dan/california

The Russians aren't getting Bakmuht anytime soon, but they do seem to be cornering the fertilizer industry.

It is expensive, until it's priceless, but at that point it is usually too late.

The worst mistake on the procurement side was canceling the Crusader SPG that was supposed to be even better than the PZH-2000. They were coming in at about 8 million a copy, but experience in Ukraine implies they would be priceless. We now seem to be frantically trying to fix that. They have just had some success with a 155 shell with a small ramjet that boosts the the range up towards 60 or 80 k. https://www.defensenews.com/miltech/2022/08/11/boeing-nammo-test-ramjet-155-artillery-weapon/ Everything for the last 15 years everyone has focused on NLOS missiles with very smart guidance. There is no evidence that the Russians have any meaningful counter for that yet. But it is always good to be ready for the next round of counter, counter, counter. If they ever want to actually fight the Chinese have certainly been fairly warned that coming to the fight without a countermeasure for that is just this side of suicide, maybe just the other side, so we will see. We have discussed endlessly that you can't let the other side fly drones that are talking to functional artillery and expect to enjoy your day.

My understanding is that CKEM had successfully completed engineering development, and worked beautifully, It is just that the Javelin did too. The Javelin is smaller, and more convenient to use in various ways. Since the Javelin kills anything the Russians have at the moment, they went with it.

We will now that the Pentagon is getting worried about Russian/Chinese APS when this system or something like it suddenly goes into high rate production. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hatm.htm

Need to build them and shoot them until the Russians are cowering in terror, THEN they will go home. It is an interesting data point on the are tanks obsolete debate. I don't there is ANY existing APS that can stop a guided 155 round.

There appears to be an organized campaign using Excalibur to thin out the Russian's best armor. Or at least a general order that T-90s are worth the good ammo.

This is a cope company for someone in Belgorod or Moscow to move around on a map, not a militarily useful entity. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2022/10/28/how-we-geolocated-a-photo-of-a-russian-missile-programming-team/ A great article on hardcore geolocation work.

That is the answer I needed!

Commenting on the controversy surrounding former RT director and host Anton Krasovsky, suspended for an overly vicious anti-Ukrainian tirade on a show last week, expatriate Russian satirist Viktor Shenderovich remarked that Krasovsky had “found himself in the position of the man who gets fired from the Gestapo for brutality.” Indeed, while Krasovsky’s musings on murdering Ukrainian children were unusually vile even for present-day Russian television, they differ only in degree from what currently passes for normal in the Kremlin-controlled media. What’s more, it’s fairly clear that the incendiary comments were not treated as out of line by Krasovsky’s colleagues or superiors until they were publicized in the West and caused an outcry. From https://www.thebulwark.com/russians-accuse-ukraine-of-nazism-but-look-at-how-russian-propagandists-talk/ True, funny, and well written. You don't see that very often. Sorry about the background, can't figure out how to make it go away, if anyone wants to tell me how...

Check out the guy in the background at about ten seconds in who is realizing the Russian Empire is done.

I have an expression that seems to upset twitter, but forgive me for using it here just once.... Burn the orcs, BURN THEM ALL!

When they said light careful strokes with the trowel, the were NOT kidding.

They are going to need the big brother version of it to clean up after this war, and not just one or two of them. And by big I mean at least five times that size. They are going to have to do thousands of square kilometers of wheat and sunflower fields to get production restarted safely. It will take a generation for the wind break tree lines, and other wooded areas to be made safe,

Have I mentioned that Belarus is the linchpin of this whole thing? Have I mentioned that the AFU General Staff is smarter than all of us? Allow to mention both of those things AGAIN, and ask you to ponder what happens in Moscow if Lukashenko's long delayed date with a lamp post happens?

Some actual maps for the first time in a while.

The Reuters' data makes the resemblance to the initial part of the Normandy campaign even stronger. The Russians held until they just didn't have anything left to hold with, and then collapsed completely when pushed. From https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/Doubler-Bocage.PDF "Even when First Army failed to seize terrain and make large advances during the fighting in the hedgerows, it achieved, in considerable degree, the principal objective of combat operations: the destruction of enemy forces. The terrible carnage of the hedgerow fighting cannot help but impress anyone studying the Normandy campaign. By 17 July, the Germans had suffered almost 100,000 casualties but were unable to replace many of their losses. Only enough fresh troops arrived in Normandy to replace 12 percent of the losses. First Army had fared little better but was capable of replacing more of its casualties." The whole paper is excellent as a summary of the Normandy campaign, I assume quite a few people here have seen it before... It also makes clear how much lower the force densities are in Ukraine I also hope the Ukrainians are not paying quite as high a bill as the Allies did in the Bocage.

Even by recent severe standards the Russians had a very bad day. And i think they lost a Ka-52 late in the afternoon that will presumably be on tomorrow's list.

More mobiks getting shoved to the front. The get a little taste of knee deep cold water in a trench, or some evidence of what 155 airburts can do, and surrender in double quick time. If they shove them up there without food an ammo it just happens even faster. Men won't stand and die when they have been treated wrong at every step from mobilization on. Ukraine has been brilliant with things like feeding POWs on camera, and letting them call home. It is NOT like surrendering to the Germans in WW2, and despite Russia's best attempts a lot of the mobiks know it. All of the video of units filming protest videos this week will be of the same units surrendering next week when they realize the only thing coming is WINTER.

The question is how they will feel when 100,000 of them have come home in cheap plywood coffins, because there isn't enough zinc? KIA running close to five hundred a day and winter is just barely thinking about making an appearance. I personally am predicting that weather and disease double that number.

This is the key point at the highest world politics/strategic level. Putin made a HORRIBLE set of initial assumptions, about both Ukraine and his own military. These assumptions led to a plan so awful that it opened a trap door of epically, are you kidding me level bad outcomes under the entire Russian state. And then at every decision point, except possibly the retreat from Kyiv, Putin has doubled down AGAIN. After the retreat from Kyiv Putin could have retreated to the 2/24 lines and probably gotten a cease fire on the basis of let us pretend it is 2/23 and this never happened. He didn't. He mobilized, with catastrophic incompetence, rather than dumping the L/DPR and just trying to hold Crimea. Now he is systematically feeding what is little is left of his better troops into a meat grinder in Kherson under impossible conditions. Contrast this with the war between China and Vietnam in 1979. The Chinese realized it wasn't going well, withdrew to their own border and memory holed the whole thing so well that not one percent of the world population outside of this forum and/or a military staff college have the slightest idea it ever happened. Putin is just not the high functioning guy he was even five years ago. That or his hold on power is MUCH more fragile than we think, and he just can't survive admitting to a mistake.

They don't have the birth rate and population to support it anymore.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base/ By the end of August, the documents show, the force was depleted, hit by death, desertions and combat stress. Two units – accounting for about a sixth of the total force – were operating at 20% of their full strength.