rocketman

30 Gepards in 2023, 30 Gepards next year. USA buyback from Jordan for Ukraine.
 

let it go, just not worth it.  Clearly he doesn't comprehend what climate change really means.  You can't argue with someone that takes pride in their ignorance.... and it is just going waaaaaayyyyy off topic

deleted, the above is so awful  just need to walk away

This was in Amsterdam and referencing Israel and Gaza. What has it got to do with Ukraine? Given your wording, it sounds like you are just trying to shoehorn a personal bugbear.

Maybe these young people are climate change zealots because they have to live with the catastrophe that our generation chose to mock & ignore.  Did you see the temperature data from this summer?  This september?  -- Off the f--ing charts.  Things are getting bad much, much faster than projected a decade ago.  

The war must really be a stalemate, what with there being talk of aliens here now...

Meanwhile situation near Avdiivka getting worse. During last 2-3 days Russians not only crossed railroad between coke plant and Stepove village, but significantly advanced north from Krasnohorivka and even entered to easten part of Stepove village (but were pushed back soon), their recon groups also make probes on coke plant territory.  
All attempts of UKR troops to push Russians behind railroad were failed. 47th brigade in theese attacks lost at least two Leo2 destropyed and several Bradleys were damaged and abandoned. 

Video of Russian advance to Stepove, which finished not very good for them
Russians conducted a "Bakhmut tactic" of continuous infantry attacks with artillery support and FPV drone strikes. Usage of armor now significantly reduced, but assault groups mostly have small armor support. Some differences - their infantry coordination, training and command level significantly worse than Wagners, but they have MANY of them and Russian command doesn't interest how much of them will find own death during advance. Reportedly Russian batatlion commanders have been fu..ng out by brigade chiefs and higher for big losses in equipment, but not in personnel. 
From other hand I already have seen two UKR servicemen logical questions, why our command just put troops in passive defense and just "extinguish fire" with small armored fireteams - with such tactic Russians anyway will trumpling staep by step our defense. Why nothing is doing to eliminate of northern salient, for example by strike north from Krasnohorivka and along H-20 road? 
 
UKR 31st mech.brigade engages armored platoon size assault group
And here southern flank of Avdiivka, where Russians havn't significant success - destroyed column of 111th mobilization reserve motor-fifle regiment of DNR
One of attempts of UKR troops to supress Russians in railroad area with Leo2 and Bradley fire.
 

UKR troops activated on Hola Prystan' direction (SW from Kherson) - they set control over Bilohrudove village on Bilohrudnyi island. Likley this happened sevaral days or even week ago, and changes was spotted due to footage of Russian drones. No official information from UKR General Staff. About week ago they strictly rejected to comment any info about Dnipro-crossing operaton.

Russian milbloggers complain UKR troops on bridgeheads, especially in Krynky area have just "unlimited number" of FPV drones, which inflicted heavy losses for armor and logistic vehicles. Also they say UKR trops use multiple recon Mavics, so almost each squad can call artillery fire from right bank in short time.  UKR troops defended by probably new EW assets which Russian bloggers called "EW cupola" - by their words Russian have severe problems with own drones and communications, Russian troops suffered a lack of own EW assets, so UKR drones fly impudent and "khokhols became so insolent that use extreme low altitude helicopter strikes at our positions with S-8 rockets and even deploy SHORAD AD assets in 1-2 km from the river on right bank, shooting down most of our drones, which try to spot artillery". 
Our units also have huge support of "Magyar Birds" unit, which likely already became independent UCAV unit maybe regiment of higer subordination. Russians say "some very known personage (Magyar) set in Kherson on residental building powerful transmitter, which allows his unit reach too far and breakthrough our week EW defense". During last 10 days Russians launched two Kh-31P anti-radar missiles on Kherson, very likely against Madyar's radio equipment.
 
 

Imagine how angry the Russian delegation would be if the President of Kazakhstan greeted them in Ukrainian. 😄
 

Or a grinding war of Exhaustion.  Guy named Bowdish did a long history view and came up with 5 basic military strategies:
- Extermination (not used as much these days but does happen), complete removal of an opponent bottom to top.  Mongols were really good at this one.
- Exhaustion.  Essentially fighting until one side can no longer hold it together on a societal scale. Think end of WW1.
- Annihilation.   The destruction of an opponents ability to fight.  Two sub methods here: Attrition and Dislocation.  Attrition is basically wearing down until military failure happens.  Corrosion is a modern spin on this theme, think of it as rapid precise Attrition.  Dislocation is Manoeuvre Warfare, out tempo, out move and fracture while imposing your own order.
- Intimidation.  The land of Deterrence and Coercion.  However there are examples of Compellance in this space as well.
- Subversion.  We have talked a lot about this one and all that Grey Zone stuff.
So both sides in this war have tried Annihilation and they may have taken it as far as it can go.  Manoeuvre is a distant memory.  Attrition is happening but we may have even run out of options room here.  So we are likely down to Exhaustion.  Keep in mind this is deeper than military Attrition, the calculus is different.  It is essentially draining things like human capita, industrial capacity and economics.  One bleeds an opponent out an a national scale, slowly.  Will becomes very important in Exhaustion and this is why Russia will likely try and keep the conflict in this arena - Putin figures that Russia can take more, longer than the West is willing to give.  He is basically playing chicken with his own society.  Of all the crap he has done, this is probably the most irresponsible: he is betting that a nuclear power won’t totally collapse before the West pulls back.  That is bigger than his or Russian insular BS as we are talking Sum of All Fears stuff.
But here we are.  The good news is that the support bill for the UA will likely go down drastically as defensive warfare will be prioritized.  And as Russia has demonstrated one can basically hold that together with landmines and bailing twine [aside: I wonder what Ukraine and the Wests landmine stocks look like?].
Or maybe peace breaks out.  A dirty unsettled peace that will never heal over.  We will very likely do this again in 10 years or so unless we can cauterize.

For folks freakin out about the expenditure from the west, it might be good to have perspective,
In Afghanistan the US alone spent some 2 TRILLION dollars.  The gov't sitting in Kabul right now is the umm err Taliban.  As of July we had spent about 76 billion in Ukraine.....  For the return on investment, it is hard to say the West hasn't got a financial windfall in kneecapping the Russian military.

And this is how we snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.  Ukraine will fight as long as it can and we should support them until that end.  Here we are discussing one possible end - I am not sure we are even at probable but we need to be ready for it.  Conversations well above my pay grade will land on how things finally resolve with respect to the war.  
After the war we need a modern day Marshall Plan.  One for the history books.  We turn Ukraine into South Korea in a month.  Even if EU and NATO somehow remain off the table there are plenty of other ways to secure that nation.  Not least of which would be stationing western troops on their soil a la the US 8th Army.  We need to follow through or we risk blowing the whole thing.  All the money spent to date will be lost if we leave Ukraine hanging during reconstruction.  If we double down on this and turn Ukraine into a regional economic powerhouse…a friendly democratic regional economic powerhouse, that is how we cement this as a major strategic victory.

For me it was just another Friday. Now I have another reason to celebrate today.🙂 🚀
 
AFU Archer spotted.
 

I don’t think it is nearly as cut and dry as the average person thinks.  There are upsides to a stalemate at this point.  To be totally brutal an endstate where both sides can claim victory (and defeat) often makes for the best outcome.  Ukraine is still a free nation, our support ensured they stood up against an illegal invasion and largely repelled it when there should have been no chance of that success.  
Russia and Putin can claim victory as they took an additional 7% of Ukraine at an eye-watering cost.  But this will likely keep ol Flat Face in power for a few more years before Time does its thing for us all.  This avoids a Russian free fall experience, and we get the added bonus of Europe buying our oil and gas (or alternatives) while we righteously continue to isolate Russia -this is why it won’t matter who is in the White House post-war. 
A lose-lose starts to look like a win-win.  US administration can point to all the upsides going into ‘24, plus we are looking at Armageddon in the Middle East which keeps the Bible Belt focused elsewhere.  We hopefully do a whole bunch of reconstruction in Ukraine and go all South Korea on the place.  Russia continues as downward spiral but slowly enough they don’t start WW3.  And we can all focus on China as the next big threat worthy of trillions in defence spending on bloated military capabilities that probably won’t work.
So you see, a stalemate is not the end of the world.  In fact I would not be surprised if in some circles they are kinda pushing for it.  The total and utter crushing of Russia has some serious risks.  This outcome sidesteps a lot of them.  Now everyone is both happy and unhappy.  Sometimes no decision is the best decision.
I for one am not convinced we are there yet, but we definitely can see it from here.

A bit more complicated but the sentiment is not entirely off.  We did an exercise about 10 years back trying to figure out all the components of military value.  In the end it looked like the Drake Equation, which was scary enough and then some egghead pointed out that some components were non-linear over time.  Over all military value is a pretty complex beast with all sorts of tangible and intangible elements.
So when considering something like a new platform one has to try and consider its value as a delta V to an overall system.  How is X giving an entire system an advantage to an opponents comparative opposing system.  So infantry in battle suits is not simply “how much does the suit cost versus the things that can kill it” it is “how does the system create effects advantage”.  Cost becomes an attritional factor but is offset by advantage.  
So beating up on the poor tank.  It isn’t the fact that cheap ATGMs or UAS can kill them that is driving their value down.  It is the fact that ATGMs and UAS are killing them before the tank can deliver its military value on the battlefield.  If tanks could survive long enough to create operational tempo and manoeuvre then we would not be having this conversation, even if we were looking at the same loss rates.  It is the fact we are seeing the loss rates without the tank being able to deliver value.  That is what is killing the tank.  Making it worse is the cost factor and those tanks being eliminated by incredibly cheap systems compared to the cost of the tank.
So if armoured infantry in battle suits can live long enough to create effect, force decision and sustain options then they have value that far outweighs strips cost.  Of course there is a threshold for this, we see that in WW2 Germany.  The Tiger was brilliant but far too costly to sustain even with the effects it could deliver.  The Tiger 2 is like modern tanks.  The damn things were very expensive and most could not even get to the start line.
So is a military capability below a cost sustainment threshold?  And does it deliver value for that costs?  When and where that value happens is also incredibly important.  In reality it is very complex - let alone when you factor in historical and cultural value.  There is a Perun video (if he hasn’t already done one, that guy has to be in FD somewhere).

Mass.is.broken.

More Avdiivka insanity (Oct. 10):
 

Ukrainian drone pilot destroys a Russian tank from 22 km distance (18 from frontline).
The tweet also states, that Russia has imposed a 10 km no-tank zone from the front.
 

https://mil.in.ua/uk/news/povernys-zhyvym-peredav-pershi-spetsialni-prytsily-dlya-mk-19/
The design department of the "come back alive" foundation has developed an artillery-type sight for the mk 19 grenade launcher. This sight allows indirect fire from this grenade launcher. The fund managed to collect 13 million UAH, which will provide 150 grenade launcher crews. Previously, the Ukrainian military complained that the mk19 does not have sights for indirect fire, unlike the AGS-17. The capabilities of this support weapon will now be expanded

Bit OT - in relation to the mob at the airport in Dagestan, Visegrad posted this meme which gave me a laugh.

Elimination of Russian assault group somewhere on Bakhmut direction. Video of National Police assault brigade "Liut' " (eng. Rage) 
Reportedly Russians now move additional reinfrcements there and again activated own counter-attacks. 
Russian milblogger сomplains, most of these attacks now conduct by Shtorm/Shtorm Z units, but without proper artillery support, so often these groups even can't approach to UKR positions for skirmish fight. He told the level of irrecoverable losses in Shtorm Z companies can be 40-70 % after each attack. Main reason - poor training and total dominance of UKR artilelry and mortars, which don't allow to evacuate wounded, which raise number of KIA. By the same reason more equipped and motivated "Shtorm" units also didn't have success. 
I can add, in last time not only convicts go to Shtorm Z. Many Russian soldiers reject to go in fight and as a punishment commanders transfer them to Shtorm Z units, which more and more turn similar to penalty units of Red Army of WWII. Main reason of refusals is moral exhausting of soldiers, who several months live in dirty trenches with short-time rest in close rear without vacations to home. Many of them hadn't vacations through 9 months. Russian milblogger told one of reason of Avdiivka fail is moral exhausting of infantry - many of them had a hope about vacations, but instead got an order to prepare for assaults. This heavily struck their moral, so there were episodes, when in first days of offensive some units just rejected to go forward despite UKR positions were destroyed by artillery and bombs and it's left onlly seize them almost withoit fight.    

as far as more babies, I'll assume you mean white babies.  And women should definitely not have choices, especially not voting and working outside the home.  Society was great before women became actual people,  like legally actually people, ya know?  It's like when we ended slavery, everything downhill ever since.  
Ya know maybe the divorce rate is because men are generally such f--kheads?  And when women aren't physically and economically trapped they will sometimes choose to leave the aforementioned f--kheads?
Maybe the real problem is letting men vote?

Just to cheer you up, USA are not alone. In Europe every single country has pretty much the same problem on a different scale. Above film about mathematics basics is just a presentation of the tip of the iceberg.
This is a big, flashing red alarm to start treating weaponization of information seriously. Really, freedom of speech is NOT freedom of lies and manipulation. Either we act and demand scientific process of proving "facts" or we will drown in b*******.

What's interesting is that those that are constantly harping about democracy and freedom being destroyed are the ones actually destroying democracy and freedom, at least in the US.  In 2020 (and coming in 2024) we faced the end of american democracy.  A giant mob of these brainless idiots even attacked and captured the US capital!  First time in over 200 years for that!  And what is said of this on the right?  "oh, was a little dustup!".  And these same people generally think religion should be more in charge in the US, while at the same time constantly harping about the constitution which very clearly says "hell no" to that.  
The enemy of democracy is ignorance and demogogery.  Fox news in the US being the primary source of this.  Fox news viewers have no idea what's actually happening.  It's news & infotainment for people that literally can't handle the truth.  They think the 2020 election was stolen, yet have no evidence other than "some black people were seen.."  (do they even know that Fox CHOSE to settle out of court and pay out ~$750M in a civil suit because of their election lies??)   They think climate change is a hoax despite their own thermometers.  They think Trump didn't didn't do anything wrong while the rest of us have actually seen the indictments and the mountains of damning evidence.  They think Jan 6 was everything except what it actually was -- a mob induced by Trump to try to overthrow the duly elected govt of the US -- it was an atttemped coup.
So western society is not being destroyed by gays or transgenders or atheists.  It's being destroyed by ignorant, nationalist, rage-filled fools who listen to rightwing propaganda to the point where they can't even stitch two thoughts together about reality yet think they are saving america while actively trying to destroy it, through their utter stupidity.

Let's not go there. You have to realize though that this is how Putin keeps defining the West in his propaganda.
Edit: ... and so complaining about this sounds a bit off when at the same time you warn that the West hasn't realized what's at stake.