Lethaface

Why UA is not massing?  Well it may also be for the same reason the RA has avoided it, mass is dangerous.  The few times last year the RA tried massing they got severely damaged doing so.  We saw the UA go through the same thing earlier this summer.  The reason is that massing dramatically increases ISR signatures and opens one up to counters.  There has been a drive towards higher distribution of forces this entire war and I do not think it is a question of coordination or ability as much as it is that concentration of forces is a good way to lose them.
The UA’s current “small bites” is not that different from the RA’s over the winter, albeit delivered via different tactical capability.  I suspect they are small-biting until the RA are eroded to a point that UA massing cannot be countered, then we may see a larger concentrated break out.  For now I am not even sure traditional air superiority would do it as ISR is everywhere and unmanned/PGM cannot be countered by conventional air systems.
I have heard this “well why are they not just doing X?” from western military experts and the answer is likely “because they tried that and it does not work”.  I also am starting to believe that “not working” is not due to UA shortfalls in C2 or training after 18 months of western support and lessons learned from this war.  Instead it is likely due to shifts in warfare itself.

Actually, I think that (again) if a problem appears among Western audiences it will be constructed upon the tragedy of Ukrainian casualties.  Even on this thread a certain type of anti-war position has been presented as 'the Ukrainians are dying for us because of our putting them up to this proxy war'.  There is enough post-imperial guilt among Western European nations, at least, that the idea of encouraging Ukrainians to die for our benefit will not sit well.  And make no mistake, that's how it will be portrayed by those who want to gain clicks and/or undermine Western support for the war.
As regards the narrative shifts you describe, they are hanging an awful lot on the definition of "winning" and that's actually what I meant by needing a cultural shift in the West - not just that casualties happen but that you can take heavy casualties and still "win".
As many have said before it is not reasonable to present total expulsion of Russia from everywhere that was Ukrainian ten years ago as the only definition of victory.  If this was ever an existential war for Ukraine (as no-one would have said it wasn't on Day 1 of the invasion) then Ukraine have already won, since this war is not going to extinguish them as a nation state.  So I agree that a narrative shift from "this war will be won easily" (if that was ever truly "the narrative") to "this war will be won with high losses" is entirely sensible.  I don't agree that the narrative of this war will ever have to shift to "this war cannot be won", though.
Also, negotiation is always happening (even diplomatic negotiation, if you don't like The_Capt's "war is negotiation" definition).  Currently, Russia's position is that they want control of Ukraine (which they will clearly never achieve miltarily).  Ukraine's position is that they want back everything they've lost since 2014 (which they theoretically might still achieve militarily), plus reparations, etc.  Difficulties encountered during this year's fighting may result in Ukraine softening their demands but it will never result in them agreeing to Russia's current terms.  So, for all that we would all love an immediate end to the suffering that really isn't in the West/Ukraine's power at the moment.  Russia are the only ones who can possibly make that happen.

Not heresy in the least.  The lines have not moved much despite all the action, no disputing that.  We have not seen an operational breakthrough, largely tactical pulses which have not added up yet.
So a couple thoughts/questions:
- If this whole offensive is a road to nowhere…why is the UA still pushing?  The UA has a lot to lose and knows that they must preserve their forces.  They cannot afford the human wave wastage Wagner and the RA demonstrated last winter.  Yet they are still pushing…why?  My only guess can be that they still see achievable objectives and their picture of the RA supports this.
- We have seen a lot of indications that the RA war machine is in trouble.  To the point that I am not even sure what is still holding it together.  This may be an example of that Russian steel everyone was going on about at the beginning of this war.  Right now the RA appears glued together by pure stubbornness.  Their losses have been historic and a lot of capability is simply gone.  The central question is, “are they close to tipping?”  No idea but I am pretty sure the UA and western military support “inside the box” have a much better bead.
- Ok, the UA offensive of 2023 fails…now what?  Well, we might have to start thinking about frozen lines and a much longer conflict.  So what does that look like?  How do we support that?  There is no “cutting and running” on this one yet, our sunk costs are too high and the opportunity to continue to cripple Russia too good.
One thing we do need to get out of our heads is the idea that “not retaking every inch of pre-2014 Ukraine = losing”.  That was a dangerous binary position to take and it will not serve well moving forward.  Losing is an Ukraine no longer able to decide when and where to prosecute this conflict.  Losing is an Ukraine no longer able to be independent of Russian Will.  Losing is western powers surrendering strategic initiative.
All war is negotiation.  With the other parties, with oneself and with the situation as it evolves.  My read is that Ukraine is continuing to negotiate from a position of strength and no matter how this year’s offensive turns out, if they can sustain that then we still have options.

I don't think you'll get any argument that the Ukrainian offensive has fallen short versus what a lot of people hoped for.  Naturally, as you imply in your second paragraph, we don't yet know the final results and so it's difficult to judge whether it has "failed", per se.
I do agree that there's a risk associated with how the Western public perceive the offensive, though.  For me it's mostly about how much traction the inevitable alarmist narratives from fringe outlets will gain because I credit most people with the ability to understand that war is tough and to get on with it (largely because they usually seem to have done so in the past).
However, if it does gain traction and become a problem I think it will not be because of the 'low gains' made by Ukraine but because of the high losses.  It seems clear that, starting after the two World Wars, we in the West have culturally internalised a correlation between low losses taken and military success.  At our memorial services we focus on the fact that the dead died and we mourn them.  There are many reasons for this and it hasn't helped that our most recent war or three has seemed to confirm this correlation.  It does mean that we try really hard to avoid casualties and therefore we do better than most at achieving that but it might also leave the general public prone to asking pointed questions if they are served up a high-loss, low-gain offensive and asked to consider it a positive.
Interestingly, in the USSR/Russia, the Great Patriotic War led to them internalising a correlation between high losses incurred and military success.  In their memorial services they focus on the fact that the dead won and they celebrate them.  This seems to have bedded in to the extent that they almost seem to seek out losses of men and materiel in order to reassure themselves that they're 'doing it right'.  And, again, their most recent war or three has seemingly confirmed this for them.  Unfortunately that means the general public are not phased by high loss rates (potentially even the opposite) and so it makes them more immediately resilient in the face of 'bad news from the front'.
All of which is to say it's probably about time we understood war a little better in the West; a slightly more 'warts-and-all' cultural understanding of warfare could serve us all very well in the weeks, months and decades to come.

Just a quick fly by in regards to the strikes in Crimea.  I've been following along intermittently just lately, work sucks at times, some days I have to bash through 10 pages or more just to get caught up.  My overall gut feeling is that things are starting to feel more loose, both in the North and south, the RA is creaking and groaning and doing slap dash fixes where it can. 
So this massive step up of long range strikes has been planned and timed very well and is acting as a stressor to overload the RAs already terrible command and control.  I don't think it is primarily about degrading assets in Crimea to help further down the road, its as I stated more about adding more problems on top of what the RA C&C already cant deal with.
I would not be surprised if we see something really break on the RA defensive line in the next week or so and I mean REALLY break.  The timing of all these strikes is just to specific.  Thoughts?

CM:CE (Combat Mission: Combat Engineering) would be about as much fun as CM:LG (Combat Mission: Lawn Growing), and sell about as well as lamp oil.

Does "quite soon" mean 12-18 months?

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.

copy paste from subsim hq

😎

It's not a mist of suspicions....Musk has quite clearly demonstrated that he will take his own interests into account before any national interest. He has actively promoted the idea that Ukraine should surrender territory to Russia and that Taiwan should submit to the PRC. Elon Musk is *not* our friend. 

Local Sevastopol TG claims, refering to sources in administration and Black Sea Fleet, that according last information there were 2 maritime drones and 8 missiles. UKR aviation resource hints there was airstrike, so Storm Shadow/SCALP were used. Russians initially reported about combined strike of converted S-200 and Storm Shadows. According to last info (unofficial for now) only two drones and two missiles were intercepted.
Number of victims of workers raised to 11 killed and 31 wounded. Landing ship and submarine allegedly destroyed, two more ships damaged, but level of damage is unknown.
More, after the strike, there was information about UKR diversion group operates in Sevastopol,so police and Army patrols were directed to find them. Police passed one of army patrols as sabateurs and opened fire. In result of skirmish 3 soldiers and  1 policeman were killed.

Again?
Ps. Starlink claims it was global issue, but... very strange coincidence

Are you sure because we expect Prigozhin romance.

I clicked to 3 random points.
Says UA treats prisoners worse than ISIS and the Chechens
Excuses UA PoWs being executed as work of "adrenaline"
Says Bucha was committed by Ukrainian artillery while Russians were handing out humanitarian aid
Hope this waste of a human being catches a bullet and doesnt live to tell the tale.
Or maybe he should enjoy ISIS prisoner treatment in his last days, I dont recall them ever doing Prisoner swaps for some reason.
 

Ok, well I don't want to act unfairly in responding to a person who is deciding not to post any more on the thread so I will offer to continue this discussion with kevinkin in DMs, if he's interested.  However I did want to address some recent posts here because I think it speaks to a wider misunderstanding that is distressingly common when discussing complicated issues and has led to similar conflicts on this thread in the past.
Kevin, if you're still reading this (and as I say, you may respond to me in DM if you like - I don't want to provoke you into a further argument in this thread), it's not the positions you hold but your unwillingness to properly explore them which frustrates.  This leads to you gish-galloping your way through three or four 'positions' in each post.  Then, when someone tries to pin down and engage with a single one (like I and others did with 'stare down Putin' and The_Capt did with 'win the war in 4 weeks') we don't get much in response.  I tried to encourage you to expand on the 'staring' position, to see if there was anything to actually discuss there (I do believe that you believe you are raising fair points) but your response to a list of things the US did with the intelligence they had was to ask what the US did with the intelligence they had.  I mean, at my most charitable I could assume that it was a rhetorical question but without any elaboration from you about why the previous answers to such a "rhetorical" question might not count...  Mate, do you not see how that might quickly become frustrating?
The below quote is demonstrative of another problem:
People should be aware that "single points" don't exist in the real world.  If one is trying to drill down to the truth of a matter then dragging multiple different topics together is unavoidable and necessary because ultimately everything is interacting, everywhere, all the time.  The_Capt, in a very particular sense, did write "paragraphs to make a single point" but that was precisely because addressing a single point requires exploration of many others.  That was his point!  In another, slightly less confusing sense, The_Capt's point intent was to just hint at the actual time, effort and patience which would be required to actually start answering one of kevinkin's one-liner questions by pointing out all the other questions which would have to be asked and answered at the same time.
My friendly advice to kevinkin or anyone else who is considering "just asking questions" or raising "points" which go against the "group-think" on this board:
Ask yourself the question Decide what you think the answer might be Think of and ask yourself at least 3 different questions directly related to the answer to your initial question Decide what you think the answers might be to each of those 3 Consider the implications of the combined 4 answers you are now holding in your mind Ask yourself whether they make sense together, as the beginnings of a coherent potential "truth" If they do make sense together and they contrast with what you perceive as the dominant viewpoint on this thread or elsewhere then you may have an interesting point.  Go ahead and make it, simultaneously making your case by including your thinking about the 3 other 'satellite' questions.  This demonstrates the way you are thinking.  It is helpful, interesting and it will be appreciated by those who are minded to respond. If they don't make sense together, try again*.  If you are still unable to find a sensible "truth" which explains them all, that's great because you may have an interesting question.  Go ahead and ask it, simultaneously including your thinking about the 3 other 'satellite' questions and what you are finding difficult to understand.  This demonstrates the way you are thinking.  It is helpful, interesting and it will be appreciated by those who are minded to respond. Listen to/read the response(s) you get, think about them and engage with the precise thoughts that people raise, doing your best to help people relate the discussion back to your original question. Sound too much like hard work?  Welcome to a discussion about a very complicated issue.  People spend lifetimes studying, thinking about and writing about this stuff and it's not because they are overly verbose or for want of anything better to do.
 
*In particular it may be helpful to think about answers which do not involve the USA.  Only a very small minority of real-world global decisions are made with the USA in mind, so you'd be surprised how often this might help.

To recover that "vision" and put it into effective action of some kind, the US Congress needs to take a deep breath and decide to work toward some common goals and agreements. They exist, and the Senate is better in this regard than the House. Anything substantive takes both houses, though. I'd say "the US" DOES know better but the current atmosphere is so partisan that bipartisan agreements just aren't happening, even though both parties essentially agree on something (and not just Ukraine, other topics as well). 
Dave

I have largely ignored you because it is pretty clear that you are not in fact interested in actually learning anything on this forum.  However, in reality this is an honest question that some lurkers may also be asking.  Why can’t the US, or NATO or an alliance in between “win this war in 4 weeks and just end this brutal war?”  Don’t need an essay really:
-  Put the nuclear escalation to the side for arguments sake but we will come back to it.
-    A US direct incursion into Ukraine or this war is going to drive a massive amount of support into Putin’s arms, to the point he might actually get full mobilization support.  A fully mobilized and galvanized Russia is a scary beast particularly since they will likely be heavily backed by both China and Iran as they will see the entire expansion of the war as a chance to defeat the US by proxy.  So now the US has four weeks to push Russia out of Ukraine, could they do it?  Probably?  Would it end the war…no way.  It would likely expand it as Russia gears up for a serious fight because now it has reason to have one. The totality of your position is that you are in fact pointing madly at a “limited war” but your solution is “more limited war”…oh wait maybe you are not talking about a limited war.
- ok, to defeat Russia, truly defeat them, it means not simply driving them out of Ukraine.  It means total defeat of Russia as a nation.  The destruction of Russian Will to fight.  This means going into Russia itself and removing its ability to generate that Will.  So we are talking invasion, defeat in detail and occupation…of Russia.  The military force the US would need to do that is well outside the US military current envelope, we are talking millions of troops.  Let’s pretend Russia can be occupied, it is a big country (look at a map).  You now need to hold it until you can install a friendly government…and remember you brought up total war.  So the US and most of NATO would now need conscription to sustain a force that large…you feeling strong?
- “But we will stop at the border”, sure and Russia will now simply reload and incite as much violence and discontent in Ukraine…now filled with US troops.  What possible negotiated end-state is there where Russia can still function while massing for WW3? No, you cannot give Russia time to reload…that would be really dumb.  So now you would need to contain Russia…in the 21st century…with China on one of its borders…and Iran.  That is a massive problem.  The state sponsored terrorism issues alone will be intense.  Again, this is limited measures that won’t “end” anything but risk a lot worse.
- Back to occupation, the risk of a resistance from hell is incredibly high.  See the many lengthy posts on that issue.  Very angry and well supported by various powers an occupied Russia could make Iraq look like a weekend outing.  Oh wait, there is more,
- Russia might fly apart while you are trying to occupy it.  Not known for its shining unity, occupation could see Russia itself fly apart and the the US is trying to manage a civil war…and a possible insurgency.
- Ok, now the obvious one…WMDs.  Let’s pretend that Russia won’t use them on good old “Merican” boys as they counter attack into Ukraine and encroach on the Russian border.  They sure as hell will if the US invades Russian soil, which we have to now.  And even if they don’t there is no way in this universe we can guarantee we can secure them all.  Now we may have lose WMDs of many flavours lose in this mess.
To put it more simply and in words with as few syllables as I can: To defeat  Russia and end this war in 4 weeks the US would need to break Russia.  To break Russia is to engage in a major war, possibly global.  It would break the UN, it would shatter NATO because I can think of at least a dozen nations that would get off that train quickly.  Economically it would break the system as we are talking markets staring down the barrel of nuclear Armageddon.  Anything short of that is just more limited war with even slimmer margins than we are already on.
So when you declare that “the US could end this thing in 4 weeks” all you are doing is loudly announcing just how much you do not understand.  If you honestly want to learn, maybe stop typing and start reading more. 
 

One of my more favoured aphorisms is "for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong."

Not just Prussian (German by this point) regulations. This is how every army worked pre-WW1. And it's mainly about maintaining command and control. There are no radios or modern NCO corps yet, and no one can shout loud enough for orders to be heard along the entire length of a company or even platoon that has deployed into skirmish line (squads exist at this point in time, but they aren't independent maneuver elements yet). And it isn't really considered possible to change direction while in skirmish line (you can try to make a company sized skirmish line turn, but it's gonna be ugly (just imagine 200 men in an extended order line trying to conduct a 90 (or 45, or any number) degree turn, especially when no one on the flanks as even heard the order)). So you march to your start line for the attack in close order, get faced in the right direction, and then deploy into skirmish line to conduct the attack.
Once a unit has deployed into skirmish line they can only move forward. Once they have made contact with the enemy they are now the "firing line" and the higher level commander has effectively lost all command and control over that unit until it has finished its attack. So the only further influence the commander has over the battle is in committing reserves to the firing line. Those reserves may be held back behind the next terrain feature in close order, or following a few hundred meters behind (in close order if it is considered safe enough, or in extended order if enough fire is still reaching them). It is considered preferable to commit the reserves to the flank of the existing firing line, making it longer and preventing units from getting mixed up. But the limited frontages available for the attack usually meant that it was more practical to merge the reserves into the existing firing line from behind. The downside to merging the reserves in behind the existing firing line is that there is no way to prevent the units from getting mixed up.
After the attack is completed everyone needs to be called back into close order so they can be reorganized and reoriented for their next orders. I conceptualize it as being pretty similar to how we use mechanized infantry (can the order get any closer than being crowded into the back of an armored vehicle?). Only "move mounted and fight dismounted" becomes "move in close order and fight in extended order". But, while in theory you should always fight in extended order, in practice a unit moving in close order may get surprised, or a commander trying to keep his unit controllable "just that little bit longer" may misjudge how far it is safe to stay in close order. 
Everyone with any sense (and not everyone had any sense) has figured out by this point in time that units are extremely vulnerable to fire while they are in close order, so should always be shaken out into extended order before making contact. But no one has figured out a system of command and control that can entirely dispense with close order formations just yet. I think the problem was that existing maneuver elements were just too big to be controllable or maneuverable while in extended order. Light machineguns will give squads enough firepower to be a useful maneuver element (10 men with bolt action rifles can't really generate enough firepower on their own to be useful), and the forging of a modern NCO corps gives armies a high enough density of leaders to make squads useable maneuver elements. Once the squad has become a useable maneuver element you finally have a formation that is small enough to easily change direction and hear the shouted commands of its leader while in extended order.
But I digress. There is a whole other thread for this.

The artwork depicted is a rejigging of the original CM advertising:

 

@BFCElvis Thanks very much ! Though to fair, I just recorded the footage, someone else cut it down to size and stitched it back together for the trailer.

@dkchapuis Here you go, this is the start of the CM chunk of the live event: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1923663906?t=00h48m50s

Brendan McBreen, a retired USMC Lieutenant Colonel, ran 300 squad assaults in CMSF and drew insights from them. McBreen, who has 25 years of service as an infantry officer, found that the service's manuals and training materials give only vague and inadequate guidance about how to conduct a squad assault. He used CMSF to run a series of tests, matching a rifle squad against different defenders, and tallied up the results. 
Then he wrote up his findings. The whole series of seven articles appears over on the Tactical Notebook, a Substack run by Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson, a historian in Quantico. 
Abstract Part I Part II Part III (test setup within CMSF) Part IV Part V (tactical insights) Part VI (recommendations) Among McBreen's recommendations: "train with simulations" and "use simulations to improve our manuals." 
Fight Club US and Fight Club UK merit acknowledgements.
 

Meanwhile new war on Caucasus is coming.
Probably Azerbaijan will try to take whole territory of Nagornyi Karabakh and esatblish land corridor between Karabakh and Nakhichevan authonomy enclave.
Both Azerbaijanian and Armenian armies move troops to the border. Interesting that Azerbaijanian forces use Z and V symbols, but crossed out.

Also intersting that now Russia on background of cooling of relations with Armenia, will be likely unofficially support Azerbaijan. Armenian authorities, disappointed by reaction of Russia and ODKB alliance on Azerbaijanian offensive in Nagornyi Karabakh, now more and more turn to USA, claim intentions to leave ODKB. But more inetersting likely now Armenia has found new ally - Iran!
 
Iran and Turkey exchanged with sharp statements - Iran warned Turkey Azerbaijan and... Israel agaisnt invasion to Armenia. In own turn Turkey warned Iran that if their forces entere to Azerbaijan, Turkey armed foces will react immediately.
 

Rare footage of tank vs. tank fight. Reportedly this is June - the beginning of UKR offensive. One Leopard 2 against two Russian tanks. Distance 1500+ m. After Russian tank was hit and damaged, both Russian tanks rolled back. 
UKR Leo likely used HE shell. But maybe ERA on Russian tank saved the vehicle from penetration