dan/california

In the very near future submunitions will be delivered to the nearest warm body by a VERY unfriendly version of Bittle here. Imagine them landing in a circle just like the DPICM we have seen a zillion videos of, and then walking to the center while looking for something that meets the criteria to go boom.

I don't think they are different/better enough to matter. What I was trying to say is that they may show up just as the Ukrainians finally, REALLY break the Russian mine belt. Thus they would join the fight at the exact moment that heavy armor becomes truly useful, perhaps for the last time in history. Rather like the denouement of the battleship at Suriago Straight, where the U.S. battle line crossed the T of the approaching Japanese fleet almost perfectly, and smashed the Japanese thoroughly. This did NOT change the fact that battleships were obsolete.

I wonder if the upcoming performance test for the Abrams we have sent to Ukraine might make a dent in the denial. There is also a nonzero chance the Abrams get there just as the the Russian lines fracture, and are very useful in the resulting maneuver phase. This would be fantastic for Ukraine, but very bad for getting NATO/The West to really change the current approach.

It appears the U.S. Army intends to keep trying, according a to a very recent press release from the team in charge of Abrams development. The video does a pretty good job of breaking down the bureaucratese into something intelligible, and fills in a lot of details.

The side who shows up with EDIT: more : "lethal nanodust"(TM) faster wins. Not really joking.

The overall article is pretty good, but this has to be the dumbest paragraph the times has written about the war in a year. U.S. DPICM shells are raining down on Russian positions by the thousands, and this reporter wants us to worry that treating some wounded volunteers is going to be what pushes the Russians into losing a broader war war worse than they catastrophically losing this one. Dude, if that is what you are worried about, maybe don't put on the front page of the NYT. The article also says that the hospital is only taking a ~third of the patients it could. There is ZERO reason for it not to be running at capacity in the absence of a significant U.S. operation somewhere else.

They seem to have adopted Steve's/The_Capt's approach in its entirety.

Another little gem in today's ISW report. A proper conflict between the FSB and the Rosgvardia would be just about the best way to implode Putin's regime that I can think off. There is exactly ZERO regular army forces available to referee such a conflict.

I have a strong suspicion they are providing the DPICM version because it WON'T drop the Kerch Bridge. Ukraine, being Ukraine. will probably catch another fuel train in transit on the bridge.. Edit: They might also be able to hammer the air defenses around the bridge so hard they can get three or four Storm Shadows through.

Well, in many ways Prig was smarter than most of them. Yet they were all on the same plane.

To hit the right part of the right building during a meeting of the command staff for an entire section of the front implies that Ukraine is just living comfortably in the Russian comms system somewhere. I mean reading their everything in real time.

Airfields, equipment concentrations, petroleum storage, air defense systems, and so many more.

More than anything else Ukraine seems to be systematically demilitarizing the Russian IAD system in Crimea. Once that is gone all sorts of bad things happen to the Russians. If they bring in a bunch of new systems, well there is a weak spot somewhere else, because Russia doesn't have spare anything at this point.

My hot take is that they have sent everything that would move under its own power to the front, and pulled the barrels off of everything that wouldn't. And when those barrels are used up, the next batch is coming from where exactly? This also gives a pretty good estimate of what percentage of one of these outside storage parks is vaguely usable.

Is this true? And if so is it illegal? Their has to be some way to sanction any money changing hands? Even if we can't make him shut up.

Osiinttechnical has an approximate infinity of very recent videos of Russian stuff going boom under the hammer of various PGMs. I think this radar is probably the most significant single piece of kit that got permanently demilitarized.

A long interview with a U.N. person. The interview leads me to the conclusion that the United Nations should simply close. They are much worse than worthless.

https://www.threads.net/@24hoursukraine/post/Cxf2q-7tN6N A new mine detection robot with big ultra low pressure tires that can just not set off most mines. The kind of clever engineering that will be needed to de-mine Ukraine this century.

I don't think think they consider the near obliteration of the Russian army to be a negative. You have to give the Poles a lot of credit for the first three months, when they had ten percent or more of Ukraines population at least pass through, and it went as well as it possibly could have done. They sent a lot of stuff early as well, when a lot of other countries wee dithering rather badly. Having said all of that, the Polish Government has certainly tried to manage the war as whole to their advantage where possible. Obviously they like E.U. money, and they have certainly gotten quite a bit of it. They wanted U.S. forces based in Poland, they got that too. All in all I still think the balance sheet of the Polish Government is nicely in the black in regard to how they have handled Ukraine, although the grain tiff certainly hasn't impressed anybody. The problem with the the current Polish Government is, well, everything else. Their domestic policy on any number of matters, their relations with the EU on everything except Ukraine, The whole mess with the independence of the courts, and on, and on. I just happen to think that the best way to deal with them is to do everything possible to help Ukraine, and reinforce NATO's eastern flank. Once the Russian Bear is firmly back in its cage perhaps they will discover how grateful voters can be, sort like Churchill did.

Daily Kos has a nice daily update, almost all flavors of good news, but the bit above seems like the important part.

This would be Ukraine's clue to target Russian oil refineries with every drone it has. Cause a real fuel shortage, followed by a real financial hole when Russia has to import refined POL, and Putin's negotiating position will display sudden flexibility.

This is what we Americans call an "unforced error" by Ukraine generally and Zelensky specifically. You can only console the children, wives and mothers of so many dead soldiers before you start to get stressed. Obviously the timing was poor.

This. is getting a wee bit out of hand. How much would it cost the EU to just pay the bleeping farmers? I don't even really care which farmers. Or we coulds have given the Ukrainians ATACMS last month,and there might be a black sea fleet to left to blockade anything. As. is the last big strike did a ton of damage. Twenty ATACMS at the same time, with a much faster targeting cycle would have sunk most of what was in port.