fireship4

Let's see if I can summarize what I came away with today from this thread:
1. UltraDave, thanks for your expert insights into the nuke plant
2.  Today we saw video of UKR strikes on Antonovsky bridge -- anyone seen any video of the damage to bridge or pontoon bridge?  And first hand reports? 
3. Hungary hiring RU to make nuke reactor -- sure, that's insane, but not if you got $millions in bribes.  Then it's just good business decision.
4. Denys Davydov's video today seemed to indicate that Pisky is soon to fall.  Can't wait to hear RU nats act like they just took that really mattered.  I wonder what the cost was to RU side for that little town, now rubble.  How many men, vehicles, shells, etc.  I have a feeling they overpaid.
5.  Someone killed Dugin's daughter and aint no one  knows who, 'cept the perpetrators, it seems
6.  NRA took RU money?  well, I'll be danged.  Did not know that though not surprised.
7.  no real movement on the front.  maybe 6-10 weeks of dry weather?  Does that sound correct?  Is UKR gonna go for Kherson territory before the mud comes?  When the leaves fall both sides lose concealment, so not sure who that would favor.
Probably some other stuff, but that's my takeaway. 

Interesting look at the US Army’s planned transition to new divisional structures by 2028-30, especially in light of the current war in Ukraine:
 

Quite a good talk held by RUSI on the Galician campaign of 1914 and parallels to today

https://rusi.org/events/open-to-all/russias-war-eastern-front-1914-precedents-current-ukraine-conflict

Personally, I believe tanks (or AFV in general) will have tethered drones and commander will control it with AI assistance. He will put glasses on and will command with the view from up there with AI getting control when needed. A tethered drone is invulnerable to EW, has unlimited endurance and is significantly stealthier. Better suited for tank.
Untethered drones most likely will be used by recon units because it is better to launch them as forward as possible. Plus untethered drone launch is by default dangerous (it starts emitting and competent enemy picks it up and sends free HE gift). So, you better move after launch (after landing) and that means Recon units are more suitable for the job. With AI assistance just one recon vehicle can launch several untethered drones with just one operator and handle job of whole tank platoon.
 

Found the article.
The Next-Generation Drone Launching, German KF51 “Panther” Tank - Warrior Maven: Center for Military Modernization

The new Panther Tank. Three crew but there is room for a fourth possibly as the drone operator. A drone could be launched from the 130 mm tube. 

Looks like Galeotti is thinking what I'm thinking: 
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/alexander-dugin-darya-putin-russia-ukraine-assassination

Pipe ash.  Stuff is wicked dangerous.

Doesn't mention the ammunition/stores at the locations of the craters... assumes SOF raid must have been during the day as opposed to the night before... doesn't explain multiple planes in revetments with some blast cover being destroyed... doesn't show his working on judging the craters to be 'consistent with 500lb warhead', apart from saying one has a  'diameter in excess of 10m'... 
Not a thorough assessment I feel. 
EDIT: Still up in the air for me, SOF was my guess, I don't know enough about explosives to say whether detonating ammunition would create the focused craters we see.  The blasts were powerful enough to knock over a bunch of stuff I would have assumed had protection from a ground-level blast judging from some of the images, so I don't know.

Doesn't mention the ammunition/stores at the locations of the craters... assumes SOF raid must have been during the day as opposed to the night before... doesn't explain multiple planes in revetments with some blast cover being destroyed... doesn't show his working on judging the craters to be 'consistent with 500lb warhead', apart from saying one has a  'diameter in excess of 10m'... 
Not a thorough assessment I feel. 
EDIT: Still up in the air for me, SOF was my guess, I don't know enough about explosives to say whether detonating ammunition would create the focused craters we see.  The blasts were powerful enough to knock over a bunch of stuff I would have assumed had protection from a ground-level blast judging from some of the images, so I don't know.

These illustrations from a VDV textbook on urban warfare look oddly familiar…
 

Ok, I sweared myself will not post any mems in this serious board, but this is simply too good to miss. Info-war is already lost by Kremlin, battered remnants of muscovite forces fled behind Ural mountains.😎

The important question we have to ask, were these Ukrainian SOF carrying a copy of The Sims 3 ? 😃

Bardyansk again. How unfortunate.
And state of Girkin's mustache is yet to be determined:
https://wartranslated.com/igor-girkins-detention-what-is-known/

Apologies for posting a meme, but when they are this good...
EDIT: As far as the cause of the strike, SOF night mission with delayed charges (infiltration or drone-dropped) makes sense to me, as well as Hrim, eventually we may have more to go on.

Apologies for posting a meme, but when they are this good...
EDIT: As far as the cause of the strike, SOF night mission with delayed charges (infiltration or drone-dropped) makes sense to me, as well as Hrim, eventually we may have more to go on.

Apologies for posting a meme, but when they are this good...
EDIT: As far as the cause of the strike, SOF night mission with delayed charges (infiltration or drone-dropped) makes sense to me, as well as Hrim, eventually we may have more to go on.

An excellent thread from Def Mon with some maps. As great minds think alike, he also points to the possibility of UA shifting forces East to outmarch Russian reserves around Kherson, as I suggested yesterday What is more interesting is the maps and RU forces dislocation. To me it seems like at the moment they are ready for defence, with big reserve ready to intervene either  in Kherson and Zaporozhiya or in both. Interesting, interesting... 
There is more maps in the thread, I attach only the most general one:

 
 

Fresh Girkin assessment but with map. Because you know everything is better with map.

 

Time to talk about what has happened in Pisky aka Pisky crisis. This is my personal opinion of what has happened there in the last few days.
General crisis of UKR Artillery
As we all know UKR artillery suffers from lack of soviet caliber ammo and tubes. However, it appears the problem has become worse recently (end of July), and RU started to notice it in different parts of the front. The situation could be especially hard at Donetsk direction due to alleged RU strikes of UKR warehouses a s@Haiduk told us. 
As I understand UKR Command tries to mitigate it by creating NATO caliber arty groups (Girkin talked about them few times). There are not a lot of them (maybe even 1). When this group is present UKR have either relative parity with RU offensive arty group or some superiority over RU defensive arty group.
Probably this is the reason we do not see serious UKR pushes and collapses of RU defenses so far. UKR arty group can suppress RU local defending arty, but it cannot CB large amount of arty RU can concentrate in one place. So, if there is major UKR push RU concentrate arty there and effectively stops everything.
Cause of the crisis in Pisky.
According to RU discussions UKR Command removed the arty group from Pisky around week ago. As I see it was calculated risk - they do not have enough groups, and this is supposedly the most heavily fortified portion of front (I have not seen fortifications/defense myself, cannot comment). RU banged their head at UKR defense here like 6 days and still did not penetrate it completely.
RU on other hand had a real crisis - the progress was negligible. Despite local penetration somewhere else they were stalled by critical Avdiyvka defenses and the only way to deal with them is to encircle Avdiyvka through Pisky and Vodiane (North of Pisky). The inaccurate and inflexible but heavy RU artillery hammer was dropping on Pisky.
As per previous experience UKR defenses could withstand significant RU battering and continue to fight. However, for this offensive RU had little know but very influential trump card - more widely available drone teams prepared by RU volunteer groups in previous months. They started to feed observation videos directly to arty observers allowing RU arty to discover and hammer even pinpoint UKR targets. The RU hammer became significantly more accurate (judging by RU standarts). 
Initial disposition
Let's look at what we know about initial disposition. 

Just to get a feel here is an old RU video of shootouts at Volvo center and Pisky. RU forward position with sniper and spotter looks like from trench in front of Volvo center and they shoot toward Cowshed.
And here is photo of Volvo-center from RU Drone operator/propagandists Tatarsky (who fought there in 2014-2015 and now again) on 3 of August.

 
And here is link to the video of him at Cowshed.
https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/15302
He says nothing important, just celebrating that the best Warrior Nation in the World managed to walk less than 700 meters in 8 years, 5 months and 6 days of new offensive against pig Untermensch. 
And this is the biggest issue of RU - despite all efforts RU could not capture and clear forward UKR position until the Crisis happened on 2 of August.
Pisky Crisis 1-2 August
For several days RU kept drones above Pisky and relentlessly hammered any movement on UKR positions. For the feel here is the sample video of that work. UKR Squad commander Sergey Gnezdilov commented that Pisky was receiving 6500 rounds per day from RU. UKR arty fire was weak. No CB. And only 120mm and 82mm tried to answer occasionally.  The only local UKR command could do was to hold the line patching it with fresh reinforcements.
On the 1-Aug while artillery kept UKR defenders in cover first RU assault groups managed to reach the outskirts of Pisky from the Airport direction. They overran a small UKR outpost taking half-dozen of UKR POW. Yet, it seems RU assault group was weak and preferred not to push forward into small arms fight with UKR defenders relying instead on artillery fire.  UKR defenders on other hand became too weak to dislodge it. UKR defense started to crack but still was holding.

Until 2-Aug. On 2-Aug probably after RU arty caught fresh UKR reinforcement and from 15 hloptcev 14 became casualties, morale cracked and UKR command started to lose control over forward positions.
We do not know what happened there (push from RU assault groups or too eager withdrawal). What we do know though is that UKR forces pulled back from Cowshed and the eastern part toward western part. RU immediately followed UKR on both sides of ponds.
However even this modest effort was too much for RU forces. Seems to be exhausted and weak after the previous 5 months fighting RU decided not to pursue UKR into UKR rear defensive zone and to dig in at the area reached by nightfall - Dam.  
The sudden loss of control caused Sergey Gnezdilov to write an emotional Facebook post describing difficult situation and heavy losses. Shock waves amplified by UKR volunteers reposts reach both UKR public and RU Nats. Word of imminent UKR defense collapse and RU breakthrough caused quite a stir everywhere. Yet, there was neither UKR collapse no RU breakthrough. 
Quiet Endgame 3-Aug
Unlike stormy UKR social networks situation in Pisky was relatively calm. RU was probing and hitting anything suspicious very hard at western part.  UKR side on other hand seems decided to withdraw toward Donetsk Ring Road and Bridge Republic positions. Also, according to Sergey Gnezdilov vague new post UKR command decided to return the arty group and RU became uninterested in further major pushes. 
It was all back to the old arty Ping Pong game. 
P.S. 4-Aug
According to latest RU Nats posts they moved on from Pisky toward new and exciting topics - China-US scandal, RU shelling Donetsks and murdering civilians while pretending UKR did it, and Glorious advance RU troops are making in the whole Donbass area. Fighting in Pisky became just another topic hinting that RU either took a pause or they are returning back to crawling pace.
We will know when the time comes.

You know that I treat information overload seriously and with all these names of settlements flying around it is difficult to understand what is happening. I am trying a new format - with a map. Because everything is better with a map! It does not contain any new information. Just put existing data on the Deep state map (Red and yellow dots are fire - red up to 6h, yellow up to 48h)

 
Tell me if I need to adjust something (tried to crop it but then you do not see bigger picture where it is happening).

A small digest of posts from couple of RU Nats 
Manpower issue - 500th issue is looks huge and looks like they ran out other sources of manpower. Only draftees are left. 
complain about refusniks even among Special Forces
Suggestion to send draftees to war
Support for sending draftees to war
 
New offensive is not going according to expectations - RU arty is not good, UKR defenses are not weak.
complaint about RU Artillery
Complain about UKR defensive

Fresh Girkin assessment
 

Putin is completelly not intrested in those people fates, but it simply is effect of lack of connectivity of those guys within wider Russian system. I don't think Buriats or Kalmuks  discontempt will ever be dangerous for regime (they are too sparcely populated), but disgruntled guys from LDPR's may pose some problems in the very long future.
It speaks more about Kadyrov resoursefunless rather than Putin preferances. Guys become POW's, their families appeal for help to Kadyrov, who is bounded to help them if he sponsored their war escapades/will do a favour for loyalty if they go there by "military obligation". He calls the strings at Kremlin, for example Zolotov who is probably one of his few allies there (great minds think alike-you can google their photos😉...). I don't think Putin is necessarly involved there, may not even know about details of whole procedures. But Tsar generally cares about his oprychniki, because his security may lay on them one day.
There was once pretty good Galeev thread about their place in general security apparatus and differencec between legalistic power and charismatic power in Russia and Cechnya, which hit the mark- they are outside of official system, so they are much more flexible and useful for guys at Kremlin than regulars. Some day they may become like Batavian Guard of Roman emperors or Varangians in Byzantium, but we are not on this stage yet.