dan/california

The phrase "He who pays the piper" comes to mind...
BTW not everything goes directly to press from the Pentagon.
The drone attacks made by Ukraine don't..
😉

It just me or isn't it extremely disrespectful to Ukrainians that everything goes directly to the press from the Pentagon

Something, yes. Speculation by or endorsed by Shushko tends to be confected bull****.
 

Anything coming from, endorse by Sushko is entirely suspect. Caveat emptor.

Assuming it’s true, it’s a pity about GLSDB. That said, I think the MIC would be well served by turning the system into a smart cluster munition that can basically give a bunch of smaller drones an extra 150km range. So what if it gets jammed a bit? Optically guided sub-drones/munitions (don’t want to mis-something these) would obviate all that.
Many pages ago, I feel like we discussed paragliders as munitions. If your GLSDB-but-not-really drops a 100kg worth of paraglider drones from say 1kft at night, how do you even shoot all those down? Imagine if it’s 100x 1kg bomblets with parachutes and a battery and propellor and some servos for steering the chute, you could mess up a lot of stuff. Or I guess they could have flip out wings and whatnot, and that might be more reliable than a chute.

Ukrainian forces dismiss as fake information about withdrawal of Abrams tanks from battlefield due to drones
 
 

Have Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs Been ‘Thrown Aside’ By Ukraine? - A senior Pentagon official has alluded to a recently deployed long-range ground-launched weapon suffering from Russian jamming and other issues.
 
 

You are understating how crazy this story is, whether it is true is another question, but back to that in a minute. The story is saying that the ENTIRE WAR resulted form an effort by Shoigu and Ivanov to cover the massive extent of their embezzlement. And then not content with that, they tried to take over Prigozhin's empire exactly the way they he said they did, and THIS resulted in the march on Moscow. Now Putin has finally realized what is going on. This is BEYOND NUTS. Yet Ivanov is sitting in prison for something. 
Apparently the Patrushev clan is leading the other faction at the Czars court, and think they finally have the rope to hang their rivals. This doesn't even have to be true, or mostly true, if enough of the Russian elite believe it to start a real power struggle.
I am not sure I believe any of this, but clearly a real argument about something is breaking loose between Kremlin factions. That is not a small thing.

QUADRUPLE POST, bleep me I was on a roll, sorry.

Sushko is not to be relied on.
Also, Shoigu is no political lightweight, and I wouldn't assume the siloviki can throw him under the bus even if they wished to. I doubt Prigozhin was ever his creature; the guy simply got high on himself and went rogue when Wagner was reined in.
I posted some bio on Shoigu a couple thousand pages ago. Like Putin, he was a handpicked protege of Yeltsin in the late 90s. His family background/ training is in O&G construction (with the accompanying huge self enrichment opps), more than military. He had his own political party, briefly, before throwing in with United Russia. He's NOT an army careerist, in fact Putin likes him for that very reason.

A credible report that Ukraine is pulling its one ~battalion of Abrams out of active combat because current combat conditions are making them ineffective and to vulnerable, especially drones. I am filing this one firmly in the tank is dead file.

You are understating how crazy this story is, whether it is true is another question, but back to that in a minute. The story is saying that the ENTIRE WAR resulted form an effort by Shoigu and Ivanov to cover the massive extent of their embezzlement. And then not content with that, they tried to take over Prigozhin's empire exactly the way they he said they did, and THIS resulted in the march on Moscow. Now Putin has finally realized what is going on. This is BEYOND NUTS. Yet Ivanov is sitting in prison for something. 
Apparently the Patrushev clan is leading the other faction at the Czars court, and think they finally have the rope to hang their rivals. This doesn't even have to be true, or mostly true, if enough of the Russian elite believe it to start a real power struggle.
I am not sure I believe any of this, but clearly a real argument about something is breaking loose between Kremlin factions. That is not a small thing.

You tell yourselves this…try going to a soccer game.  Hell get on a train before a soccer game.  Understatement is not how I would describe the experience.

A credible report that Ukraine is pulling its one ~battalion of Abrams out of active combat because current combat conditions are making them ineffective and to vulnerable, especially drones. I am filing this one firmly in the tank is dead file.

That is a weird way to do internal power struggles though, if it calls the reason for the war in question publically. That could have massive ill effects, or am I misunderstanding something here?

Brits do understatement.
😉
We leave all that other stuff to our American friends.... (And hyperbole to the Canucks)
Let's see how the story unfolds if any of it is true....

Someone text the grandkids and have them take the keyboard away....

A credible report that Ukraine is pulling its one ~battalion of Abrams out of active combat because current combat conditions are making them ineffective and to vulnerable, especially drones. I am filing this one firmly in the tank is dead file.

You are understating how crazy this story is, whether it is true is another question, but back to that in a minute. The story is saying that the ENTIRE WAR resulted form an effort by Shoigu and Ivanov to cover the massive extent of their embezzlement. And then not content with that, they tried to take over Prigozhin's empire exactly the way they he said they did, and THIS resulted in the march on Moscow. Now Putin has finally realized what is going on. This is BEYOND NUTS. Yet Ivanov is sitting in prison for something. 
Apparently the Patrushev clan is leading the other faction at the Czars court, and think they finally have the rope to hang their rivals. This doesn't even have to be true, or mostly true, if enough of the Russian elite believe it to start a real power struggle.
I am not sure I believe any of this, but clearly a real argument about something is breaking loose between Kremlin factions. That is not a small thing.

And how much better off would Ukraine be if the 860,000 fighting aged Ukrainians were back in their home country defending it as opposed to hiding out in other nations?
"Millions of Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia(opens in a new tab)'s full-scale invasion in 2022, mostly to neighbouring European countries. The European Union's statistics agency, Eurostat, says 4.3 million Ukrainians are living in EU countries, 860,000 of them men 18 years of age or older."
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukraine-is-putting-pressure-on-fighting-age-men-outside-the-country-as-it-tries-to-replenish-forces-1.6861301
All those "kids who don't make a difference" add up to brigades and divisions that can definitely make a difference.  Fully agree on weapons, ammunition and vehicles but they are useless without Ukrainian people to use them in their own defence.

Manpower shortage is absolutely an issue for Ukraine - not all the weapons in the world would matter if there's not enough warm bodies around to fire them. Hence why the conscription age has already been lowered.
I'd wager you that if you took all the men who said "it doesn't matter if just I dodge the draft (but also please continue providing me with state services while I live comfortably in a richer country)", you'd get at least enough men to create a couple of divisions, with replacement personnel to spare.

This youtuber continues to post really good frontline analysis.  His youtube channels have been under attack, which I think says something good about him.  The headlines are over the top, but the video content is much more serious.
 
 

Of course the numbers are going to fluctuate over time.  Right now this war is viewed as bogged down and in slow motion - except for the Russians of course who are poised to break out and re-take Kharkiv.  The fact that a divisions worth signed up and fought in that first year is an enormous contribution considering that all foreign fighters really had no duty or obligation to join this fight beyond a greater ideal to right a wrong.
The shoulder shrugging on this issue is not impressive in the least.  How do people on this forum think wars are actually won or lost?  Who do you actually think is really doing the fighting and dying?  I hear comments like "well most of the UA were already in the military" and what I think I am really hearing is "well some people just want to fight anyway, so let them."
Wars are collisions of human certainty.  Violent, lethal collisions.  Once a side loses that certainty they are on the road to defeat - history backs me up on this going back thousands of years.  Certainty demands sacrifice.  For a nation state that sacrifice has been done in many ways.  In the past nations would hire mercenaries to do the fighting, so at worst it was financial sacrifice.  We do not live in that era anymore.  Wars like the one in Ukraine are as near to total as we can get under the nuclear umbrella.  
If too many Ukrainian 18 year old's run away, while enough Russian 18 year old's keep signing up for the $$, how do you think this war will end?  

Court politics...
The fact that they are airing it in public makes it very interesting.
Putler getting revenge or some one else?
One to watch...