dan/california

Pilot was either suicidal or thought he was in a safe zone. He was straight and level at least 500ft with no flares. I do hope the Ukrainians captured him.

Interestingly they had the highest tank and AFV losses today of the last several weeks. Although the Ukr report doesn't make clear where. But they pushing or getting pushed somewhere.

Did I mention you need to run for Parliament?

That is a FANTASTIC thread. But could we please ask google to translate the whole thing, instead of hitting the button over and over again. And yes I realize I am complaining about UI issues on technological miracle... Edit; bleep me no sooner do I finish reading than LLF supplies it in full.

FINALLY!

Speaking of assessing the Ukrainian and Russian forces, is there any public info about how the poles and the Baltics intelligence services thought about the two sides? I still firmly believe the U.S. problem was reading the Russian General Staffs email system and believing what the Russians were telling themselves..

By deeply he means a solid 100 km from the front line. That is beyond the posted range of M30/M31 GMLRS by a good ten or fifteen kilometers. And I DO NOT think they brought the launcher within 10k of the front line. So either GMLRS really does have a lot more range than listed, or the Ukrainians were using something else.

Lukashenko has been in power for decades. He is a classic autocratic strongman. But he has never had the raw military power to threaten anyone outside his borders, and has mostly had the sense not to try. Until about 18 months ago he has played a high wire act between Putin and the EU and really did have almost absolute power in Belarus. But his last attempt at a managed election blew up in his face and a full bore "color revolution" got going. There were 100,000s of protesters in in Minsk screaming for him to leave. He was only able to hang on with massive Russian assistance. That assistance has essentially made him Putin's vassal. This allowed Putin to essentially station Russian troops anywhere he wanted to in Belarus. The attack on Kyiv was based from there. The only thing he hasn't done exactly according to Putin's orders is actually commit his army to the war in Ukraine. He hasn't done that because the only two possible results are his army rebels and replaces him, or surrenders in mass. He leaned a little too hard into being sure his army could not replace him. It turns out they are not capable of much else either. The latest wrinkle is reports of him putting actual Russian officers in important position in his military. Which I suspect means it will eventually try to do something. Every evaluation of if the Belarus military I have read though says it will fail miserably at whatever it does try. Also multiple reports that Belarus is shipping all its artillery ammo to the Donbas front for the Russians to use. Which may mean that the aforementioned newly installed Russian officers wrote back to Moscow that trying to get the Belarusians to do anything was not going to go well.

HIMARS/GMLRS is letting Ukraine work a target list they have been developing since 2014. The LPR/DPR have built an entire military infrastructure that assumed Ukraine did not have precision deep strike. The arrival of that capability is going to be extraordinarily painful for the DPR?LPR forces.

Second video makes the trajectory clearer.

Well some combination of SOMETHING just pretty much eradicated the Russian forces on Snake Island, which was basically a big nest of air defense systems. So it is entirely possible that not everything Ukraine has has been disclosed.

The ones made in a hungover haze on Monday morning would worry me even more.

Pretty sure it was a SAM system, and it only almost hit the launcher. Though I also suspect the crew used their contracts to wipe their pants and just started walking home.

Well that would seem to reduce the odds of Belarus opening another front any time soon. Edit: I bet the storage conditions in Belarus were great, too.

Google maps and Cyrillic alphabet are fighting me, but I think the above implies the Ukr are making real progress towards the dam above Kherson.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/24/world/russia-ukraine-war-news#ukraine-says-it-will-withdraw-from-the-city-of-sievierodonetsk Headline pretty much says it...

We don't need a moving train, but a big fight over a derailed one would be awesome. Just some dismounts now, happily...

Going to throw this out one more time, Battlefront should sell Ukrainian stamps. I think a LOT of people would buy them from a U.S. source they already trust with their credit card number. E.U. news is FANTASTIC, and irrevocable proof that Putin has lost this war. This also excellent, and they need to do everything they can to get it all over Russian outlets/channels in full bloody color to remind all those poor Russian fools that draft dodging, even high risk draft dodging, is the better option.

Out of likes, so I will say great post. Since I have started typing I will add that Ukrainian General Staff are bloody minded geniuses, they have played a near perfect hand with the forces they have. The unit above is being used to the very best of it its capabilities, not pushed to do something it can't and suffer massive casualties. I am absolutely certain that with enough aid to to change mix and balance of forces the the Ukrainian General Staff will KEEP being brilliant with new capabilities.

All of the above points out how different the world is when people just aren't scared of the Russian army. The world can be a MUCH better place for decades if the The West can hold its nerve, triple the aid, and conclusively win this war. Every piece of hardware on the planet need to be headed to Ukraine of Taiwan. Anybody else that misbehaves can be dealt with after the Russian army in Ukraine is smoking wreckage and sunflower fertilizer.

Some of the artillery people on the forum expressed concern that the 777 might have some of the same issues. It is a very well designed piece of equipment, but perhaps it actually needs to weigh another ton or two. Of course in a war as hot as this one if you can keep the gun and crew alive long enough to wear it out you have done rather well.

I think that accuracy is a solved problem at this point. The Caesar system Drops that base plate, and ALL reports are that it hits the first time and every time pretty much. As to the relative durability of tracked vs wheeled, we have this unfortunate test under way.

Holy bleep, did Scholz just pick a side?!?!

The trade off between wheeled and tracked SPGs has a lot of moving parts. The tracked systems have better tactical mobility. They can stop shoot and and displace more quickly, although vs a well thought system like Caesar this advantage is not that large. They are more resistant to shell splinters and small arms. The truck mounted systems have much better operational mobility and a lower logistics burden. A wheeled vehicle has a higher road speed, which helps both with clearing the last firing position, and makes the spot where they will stop to shoot next at least somewhat less predictable. My two cents is that the advantages of tracked mobility are less than they first appear unless you have a large scale system of tracked ammo supply vehicles. That can be done but it isn't cheap or easy. Otherwise the tracked SPGs are not straying far from their wheeled supply trucks, and if we have learned anything in this war it is that artillery is utterly dependent on its supply lines. My inclination is that I would rather have more wheel based systems rather than less tracked ones if the total system cost difference is significant . Edit: Didn't mean to include the upper quote in this post, editor won't let me take it out, sorry.