dan/california

That exact sentence in that exact article is what I was thinking of. The Russians HAD to be slowed down so the artillery and everything else could have the time to work. Without that initial blunting of their momentum the Russian bum's rush excuse for a plan very well might have worked. At least well enough to displace the the Ukrainian government from Kyiv.

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It is that I am not making making my point very well. The point I am trying to make is that the the NATO ATGMs, most of which were sent right around the start of the war, increased the the total anti tank capability of the Ukrainian forces by a factor of five, a factor of ten? I would love to see a real analysis of what they had on Jan 1 2022, vs what they had on March 1 2022. That increase in anti tank capacity, and its brilliant incorporation into an operational plan by the Ukrainians turned a Russian war war plan that would probably have resulted in a messy invasion of Georgia style win, into an absolute bleeping fiasco. MLRS systems are probably the easiest area to open the hydrant. First and foremost The U.S. has this big shiny air force to help with deep strikes if China or Iran decided this was the moment to do something spectacularly stupid, really don't see a third possibility. I have great deal of concern about the viability of manned aircraft even five years from now, but at this moment we have an air force that nobody else can touch. Secondly the HIMARS is just a really easy system to train people on. Not that there is no training involved, but there is nothing like the training and logistical tail to equip the Ukrainians with Abrams. The Ukrainians already know what to do with rocket artillery, it isn't THAT complicated to figure out what to do with BETTER rocket artillery. The Russians seem to be on knife's edge of failure in this whole war. Why in the bleep wouldn't we run some small risks with our short term force structure to push them right off the cliff. There is a big upgrade planned for U.S. MLRS starting in ~2027 anyway. We can live with a small capability gap between now and then. Doubly so if what is now left of the Russian army is a smoking ruin in the Donbas. Every munition we send to Ukraine is killing the army it was built to kill. Biden is way too deep into this to get scared of winning now.

HIMARS is much the same situation actually. I am quite sure that if there was a massive stockpile of the Soviet legacy MLRS systems available anywhere on the planet, we would ship the Ukrainians those first. But that appears to just not be the case. So it isn't just that HIMARS/M270 is better, it is that or nothing as the Ukrainians run through the last of their legacy stocks.

I am preaching to the choir here but.... Two things about Kherson I keep thinking about, The newly stood up brigade equipped with Polish tanks is reported to be on the Kherson front, and the enormous losses in senior officers that the Russians have suffered in that area. If I understand it correctly the Senior Russian commander Kherson has been killed twice, and at least one of those strikes also took out a huge number of whole command structure. There just can't be a lot of unit cohesion left. Throw in Steves insights about the Russians stripping support from everywhere for the push in the LPR salient, and a lot of dominoes are lined up in a row.

It is worth at least throwing out that in 1917 the Russian army's capacity for suffering was not infinite. In fact they folded up pretty completely when they decided the Tsar was an idiot and was going to get them all killed. And the Tsar had far more legitimacy than Putin can ever dream of. Though I don't doubt Putin has thought about having himself crowned as the first Czar of a new dynasty daily for fifteen years. We are perhaps quite lucky he doesn't have a competent, well educated son around the age of forty.

I think there is a far amount of evidence from Ukraine that this isn't true. NATO ATGMs are why the initial bums rush got stopped. The Ukrainians had to do a lot of other stuff right, and be suicidally brave. It didn't hurt that the Russians are idiots. But is was ATGMs that just made the Russians STOP. The entire Russian plan was to NOT stop. Once they stopped Ukrainian artillery could get serious about killing them, their supply lines could be attacked and so on, and the war evolved from there. FWIW I think NLAWS were probably more important in the battle for Kyiv than Javelins. Both missiles seem too handily kill anything the Russians have, but with mostly short sight lines north of Kyiv the NLAW's much shorter time to fire trumped all the Javelin's other advantages. The MLRS will meaningfully increase the Russians attrition rate, it will apply at least some pressure further behind the Russian lines than anything else the Russians have had to deal with on a regular basis. If we assume the fight is relatively balanced currently, that is a lot.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop Haiduk, we really appreciate it!

Did he get blown up in the midst of propaganda production? Because if so there is a video out there that needs to find the light of day. Or are they so desperate for officers he was trying lead a company in the assault on Severodonetsk? Which would imply they are getting catastrophically short of officers.

Glory to Ukraine! Peace to his family! Napalm to the the Russian Ba&^$$&#$&!

Also a case study in why they need HIMARS. Two trucks worth of guided rockets and most of that base is scrap metal. I do give them points for shooting at the fuel trucks first.

This is better news.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-28 The short version-The Russians are overpaying for Severodonetsk, by a lot.

This was supposed to be in the post above....

Allow me to state again for the record that "Combat Mission, Battery Commander" is a game I would pre order instantly.

That is fantastic, now send SIXTY more! Push around Kherson looks to be real. Trying to stop this is almost certainly how that Su-35 got lost a day or three ago.

Kherson is the a pretty good sized city whose population the Russians are systematically torturing. Regardless of the operational significance of the Donbas front, 90% plus of the population has left. A successful assault on Kherson frees tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

It made more sense before Javelins, I am seeing a severe morale problem when the base's T-62 mascot enters the Ukrainian turret toss olympic qualifier.

I could not be more in favor of just shipping the Ukrainians every GMLRS rocket and launcher in Europe. But since people are not doing that fast enough how hard would it be to design/adapt some sort semi smart fuse to the rockets they are launching? a CEP of 200 to a CEP of twenty is a big deal. Of course they may be running out of these, and then we are back to ship them ALL the GMLRS.

It concerns me that the Russian casualty numbers seem to have gone down even as they are trying very hard to advance in the salient. It implies they really have improved at something. The other possibility is that because the are advancing coherently the UKR just doesn't get as good a picture of there losses. The Javelin really needs a remote tripod. If they have to get fancy, a walking remote tripod that could go the ten feet by itself.

There are times you have to take a calculated risk, and accept that life isn't perfect. Every munition we send to Ukraine is being used to kill the army that those munitions were BUILT to kill. The only other two opponents that could really stress the U.S. military are China, and Iran. And since I think the U.S. has ZERO appetite for another mideast war, that pretty much leaves China. Unless we are going to start shipping HIMARS to Taiwan in en masse, now, today, we need to start shipping them to Ukraine. If we need a whole new factory for GMLRS, then start pouring concrete. And yes I know it will take three years to get the first missile out the door of the new facility. But it will take 3 years plus how ever long we bleep around before starting on it, SO START.

Everyone is still hung up on these exceedingly fine distinctions in how we kill Russians, even as we have killed 20,000 to thirty thousand of them. Everyone is still hung up on these exceedingly fine distinctions in how we kill Russians, even as we have killed 20,000 to thirty thousand of them. if we ask Zelensky for a firm promise that he will only use them in the DPR/LPR and Ukraine proper i am sure the Ukrainians would honor it. If the Russian wanted to attack Poland they would have done it weeks ago. Apparently even they can figure out that the only two outcomes of that for them are bad and worse. Granted worse is bad for the whole planet.