian bodies at the mouth of the Dnipro would make an outstanding countermessage...

Out of likes, so What he said! ^^^^^^^^^

random happy anecdote, need one of those occasionally.

Hopefully there will be more good news tomorrow.

Hopefully they are worried enough to remember how their pistols work. Anyone who lets Prigozhin become the heir apparent in the hopes of being left alone will get exactly what they deserve. They might get even more than they deserve, which you wouldn't think is possible in the mafia running Russia, but the Wagner boys will do their level best if these idiots let them take over. Well I got more out of than I did any of the humanities classes I took in college, and I paid a fair bit for those. Learned a whole new approach to the problem. If I may attempt to synthesise a bit, mobilization is extremely dangerous to Putin because it is disrupting and upsetting micro social structures which previously had a non aggression pact with the macro social regime?.And even Putin, who is the runaway winner for the least nice guy of this decade, understands that is real risk to the regime. Even though he clearly cares absolutely nothing for the average mobik.

Good thread!

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I am not quite sure what meant, but I am pretty sure it was significant.

Between Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine 2014-15, Russia came up with a new tactical and organizational concept. They at least semi competently implemented it with ~two brigades worth of of troops. They did this against a Ukrainian force that had not been well treated by the Ukrainian Government whipsawing between pro and anti Russian factions. And then both sides settled for Minsk II. Russia won the info war for the perception of military competence in the wider world, Steve clearly excepted. In the Syrian civil war Russia again managed to field a small expeditionary force of similar size plus a squadron or two of fighter bombers. Against a zero tech opposing force this was sufficient to swing the balance in the Syrian civil war. This increased the perception of Russian military competence further in the wider world. This perception of Russian military competence gave Putin a significant advantage in diplomacy in general, and in his attempts to undermine Ukraine specifically. And then, well we are at 1700 pages about and then... The question I really want the answer to is what was the Russian General Staff's opinion of its own forces? Two what extent did Shoigu and Gerasimov understand that the public perception of Russian military readiness was a sham, at least in terms of the wider force? A related question is the whole invasion vs coup issue. Did the Russian General staff just not CARE about force readiness, because it thought the FSB had this handled as long as it could manage a glorified parade? Last but not least how much of the Western response pre/early war was driven by believing the Russian's own planning assumptions, in face of countervailing evidence from other sources.

Last time the army had other ideas...

Someone asked for the translation. Short, No training, no food, no gear, worse than no leadership. Didn't think being treated like that rated dying for Putin.

If this is true at any scale the tipping point might be getting closer. Big if...

You are not accounting for the impossibility of surprise. If the Russians concentrated a force anywhere close to this size everything the AFU has would be there to meet it. Starting with a hard tungsten rain when they were still tens of kilometers back. I am not saying the Russians won't try. The_Capt just ably layed out why they might. But they just can't pull the pieces together to make it work. I would posit that if they try it will accelerate Ukraines victory significantly. Maybe by a lot if Ukraine can counter attack right thru the wreckage, or take advantage of the induced weakness somewhere else like they did in Kharkiv. Edit: cross posted obviously...

They don't have the tanks anymore. I also doubt they can concentrate that much mass without getting Himarsed into oblivion. Your reasoning about why they will try anyway is quite sound though. If Ukraine can shatter an attempt like that the way I think they can, it might be their chance for a maximum effort counter attack to break the land bridge once and for all.

All the logistics you just proposed would be equally necessary for either system. But a Quad can't hide in a random drainage ditch the way a person can. Can they build armor that would still let a person do that? I don't know, but I suspect they are trying.

I am sort of repeating myself here, but one interesting thing that offense is getting much harder at the tactical operational level, even as defending fixed targets far behind the lines becomes much more difficult. The Shaheed 136 is effectively a ~1000 km range cruise missile for $20,000. The supply of them is not great enough, And Russia's unfixable overall situation bad enough, that they will not change the course of this war. But things like them are going to have a very great deal of weight going forward. The number of them China could launch at Taiwan if it set its mind to it for instance...

Russia has mad the worst possible choice at literally every possible decision point. There might be one exception but I will get to that last. Russian force design is wrong in about seven different ways, all have been discussed. Russia couldn't afford the army it tried to build even it was relatively well run for an economy of its size. Of course it is in fact run horribly with corruption so severe that if you put it in a bad novel the editor would send it back. Putin decided nothing less than the complete conquest of Ukraine was the objective. Russia made multiple horrible assumptions about its forces, and Ukrainian resistance. This led to a plan even worse than the assumptions. Zelensky turned out to be great wartime leader. Putin didn't have the sense to call the whole thing off at about the two week mark when actually might have been able to get SOMETHING at the negotiation table. Russian war crimes and atrocities have been off the scale awful, and it is ALL on video. Virtually all of these mistakes were required for us to get to the point we are at now, Russia has flat out lost this war, and if they don't quit soon may a lose a great deal more than just their claims in Ukraine. The one exception to this litany of epic failure was the artillery led attempt to take all of the Donbas in May,that came uncomfortably close to working before the accumulated weight of all of Putin's other errors started to bear down. If Putin/Russia hd been smarter at virtually any of the decision points above they would not be this bad off.

I will settle for every guy being able to carry a Javelin class missile, either an LMG or a sniper rifle, and enough ammo to stay in the fight without being exhausted in a hundred yards. That is the level of stuff that is wandering around proving grounds with varying degrees of success.

Please tell me you can get Steve to experiment with these in the next game, even if the technology is not quite there yet? It would even make a good module, I think. Edit, I seem to be out of likes so let me add that all your other posts are excellent as always, and much appreciated.

A LOT of the Russia sucks narrative is driven by the utter incompetence of their regular infantry. So they have to have their recon troops do a any regular infantry job that requires any thinking whatsoever, or a semblance of aiming. Then they have to use Spetsnaz for recon. Since both the recon troops and the Spetsnaz exist in a tenth or less the numbers required to do what the jobs they are actually being employed for, results are poor. In the ambush that is the subject of today's discussion it is pretty clear not much recon got done. Something else that has occured to me this weekend is that neither side in this war uses very much smoke at all, even in situations where even the old Soviet books call for it. Perhaps because neither side has enough training to do it effectively?

A piece of gear that is about to go from nonexistent, to absolutely omnipresent is a transmitter powered by a AA battery that emits a signal you have to work hard to figure out is not part of the actual network that is killing people and breaking things. Five hundred dollars "drones" that just fly semi coherent patterns in the general direction of the enemy and broadcast a similar mimic signal will also be very popular. We are at the very front edge of more things than we can keep up with. I will admit that my opinion of some of Sullivan's actual policies are coloring my opinion of these communications. Which actually do make sense.

He needs to get lot better at saying "Leave, Or Die"