dan/california

Given the large number of Javelins the UKR have now, and reportedly a lot of other infantry night vision gear I wonder is this makes sense, or is just another doctrine they are not flexible enough to change. I would think nighttime would be much worse for the infantry screen they don't have enough of anyway.

anybody got a clue what the Italians can ship in three days or less?

Where there is a tank, there will be a fuel truck very soon. Seems more profitable to wait unless things are desperate. Though there is a lovely thought about catching the BTG commander with his head out of the hatch.

My two cents, probably worth less than that. The initial invasion plan was basically thought up by Putin and the FSB, they literally didn't tell a fair bit of the army what was actually happening, and made a whole series catastrophic assumptions we have discussed exhaustively. The results were more or less catastrophic. What is happening now is the army's plan. They now have a realistic view of what their forces can do, and what the Ukrainians can do. Although Putin may be channeling his inner Hitler, and rushing things. So this time a round the basic plan is less likely to be just stupid, although depending on the aforementioned pressure from above it may be under resourced. Of course a more rational plan doesn't fix the now obvious problems with their doctrine, force structure, procurement, and and general tactical incompetence. Hopefully the bill the the Ukrainians have to stop it isn't unbearable.

We are about to find out...

I think the Russians are worthless pieces of &%$##&&$$, lie about everything. and only respond to a baseball bat upside the head. This isn't really about the Russians, other than giving Putin one tiny something at the negotiation table, in lieu of storming Moscow. It is about Ukraine fulfilling its potential. I am saying that Ukraine is more free, more prosperous, and more stable in decade if Crimea and the DPLR are Russia's problem instead of yours. My opinion, worth what you paid, and I really doubt Zelensky is going to put me on the negotiating team, not even as a food taster.

I have zero standing to to give Ukraine advice. I will now proceed to give Ukraine advice... The best way to get a durable post war peace is for Ukraine to trade Crimea and the DPLR to Russia in return for NATO membership. When this nightmare is over Ukraine wants to become a stable, free, and prosperous country that is as much a part of Europe as France. dealing with the wreckage of the DPLR, and a population in Crimea that really is Russian leaning just makes that much harder. It allows Putin a tiny fig leaf in the armistice that has to happen some day. He can spend the rest of his hopefully short reign explaining how the army had 75,000 causalities securing paper title to territory Russia already de-facto controlled. If Russian armored tactics and logistics are a disaster, their air force hasn't had any. This allows western air forces to argue that things really would be different with competent execution. In particular the Russians not having even a fraction of the PGMs they need, so their planes keep coming into the ManPad envelope. What simply hasn't been tested is NATOs ability to suppress/destroy an S-400 based integrated air defense system, so that flying high isn't more dangerous than flying low. I think we have to say the jury is just still out on that one. Although the number of pictures of Turkish drones popping ADA assets certainly means SOMETHING

And they don't have to completely close the pocket, just bring the supply lines under effective artillery fire.

Or at least credibly threaten too, and completely spoil the attack the Russians are trying to set up. There is also a credible report the Russians are just pouring artillery right on the middle of the pre 2/24 defensive line. My speculation is that is the one place they can move ammo easily and so the best spot for a distraction. But who knows they might go for a full replay of the Somme, but against modern munitions.

They may be sending all their artillery ammo to the center of the pre 2/24 frontier because that is the only place they physically can get it too. I am not sure if that is an attack of sense, desperation, or both. Maybe they will try a frontal attack on the Ukrainians strongest defensive positions, and hope to get it done by burying them in bodies. Although I have strong doubts they have enough people willing to reenact the Somme.

Putin's funeral, followed by a tidal wave of denunciations about how he screwed this up would work nicely.

TheUkrainians appear to be quite willing to dispute who is going to encircle who, if this map has any bearing on reality. If valid this seems to support Steves position that the Russians are COMEPLETELY fought out.

Sorry about that...

So basically the road system dictates that from Izyum they attack southeast towards Barvinkove, southwest towards Slavyansk, or both. There is a small river running more or less east west through Barvinkove. It enough of an obstacle to let the Ukrainians really slow or outright stop them right there? I am assuming the Ukrainians are reading these maps, or better ones. I am a lot less sure what the Russians are reading.

Tank thought it was safe tucked in between buildings the way it was, nice shot!

If google maps is pointing me to the right places, the Ukrainians are pushing back on a ten or twenty mile front southeast of Kharkiv, or at least on two axis of attack ~twenty miles apart.

Sending the people who make your missiles to the front is a whole new level of eating your seed corn. Not only is that factory shut, they don't ever expect to reopen.

The beginning of the backing and filling perhaps? Maybe Putin has purged his way down to command layer that has told him what is actually going on?

You COULD give us all more likes? Please?

A very great deal of it comes down to the fact that the Russians have about a fifth of the troops they need to do what they are trying to do.

It is pretty clear we own their comms systems totally. U.S. intelligence has been 100% on Russian plans and intentions. Where U.S. has made mistakes is when it believes what the Russians are telling themselves. Pre invasion readiness reports come to mind. What we haven''t seen YET to my knowledge is the insertion of false orders/information. This is the next thing to watch for.

Haven't seen one these in use before.

This is a great thread. Some implications for the coming showdown in the Donbas, depending on whether the Russians can reorg to deal with some of their most atrocious corruption related screw ups.

The Siversky-Donetz river runs south west - north east thru between Izyum and Kharkiv with small towns/large villages at most of the crossings. Unless the Russians have improved by at least an order of magnitude they aren't going to take those crossings fast enough to encircle Kharkiv before the Ukrainians can get reconfigured to use Kharkiv as an anvil to to beat them to death on. At this point in the war I really think it safe to assume the Ukrainian General Staff can read a map. And the last time the Russians went with the surprise order trick didn't work out well for them either.

You are assuming the Russians can shift their axis of attack faster than the Ukrainians can shift to meet it, and/or that the Russians could take the Ukrainians by surprise when every ISR asset on earth is looking at this patch of ground. It is worth mentioning that Kharkiv was intentionally designed as a defensive bastion when the Soviets rebuilt it after WW2. That is why the Russians couldn't take it the first time. It might be a great time to pull a surprise attack in Africa, or southeast Asia. But from Poland to Moscow it is currently a fishbowl in some sort of very fancy laboratory where the gear displays the heart beat, oxygen level, and nutritional in/out of every guppy. As well as its six dimensional movement vector