dan/california

Steve is not the chokepoint, the chokepoint is how many very competent programmers can be hired to assist Charles.

If they are combat proven in Ukraine as a good enough solution, with a lower maintenance and training load, I would think Sweden could sell a TON of them. I realize F-35s have a lot more capability, and drones are coming like an avalanche, but there is still a lot to be said a for a manned fighter with NATO standard coms/hardpoints/radar and the ability to land on any decent road.

Discussion of U.S. Chinese relations. It includes a substantial discussion of munitions production in regards to both deterring China, and maintaining supplies to Ukraine.

No one is getting the chance to develop an urgent family emergency in one of the stans.

Swedes for the win!

Ukraine has developed a Shaheed equivalent. It needs the help to build THOUSANDS of them, perhaps tens of thousands. When they can credibly threaten to knock out every power plant in Russia west of the Urals, some Russians might reconsider. As always it is Moscow and St Petersburg that really matter. No power in Moscow on Orthodox Christmas when it is -20C might get some peoples attention

Of course all I had to do was scroll down, sorry.

A lot of interesting pics tonight, can't wait to see the geo locate on this one.

Either the Ukrainians have come up with an FPV system with longer range in enough quantity to use them on towed D-30s, Or they have figured out some sort of mothership set up. Either way they just get better by the day. I think Haiduk said Ukraine had FINALLY gotten Switch Blade 600s in limited quantity, but I am not sure towed artillery is a high enough priority to use those on. Maybe somebody in Eastern Europe has just started making out and out copies of Lancets?

I fully agree with the general point here, but the issue isn't the calendar, it is the weather. And the weather is getting screwier by the day, almost. Raise your hand if you had Hawaii burning down on your bingo card for 2023? Anybody? The curtain could come down on the offensive in the middle of September, or the middle of November. The is just no way to tell until we get there. I don't think Ukraine is trying to do it this way intentionally, but it would actually be somewhat advantageous if the weather went to heck and made offensive operations impossible right after they had achieved their major objectives.

The peace faction in the U.S. government has obviously decided to make a coordinated push at Zelensky's expense. Note this comes at the same moment as Sarkozy's unfortunate attempt to rant himself back into relevance. Ukraine just needs to keep calm and carry on. There is also an outside chance that this a coordinated info op with the Ukrainians, that has been done at least once, although the goal of this one is unclear to me if that is what it is.

I am talking about DPICM, because we have done closest thing humanly possible to a controlled experiment in a real war. It was introduced after weeks of heavy fighting, and is being shot by the same crews through the same barrels. The thing that we won't be able to sort until the detailed post war analysis is how much of the difference was the type of ammo, and how much of it was just having ENOUGH ammo. Edit: and at at exactly the same type of targets.

Putin is determined to leave nothing but ashes behind him.

With airpower not being a factor, and cluster munitions introduced mid way thru the offensive post war analysis should produce the cleanest data we could ever ask for about their effectiveness. Hopefully that data will end the careers of the people who didn't send it sooner.

I think it JonS who pointed out that the poor bloody infantry may not improve all that much, but battalion and brigade staffs live long enough to actually learn.

I think you are perhaps underweighting the artillery battle. Ukraine finally seems to be winning it, whether DPICM is really better or they just have enough shells. If that trend holds I suspect the rest of the Ukrainian forces will suddenly start performing vastly better as commanders are willing to risk more concentration of forces, and persistence of those concentrations. Until now the counter offensive has borne an enormous resemblance to the fighting in Normandy before the breakout. Hopefully it will progress to similar breakout as well.

Maybe just maybe the Russians are running a little short of stuff and bodies...

Supposedly a long leaked memo about the state of Russian drone procurement and operations by Dmitri Rogozin, who used to run Roscosmos. S

I guarantee you there parts the Russians are desperately trying to restart production of. I don't know if it is the wheel bearing of the front idler wheel wheel, of the tanks equivalent of a rear main seal, there is a weakest link. There something that time water and rodents have trashed on 99% of them. They probably have an entire prison camp trying fabricate whatever it is by hand with a file.

Germany could simply send any shortfall straight to the Ukrainian MOD, best possible use of the money really.

Because we are still holding desperately to the belief that Putin is rational, competent, and can be reasoned with. If he was any, much less all, of those things he would have declared victory and gone home in March 2022.

I have used my twitter allotment for today, But Tartargami just did a detailed analysis of the the Russian tank refurbishment facilities that are plain to see on open source satellite pictures. He was pretty certain te Russian production was 40 tanks per month or less. I think a lot of intel analyst are still not realizing that most of the old stuff is just scrap metal. Or at least bad enough that you have to piece thru four or five of them to get one "running" vehicle.

Just start with the simple things, send them ATACMs, send the the M26 rockets, and send every round of 155 on earth. The U.S.air force will just have to live up to it press releases if war breaks out somewhere else. There is a LOT of recent reporting that Russian artillery is is being beaten down on the Southern front to the point where Ukraine has a real superiority in fires for the first time in the whole war. The best time to win this war is RIGHT NOW, and Ukraine can use the three things mentioned above with little or no training, SEND THEM.