dan/california

Ukraine and Poland grow ever closer.

Hey Steve, any thoughts on when we might get a module for CMBS, CM The Sunflower War, or CM the Future of War to help us start teasing the various factors apart?

Did some people get a lot closer to revealing sources and methods than they were supposed to?

Yeah, turning Ukraine into a garrison state whose entire reason for being, and means of support is too act as NATO's forward bulwark seems like not a great success. Oh, and they will hate Russia with a violent passion for five plus generations. So much winning....

One of my greater worries about this whole disaster is that Putin is sitting around watching his own government's propaganda, and believing it.

I will bet bet a great deal of money that one of the places this crisis ends is Japan becoming a nuclear power. They are the opposite of stupid, and see how countries with the bomb get treated vs countries that don't have it. The have the plutonium, my bet is it wouldn't take them six months. I wouldn't be surprised if we are two months into that six month program.

This war has made Bakyar a player in the global arms market, they seem more than smart enough to keep climbing that ladder. He will be Prime Minister some day, if he lives through this war.....

There is still a trick to that scenario, or at least there was when I played it. It is by the way the best scenario ever, period. It is just fun to play. There is a spot where you can bring the AAVs grenade launcher to bear on the primary concentration of insurgents that is just out of RPG range. The AAV has a LOT of 40mm ammo. You can just hose down that whole street and the buildings on one side of it until the problem goes away. No, I didn't figure that out the first time thru.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/exclusive-us-plans-sell-armed-drones-ukraine-coming-days-sources-2022-06-01/ Not 100% sure I believe it. Also not sure how survivable they would be against current Russian air defenses.

Except the training should have started weeks ago. There was just no good reason to make the Ukrainians fight at a disadvantage for most of the summer over some made up escalation issue when there were already ten thousand plus Russian casualties around Kyiv. Really hoping the Poles have another rabbit in their hat like the self propelled 155 that announced 36 hours before they were sending rounds down range in the Donbas.

It is KIA sadly, with several hundred wounded, I can't get the whole tweet to display correctly. Even with the difference in the way the two sides are fighting though it points out how staggering the Russian wounded numbers must be. The very credible Ukr estimate of Russian KIA is NEVER less than 150. SO their wounded numbers could exceed A THOUSAND on some days, maybe most days. Attacking is harder than defending, especially the way the Russians do it.

But I was just psyching up to dive in....

So we do we think that is half? a third? a quarter? of the Russians casualties?

We talked quite a bit ~300 pages ago about various parts of the Russian periphery remembering how much they don't like being Russian as the Russian Army just destroys itself in Ukraine. This might, emphasize might, be an early warning of that breaking out. Edit, AKD typed faster, and with better info too. And yes the LPR/DPR have something worse than the worst of both worlds.

Says about 95% of the right things. I would have liked to see something more specific about better SAMS, but I am being picky. And let's face it, I think anything short of selling Ukraine cruise missiles as they cross the Polish/Ukrainian border, in the air, for a dollar each is a half measure. I mean they have the right to blow up specified coordinates of their own country, don't they?

I read that ten seconds ago too, I think You just answered my question about whether or not you are the same Bill...

These went from announcement to sending shells down range in about thirty six hours. Hopefully HIMARS will do the same thing very soon.

Obrien notes the probable fall off in Russian vehicle losses recently. I have noted this before and was really worried it indicated the Russians were getting their bleep together, convincing their infantry to do its job, and so on. His much cheerier take is that they are running out of vehicles to lose, and are therefore just having to be far more careful with them. That is why they couldn't exploit it when that TD unit cracked at Popsana. They just didn't have enough armor left for a real attack. I would say this significantly reinforces Steve's thesis that the Russian army really is pretty close to just cracking up.

I strongly believe a lot of the timing of he attack on Ukraine was driven by events in Belarus. Lukanhesko spent decades managing to play off Russia and the EU while maintaining more or less absolute and independent power at home. He ran out of rope ~18 months ago and had to ask Putin for real help. That help came with so many strings it almost amounted to annexation. I think it was the ability to start the war with his forces only a hundred miles from Kyiv that convinced Putin he could achieve a quick victory. Hopefully as Russias position in Ukraine actually fails Lukashenko's choices will narrow to a lamp post and a rope, Polonium tea, or a bullet from his own pistol. Because at the moment he has made everybody mad as bleep, and his tight rope act can't go on forever.

Which is why I CANNOT understand the hesitation on sending MLRS and the other weapons the Ukrainians need to to turn the pressure on the the Russians up to eleven, and force them into a large scale retreat. Maybe they are working on some sort of "shock and awe" package announcement, but they need to get it done. I have pretty much come around to believing that the Afghanistan withdrawal was done in part to deny the Russians the ability to hit back there when the balloon went up in Ukraine.

Thats not true, they are doing an excellent job of disarming themselves.....

This video this the first clip I have seen in the whole three months of someone actually adjusting something on an artillery fuse.

Ukraine needs to trade Crimea for Russia agreeing to Ukraine joining the EU, and NATO. I realize nobody likes this idea, but short of taking Moscow, and doing something medieval with Putin's corpse this is the thing that would create a stable peace. The other issue with taking back Crimea is that I don't think Ukraine can deal with an unhappy populace that size and retain uncontested Western support. Putting down riots inherently looks bad on TV. The FSB most certainly knows this, and I am sure they have a plan. EU/NATO membership and the 2/24 frontiers as absolutely inviolable international borders make Ukraine a prosperous, UNIFIED, successful country. Sometimes living well really is the best revenge.

It looks like the Ukrainians are finally pulling/getting pushed out of Severodonetsk.