dan/california

The above is why I think 2/24 borders with EU and NATO membership is the best scenario for Ukraine. In the LPR/DPR and Crimea that is probably the majority outlook or close to it. I grant you the Russians are trying get literally every male between 15 and 60 killed in this war, but that isn't going to put the rest of the population in these godforsaken "republics" in happy mood.

There seems to be an entire mineshaft underneath the bottom of the barrel at this point.

Some sort guidance on those rockets they are currently aiming with not much more than prayer would seem high on the list. Maybe adapt the laser guidance nose cone from the U.S. 70 mm rocket. or run up the bits to attach actual laser guided 70 MM rockets to a SU-25. Even if wasn't very flexible and had to be coordinated with a specified FO or drone unit in advance it would be better than the current lofting technique. I mean that has to have a CEP of well over a kilometer. And yes I realize it is actually an oval.

No IFV in the world can stand up to a Javelin of an Nlaw without APS, which seems to be a grade of tech beyond what we think the Ukrainians can deal with, or we are really worried about the Russians getting ahold of it. MRAPS are way better than pick up trucks for getting from 15 miles out to one mile out from contact undamaged.

Complete speculation to follow... Ukraine is probably not incorporating its newly raised troops into the territorial defense, but incorporating them into the regular army, with cadres from the same regular army. The territorials might last in line for everything as the newly raised "regular" troops are trained and equipped. This works as long as no one gets the idea it would be convenient to have the territorials do real high intensity fighting. A mistake they have made at least once. Ukraine is clearly trying to train its newly raised regular units as long as it possibly can, and is willing to spend blood at the current front to allow that. I do have a strong impression that one new brigade equipped with upgraded t72s from Poland either has been or is about to be committed to action around Kherson. Presumably as an exploitation force so hopefully we will see more of it soon.

The latest ISW map of Kherson shows the Ukrainian strategy of endless nibbling is having results. They could range the airfield with tube artillery soon. I suspect the Russians will find that inconvenient.

Better news, maybe?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ukrainian-military-unit-russia-artillery-1365021/ Good article, not particularly cheery. Author is a former Marine.

It truly can go either way. I am pretty sure they are not showing up to say nothing. People just need to keep up the pressure to say the right thing. The Russians have pushed themselves past culmination, and into or at least near outright collapse at least twice. They left Kyiv at a dead run, and didn't exactly retreat gracefully from Kharkiv. The Ukrainians really haven't lost any meaningful ground since the first month. I do think the Russians are doing better in the Donbas because their rail based supply system is working, but some new NATO equipment could fix that at any time. At this point you have to assume the Ukr General Staff know what they are doing. They are holding the salient and Severodonetsk because they think it hurts the Russians more than it hurts them. Kherson feels much more like Kyiv or Kharkiv. The Ukrainians keep hammering things well behind the lines. They have REPEATEDLY hammered the command structure. There is real partisan pressure all the way back to Melitipol. And the Ukrainian troops just keep pushing and probing for weak spots all the time. Most of the Russian force is DPR/LPR conscripts with crap everything. I really think the whole thing in Kherson can fold at any time. The one thing I don't understand is why the bridges are still there. You have brought that up before as well. But again, at this point the Ukr command gets a presumption of competence.

I also think that Putin's insistence on scraping out the bottom of the barrel with a chisel. and then throwing the cut up pieces of the barrel into the fight after the scrapings will make the collapse worse when it comes. Third and fourth tier conscripts with two weeks training and 70+ years old gear are not even going to try to hold the line when when the units beside them and/or the supply lines behind them collapse.

You can see the exact moment they saw/heard the drone.

Better link

https://wartranslated.com/why-is-igor-girkin-still-alive/ A great, long article about Girkin. I would argue it supports my opinion that what is happening in Ukraine now is driven in large part by the internal contest for power in Russia post Putin. But I am wrong a lot.....

Too funny!

Could BFC do a premium version of the game that included a set of the stamps and route part of it to a Ukrainian charity? It would be a heck of an excuse to release an update to Black Sea that better reflected Ukrainian forces. I would buy it in a heart beat.

Have the Taliban managed to be unpleasant enough to unify the opposition, at least sort of?

If we sent a couple of heavy brigades and To Ukraine, and started firing cruise missiles like we meant the problem of what to give the Ukrainian army goes away in about a week, and Africa gets to eat....

Yes, Realize that, but it will take that long, plus how ever long we procrastinate on STARTING. The fact that it is a slow process is a reason to get going, not obfuscate for eighteen months. And yes I am advocating the aforementioned parallel lines. Go absolutely all in on automating the process. This is at at LEAST the sixth or eighth time sine WW1 that the Pentagon or its equivalents has said "holy bleep a real war uses a lot of ammo". Might be time to learn the lesson.

So we COULD admit that the only likely opponent for a land war in Europe is currently wrecking itself in eastern Ukraine, and send Ukrainians everything they actually need, so they can finish wrecking it without losing a whole generation of fighting age men. What they need is about a third of the hardware in Europe. If the Russians leave Ukraine just beaten they are not coming back for a while. So unless you anticipate shipping most of your army to Taiwan sometime soon, The only real limit on how much hardware you can send them is how much you have. And if the Russians do completely lose their minds and attack Poland or the Baltics, it is Pretty clear their air force wouldn't last a day, and the rest of their army wouldn't last two more when GBUs started raining down in quantity. There is just no rational reason not send the Ukrainians everything they can physically use. Starting with the entire artillery park.

I fully agree that everything needs to feed back to a networked command system that produces a unit/force wide Borg spotting picture, but against higher speed threats I don't think even current/near future networks are going to be able to pass the sensor info back to a centralized system and chew on it. Doubly so in an environment that has an enormous amount of energy bouncing around the entire electromagnetic spectrum, most of it with ill intent. Just to be clear the system needs to deal with both drones, ATGMs, and maybe even main gun rounds. Current APS systems basically assume an intercept within a few tens of yards at most, and that the remains of the missile will impact the protected vehicle. That envelope needs to be pushed out further if it possibly can be, so that mission critical systems are not degraded by the fragments of intercepted missiles. Maybe retain the current Trophy style systems as a final line of defense while the RWS mounted system engages threats further out. Jamming these systems, HARM missiles, balancing the risk of radars on vs radar off, is all going to be part of the game. There are just going to have to be a lot more layers in the protective bubble if you are going to keep your vehicles alive. I really think is great advantage to a heavy unit that pushes as much capability forward to the line of contact as possible. But it needs real modeling of different possibilities and systems. And this whole mess has to be coordinated with friendly drone systems. Somebody is going to have to build real prototypes of different architectures, and shoot real missiles at them. Maybe this problem really is too hard, and the height of military technology is going to be a REALLY high tech gillie suit. But maybe we can make a few guesses when the next iteration of the game comes out.

I am getting a vision of Kinophile mis-adventuring his way all the clear to trench in a "quiet" section of the front, right before it becomes NOT quiet.

Do we have ANY figures on how many shells per month the Russians have? Had? Can build?

Nato just needs new production lines for artillery shells, and actual artillery pieces, GMLRS too. We don't want to lose this war or the next one because skipped on the simple stuff. Hard to be more interested in the fancy bits than I am, but there is a real chance that in an even fight all the fancy stuff gets neutralized on both sides. All the countries yelling about maintaining a war reserve need to look around. If you aren't shipping it to Taiwan TODAY, you should be shipping it to Ukraine TODAY, because the chances of a truly serious fight elsewhere just doesn't seem that high. If the Russian army finishes killing itself in Ukraine there really isn't a second country threatening a general European war. And yes I include the U.S. in that.

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russian-underperforming-military-standish-interview/31891133.html This one of the guys from ISW, so it can't be much more authoritative unless someone in either the Ukr or U.S. military wants to actually talk. Short version is send more hardware, the heavier and longer range the better. Ukr does not currently have the weight of metal for a real counter offensive. I guess we are testing that around Kherson as we speak. Maybe the Poles gave them a whole new something on the quiet.

Looks like the Ukrainians are making a real push for Kherson while the Russians are bleeding themselves white in the Donbas!