dan/california

As badly as the Russian strategy is failing militarily it is sort of succeeding politically. Mostly because the politicians and diplomats don't know anything are to lazy to learn. This entire podcast is one long diatribe of defeatism from Ian Bremmer. As bad as I hate to say this, Ukraine needs to run more risks, and take more casualties to break the land bridge this year to keep this whole thing on the rails. They shouldn't have to do that, we should have gotten them much more stuff, much more quickly. But this really seems to be where the politics is at.

Winner!

The top U.S. officer in NATO, reassuring to see that he is paying attention. Says there are huge lessons learned about EW as well, but declines to be specific.

No that just recreates the the controversy over the Nordstream, with endless investigations and so on. What needs to happen in places like Thailand is a sudden and severe attack of legalism. Suddenly start strictly enforcing the laws on drugs, and even less savory amusements with maximal severity. Throw several hundred, or several thousand, Russian tourists in jail, and then give the local Russian diplomats the the total run around. Make them criss cross Bangkok five times just to talk to people, and on, and on. If you can't just ban Russian tourists make them afraid to show up.

Lets just say that it is another triumph of Russian quality assurance. Would a love a decent translation?

It figures in there somewhere that Russia has not been well run for even five minutes of the last thousand years. ALL it has ever experienced is various forms bad. If you are a Russian without much knowledge or interest in the outside world it seems to be possible to shrug your shoulders and figure that yesterday was awful one way, today is terrible a different way, and and tomorrow will be worse in some new and horrible fashion. There is nothing for it but to keep on keeping on while ingesting as much vodka as possible. The people who saw it differently have emigrated or been dealt with unpleasantly.

Or inflation makes the money itself worthless, with the same results..

I agree it is a useful perspective. It does not entirely square with the difficulty that the Russian Regime seems to have raising new troops. It does explain the the overall passivity though. And Russia is certainly a large and complicated place. The_Capt wrote an excellent post many, many months ago about how a society consists of a multitude micro-social environments that have complicated arrangements with each other, and with the actual government. This particular micro-social environment seems to think that the regime is keeping/improving its bargain with them. I think a fair bit of this comes down to the regime needing something beside passive acquiescence to kleptocracy, and for the moment it is willing and able to actually pay for it. For decades now the Russian state has simply been a vehicle to turn oil money into princely lifestyles for those at the top. Whatever little bit had to be spent on the rest of the population was basically just a tax on the fortunes of the new Czars court. The war has forced a change in this arrangement. Now the regime actually needs people to do something, rather badly. So the sudden shower of money and attention appears to be an acceptable trade for the zinc coffins. The previous societal bargain was so bad this one seems better. There is nothing for it but see how many zinc coffins it takes to change their minds. The situation as described also seems primed for severe inflation once enough rubles have been sprinkled around randomly. And of course all this is coming at the expense of those Princely Lifestyles(tm) one way or another, that may yet turn out to matter.

The thing that doesn't get enough discussion is that ATACMS, in any version, is not just much longer range than GMLRS, it is just as responsive. I honestly don't know if Storm Shadow can be reprogrammed mid air with the Ukrainian set up, but you still have have an air tasking order, and a strike package assembled and, and... Their is zero reason I am aware of that an ATACMS couldn't be on the way within five minutes of a drone or other ISR spotting a worthy target. It will push trains back to the Russian border, and perhaps the far reaches of Crimea depending on the model.

Are the fish ok?

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5102427,36.1714752,12z/data=!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu I finally took a hard look at Verbove on google maps. The village itself seems almost irrelevant, other than it being a handy spot for the Russians to dig in. the really important terrain is the two parallel roads a few kilometers north of Verbove, and the hills that over look them. The T-0803, and T-0815 are two parallel roads that would allow the Ukrainans to unhinge the entire Russian defense in this sector if they can make it a few kilometers down them. The "attempt to flank Verbove" that is being cited in the media doesn't have anything to do with Verbove, other than it being a handy map reference, it is about those roads. There are some very useful street view photos that give some feel for he lines of sight involved. My opinion, worth what you paid.

Can Canada extradite the Speaker of the House, and the aides that cooked this up, instead? Because I am absolutely certain they deserve it.

Well, you are correct it is very bad. It is also true that the the more you know about the Russian army the the more you will pay, and the faster and further you will run, to avoid serving. So i am not entirely convinced this is going to work out the way they think, even if it does increase the percentage of future mobiks who can actually load their rifles and point the right end at the enemy.

NYT checks in on the drone war with a shockingly competent article. It is like their are two completely different sets of reporters running around Ukraine with NYT credentials. One set of them is extremely competent....

Drone pilots seem to get the hang of it pretty quick.

You have love a proper political screw up, is it going end any careers, besides an aide or three. Asking you as our Canadian expert, as opposed to our staff college instructor.

Pretty sure this is good news.

They just barely got it close to do anything. Fingers crossed they run enough exercise with open eyes to figure it out. Post war we REALLY need to get the one the better Ukrainian units to the NTC, or equivalent Among other things the seem to be in position to push northeast from Verbove and really widen their current breach of the first/main line of defense. That would greatly increase the are the length of line the Rusians have to defend with less help from mines and obstacles. I am just eagerly awaiting the first video of a Russian artillery battery getting aquatinted with a Bradley's 25mm. This war consists of a near infinity of moments that any decent editor would have sent back for a rewrite in 2015. Could you give more details on the force structure of both sides in this little training engagement?

Because these are fundamentally cheap civilian drones. They last three or four missions if they are lucky. Their is a little video out there of a fixed wing drone bomber that seems remarkably accurate. Their are certainly many military models in the works, but nobody its rolling those out by the thousands per week that would be required, yet.

Exactly this, and the way to maintain your operational tempo is to have a a flight of a hundred as your near leading edge. Depending on the exact way the tech develops you might want some really low signature sensor only models out front. Then if your the Chinese, you tell them to kill anything that moves in front your continuously adjusted phase line. If you are NATO they send you photo as they start their run and ask if this is something they shouldn't kill. BTW we need a way to STOP the bad guys doing the same thing. Either counter drone drones or lasers need to get done in double quick time. Edit: I would give better than even odds the Ukrainians get a fair bit of the way to this by next summer.

You don't want to be these guys....

This was definitely not a great move by the Canadian politician in question, but it is by no means the worst vetting failure in post WW2 history. Werner Von braun also got by rather well by repeating "I build the best rockets". To be fair, he was telling the truth, about that part. Edit: I mean they asked two out of the three important questions , Were you born in Ukraine? Did you serve in the war? They just skipped on the rather important third one. For which side?

Well yes, but the revised version of "think of the people", at least our people, is too bury the bad guys in robotic things that go bang until no one can hear them scream. There is a decision point coming up, very quickly, where we will have to decide how many casualties we want to take to keep a man in the loop. My guess is very few.

It may be an interesting week.