beardiebloke

It is a better read by the light of burning Russian helicopters.

Further confirmation (not really needed):
 

The issue is the next layer of deep strike that the Ukrainians have not been permitted to do. If the Kerch bridge was in the water, and the weakest links in the rail system in the parts of Russia immediately surrounding Ukraine were under relentless missile attack this thing would be in a completely different place. Jake Sullivan has decide he would rather the Ukrainians lose than that take that risk. Given his brilliant piece about the state of the Mideast last week, i think he needs to go.

Battalion.  Not Brigade.  Of course the loss of an entire Battalion is going to seriously impact its parent formation.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20054483
 
By early information, likely an attack on Estonia-Finland gas pipeline yesterday. 
 

Mainly problem for Estonia. Finlands and Estonia's shared LNG-terminal is situated in Finland and this pipe is used for transfers to Estonia. 

Oh my someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  I was more playfully talking about the pearl clutching and hand wringing "the half empty glass is breaking!!" sentiment, which appears to be spreading.  Long list of posts with that tone have your name at the top going way back, hence why I "pulled you in"...and you never disappoint!
So we have moved from the monolithic invincible Russia specter, to "how long can Ukraine possibly hold out?!"
As long as they want/need/have/can?  I sense you, and many others, are really struggling with the unknowns in all this.  Welcome to war.  It is a collision of certainties that create massive uncertainty.  The RA is a "shattered shell" of what we feared on 21 Feb 23 - you can debate that one all day but it is done.  It will take a decade or more to rebuild what they were shooting for back in the 10s.  They broke it all over Ukraine last year; talk about bad decisions.  But they can Defend - as the old Prussian also said, that part is easier, but it does not get the business done.
So how long can Ukraine "last" really depends on what they are doing.  Can they freeze this conflict in place - yeuup, the RA suicide-fest last winter proved that one.  Can they re-take all of former Ukraine...well, jury is still out.  Can, as a nation, they sustain a war longer than Russia?  Well we will see.  Are we talking low-intensity "we are all dug in and raiding now and again"?  Sure.  Are we talking insanely high intensity combat - well probably not, no one really can.
My main point is that just because you can't get answers you want does not automatically mean the worst is happening.  Based on what I can see (not imagine I am seeing, like fully functioning Russian rail systems pouring thousands of tons of supplies onto fat happy Russian defenders), the West is committed through the Winter at least.  If Ukraine can pull off a breakthrough and regain some momentum, they have a good chance at some serious gains- as we have seen in this war, no one cracks like the RA.
If no breakthroughs happen and all we get is very expensive leg humping, then I expect some difficult political conversations are on the table late-Winter, early-Spring.  Maybe we call it where it stands and everyone wins/loses.  Putin can claim the "greatest Russian victory since Bagration" as he retains an extra 6% of now-blasted and mined wasteland, that cost them 100k lives.  Russia can go back and lick its wounds while trying to figure out who to fend off NATO, who scored Finland and Sweden out of this deal - Russia got a pretty weak China...and the big stuffy animal filled with asbestos that is Iran.  Oh and lets not forget the BFF of North Korea - like being best friends with that weird kid who tortures bugs at recess while touching himself, and everyone tries not to notice.
Ukraine gets to stay Ukraine, starts laying mines - hey look they can do it too! And we wind up with a Korean solution.  Maybe Ukraine does not even get to enter into NATO or EU, but money and alliances will be created because containing Russia matters now - South Korea made it work pretty well and their capital is under gun range of one of the craziest MFs since his Dad.       
https://datacommons.org/place/country/KOR/?utm_medium=explore&mprop=amount&popt=EconomicActivity&cpv=activitySource,GrossDomesticProduction&hl=en
To my mind, that is about as bad it will get, at least as things stand right now.  If the West - especially Europe, cuts Ukraine lose entirely, then this whole show was a complete waste of time as Ukraine will not be able to survive for long without a massive reconstruction/investment effort - we let that happen, well we deserve what happens next. 
I know this is not the war you ordered, sir, but it is the one we got.

The pay is reasonable I would say, the retirement support is decent too. How come that position only attracts geriatrics? They could do more useful things like playing Combat Mission games. 

Worth a read
 
 

There are;
Breech prems (horrible horrible events)
Bore prems (bad, but can make for amusing photos)
Muzzle prems (can be very bad, depending on battery layout)
Flight prems (problematic, and a cause for serious concern ... quite aside from the potential for fratricide)
The cause for any of those is far from easy to define, although the different types of prem each have more- or less-likely causes. It could be a wonky fuse, an obstruction in the barrel/muzzle, defective projectile, poor ammo handling proceedures, poor drills by the gun crews, force majure, etc. Without a full investigation, you're just left hoping it was a one off, and not a systematic problem with the ammo batch or fuse batch or the drills of the gun crew (assuming they survived).
That particular barrel appears to be ok, but I really wouldn't want to push anything other than a bore brush through it until its had a full tech inspection. *Something* caused the prem, and it'd be more than nice to know what it was before trying that again. Also there could be internal damage to the rifling, the front section of the barrel was likely overstressed by the detonation,  and the recoil system probably needs to be checked since it wouldn't have functioned in the way it was designed with this round. Specifically, the muzzle brake normally 'pulls' the barrel forward reducing stress on the recoil system, but of course that wouldn't have happened with this round, and obviously couldn't on any future rounds. Also, the mass of the muzzle brake forms an important part of the fine balance of the barrel assembly - without it working the elevating gears is really tough, and probably really damaging to the fine gears. It also makes the fine adjustments absolutely needed for accurate fire all but impossible. On the other hand, firing *this* gun /without/ removing the remains of the muzzle brake (to keep the balance roughly right) would do weird things to the trajectory since the air pressure on the round as it transitioned out of the barrel would be all over the place, which would itself bollix accuracy in random ways,  due to the modern art sculpture now sitting where the muzzle brake used to be.
*could* it be fired? Well ... yeesss. At least once more ...
*should* it be fired? Oh hellz no!
 
Edit: just saw Haiduk's post about Pakistani ammo. Aye, some manufacturers/countries rapidly get a poor reputation. We used to use Hirtenberger ammo for the 81mm mortar; lovely stuff - reliable and a delight to work with. But really expensive. So it got replaced by cheaper ammo from [differentcountry]. Yikes. Yiiiiikes.

Anyone who hasn't read Timothy Snyders "Bloodlands" book should do so.The extent of the 360 degree awfulness pretty much anywhere between Berlin and Moscow was simply incomprehensible from 1900 to 1950. Not to say that it was the same everywhere in that large expanse of territory, but it was some flavor of awful in almost all of it. There was a whole lot of intentional forgetting after that, because it was the only way to get thru the day.
BTW I almost always read a book in a week or less, "Bloodlands" took me six months just because it is to awful to take more than little tiny bits.

A friend and I have substantial experience in this area and I figured it might be worth a stab (many years ago we had an unsuccessful embedded hardware startup), as there is a relatively small band of frequencies used by the majority of small drones. You need to cover 700-1300mhz and the two WiFi ranges and you are solid (so an RTL-SDR and then a wifi chip), and I’m pretty sure it’d be easy to classify drones roughly by frequency and by the signals sent over the wire (at least for WiFi enthusiasts like us). This is an EE grad student semester project in terms of complexity level for a prototype. Productionizing it would cost $50-200k.
As I posited many pages ago, I think there’s a realistic, near-term path to build an anti-radition drone to go after drone operators or drones in the air themselves. You take the above signal detector + some basic computer vision setup running on something like a rasberry pi, and have it go after a certain signal. Tracking the drone is easier because of the omni antenna and larger signal (sending video) and the fact it is moving so triangulation is easier even with one antenna.
Edit: Think of this as counter-battery, but for drones.

Unbelievable it looks so simple how they get Intel. Subtitles are fine too if you switch to English. 
 

My hot take is that they have sent everything that would move under its own power to the front, and pulled the barrels off of everything that wouldn't. And when those barrels are used up, the next batch is coming from where exactly? This also gives a pretty good estimate of what percentage of one of these outside storage parks is vaguely usable.

Classic “why is spotting in CM so broken?” situation:
 

Slightly off-topic, but interesting:
 

Hromadske report with vision, interviews of life in a UKR artillery unit.  UKR to ENG auto-translate works with this one.
 

I think you're being sarcastic, but honestly a more detailed fire-panning interface would be awesome. Are you sure you're talking to the audience you think you're talking to?
Also, based on what we're seeing in this war, obstacles and breaching ops clearly are a requirement. At least if you want something that can accurately simulate warfare. And that is what I want. If it wasn't, I'd be playing Starcraft.

What air defenses? ;D
Apperently, there's less and less of them. BBC was pretty quick to report the local (my hometown) events, so you may wanna check that out.
No air raid warnings, no nothing. Nothing is happening, as always. Just bavovna and smoke. Even the announcer at the train station skips the usual "be observant and careful, careful and observant" this morning. How come, I wonder?
 
ps: I'm okay, and the windows are fine, for now.

A bit of a write up on it - https://mil.in.ua/en/news/australian-eos-to-supply-160-slinger-counter-uav-systems-to-ukraine/

Interesting strike drones adapted to a very specific set of targets:
 

Hey, bricks are expensive. You tie a mobik to the gas pedal.

Steve had some suggestions few pages back about “bomber drones” loaded with different types of explosives depending on targets.
@Battlefront.com Could you please ask that crystal ball of yours about next weeks Mega Jackpot numbers?

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

Who remembers these words? "My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Ronald Reagan, August 11, 1984

From the Economist:
"The war in Ukraine shows how technology is changing the battlefield
But mass still counts, argues Shashank Joshi in the first of seven chapters of a special report on the future of warfare"
Another useful analysis of what this war means for the next war. Shashank Joshi is the defence editor for the Economist, previously a think-tanker at RUSI.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/07/03/the-war-in-ukraine-shows-how-technology-is-changing-the-battlefield
I like a lot of it, but here's one quote: “You can’t cyber your way across a river.”
It's a paywall.  Recommended if you know how to bypass or just have subscription (well worthwhile).