dan/california

It would be a fun thing to put in the next game. It is an odd little idea that has been floating around my head for ten or fifteen years since i basically cheated my way through a Shock Force scenario because I figured the that particular batch of pixel insurgents didn't have anything that could reach my AAV if I parked it carefully. So i just systematically slaughtered them. It is the kind of nifty little insight the game gives you occasionally. I still think it is worth a defense contractor somewhere taking a flyer on. The prepositioned gear for two heavy brigades is setting in Europe doing nothing. and I think we ought to give half of it to the Ukrainians. That is unless you think the Russians have another whole army sitting around somewhere the Finns, and the Poles can't thrash in three days. The Biden administration is, at least to some extent drip feeding the the Ukrainians because they are hoping that the Russians will get a clue and go home while they have enough of an army left to hold Russia together, and they are also hoping to avoid a direct staring contest with the Russians over their urge to use nukes in Ukraine to pull their worthless murdering A$$s out a disastrous losing war. I happen to think there is no way the Biden administration is going to get what it wants on either of those questions. Not unless it wants to just let the Russians keep all or most of the ground they now hold. The problem right from late March is that the we have been too scared of what winning means. Status quo antebellum is not a thing anymore. The badly run mafia that is the Russian state is going to come out of this stronger, or shattered. It literally doesn't have the mental bandwidth to do anything else, or it would have tried to pull the plug on this fiasco March 15th. It didn't, it doesn't, and here we are. As to the impact question about thirty HIMARS and three hundred 155 tubes changed the course of this war. I happen to think a decent dose of western armor in Ukrainian hands would just end it. Am I right? Well there is one way to find out...

And yes, thats me. A 40mm with a nice computer controlled indirect fire set up, and couple of Spike missiles would make an excellent infantry support vehicle. There aren't to many places where there is nowhere to hide within 1500 meters of an objective. Those are the places the Abrams was invented for. It wouldn't take much more than a nice bit of systems integration to have the grenade launcher slave directly to the cursor on the drone feed. Trenches would become much less popular. And something the size of a Bradley could hold a LOT of forty mike mike if wasn't carrying any infantry. A breach loading 60mm mortar would be even better, but that involves all the risk of a real development project. The super tech version would be a magnetically launched 60mm mortar, but that is even more development risk. But that would more or less match the range of the Spike missile.

I have seen some discussions that a lot DJI batteries will have issues if the weather is much below freezing. I would really like to know how big of an issue this is. An empire of the sword inevitably becomes an empire of the pen, and then along come some people with swords and very poor attitudes. Yeah, it is soldier quality where they have real issues. We won't even discuss the nationality of 99..5% of their maintenanceI personnel.

However bad the sergeants day was, a Major somewhere close by was pondering the end of his career... I am pretty sure it is another angle on the Wagner helicopter. The Israelis were doing at least some of this a decade or more ago. I assume there is ongoing work. Since the river crossings that cost the Russians a BTG or two I have been pondering how useful it would be to have drone sensor package you could just stick in a convenient tree. There are obvious variations for deploying them by drone or parachute. I assume some sort of rocket would be infinitely better than gun launched. It is royal and expensive pain to harden things to be gun launched. The sensor bubble, and the conflict between sensor bubbles is the defining concept of this war. There is an enormous scope for things like leaving sensors behind if you have retreat from an area. It is only money, the only thing more expensive is losing. They do great coverage when they want to. But they have been very episodic about putting in the effort. And whoever the regional guy that just dials it in is awful.

Whatever the rationale I am fairly certain it would flunk epically if proposed in a NATO staff college. The obvious solution is to get another 50 or 100 155 tubes to Ukraine soonest and make this artillery balance issue go away. The Werchmant broke its teeth at Kursk with mostly political logic like this. Hopefully it will work out just as well for the Russians. A full brigade set of Bradley's and M1s of course would end the war in a couple of weeks, but apparently that makes too much sense. This is the 34th time I have said this since February, but if we aren't shipping it to Taiwan we ought to be shipping it to Ukraine. A problem any where else can get the second tier treatment. Strategic risk in Europe is zero. The Finns, Poles, and airpower could wipe out the pitiful remnants of the Russian army in three days at this point.

We clearly need more Javelin night launch pictures!

At least Nebenzya has real comedy value. To be clear that is the only area in which he contributes more than toxic pond scum.

I would just point out the Ukrainians have to use the bleeping death traps, too. Write your Congressperson/MP, AGAIN!

There is a reason drones are this year's Christmas rage...

First hints from the Russians, all the stated condition are completely unreasonable of course. It is still a sign the dinosaur that is the Russian state has realized it has a problem.

I saw a single tweet about a convoy of newly arrived mobiks getting a dose of the tungsten rain. Of course I can't find it again. It was in southeastern Kherson towards the limit of Himars range. Of course I can't find it again. More generally we have all expected the pushing of utterly unprepared units to the battlefield to increase Russian casualties, We might have underestimated the size of the effect. Think about how quickly you can get a whole battalion wiped in CMBS if you do something truly stupid. Now imagine a battalion of mobiks with doddering/drunk/nonexistent officers actually doing those things. Edit: found it on ISW, was Bakmuht. " The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces conducted a high-precision strike against Russian forces, who were preparing for another attack, south of Bakhmut near Mayorsk on October 28.[45] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the strike killed approximately 300 Russian personnel and that Russian forces evacuated 60 wounded personnel to a medical facility in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff subsequently did not report any Russian ground assaults near Bakhmut in either its morning or its evening reports.[47]" "

There are a remarkable number road casualties even in peacetime exercises. Twenty year old corporals that haven't slept in two or three days are not the world's best drivers.

Let me come at this one more way. Putin started this war, with as little justification as any conflict in human history. Putin has fought this war with a rather unique combination of barbarity and incompetence, exceptional in both regards. Putin is LOSING this war, at an accelerating rate in my opinion. If Putin wants to end this war still owning Crimea he needs to fly to Istanbul with a peace offer that gives Ukraine EVERY other thing it could possibly ask for, except maybe his own head. A trillion dollars in reparations, EU and NATO membership, every single deportee and POW or the bodies of same. That woman in charge deporting children delivered to the Hague. Or he can keep doubling down until The Russian empire busts into 10 or 15 pieces, it is on him. He could also take a swing at ending civilization, but it needs to be CLEAR to him, and everyone else in the Russian government that the one SURE consequence of that is is that Russian is a deader language than Sumerian in, about 45 minutes.

Himars and Excalibur being applied systematically to Russian artillery.

Which is why Ukraine needs to win this fast, and not give Putin time to reorganize around competent people. Edit: Winning fast and making Putin very unhappy are completely coincident geometric spaces. doing one means doing the other. And being mad seems to make him do stupid things, this was never going to be a smooth ride.

Russia was threatening to pull out of the grain deal days ago, and for that matter weeks ago. If they hadn't pulled out this week over the USV strike, they would have pulled out next week over a Himarsed convoy of hapless mobiks, or something. Putin is losing, and he has realized time isn't on his side after all. That winter is going to push Russian KIA from 500 a day to 1000. He is desperate to kick the the chessboard over. So what NATO needs to do is say fine and give Ukraine the hardware to make Russia's casualties 2000 KIA a day. It is a war, you have to kill them until THEY know they are beaten. I can't remember who I stole that from, but it is true. Boiling the frog slowly is just running up the body count on both sides. We need to blow pot out of the kitchen and three houses over, and send the Russian army HOME. The frog needs to be part of that smear on the ceiling.

Ukraine may be slow rolling Kherson just to kill as many Russians, and as much Russian artillery, as possible. As long as the Russians are stupid enough to feed meat to grinder AFU just cheerfully stands there and turns the handle.

This requires immediate in game testing.

This whole attack has also just changed base security requirements for every navy in the world. There are a lot of countries out there that could pull this off. We have been warned.

The other thought floating around my head is that everything to do an attack like this could be put on any random cargo ship and the whole show taken to Vladivostok or somewhere else. The port in Syria would be VERY amusing.

I am wondering about a kayak sized shaped charge. I think that might really inconvenience a bridge pylon. Could the kayak get there is another question, but the bottom in term terms of Russian incompetence seems a long way down an oil well.

Is BFC Elvis's liver going to make it to Christmas? This much winning might do the man in. All of these are addressable, but all of them as you point out, they are expensive. The most obvious step is to Build the body of the shells so that the fancy electronics unplug in a simple way. Said electronics can be kept in far more careful storage. There is a vast literature on whisker problems. All the solutions are of course more expensive. https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm#q6 https://cen.acs.org/articles/85/i29/Stopping-Tin-Whisker-Stalkers.html "There's another way. Manufacturers can avoid pure tin altogether by plating components with materials that don't whisker, such as nickel-palladium-gold. But as the ingredients suggest, this is not the cheapest way to go." But if it gets you a thirty year shelf life, instead of a ten year shelf life it might be worth it. I am only oversimplifying a little when I say every smartphone is a guidance system in waiting. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bizarre-theft-wave-targets-same-rotax-engines-used-in-iranian-drones It also seems possible bordering on likely that Iran has an organized operation to steal the engines they use in these nasty medium sized pieces of good enough engineering.

Is it just me or that about the best camo scheme I have ever seen on a tank?

The mobiks seem perfectly well aware how bleeped they are. Ukraine literally needs to do leaflets by drone with the surrender number and how too.