dan/california

Ukraine might want to see if theses guys prefer surrender or the tungsten rain. Seems like they might be prepped to make the right choice.

NATO's absurd sensitivity about top tier MBTs and IFVs is getting a lot of brave Ukrainians killed. Allow me to state for the 723 time that if the Russians wanted to fight NATO, the tens of thousands of casualties that they have already had are orders of magnitude more casas belli than belli than any government in human history, much less one with as few guardrails as Putin's, has ever required.

That is an outstanding idea. A modifier that reflects the strength of a forces NCOs and degree of tactical flexibility. Unlike the leadership modifiers this is set for a given unit for the whole game. Forces that have a very bad stat for this just go to bleep when out of command, maybe they stop responding to orders entirely, or do so only after long delays and with bad morale. Maybe the bad morale doesn't apply if they aren't told to move. This would also incentivize killing officers and things with comm equipment when fighting these forces, which certainly seems to be the real world tactic. It would make them effectively more brittle effectively and allow really good execution, pun sort of intended, on the highest value assets to just render the whole force almost paralyzed. The iron level version might just have units with the worst modifiers execute their last orders received while in command and just stop, until they are back in command. You have to get an officer or a radio over there period. Playing this force at this level would be an acquired taste to put it mildly, but as a sim....

Is the salient sticking out in the north east going to be manned by punishment battalions, or do you have to pay to get assigned there because it will be so easy to surrender?

By any standard in Human history Poland has done its part, and two or three other countries. Heavy Weapons, refugees fuel, name it. If the rest of Europe had done as much Ukrainian forces would be on the outskirts of Sebastopol. Edit: the Baltics have been fantastic, too, but they just don't have the same throw weight.

Excellent news!

A surprising amount of truth on Russian TV.

The best joke I have ever read in the Economist, "There is obviously something terribly wrong with the French education system, it produces Frenchmen". As applied to France it is just a harmless bit of fun. But if you apply it to Russia...the whole society has deep, severe issues, the kind it take at least a generation to move in any meaningful way.

I apologize for being a broken record on this, but you just made an excellent case that the attack on Bakmuht has nothing to do with winning the war, and indeed is probably actively helping to lose it. Thus it serves some other purpose to someone in position to order it in the first place, and to order it to keep going in defiance of all military logic. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that the person giving those orders thinks that taking Bakmuht will of great advantage in the post war/post Putin power struggle. And that was attempt to kill ballistic missiles in the boost phase. Drones are a very different target. Yes, and every single one of them should be in Kherson, TODAY. SOMETHING different seems to be happening. How to model it is an interesting question. A chance to switch their preexisting motivation to fanatic under certain scenario defined conditions if that isn't unbearable to code, maybe? See above.

Ukrainians are giving a masterclass in trolling.

A better way to kill drones is is the new golden goose for defense contractors. The people that figure it out are buying new boats. There are a lot of systems in development using twenty to one hundred kilowatt lasers on various trucks or Strykers. Is anyone trying to hang one on a C-130 or similar with an integrated radar that could knock these things down over a broader area? There have also been one or two videos of drones hunting drones in various improvised ways, I assume that is in frantic development as well.

If the Ukrainians have ISR in Kherson that is so good that they can get hit a a specific priority target like this guy, as he is trying to cross what should be the most protected asset in the operational theater, I have to think they are still on track to wrap this up. Not going to speculate on the accuracy of the particular clip, but we have talked a lot about the importance of the ISR/fires bubble. The clip above would be example A. You CANNOT let the the other guy have a capable drone up with a competent artillery battery in the loop. The U.S. needs to send Ukraine some, maybe even most, of the new shorad systems that are just now being accepted for service. There are some fancy new laser toys mucking about in the Arizona proving grounds as well. I would simply point out that if it kills Russian drones in Ukraine it passes the test. More generally we are STILL trying to boil the frog slowly. What we need to do is blow the kitchen all over the neighbors yard and break the Russians army's will to stay in this thing.

Capt, just as an aside, what is your opinion on a VISA ban? Do you think the increased pressure on the regime justifies the fact that it would make it harder for both draft dodgers, and actual regime opponents to escape Russia? Please note i do not claim draft dodgers and regime opponents are the same thing.

https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471 It is rare for me to take more than three days to read a book. The one above taking the better part of a year because I can only take it in microdoses, not joking. The excellent author has some of his actual classes on youtube/podcast though. I recommend them, and him, highly. It doesn't help that the bleeping Russians seem determined to add a couple of chapters.

We also don't have good casualty figures. They may be coming back east/south across the river with half or less of what they went west/north with. Indeed the one thing the Russian seems good at is taking casualties. There are multiple conversations on war translated that flatly state their units have taken seventy, eighty, evn ninety percent casualties. It almost defies accepted military logic that what is left of these units is still on the field. Somehow starting out so awful, and with so little cohesion makes them more resistant to complete dissolution. This also why I think even Ukraine's casualty estimates for Russian losses are probably low. The Russians have fed more people to the meat grinder than ought to be possible.

Don't drive sleepy in Ukraine.

At least two of the major factors in play. 1. Kherson is billiard table flat, and with less trees than other parts of Ukraine. It is the worst case scenario for the sneaky and then fast that the Ukrainians are good at. 2. Due to HIMARS and the way the river divides the Russian forces, plus the epic lack of cover mentioned above. the AFU has been winning the artillery duel rather handily. They have let that play out for a while., a LOT of Grad and Uragan batteries have gone boom. So one reason that is good for Ukraine, and one that is less so.

The Russians DO NOT want to fight NATO. If they did the ~70,000 KIA they have already had, a very large percentage of them killed with NATO hardware, is orders of magnitude more casa belli than anyone who wanted to fight has ever needed.

The Russians are not going to get the point that they have lost this war until and unless the power goes out in Moscow, and stays out for a month. Ideally this would be done by an untraceable cyber attack in the middle of a winter cold snap. Ukraine and the West should just deny any involvement and make nasty jokes about Russian "maintenance". It really sounds like Kherson is headed towards the final crack up. Apparently the pontoon bridge went boom.

The forum needs some info from the front, or some info about the new game. only one of those is directly controlled by any of our members, to the best of my knowledge. So for the love of %%%* can we get a bone? Edit: My God my spelling is awful.....

The ~300 billion in Russian assets frozen in Western central banks come immediately to mind. It won't cover anything like the whole bill, but should make enough of a start to get Ukraine into a positive recovery cycle IF they really win, and IF the Russians stop launching random missiles at power stations. I will point out that Germany and Japan managed impressive postwar recoveries after being absolutely flattened, and they had to deal with a great deal of hard feelings and guilt. No one is mad at the Ukrainians except the Russians, and they are not going to be consulted on this matter.

I think there are a lot of positive trendsBut that is a reason to do even more, not less. Not just more, but much more. Do not give the Russians a chance to recover and find/train more competent people at any level. Run them clean out of Ukraine and crush their army for a generation. And if the Russians do get a clue somewhere maximum support will give the Ukrainians the ability to deal with it. The Russian attacks on the Ukrainian electrical infrastructure are the worst sort of state terrorism, and everything possible should be done to stop them. But they have almost no effect on the military situation. They are just one more reason to have the eventual peace make The Treaty of Versailles look like a slap on the wrist in terms crippling long term sanctions and reparations. Russia should never see another computer chip until and unless they damned near disarm.

I saw a quote from some bit of the Ukrainian military stating the casualty ratio Russian/AFU was about 6.5/1. They went on to say that if they could get it up to 8/1 or 10/1 they thought the Russian morale would simply shatter. I would add that the Russian artillery is approaching a failure point. Between Himars on their ammo, Himars on the guns, especially the rocket launchers, the amount of ammo they have wasted, and simply wearing out their gun tubes the Russian's ability to maintain the volume of fire that is keeping them in this is about to go away. Once that really starts to bite my prediction is that the Russians will be out of everything except Crimea in a month.

They have to fly a straight and level back and forth flight path that is commonly referred to as 'Target practice 101"