kevinkin
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Posts posted by kevinkin
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51 minutes ago, chrisl said:
So does that mean Prigozhin needs to stay away from windows and tall stairwells for a while?
You can't even make it up. He does the motherland proud. And anytime a so called leader does that in Russia, it's a banner story.
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I guess this is pretty close to an "official analysis" of the front today. Nothing really surprising; but confirming:
Venislavskyi’s comments also synch up with an analysis provided to The War Zone Monday by a Ukrainian advisor who asked to be referred to by his nom de guerre Vlad Dut to discuss security matters.
The Russians, he added, are amassing troops and supplies in Donbas beyond the range of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) provided to Ukraine, which can reach targets about 43 miles away.
Still, the “Bakhmut direction is one of the critical points of the front line, where one of the most significant infantry and artillery battles of the 21st century unfolds,” Dut wrote, adding that it has forced both sides to pour personnel and equipment into the fight.
Capturing Bakhmut would give Russia “a key transport interchange, which allows movement to the north (Slovyansk-Kramatorsk) and west (Konstantinovka-Pokrovsk) and will favorably help the occupation of the Donetsk region,” Dut wrote. “An additional factor is that after a series of failures and the loss of significant territories by the occupiers, this city is a small, but at least some kind of victory.”
The "likely retention of Bakhmut and the surrounding area at all costs is unacceptable and should maintain a delicate balance between moving away to favorable positions or holding in the future,” he wrote.
Haven't we all had to make this type of call in our wargames over the years. In the UA, if it came down to one man's vote, who would it be? Not sure how they jive the political factors with the military ones. Kind of think it will be a military call.
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5 hours ago, Twisk said:
must be taken with large grains of salt since it doesn't represent the overall situation.
Well of coarse and it's just one observation as noted. However, what we are witnessing is a historically awful meat grinder.
Many have leaned on the UA experience, guile, spirit, and moral to get them though and kick the RA out. This n=1 soldier is saying experience does not matter in the actions he is seeing on a stationary front. Which means the UA must return to open warfare where experience etc.. produces battlefield opportunities that can't be realized stuck underground. So the guy might be saying don't give us your best and waste them here and now, hold them back for a strategically successful strike. Just a thought. -
UA soldier quote from the WSJ today from article on the brutal fighting:
“I need men. Good men. Spirited men,” he said. “Experience isn’t the most important thing. Here, the most experienced person can live for one day, and the least experienced person for months. It’s roulette.”
Just one observation, but that is really is a major part of attrition warfare. That is, experience does not matter. So why train men and just feed them to the mill? I think NATO is putting together a force structure that will break that mold. The one thing the UA has over the RA as a constant is the spirit on their soldiers. And that has to be natured and retained very carefully.
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ASL has a player base that goes back to the 70's and nostalgia is a big thing for them. Holding printed game components and figuring out the complex rules is a part of the experience. Prior to PC games, MP was essentially zero. Solitaire ruled and players developed modified rules to fit their understanding of combat. I think SF has a chance to have staying power but it rests on MP. As I mentioned, you really can finish a scenario on a Saturday night. Just an email system would work. SF will not replace games like CM, but it could carve out a sustainable market. Maybe that market is already with LnL (which is very affordable now). I think the nostalgia is getting me too. And I am afraid the dice aren't going anywhere. Almost like backgammon without betting and a doubling cube. Momma give me those snake eyes.
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Agree, if you want to try a board like game for a change and went only one way it would be LnL. SF is has to add some important things and the 3D effects are briefly interesting. But without replay or a detailed LOS system, they are really not needed. I will be watching to see how SF evolves. But without MP and off-map arty, it's still work in progress which is OK. Being a wargame geek, I had to buy it just to see.
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I have SF too. benpark's comments are spot on. I think game may attract more board gamers to PC wargames than the other way around. The system cries for MP and a random scenario generator to support that. You could complete an old fashioned ASL type game with a bubby in an evening. The developers are very protective of the combat results and randomness. I can't remember exactly, but ASL often was that way and game came down to the final die roll. FOW is nothing like CM. And the phases within turns provide a completely different feel to the combat. But this is by design. I think you will always play CM much more, but with a quick to set up and play MP system, the developers should do well.
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Undetected? Well there's the middle finger explanation for you.
Let's hope they treat the remains as a biohazard. And at least our chips didn't fry this weekend.
“As NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America,” Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, who oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told reporters during a news briefing. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”
VanHerck declined to elaborate, saying only that it was the U.S. intelligence community that “made us aware of those balloons” after the fact.
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Just a breaking report - I think.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-730768
"Russia probing alleged Ukrainian use of chemical weapons"
False flags might start increasing this year.
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7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Maneuverists always struggle to describe when it's a good time to engage the enemy. Every time you try and pin them down on it they will say, "nope, just maneuver around it".
Then they are not really proponents of maneuver warfare. Attrition and maneuver warfare are both viable means to defeat your enemy. They are just tools in the general's kit. We all know what attrition looks like, its basically arithmetic. But it's not the Bogeyman. In maneuver warfare, friendly forces use recon (ISR) to find and strike at the enemy's critical vulnerability to produce psychological defeat - not necessarily a numbers defeat. This technique is applied anywhere the conflict takes place: air, sea, ground, space, cyber, politics, the media, the boardroom etc.. It's about not fighting fair by lining up on the battlefield like chess pieces everything neat and the rules known. Maneuver recognizes three primary "Means of Defeat": Preemption, Dislocation, Disruption. It uses one of more of these means and then accelerates "mass" at the enemy's critical vulnerability. Mass is an abstract term since its hard to envision mass being used in space or in the cyber domains rather than on the ground. But if I can slow down the enemy's networks, I am applying drag to their system which can be thought of as applying a force to disrupt and dislocate a potential vulnerability. Time is part of the technique in that F=m*v^2 and time is a component of velocity. If I hold a 10 to 1 troop advantage over the enemy and all else is equal, attrition might turn out to be the best approach since determining the enemy's critical vulnerability takes time and might turn out to be incorrect - intel being an inexact science. You might use attrition to quickly defeat side A and then use interior lines to defeat a larger side B by striking at their supply lines. Maneuverists know that the time to engage is now. But across all vulnerable domains and the result may look murky since it is not recognizable on a neat map of the battlefield having colored arrows going back and forth. To defeat the enemy efficiently, you need an open mind. Sometimes it's best to suck it up and use attrition. Maneuver today means much more than the movement of forces around flanks seeking the famed battle of annihilation aka Cannae. People tend to fall back on Hart's book on the indirect approach when thinking about maneuver warfare. His book is just a subset of what maneuver warfare it thought of today. To avoid attrition warfare, the UA must be constructed and used differently than the RA. As a whole, Ukraine must strive to defeat Russia psychologically and give them no option other than 100% withdrawal. Otherwise, toe to toe, the battles will just come down to numbers and staying power. I believe NATO knows this and it will be interesting to see how asymmetry manifests itself in equipment and techniques this year and ends the bloodshed.
OK, RAND is at it again:
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/02/rand-experts-fear-stalemate-frozen-conflict-in-ukraine/
“The bumper sticker is … heat and freeze,” said Barry Pavel, head of RAND’s National Defense Research Institute. “I think we’re going see a very intense battle… in the next two to three months.” But after that furious “heat and friction,” he went on, the frontline is likely to “freeze” again.
“That means the industrial battle is really important,” Pavel emphasized. Some crucial questions: Can the West supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition faster than the conflict burns them up? Can Russia, its oil-driven economy still largely unhurt by sanctions, resurrect rusty stockpiles of Soviet weapons and buy new technology from Iran, faster than the West can arm Ukraine?
There is also the battle of will — and sheer attrition. “The Russians are better at suffering than any people on Earth,” Pavel said, “from centuries of history.”
Let's keep it that way for a while.
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11 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
major shakeup
Missed it:
I wondered what the guy did:
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-730694
During his tenure as defense minister, he spoke out strongly about wartime corruption, which he said was akin to "marauding." But in recent weeks his own defense ministry became embroiled in a corruption scandal over an army food contract that envisaged paying vastly inflated prices. One of his deputy ministers has been fired and named a suspect in the scandal, and another one has since resigned separately.
Maybe the tip of the iceberg. But he retains a seemingly important role. Maybe the other guy is better at procurement. A very important skill. If Reznikov fell on his sword, it was for a good cause and he remains afloat in government.
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3 minutes ago, Khalerick said:
broken state
I don't disagree. But this is largely out of the West's hands once Russia withdrawals. That will be internal palace politics. But Russia will probably coalesce around Putin or another strongman again. Lord help them.
7 minutes ago, Khalerick said:Dogwalked into static, attritional warfare
I am not sure the UA had any options after months of fighting with flying columns of light infantry. Someone somewhere made the command decision in November that the rest of Ukraine would have to wait. I advocated at time is to maintain operational freedom and momentum - if possible. But we don't have all the facts and figures. We will never know the true body counts during this trench warfare stage, but it appears the ratio is very much in the UA's favor.
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38 minutes ago, Khalerick said:
My belief is that the Ukrainians were dogwalked into this by the American generals' advice.
Dogwalked into what? Defending themselves? What do you mean?
Is the West's military industrial complex any more incestuous than Russia's? At least the West is producing modern weapons and their post cold war hand-me-downs are better than anything Russia can field (ever). Russia has no competent navy, air force, or army. All they have is nuclear blackmail. Which is why it's imperative that WMD don't fall into the hands of state supported terrorists and non-state actors. Unfortunately, for its people, Russian already contains state supported terrorists top to bottom and a state hardly worth defending. Putin let the genie out of the bottle and Russians are now, and for years, going to pay the price.
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1 hour ago, danfrodo said:
american commanders were pretty happy to have the germans out of their holes and out in the open.
Yes, we have been forwarding that as a operation idea the UA might adopt. I am not sure the extent of the internal pressures to end the war for Ukraine. I am pretty there are some. But not to the same extent as with Russia. There are always going to be scores to settle, but Ukraine has the wherewithal to ignore those until the dust is clear. We can only hope the scores are relatively minor and don't get in the way of a functioning country that will need to heal and still defend itself depending on how the peace shakes out.
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16 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
To summarize... Girkin thinks Russia should not launch a strategic offensive this year because it is likely to fail.
No military commander would recommend a RA offensive anytime soon. We discussed that internal politics might force the military to do so. The compromise might be an attack (not a general offensive) to gain something tangible thereby appeasing the hawks and giving the Russian public something to hang their babushkas on. So when the attack comes I will be thinking of meeting statements:
Eisenhower arrived at Verdun, according to one observer, “looking grave, almost ashen.” The meeting took place in a dismal room of a French barracks in which very little warmth emanated from a pot-bellied stove. The atmosphere was equally grim despite Eisenhower ‘s fragile attempt at levity when he opened by saying: “The present situation is to be regarded as one of opportunity for us and not of disaster. There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.” The smiles seemed forced. Patton immediately chimed in: “Hell, let’s have the guts to let the sons of bitches go all the way to Paris. Then we’ll really cut ’em up and chew ’em up.”
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19 minutes ago, billbindc said:
That Gates jumps on that bandwagon is pretty much the Gates specialty...seeing what is popular and promoting it.
Not sure we can gauge his opinions now since we don't know a lot about his prior thinking on this war and NATO support including armor. Maybe he has changed like a chameleon, maybe not. Maybe he is overthinking Crimea - but from last April:
“I think he (Putin) wants not only to gain land in Eastern Europe, but in the Southeast as well,” Gates said. “Using the area around the Black Sea as a land bridge to Crimea, I think he wants to leave Ukraine a landlocked country. He’s not done with Eastern Europe, he wants to change Eastern Europe, and Zelenskyy cannot give up.”
Maybe we all been overthinking Crimea since The Charge of the Light Brigade. Think not. Here is a tidbit of his thinking from May:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-gates-nato-expansion-sweden-finland-face-the-nation/
While not a hawk, definingly not a dove. An inside the belt way measured hawkish approach. Although mentioning an airlift is surprising. With Crimea having obvious strategic value, Gates does not say to assault it at all. Nor does he offer other tactics to minimize its value to Russia. OK fine, its a short article. If you asked him, he might very well recommend isolating Crimea while re-taking Donbass. Sounds familiar.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
I don’t know if the tank is really dead, but for the RA at least
I have been thinking about this too and wonder if the key sectors are so impassible now that armor in the hands of little trained RA troops can gain the momentum needed to make their deployment worth the effort? To push through these sectors would require combined arms combat engineering that I don't think the RA has. Even if they could carve out narrow corridors for movement, they are narrow and easily interdicted.
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10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
This is troubling because it could be quite effective.
Agree. Death by 1000 cuts. NATO/west will have to start allowing long range strike ops onto Russian soil including UA special forces. Hate to use the term safe haven, but we can't allow this (peace on our terms) to slip away with one hand tied behind our backs. Seek and destroy the means by which the RA in Ukraine is being supplied. Might not see this until the RA goes over to a major offensive.
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16 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Gates is a guy with a long history
Forget the past, the New Yorker and the CS lack of science Monitor, what do you think of his present assessment today? That's what is at issue here. A broken clock is right twice a day you know.
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Gate's on board overall and specifically:
The critical issue for Ukraine is how quickly the United States and NATO allies can get equipment like tanks and other armored vehicles into the country, Gates said. “We ought to be airlifting some of that equipment to Poland now,” he said. This includes the American Abrams M-1A1 tanks and German Leopard tanks, armored personnel carriers and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected [MRAP] vehicles, Gates said.
Gates was wary about providing Ukrainian armed forces with longer range weapons that could strike targets across the Russian border. He stressed the need for an agreement between Kyiv and Washington on targets, such as logistical depots and rail hubs, and locations. It’s an option “worth considering but with very real limits imposed” before receiving approval, he said.
Gates, a former CIA analyst, said he believes Putin is “a rational decision-maker” who was ill-informed and isolated at the start of the war due to COVID-19 restrictions. He dismissed the idea that replacing Putin would bring an end to the war more quickly by pointing out “the advisers to him are more hawkish than he is.” He mentioned Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group of mercenaries, as one of those closest to Putin, but also a critic of how Russia is fighting the war.
His PhD dissertation was titled: "Soviet Sinology: An Untapped Source for Kremlin Views and Disputes Relating to Contemporary Events in China". Interesting guy who has been around and around the beltway a long time. He is either very good, knows too much or maybe both.
Note: the C-5 can carry two M1s and the C-17 three Bradley's and they can fly 2000+ miles. Slow going, but what and airlift it would be.
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Used the term zombies in jest (sort of) a few days ago, maybe there is more to it:
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If intentional, would China allow anything of value fall into the US hands? I mean the NTSB can put fragments of a/c back together and I did not see a fire in the video. Maybe there was a fire. I think the balloon was benign technically. So the only intentional thing is a big middle finger to the US. Why not. It took a ground based citizen to alert the media. The government was silent. Cat and mouse game. But who is who in this bizarre news story. Certainly the initiative (for what's its worth) was in China's hands on this one and I bet they like that.
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Technical error or trolling America by design. If an honest mistake there are channels by which to inform the world. If trolling the America, Superbowl week would be better. If honest mistake, maybe they were embarrassed and mum was the word. So, "lets just take advantage of what we have in front of us"; mums the word while watching America's reaction inside and outside the beltway. Sort of a combination of both in the end. With plenty of time for a SNL skit. John Belushi in a duck hunter's cap etc..
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Yes, agree. In football we spread the defense thin and try to set-up one on one match-ups to enable a strike downfield. The RA has the ability to spread the UA thin, but their talent does not match up well in the subsequent one on ones where small unit commanders have to make quick decisions in the open field. Perhaps the RA can move their best north and south in the backfield waiting for the thinning operations to open something up for a deep strike. A misdirection play. Hail Putin on 3. Not a touchdown, but maybe to get within field goal range before they run out of downs and supplies. (Sorry, its Superbowl weekend). Is it even thinkable the RA can deceive the west's ISR into believing the backfield is not where it really is? They used to be pretty good at that.