dan/california

I tried to get Steve to talk about the new game, I did, I swear it.

The ONLY rationale I can come up with for the Russian's inability to disperse rationally under endlessly repeated Ukrainian attacks on concentrated targets is that NOTHING happens once troops are out of sight of a company grade officer. It might even be a battalion level officer. Keeping everyone close enough together that a major can walk around and boot people in the ^$#^ hourly must be absolutely necessary. The nothing getting done otherwise probably extends to complete intoxication, and desertion, not necessarily in that order. In addition to the now NORMAL daily loss of well over BTG per day, The Russian UAV losses have spiked enormously. Is this because the Ukr have gotten better at something, or because the Russians are so desperate they are using them in ways that they are far more likely lose them.

Double post

The ONLY rationale I can come up with for the Russian's inability to disperse rationally under endlessly repeated Ukrainian attacks on concentrated targets is that NOTHING happens once troops are out of sight of a company grade officer. It might even be a battalion level officer. Keeping everyone close enough together that a major can walk around and boot people in the ^$#^ hourly must be absolutely necessary. The nothing getting done otherwise probably extends to complete intoxication, and desertion, not necessarily in that order.

That is not what the oaths they had preciously taken to the United States Constitution said. The Civil war was about one thing, and one thing only. The top one % in the Confederacy got and stayed filthy rich because you don't have to pay your workers when you can torture them instead. That is what chattel slavery was. The top tier managed to bring the rest of the south with them by the use of the 1900s equivalent of a certain TV network that rhymes with box. It took a ~million dead and another 100 years of miscellaneous unpleasantness to almost clean up the mess.

Are you ready to start a thread on what the next modern game might look like? In particular, and related to the above, do most scenarios just have to assume that both side unmanned ISR bubbles have more or less annihilated each other in order to have an interesting game? The lesson of the Ukraine War seems to be that if one side has a drone in communication with 155/120mm mortars, and the other side doesn't that pretty much decides a given tactical action right then and there. So to build a decent scenario, either both sides have it, and things play rather quickly, or neither side does. And it is worth pointing out that for the most part neither side in the current war are using drones that are anywhere close to the state of the art. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/the-spy-in-the-sky-that-sees-backwards-in-time/21809102 There are MUCH better sensor packages out there that to my (limited and public only) knowledge have not been deployed in Ukraine by either side. The Nato strategic level ISR that is being supplied to Ukraine is a different question. But for the most part they are not circling directly over the Donbas and passing intelligence in real time.

Given the extent to which this war had confirmed artillery as the king of the battelfield, maybe just make a whole new game. CMBS battery commander, or CMBS forward observer, whatever layer if the system makes a playable game? If any?

Can't somebody run up the bits and pieces to get these guys guided munitions?!

I think there are broader implications though, beyond the fact that the intersection of two random gravel roads in a Ukrainian cornfield might NOT have the best data on google earth. It points towards the fact that for a first tier military with undegraded comms spotting rounds are just not going to be thing anymore. edit dropped the not, my typing is truly hopeless.

Reposting for clarity, apologies for fat fingering the first attempt

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1523025055273619456/photo/1

Trent perhaps having a moment of insight or good information here.

100% guessing, but I think the Poles gave the Ukrainians some SIGNIFICANT AA assets, and the Ukrainian offensive kicked off the minute that and enough NATO 155 were in place.

But does it say they captured it, or that they just have a report from there? Captured is a big deal, a report is just the SBU doing its job. Edit Cross posted with Huba's answer...

Maybe it is translation issue, and it is just an intelligence report about Russian casualties? I follow Mackay because he usually produces the most intelligible transcripts/interpretations of the Ukr military stuff. But maybe he slanted this one the wrong way.

Ukrainian target practice continues around Kherson.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burchak,+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine,+72010/@47.3710236,34.1884494,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x40dd1ed2601fb603:0x44d5fd94351b1ea3!8m2!3d47.375382!4d35.3079101 Have the Ukrainians launched TWO major counter attacks?

The PH 2000, and the Caesars, will make a VERY nice hammer to go with the anvil of a ~100 towed 777s.

Russian positions around Kharkiv are just melting, and the coordinates above for strike on those two SPGs is halfway too Kupiyansk, . Putin's victory day present may be the complete rout of this excuse for an army...

Which of course is what the german self propelled gun is. But the impressive max range, ROF, and time get in set up and then gone all probably matter more than the ideal range MRSI

If he tries to get in it his own army will depose him. They have seen the this war and want no part of it. We need to up our offer and get them to depose him anyway. It just wrecks Putin completely if Lukanhesko goes down. I mean several million per officer and a passport from any western country you want would be dirt cheap if it wrapped this thing up.

#Avdiivka for some reason pulls up a zillion Russian trolls on twitter. Any obvious reason they would point the troll farms there?

Any game/module/battle pack updates you could throw out to pull this discussion back on topic, a little? Edit Otherwise I might have to revisit my theory that a Polish-Ukrainian Union is the easy way to pull Ukraine into the EU and Nato. Think about it, anything that would make make Scholz and Putin pop an artery at the same time has to be a good idea.

The other piece of "why now ?" is the situation in Belarus. Lukanhesko had been playing Russia off against Nato for decades, literally decades, while running the country as his personal fief. It was only in the last couple of years that he had to pick and and essentially subordinate himself to Putin almost completely for the backing to stay in power. That let Putin start ~110 miles from Kyiv, instead of several times that. I am fairly sure that helped convince Putin he could do this quickly enough to get away with it. A brilliant combination of a blown dam, sheer courage, volunteer drone pilots, and NLAWs held him off for long enough for the rest of Ukraine, and NATO to get themselves set for the war. And it suddenly became clear that both plan B, and most of the logistics even for plan A were mostly hand wavium, and vodka flavored hot air. Kicking off a real uprising in Belarus remains THE best way to just END this, by the way. May 9th would be a great time.

A battle group plus per day, every single day. Arguably this is more like TWO...