womble

It might be that it's (part of) the way forward. Maybe an early role for autonomous transports once they become viable. A different slant on "the Internet of things": multipath routing of packets of supplies... Can't stop 'em all.

What's the flight time for a HIMARS rocket from a launcher at "out of CB range" to the bridge at Kherson? Can they "snipe" at vehicles crossing the bridge (assuming real time notification of the start of crossing), or would the target be across before the warhead could arrive? Would it be feasible to have missiles or arty "on call" to interdict any detected movement across (in either direction). Are "jump off points" for crossings, where vehicles might sit, waiting for repairs to be completed, likely to be more hittable?

is this evidence that Putin doesn't feel he's under threat of a "coup"? A few drones certainly aren't worth the risk of leaving the country if he did.

They could get behind a more comprehensive sanctions package and push. "Nothing in, nothing out; penalties on nations that bust the package" kinda thing. Along with help for alternative suppliers of staple foods and agrochem feedstock.

Is there a source other than Visegrad24 for this. He's talked bovine excrement before, in an apparent attempt to scare Germans.

Maybe the rank of midshipman means something different in the navies of the former USSR's successor states, or maybe it's a blemish on the translation, but in RN terms, retiring as a midshipman is not an indicator of a legacy of military glory. Is the bolded bit Girkin's little fantasy, or was there some sort of reliable plebiscite prior to these actions?

How does the advent of HIMARS et al on the battlefield alter the SEAD equation? Can the ultra-responsive UKR artillery ISR net drop pinpoint precision ordnance on the ground-based AD components that are denying the airspace over the battlefield to the UKR airforce? How do the ranges compare? Can the UKR AD network, including Stinger and Starstreak et al, deny the battlefield airspace to RUF assets, if it's able to operate at full potency without worrying about RU long range fires obliterating the ground units providing the air cover (because those long range fires have been HIMARSed into impotency)? Can proper employment of ground based assets make the job of gaining air superiority over the battlefield significantly easier (and cheaper) than it would be, trying to do it with wings alone? I get the impression that it's been the basis of the Russian approach since the days of the Cold War.

I've been thinking about the Volgs a bit lately too. My incomplete and woolly recollections have the ABC Warriors continuing the fight against them in an irradiated/gassed/diseased Europe... Let's hope Hammerstein and friends don't become the future of warfare. I think the same timeline leached into Dredd, as well.

I would go so far as to judge the opposite: they have (at least upon occasion) actively tried to inflict civilian casualties.. Not every salvo has been aimed to cause civilian casualties, but it certainly looks like some of them were intended solely for that purpose. There was a point near the beginning of the war where it looked like the published "Do not bombard (because they're hospitals and schools)" list was being used as a target list for RU ordnance. Or their intel is so egregiously bad that they should just not use artillery at all (especially missiles), if they want to try and minimise civilian casualty collateral damage.

Really? Ah well. I'll leave you to your little dreamland then.

And Chernobyl seems to be the worst of them all, by pretty much any measure. Only Fukishima is rated "7", but the actual physical/medical/radiological effects of the Japanese disaster are very significantly less than those of Chernobyl.

Is one of NATO's goals to have to go through this again in another 10 years? Because there's no way Russia is going to end "this" in a way that lets Ukraine into NATO or even the EU. How much of a victory do you want to hand to Putin and his murderous thieving brigand cronies? What is your special insight into "NATO's foreign policy goals"? Sounds to me like you're making a bunch of assumptions, largely shaded by Russian propaganda.

Aye, underground is expensive to build and usually only economically viable where there's a lot of pressure on land prices. I would guess that Ukraine doesn't suffer too badly from such pressures, in a country the size of France with 2/3 its population, so underground parking will be rare, and mostly small where present.

I believe Butschi was jesting... In case you're not (jesting), please don't (cut further).

Is that a DoW? I suspect that "formally" it's not, because it doesn't name any recognised, well-defined political entity. They'd be idiots to actually do anything about it, though. So Iskanders at Polish targets sometime soon, then.

Lukashenko's sabre rattling in the direction of the Poles could well just be an excuse to not participate in any material way in actions inside Ukraine. "Sorry Vlad, we can't send any troops to cut the Lviv-Kyiv LOC, because of the threat of those pesky Poles." I get the feeling that Lukashenko's position is much less ideologically warped away from pure self-interest than Putin's. Where Putin, deep down, believes, in the face of all contradictory facts, that the West might come over the border, Lukashenko knows "we" won't without some serious additional provocations, and can make "promises" in that knowledge.

I know nothing about the scenario, but it may be that there is no way to avoid the bombardment, and it's part of the "story" the scenario is trying to tell. There's no guarantee that you can finish every scenario without a scratch. If the scenario has been well playtested, to give a good assessment of the range of likely outcomes, the victory conditions might give some indication of the level of casualties the author intends, but given the nature of "branching" conditions in campaigns, it might be that you're "going to lose", and the degree of that loss will decide the future course you take through the campaign.

No, there's no separate "LOS Tool" in CMx2, not in any engine variant. You just have to "try and target something" with the Target tool (Light or normal - I tend to use Light in case I forget to cancel it; saves wasting too much ammo... ). The good thing is that you can use the Target tool from any waypoint you've plotted. It uses the characteristics of the unit that the waypoint is for and assesses LOS based on "Ground level" at the centre of the Action Spot you're hovering over, or have clicked on. So if your pTruppen are currently prone, they'll have a worse FoV than if they're upright. And if they're in a tank, their eyes may be higher yet.

Be aware, though that using the target tool from plotted waypoints, or before enemy units are actually visible can give (slightly) misleading indications, as the target tool won't know what posture your men are in when they actually reach that point, nor the height of the enemy unit they could, potentially be drawing LOS to, so there are some assumptions made. It is generally a useful indicator, though. I think there may be some factors that aren't taken into account during the setup phase too: time of day and atmospheric obscuration are, I think, not considered at that time.

At which point he's using Russia's own, unique definition of "own country". I mean "seat at the UN" is a pretty loose definition that they'd probably rather not have everyone else paying too much attention to, given their ambiguous status as the successor to the USSR on the UNSC... I mean, the Russians say, "It's our country, really," and the Ukrainians say, "No it frellin' ain't!" And since there doesn't seem to be a solution to the dispute that can be obtained by earnest negotiators sat around a table, the diplomacy has been pursued by other means. Most people would say that's a war, but the doublespeak mental gymnastics of totalitarianism lets the Russians feel good about their aggression. At least China has had the decency to consistently refer to Taiwan as a "breakaway province", whereas Russia was prepared to go along with the (re)creation of Ukraine as a sovereign entity, at least at the beginning. I don't recall any external parties holding guns to their heads at the time.

Words mean what they want them to mean. Orwellian. According to the Russian dictionary, you probably have to have declared a war, and announced "this is an invasion" for it to be an invasion. There are no other meanings [edit] (until they want there to be other meanings and then they will be used)[/edit]. Or, he's just a liar. He has talked about Ukraine being "dragged" into NATO, when that's a total impossibility, because it's the only way any of Russia's justifications for the war can even start to stand up to scrutiny. It's more nonsense, and it seems the only language they actually have in common with the rest of the world is that of violence. So that's how they have to be communicated with.

This is illustrative of the fantasy land that Russian propaganda has created. None of the EU sanctions that Lithuania is now enforcing affect food supplies in a material way. Kaliningrad might have some brownouts and stop being able to build anything, but vital infrastructure stuff should be the priority on the sea transport that RF has to replace the overland routes with. When the other side is spouting nonsense like this, there's no arguing with them, unless you're a King, and then you have to use your last argument.

Because EU citizens allowed their leaders to cozy up to the Kleptocrats (known gangsters) who stole the inheritance of the Russian people from them in the '90s. It was a move borne of hope, for sure, but not grounded in any actual reality. Russia was always going to find a "reason" to weaponise the energy monopoly they were permitted to create, just to increase their profits, even before you start considering the leadership's dreams of empire reawoken. They were "boiling the frog", back then.

Still not a valid argument, because relative military capacity isn't relevant in the final analysis. NATO doesn't have, and never has had, enough military power to subjugate Russia, because Russia is freckin' Hyooge. It no more has the power to conquer Russia militarily than Russia has the power to conquer Ukraine. Strewth, "we" couldn't even manage Afghanistan or Iraq; how are we going to fare better in The Rodina? Russian fear of NATO aggression has always been a paranoid fever dream or "demonisation of the other" for propaganda purposes, to divert the proles' attention from the failings of the ruling classes.

USB-C, obvs... [facepalm] I'd post a smiley, but I really can't find the funny side...