fireship4

This thesis on "Auftragstaktik" takes its title (Order out of Chaos) from it:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36719003.pdf
 

The video shows the fighter approaching from the rear (the drone's propeller is a pusher type).

The video shows the fighter approaching from the rear (the drone's propeller is a pusher type).

The video shows the fighter approaching from the rear (the drone's propeller is a pusher type).

Some observations on recent Prig videos/audio recordings
Prig claims RU has been able to increase shell production, but I didn't see any confirmation. Certainly not on the front lines. Prig says some unnamed authorities (heavily implied RU MOD) are planning to disband Wagnerites after Bakhmut. The plan is to order Wagnerites to R&R, disarm them, and offer them an early retirement option. Prig announced that Wagnerites would not retire under any circumstances. Instead, they are preparing to recruit men from all over RU and will become a real/large army of their own. It was less of a military announcement and more of a political one. Politically RU has already been negatively affected by the Bakhmut siege. And most likely it is one of the reasons UKR command prefers to continue to defend it.  

What Aztecs has to do with US in 1800? Read the post again, carefully. Which native North American culture that colonists met was not predminantly stone based (ok, several more widely used some copper axes)? Btw. info for non-archeolgists: stone is determinate of predominant tools, not mark social or cultural sophistication- basically the ceiling what you can do with stuff. In agriculture, warfare, hunting, crafts etc. None of those folks developed significant iron on their own, and despite occassionaly very complex political structures (Mississipi culture or Iroqui for example) have no chances against colonists in long run. I think history of peoples in the North America would be roughly the same with deaseses or without them, disparity in population and mode of life simply massively favoured newcomers on every gound.
Ok, going back to main thesis: US version of ethnicity and identity is different than in most European countries. It could be extremely brutal on racial lines in USA history and had obvious Anglophone dominant, but in the same time most (white) newcomers did not find it too difficult to adapt and still retain parts of their heritage. There were some country-wide massacres of German towns or ethnic cleansings of Scandinavian farmers? Some massive pogroms of Jews I missed compared to what happenned in Tsarist Russia or Germany during WWII? Irish could get it rough at times, and Africanamericans and Chinese are separate matter in the context of the era. But this is nothing compared to what was happening in especially XX cent. Europe.
US project is genuinly a creation of emigrants, unlike Old Continent.
Who said anything about "inferiority" of anybody?? Musket, train, efficent agriculture, metal swords or this small thing called modern beaurocratic state that can generate and sustain armies hundreds thousands in winter does not care about your or mine feelings, higher spiritual values or that somebody make beautiful jewelry, sorry. This is pretty simple, observeable historical effect of meeting of cultures that have widely different tools and concepts of conquest. Btw. I professionally study these things in regard to barbaricum/Roman Empire dynamics. It's historical basics on level of first year of History, really. Only things that stopped Romans from conquest in long run was they were not profitable enough.- and  just purely technical gap between "barbarians" and Romans was way smaller than between native people of Americas and colonizers. Sorry, history is brutal, and it is very good we now try to give those people their place- but it does not change a fact that withing context of an era they have zero chances to survive as they were.
And what Aborigens even have to do with North Americans? Another storm in a cup of water.

Worth to note this "Decalog" was on of craziest piece of hatred created by late XIX/early XX cent. ethnonationalisms in Europe. Based on concepts of "intelectual nationalisms" or "saloon nationalisms" of Dymitro Doncov, still XIX cent. and rather theoretical in its roots, it bore very real genocidal fruits during WWII. It literally conditioned young Ukrainian nationalists to commit every cruelty. Point 7:
"You will not hesitate to commit even the greatest crime, if the good of the cause demands it."
Point 8:
"With hatred and deceit you will receive the enemies of your nation."
Point 10:
"You will strive to expand the strength, fame, wealth and area of the Ukrainian state, even through the enslavement of foreigners."
Later new "light" version was created, with most controversial pieces removed, but almost everybody knew old one as well and many OUN/UPA sotnias during WWII still made pledge on old version (or variations of both- many youngsters preferred old version as it was more edgy).
Out of pure coincidentality, here 10 Hutu commandments:
https://www.rwanda-nogreaterlove.com/hutu-10-commandments
It's pretty obvious Da Vinci was far right nationalist to a pont; it's almost impossible belong to RS and not having a lot of exposition to extremist views. Almost all nationalists are or end as far right, btw. It's simply nature of this kind of ideologies- they are like self-spinning wheel normal guys can't control in the end, even if they think they can. However Haiduk is right that Ukraine has countless variations of nationalisms, including some pretty odd ones, like "non-ethnic" nationalism (which experiences of XX century spectacularly refuted everywhere in Europe- but not everyone get the memo). Others, more measured and smater, imagine nationalisms as a stage for development of a country that must be gone through for a generation or two in order to let it go later. Looking at homini sovieticii in Donbas, hard to blame them...however they are also wrong in the end. Generally experimenting with these narrations almost always leads to troubles.
That being said, it is terrible that such young guys must die defending their country during this war, and far-right folks have the same right to fight for it as queer from Kiyv nightclubs. All in all, it's Russians who are fault. Glory to the braves, even if they were misguided during lifetime.

There was same situation - the man who was mobilized at the end of January was sent to Bakhmut in February and killed since four days on frontline. He was enlisted to TCC security company, but three weeks later they received an order - to go at war. TCC security company is mostly 45+ men, so part of personnel wrotre a reports they rejected to go to frontline for combat tasks due to health reasons. But this man agreed to go at war. They also had few training - just one time they shot with AK. When about this episode wrote Censor, MoD claimed there will be investigation why untrained personnel turned out on frontline.
But sitiuation on Donbas, not only around Bakhmut is too heavy and we are losing too many people. Of course, most of losses are wounded, but they need substitution. Since December in Ukraine was launched new wave of mass mobilization, and alas in this time it very similar to Russia. If you have a "luck" to became infantryman-rifleman of not so cool brigade like 93rd or other, you have enough chances to turned out in the trench since 7-10-14 of symbolic training

It's hard to pin down what's what in the video, it's not for sure that the clips of the BTR are from the same engagement.  There are a few explosions, a lot of tracer, and a lot of dust puffs around the trench.
If it was the same engagement, then the impacts are perhaps from the coax, as they are too frequent for the rate of fire the cannon is shown using (the article's second video shows it capable of a higher rate).  If they are 30mm then most of them are duds or haven't armed. 
The explosions could be 30mm, they looked a little big, but without more footage it's hard to say more than that guy better have ear protection, and has a set of balls requiring a gun-case when not at the front.

(I searched back a dozen pages to see if this was previously posted).
I love these kinds of infographics: rather than land area, each square is 15,000 Russian citizens. So the vast oblasts of Siberia show here as tiny, while metro Moscow and StP.....

For comparison (from Galeev), population growth in these oblasts... red means aging/ emigrating/ not breeding. Notice Ukraine also has a demographic problem....

****
1. So let's set aside the obvious item about Putin sending (rural) non-Slavs to die while sparing his metropolitan core base. Entirely true, but they haven't rebelled yet.
2. The above map shows 15,000 identified KIA. Actual KIA are thought to run about 10x. Let's assume regional distribution about the same (if the ID'ed are mainly officers, that may undercount non-Slavic areas). We also need to ignore non-Russians (conscripted Tajiks, Syrians).
3. So in the high casualty 'red' zones, that's 200-500 KIA out of 50,000 males (half). So up to 1% of all males in each oblast have been killed in the last year, with an additional c.2% disabled physically or mentally.
4.  Military aged males (say, age 18 - 52) are (eyeballing), about half that 50,000? keeping in mind that this is an all-Russia dataset.

5. So in the 'red' areas, that's up to 500 x 3 per 25,000 = 6%. In other words, about 1 male in every 20 in their economically productive/family years is effectively lost to the Rodina.
At 1 in 20, pretty much everyone in the red oblasts personally knows/of somebody in this group. 
Not a tipping point yet, as I'd guess everyone in these oblasts also knows of a man who has died/is nonfunctional from alcohol related causes. Also, some (20-40k?) of the dead are convicts, whom relatively few will miss.
6.  But once KIAs hit 300,000 (x 3 = 10-12%), pretty much everyone in these areas has lost someone dear to them. Do they rebel then?
Probably not, but at that point I suspect nobody is buying the cheery Great Russia Ultimate Victory line, or putting Z stickers on their cars.
(Yes, this math is crude. Have at it)

Many thanks for this.
I also recall that a major problem for the BTGs during the 'mobile phase' of the war was that they were massively short of infantry to do things, oh, like screening AFVs and LOCs, or later the gaps between fortified villages.
Part of that was (what turned out to be) a weakness in the TO&E itself. 
But ISTR it was even more a function of most 'contract' (i.e. career) soldiers having graduated from ordinary grunt into specialty arms (e.g. gunners, mechanics). 
On the legacy Red Army pattern, the infantry units, as well as the skeleton 'third battalions' of each MRD, were expected to be fleshed out during mobilisation with lower skilled conscripts (мелкота) and reservists.
....BUT said mobilisation never occurred prior to Putin's 3 day 'SMO'. So except for the VDV and marines, the BTG infantry mainly rolled into Ukraine with skeleton staffs.... and quickkly consumed what starshini and junior officer cadres they did have.  Along with whatever specialists could be poached from other parts of the unit, issued rifles and told to learn on the job.
Next genius move, as I recall, was cannibalising their training units for experienced infantry (so they now have to find their DI's in brick-bashing Belarus).
In the waning days of the Kherson bridgehead, Afgantsy-Chechnya veteran General Surovikin began attaching VDV platoons to mech BTGs to beef them out. This visibly helped their effectiveness on defence and let them dish out some nasty tactical defeats to the Ukrainian mech. Not least, I suspect, because the paras felt free to tell their  officers to eff the eff off when given suicidal or nonsensical instructions. So they could fight a little like Ukrainians.
....By fall, as we know, they were finally getting mobiks in volume.  Without many veterans left to show them the ropes though.
Or it went something like that, anyway.

I have seen a few of these and frankly they are kinda big celebrations of confirmation biases.  There is nothing inherently wrong with the BTG, it lies somewhere between Combat Team and Battlegroup in organizational constructs. I think the theory was that the unit would really heavily on quick response firepower linked directly into the tactical level C2.  Add UAS and this sort of unit worked and saw some success when facing mounted manoeuvre units back in 2014.  
In some ways the BTG has advantages in lower size and profile, and logistics requirements.  In the right hands and fully enabled the BTG looks a lot like some sort of ACR/ACS concept.  Lighter, faster and carrying a lot of boom-boom.  Obviously the BTG runs into problems in infantry heavy fight requirements, but so do ACRs - not designed for it.  The RA actually had several BTG types if you look them up and some look more manpower heavy.  I think the intent may have been to make the modular but it looks like it did not pan out. Overall the thing looks like a self contained raider unit with a lot of integral firepower.
The BTG failed not because it was a bad design, it failed because so many other aspects of the Russian military system failed.  A BCT without air superiority and under constant illumination and deep strike PGM is not going to fair well either. The second problem is that a BTG is fine so long as you only ask it to do what a BTG can do.  If you ask it to do too much any unit organization will fail.  The third problem was what looks like a serious lack of peer-coordination.  These sorts of units will need to work together a lot and provide mutual support - this is very MC and self-synchronization stuff, which we have seen that the Russian doctrine on C2 does not support.  And finally on support, this organization will work fine if it has a formation over it to C2 all the enablers.  And we know that was a serious issue.
I mean the BTG didn’t work in the same way that asking an ACR to do a heavy urban assault unsupported, after losing air superiority etc, would not work.  Focusing on the organization as the “reason” for Russian failure is missing the much larger issues at play here and frankly highlights some incorrect lessons.

Ok and @Kinophile can jump in on this one too.  So we are muddying up some stuff here, so to clarify:
- The original point on MC vs DC was to point out the cultural constipation of conventional services and how they are nowhere near as innovative or open to disruptive thinking as is often sold.  Over the military generations, military doctrine becomes dogma and counter-thinking in an organization that literally exists to create uniformity in behaviour is not well accepted.  We in the west have built a democratic myth of "empowerment and gumption" but it really does not translate well into actual military reality.  We can debate this but I know what I have lived for the better part of 3.5 decades. 
- The UA is a hybrid mix of Soviet and Western schools, and for them I think this was a major advantage.  It was not because we peppered them with western doctrine and training, it was because they had both worlds to pull from.  If we had an all western force in this thing, with the same restraints/constraints and capabilities as the UA, my hypothesis is that we would have done worse because we would have tried to apply an all-western approach.  I can definitely see in Phase I where this would have gotten us into a lot of trouble.  The UA is already outside of boxes and pulling in so much from the civilian side so quickly also helped in breaking doctrinal group-think and creating whatever this has turned into.  As to which school MC or DC, that the UA employs I do not think we have a clear idea but it is also likely a hybrid - which was how the entire thing was actually designed to work.
- MC vs DC schools of thought.  Ok, this is a whole other thing.  Mission Command is a essentially (and I will just use my own descriptions, feel free to go look up others) is essentially empowered command.  It arms subordinates with context and intent, "why we are doing this and here is what we are looking for".  This, plus allowing them to exercise initiative to exploit opportunity - the alignment of circumstance, context and capability, theoretically provides a force with higher potential for tempo advantage.  The thinking goes that empowered tactical commanders can see opportunity well before formation level and as such if they exploit it without waiting to be told the entire force can OODA faster than an opponent.  This is a cornerstone of Manoeuvre Warfare which is really a strategy of Annihilation through Dislocation.  We seriously bought off on all this and drank the Kool Aid on it about 40 years ago, to the point it became so dogmatic that it left little room for counter thought.
DC is one of mission control being held at higher levels.  Subordinates are empowered to do a task (The terms are actually derived from the Germans largely because Depuy and Starry really were hot for German warfare - Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik, The first meaning "mission tactics" the second "detailed orders tactics").  They then wait for further direction before exploiting opportunity.  They can still execute initiative in execution of the task but not the overall mission. 
So was born the Great American Military Myth (and frankly almost every western nation jumped onboard).  We were a democratized military built on "good ol 'merican innovation and initiative."  Further this All-Yankee Doodle (sorry but we really got beat over the head on this one back in the day) approach is very economic as it yields quick nearly bloodless wars.  The Persian Gulf became the poster child for this type of warfare, but more than few put up their hands and asked if it wasn't a false-positive.  The Gulf War was highly attritional and mostly driven by air supremacy - the land battle of mission command and manoeuvre warfare was basically executed against an already beaten foe, and one crushed by far more Detailed Command approaches of the Air Force. (This brings up the other problem with the Kool Aid, it really does not work for either the Navy or Air Force - and does not work enough for SOF, kinda).  
The truth is far more complicated.  The largest problem with Mission Command is that while it is great in theory it runs into serious problems in full execution because of all those pesky enablers.  Tactical commanders can run all over the place all empowered but there is only so much ISR, artillery, engineers and logistics to go around.  So what really happens is far more control in practice.  The Main Effort gets a lot more empowerment but if you are on a side gig, well you might very well get held back because the boss simply does not have the stuff to support you if you go all manouvrey.  Detail Command it far to restrictive and you get into micromanagement, so in reality neither systems works in extremes.
The future.  Well the problem was seen coming way back during the RMA days.  "What happens when a higher level commander knows more than a tactical one?"  I suspect if the UA has created a sort of ad hoc JADC2 system then this has already happened.  If a higher formation commander knows more than the tactical level, then DC starts to make a lot more sense.  And then what does Manoeuvre Warfare turn into? Well a form of Corrosive Warfare is one option apparently.  There is a lot of sense to this, we already do it with unmanned systems, which are going to expand in use not contract.  Detail Command that controls the battlespace like a production line and not a jazz band is not totally out of the question.  
So at one end we have "lets go all DC because higher can see all".  While at the other end we have "remove higher command entirely."  This is hyper-Mission Command, or self-synchronization.  Here tactical units are loaded up and basically command themselves with their peers - this gets a lot of traction in SOF circles. They then share enablers in a hand-off system where "higher" is really coordination and not command and control.  Here we get into military effects clouds and inverted command systems.  This also makes some sense but many are shy as to human nature.  How are enablers going to be shared?  This is always a friction point, and higher commanders are the referees.  What happens if we get rid of them.  Some have suggested AI does the job as it can calculate requirements far faster than a human can, or a human AI pairing because human can do context.
So in the end there is no "answer".  We should continue to try both, and maybe have a C2 system that can swing wildly from one to the other based on good ol human art of war.  But service cultures and equities already get in the way.  This is way tanks got resisted, the machine gun and even unmanned systems.  We make idols of our history and sometimes it gets in the way of evolution.  Experimentation and paying attention to wars like these are absolutely critical as we can start to get some idea of where things are going and then plan to adapt at a better rate than an opponent.      

Without wanting to stray off topic in this thread, the US Department of Defence makes an annual report to Congress (publicly available) on Chinese military capabilites and intentions. The most recent one (September 2022) is currently available at https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23321290/2022-military-and-security-developments-involving-the-peoples-republic-of-china.pdf It weight in at just under 200 pages, so it's not short.
This comes with the caveat that it obviously isn't going to include everything the US knows about Chinese military, since a lot of that information is going to be classified. And there are going to be limits to how accurate the underlying intelligence is (what's the Chinese for maskirovka?). And there may be deliberate biases if the DoD wants to influence Congress' policy and funding decisions in particular directions.
But it's also about as good as you're going to get for a comprehensive open source review.

Exactly.  Let's be brutally honest with ourselves here.  Western warfare theory and doctrine is highly elegant and has demonstrated superiority in some contexts.  However, it is also very fragile.  Books have been written about why this is and how we got here - to be honest I am leaning towards the "let's sell war as political 'fast-food' - cheap, fast and goes down easy" linked to a bloated military industrial complex (War Incorporated) as the primary reason.  Regardless our entire military doctrine is based on a highly interlinked and dependent system that we have labelled many things over the years - combined, joint, JIMP, multi-domain, all domain. 
It is a brilliant theory but it is not robust.  You pull out one critical component and the whole thing falls apart.  And of course being us, we have highly incentivized finding ways to pull out critical components for our adversaries.  Saddam H was a monument on "How not to fight the western world" and everyone who might be "agin us" took a lot of notes - and modern asymmetric warfare doctrines were born.  A2AD, grey zone, subversive, hybrid, NavWar, swarms, cyber and a bunch of stuff which we probably have not even thought of yet all got a lot of heat and light because they could be weaponized to help the western way of war fall apart. 
Say what you will about the Russian way of war but it is damned robust.  What is happening is a final exam on whether dumb resilience can still stand up in the modern era - my guess is "no".  However, our system is very vulnerable.  Take away air power and AirLand Battle falls apart.  Take away armor and combined arms falls apart.  Take away C4ISR and the whole damned thing falls apart.  The best generals right now train by taking things away because that is what our opponents are going to do.
So to clarify my point.  Given the same forces that the UA has, I do not think western commanders would have done better and in fact may have very well done worse.  Manoeuvre warfare clearly needs some rethinking in this environment and we already saw what happens when it is blindly applied, by the RA.  The RA are the ones who started this war fighting in a manner very similar to our own, not the UA - they did something else entirely.  Now at some point, good old fashion western manoeuvre (aka dirty tank-love) is going to work, but likely after a long campaign of corrosive warfare.  And right now the experts at managing that corrosive warfare campaign are in the UA, not back in NATO.
 

Update from Jomini, and his phantastic maps:
 

Exellent documental film "Battle for Chernihiv". For this time this is most detailed thing. The same team recently made film "Battle for Kyiv", but it turned out too weak in part of facts or describing of actions. But film about Chernihiv is really cool - it removes some blank spots, but I hope, after the war we will know much more. 
First version of this film was only in UKR, now ENG subs have appeared - you can turn them on during watching
Part 1:
Part 2
Part 3
 

Ohh. Ohh I like this word. Compression of Cannonade (salvo of cannd blasting)  and Buffoon(ery)?

🤣🤣🤣
https://cgrozev.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/putins-pickle/
(from 2014) 
....More recent journalism (early Feb) on Girkin's monarchist sponsor, Konstantin Malofeev:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/11866
This source is definitely 'suss', but bio seems on target:
https://news.russia.postsen.com/trends/192617.html
'The Grey Cardinal'
(...I am not the biggest Harry Potter fan, but does this yarn diagram lead through House Slitherin to Lord Voldemort?)

'A Critique of Realism' (using John Mearsheimer as an exemplar of the school) posted by Kraut:
 

'A Critique of Realism' (using John Mearsheimer as an exemplar of the school) posted by Kraut:
 

Longer version sees even more weapons in use by this one guy:
 

our friend Denys D thinks UKR making some local counterattacks N & S of Bakhmut.  Gains measured in, literally, meters.  But let us hope this is just the beginning of rolling back some spent RU forces. 
 

Btw,  if we're use WW1 as a reference frame (and I don't disagree with this)  the Russo Ukrainian War is more like the 1st or 2nd Balkan Wars.
No alliance lock-ins, no actionable security commitments. The major current alliance is defensive and requires voting, so that's a welcome brake on automatic collective suicide. 
It's the time after this war that will make states lock themselves into alliances for perceived security, one's that are more definitively aggressive in consequences if activated. 
Tbh,  this timeframe now is more a wierd blend of pre-WW1 (the imperialistic mindset in Russia, China is alive and kicking)  and pre-WW2 (western fear of war's damage gives hostiles the wrong idea). 
This makes sense in that our current time did not just pop into existence,  the modern political structure is a twisted outgrowth of the 20th century's rivalries,  ideologies,  pressures and security conflicts. 
Of course, these had their own roots in the 19th century,  and so ad infinitum...