Baneman

FWIW, I am always happy to read your posts, and I usually learn something new. But hint: you can pick who you bother to reply to. Silence doesn't mean they've won (and if they think so, who gives a rats?)

The thing about Bakhmut that I keep coming back to is how small the gap is that Russia has to close, and they're not only unable to close it, they can't even deny Ukraine the ability to supply through it.  The extreme edges of the pincer have been as little as 5 km to close the circle (I'm not sure what they are right now). If there were no trees, that's clear LOS for a human standing 6 ft tall from one arm of the Russian pincer to the other.  And they can't even prevent Ukraine from supplying through it. It boggles the mind.

Damn you man! 
I'm on holiday in Hamburg, Travemünde and Berlin in 3 weeks time and already salivating about currywurst, bratkartoffeln and schweinhaxe. 
Now I can't wait! 
Edit : sorry, very off topic, I know, but German food is so awesome. 
 
 

Damn you man! 
I'm on holiday in Hamburg, Travemünde and Berlin in 3 weeks time and already salivating about currywurst, bratkartoffeln and schweinhaxe. 
Now I can't wait! 
Edit : sorry, very off topic, I know, but German food is so awesome. 
 
 

Damn you man! 
I'm on holiday in Hamburg, Travemünde and Berlin in 3 weeks time and already salivating about currywurst, bratkartoffeln and schweinhaxe. 
Now I can't wait! 
Edit : sorry, very off topic, I know, but German food is so awesome. 
 
 

Haven’t we been here before?  Back at Severodonetsk were we not told at length how Russia had reframed this war in their favour?  And back then the RA still had massive artillery in play, now their indirect fires appear in trouble.
Regardless, we got the same stories of the UA bleeding out and “behind the curve”…and then Kharkiv and Kherson happened.
Here we are again. I am almost at the point that I am thinking this is a blue disinformation op aimed at getting the RA to keep pushing (and dying) at Bakhmut in order to weaken the line elsewhere.  The reported Russian losses are staggering and unlike the poorly mobilized infantry, all those vehicles and equipment are not things the RA has a “bottomless sea” of within its inventory.
UA is going to take losses and frankly it is in their best interests to look desperate - just keeping that big win slightly out of reach while the RA continues to bleed out.
Here is an actual metric of the UA bleeding out: when they stop sending thousands of troops to western training centres.  Once we can no longer load Ukrainians on these course streams because there are none left willing or able to fight, we know that the UA is actually in trouble.  That or some sort of RA break through.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

Doesn’t matter. He did his job and poisoned the well. Tankies and pro-Russian fascists will be citing his report for decades. I mean, there are still people who think that the Katyn Massacre was Nazi propaganda.

Tsk - do you zink ve are some 26 letter alphabet peasantz? Ve also have Ä, Ö, Ü und ß to choose from.

Much from Marx &  Engels and Lenin are still valid. Gramsci, Frankfurt school, Zizek, all have made good contributions to philosophy, sociology and political economy. Dialectical materialism is a useful framework. Anarchist contributions towards anti authoritarian and horizontal frameworks of living and organizing are valuable too, offering alternatives to systems and ethics based on exploitation, chauvinism and profit over all else. 
Socialist authors to this day are still critiquing current affairs and dominant ideologies in a way that profit centered, corporate owned media cannot DARE to do(for obvious reasons). 
The sheer hostility towards their work by people who haven't read them, and the way they are all strawmanned by oligarch funded sock puppets(when not outright banned or kept out of circulation) is quite telling.
Bosses don't tend to like it when people ask for more, and question the power relations and double standards.  Cultural chauvinists and dogmatic religious leaders don't like when their mythological grand narratives have holes poked in them. And people who claim to oppose tyranny and support freedom want to suppress the ideas and books and the people they disagree with.

That is cooooold, very funny!  But why do you think QAnon is false?  Everyone I know drinks baby blood -- it's actually in the vending machines of most federal gov't office buildings.  

Yes, and poor Imperial Japan was just nicely minding its own busines, rampaging across China, raping Nanking, cutting down all the trees in Korea, fortifying the entire ex-German Pacific islands mandate. Co-Prosperity Sphere, you know.
...and mean old Roosevelt needlessly provoked them with his metals and oil embargo, like a literal dagger to the throat of an oil poor maritime power I tell you!
I mean, what else could they do? but rampage across the entire Pacific, mass-murdering civilians by the bucketload?
Bring better arguments than drive-by Carlson/Buchanan retweets, mate. Otherwise, The American Conservative is over there.....

it is George Santos.  😎

I don't really have any clear idea of what that feller was trying to say about the war, overall.  I think he made a very clear case that everyone here is an idiot.  I feel bad that it's been pointed out how stupid I am and how I spend time reading things by stupid people.  So I'll just ignore Khalerick so I can keep my head in the sand, proving his point that we can't handle/don't want the truth.

Does this mean... The balloon has gone up? 
. 
... 

But sweet on the inside...kinda like a rancid Werther's Original. 

Almost like the world could use a really detailed simulation of what war will be like against a China-like adversary in about 10 years.  Something that lands somewhere between game and research tool…hmmm, I wonder where we could find something like that?
As to your original premise in this war against Russia, I totally agree, NATO would cut through that is left of the RA faster than it rolled thru Saddam in ‘91.  In fact if it weren’t for the nuclear equation I think we would have Gulf War’d this thing months ago.  I am at the point that the RA has devolved so far back (human wave attacks, seriously) that a good old fashion front door kicking at the right place and time might just do the job.  For example, what is the state of Russian C4ISR?  

@Shady_Side - to add to my previous post and to provide a documented example of converting from one armoured platform to another, the British Army until fairly recently used to do a thing called 'Arms Plotting' which saw regiments re-role every few years - in the case of infantry from light role, to mechanised, to armoured infantry and in the case of the Royal Armoured Corps from formation reconnaissance to armour.  To give a flavour of what it takes to as you put it "they will be starting with crews that already know the fundamentals of armored combat" the links below will take you to the Regimental Journal of the Life Guards for 1980 and 1981 which describe the regiment's conversion from formation reconnaissance to armour.  Bear in mind that this regiment used to change roles about every six years so anybody in the regiment with longer time in than that would have been familiar with Chieftain rather than jumping straight into one from scratch, a luxury Ukrainian tank crews will not have.  Now I accept that the timescales to convert the regiment would be longer back then because of the demands of peacetime soldiering such as: handing over the old camp and equipment; taking over the new camp and equipment; booking training areas; letting soldiers go on leave; area cleaning; site guards; and, marching up and down the square but the bottom line is that the Life Guards took about a year to convert properly to Chieftain to the point where the regiment was capable of fighting effectively as an all-arms Battlegroup.  According to the 1981 journal, B Squadron took four months to fully convert to the point that it was capable of fighting effectively as an all-arms Squadron Group.
Acorn 1980 by LGregsec - Issuu
Acorn 1981 by LGregsec - Issuu

Two weeks, be sure!
(old IL-2 players will get this)