dan/california

JonS is the real expert here, but i want to throw in a little semi informed speculation. I think there were two batteries/sections shooting, and one of them was better than the other one. I agree with Steve that the first shell that hit the actual building was guided. But we won't know if was a vengeful God or a laser beam until someone tells us. Given that they got the General, maybe they will, eventually. So just going thru the film hit by hit. It really looks like there are two overlapping circles. The first one is 100% on target with the a second shell landing at the end of the copse of trees the building is in, and then after about 8 impacts rounds start landing in the field. I think rounds keep landing in the field after they stop hitting the copse of trees. My theory is that the intel was good enough to get an absolute max priority fire mission from everything that could reach. Either they were attempting a ToT barrage from two different locations, or if you are on team Steve regarding the guided round the other battery held back by 10 seconds or so. This would be to be sure no one ducked before the guided round hit. I have no clue if The Ukr is up to that level of coordination at this exact moment. Or If the FDC just put everything they had that could reach on the target and it all worked out.

And this gentlemen is why we hang out here, chapter and verse from an absolute pro.

No one has stood stronger, not once in the last 5,000 years.

They closed the loop between the intel and the shooters, and got steel on the target, that is never a bad day.

Holding an important Flank with DPR conscripts sounds exactly like the Romanians and Hungarians the Germans had holding their lines outside of Stalingrad. Are just not any books at Russian military schools? Are they incapable flipping a historical map around and wondering what the other side was thinking?

Two different batteries shooting? one of them with MUCH newer gear? Maybe even NATO 155 from one of them? They clearly felt the target was worth smashing

My guess is they do that anyway. They have ALL the pieces. And the lesson of the last two decades is that people with nukes don't get the bleep bombed out of them......

This is not an AFV, it is a better tractor, they get tractors....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/opinion/russia-ukraine-biden-aid.html NYT coming around too. It is sinking in everywhere that the Russians don't have some secret second army that actually knows what it is doing.

It is worth pointing out that the pressure that such a threat creates exists on both sides. Massively, and publicly increasing the risk of a nuclear exchange to cover up his own enormous errors in this war might be the straw that breaks the camels back in Moscow. No rational person in Russia gives a bleep about the DPLR. They are an expensive bleeding sore that won't heal. To mix metaphors horribly. The more complicated question is whether of not Ukraine is better off leaving them as Russias problem. The brutalized, brainwashed, and no doubt very bitter population of those unhappy excuses for countries are not a prize worth winning. Ukraine is far better off letting Putin keep them in return for agreeing to EU and NATO membership.

The drills and evolution of a well trained infantry unit in urban combat are quite interesting. But the enormous operational and even strategic import of that video is good Russian infantry is taking losses in Mariupol sixty something days into this war when the Russians need them DESPERATELY, in every other sector. That is an enormous success for the Ukrainians, almost impossible to overstate.

I simply cannot think of a stronger contrast anywhere in history than they way Afghan army rejected Western training, and the way the Ukrainians absorbed whole libraries of it for lack of a better term. And this from essentially the same trainers. The trainers certainly went to exactly the same schools.

And sadly I found this immediately after I wrote my last post. Brave men are dying to put Push Putin back.

Probably tradecraft 101 to use fake names on a list like that. And doubly so if they recently separated from their home countries' military. Quintuply so if, as I have strongly suspected since about day four of this war, there are entire units of Polish/Balt/Czech special forces/ airborne types that all decided to "enter civilian life" as a unit about February 20th. I saw a report in the last few days that an extraordinary number of the British trainers who have served in Ukraine since 2014 have showed up as well. I honestly can't remember if that was on the board or not. I would expect a great many artillery branch from the same sources to come in with the NATO 155mm guns. You can't exactly tell a Pole from a Ukrainian by looking.

It was also correct...

The exact force levels on both sides are subject to the fog of war, to put it mildly. But the way the relative power balance between the two armies is changing is clear as day.The Ukrainians are getting a massive ongoing infusion of Nato gear, and have a huge batch of reservist training up to march east bearing it. And every sign there is another round of reservists behind them who will march east with even more and better NATO gear. The Russians simply have no hope any large infusion of even minimally trained troops before September, when the new conscript class might be loosely considered trained. But the Russian casualties have been so bad it isn't even clear who is going to train or command those conscripts, if they even show up. This is an extremely long winded way of saying that right now, this minute is the best force balance against the Ukrainians the Russians are going to have for the foreseeable future. It doesn't seem to be enough. I will simply quote Von Runstedt's advice to German General Staff when it became clear that the D-day had succeeded and there was no chance of pushing the allied forces back into the sea. "Make peace, you fools".

Imagine how the guys betting their rear ends on this rolling junkyard feel...

If we are being honest here 85% of the vehicles on both sides are various degrees of obsolete. Nothing in this war can can take a hit from a Javelin, or a Kornet. Most of it seems vulnerable to far less capable systems. So any AFV driver that wants to live is driving bloody carefully.

The M113s are obviously obsolete for actual fire fights. I do assume they can haul more mortar ammo more places than 97% of the Ukrainian truck fleet, and that is not nothing.

You have a point, someone who is merely incompetent might get the job. The Russian performance would improve vastly if so. Except Putin can't appoint someone competent to that job, because their first act would be to shoot Putin and make themselves Czar. They could and would truthfully state it was for the good of the Russian people. It would no doubt be rather nice for the new Czar, too, but I digress.

I suspect Gerasimov was told to get his rear end to the front, and produce a breakthrough or die trying. Here is hoping that we get indisputable evidence of the new U.S. MLRS system in his funeral announcement.

The sane half of the Republican party is on board with supporting Ukraine. Mitch McConnell is on record saying give the Ukrainians anything they need. I think it will pass, albeit with the usual hysterics or system seems to require.

Cross posted with the fox dude.

This could have immediate effects...