LuckyDog

Agreed. But of course, while the USMAAG bodycount metrics (e.g. 'the Five O'Clock Follies') were pants for countless reasons, the Viet Cong were indeed being steadily bled white, as everyone from Giap on down admitted after the victory.
I don't know if there's a strict correlation from buckets of blood to territorial losses; we believe that the boundary fortifications built from 2014-2022 are a lot harder to replace once lost, and that seems to make intuitive sense.
...But beyond that, who the hell knows what a square km, or a shattered hamlet, is worth militarily? As @The_Capt noted thousands of pages ago, just how valuable is 'high ground' nowadays in the FPV era?  A nice marshy streambed or wooded balka, otoh, is still tactically useful.

An interesting analysis of Russian fighting age demographics: 
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2022/02/26/the-stats-guy-what-the-numbers-are-telling-us-about-putins-russia

FancyCat, edited for concision:
A drawn-out war is bad for Ukraine. We don't know what might bring Russia to ceasefire negotiations. The best way to bring them to the table is to fight to win the war. Russia will keep the war going if it is to their advantage. The west is not fighting to win, Russia is taking advantage of Western lack of commitment. Russia is using Western fears of Russian collapse and nuclear war to it's advantage, actively promoting such a narrative for it's benefit rather than because it is a realistic one. Russia seems to be pursuing maximal goals.  The west must signal that these cannot be achieved. Why should the west make concessions as Russia does not.  Russia does not offer a negotiation, rather demands surrender, disarmament and fomalisation of annexed land  
The_Capt, edited for concision:
Preamble: You are ignoring reality. The best becomes the enemy of the good. We have a phrase for that in Army.
The Russian regime might collapse. This would be a risk. You think the only way to win is for the Russia to collapse. Russia doesn't need to collapse for there to be peace. You think Ukraine must have total victory and anything else is defeat.  This is holding you back. (6.1) WW3 would be bad, Ukraine is not worth that.  War is costly.  We can simultaniously support Ukrainian resistance and pull back to a new iron curtain behind which could sit a well funded NATO. (6.2) Maximal goals are not the only form of victory. We are looking at a ceasefire scenario with half of Ukraine in Russian hands. (6.3) We must fight to achieve a better negotiating position, this might require Russia to collapse. (6.4) Your argument helps the enemy, by making the war unwinnable, and might encourage people to give up support if it does not achieve total vicory.  This is what Russia wants.  
I feel simply summarising the main points of the exchange as I have here should suffice as a critique.  It took me an hour or so.

So this post and the one above it are what we like to call “losing the bubble”.  You have let your passion for Ukraine cloud objective strategic thinking to the point that you are proposing a denial of reality to insert one of your own that matches that passion.  In blunt terms, if you were on my staff I would be thinking you need a vacation and maybe a posting away for awhile.
1.  We cannot simply discount/avoid/wave away the risks of a full on Russian political and social collapse.  First off it is not “impossible” or even improbable given we have a rigid autocratic political mechanism that has been under significant strain for some time now.  Russia has collapsed in the past (twice in the past century and a bit) and can do so again.  
2.  The consequences of a Russian collapse cannot simply be waived away either.  At best we get a stable regime quickly grabbing power so that the centralized control apparatus stays in place.  That regime will need to 1) have clean enough hands to do an honest deal with, and 2) be supportive in stopping this war.  That is a tall order. Follow on scenarios of a Russian collapse and its impacts get worse from there and we have gone into them many times.  You are essentially so gripped with the Ukrainian cause that you have simply stated “ignore them” with neither proof or logic on why to do so beyond “well it hasn’t happened yet, so it will never happen”.
3.  By your metrics Ukrainian security is not guaranteed outside of a full Russian collapse and regime change.  Nothing would stop Russia from lobbing missiles even if it was forced back to 2014 lines.  So we are back to “we need a full Russian collapse to ‘win’ but ignore the consequences of that collapse because = ‘love Ukraine’.” That makes no sense nor does it address the scenarios where a collapsed Russia poses as greater risk to Ukraine than what they are dealing with now. 
4.  There are plenty examples of frozen conflict where an enduring peace and security were guaranteed: Korea, Cyprus and Former Yugoslavia, to name a few.  Like Israel right now, there is always risk of reemergence of warfare but we can manage that.  So immediately writing off any and all other peace scenarios is not only extremist narrative, it is dangerously reductive thinking.  This is not how high levels of diplomacy, defence and security or economics think about the world, it is how college students on a campus do.
5.  Your position and thesis essentially start with a conclusion and then build a logic model theory of success that only supports that conclusion.  Ukraine must have total victory, all other outcomes are defeats.  Further the West must support Ukraine in this venture to the point that it will risk the total political and social collapse of a nuclear power.  We are to sidestep all that risk for Ukraine.  What happens if we get to 2014 lines and Russia does not quit?  Do we need to go into Russia proper?  This nearly happened in Korea/China in 1950, this was how MacArther talked himself into nuclear weapons and a massive Chinese reaction.
6. We all support Ukraine and want a victory here.  But..and you really need to sit down and think about this…Ukraine is damned important, but it is not that important.  We are not going to start WW3 over Ukraine - even as we skirt around it.  We would be talking hundreds of millions of deaths, even if the thing stayed conventional.  We have 8 billion people on this planet and keeping them all alive takes a lot of energy and resources.  We built a highly complex and integrated system to keep the whole dance going.  One war breaks out between Ukraine and Russia and we already have people starving to death in Africa. Imagine a full on conflagration that drags in NATO. Iran and possibly China.  I am sorry but we could easily go with plan A, which was likely the plan on 24 Feb 22: continue to support Ukrainian resistance, fall back to NATO lines, drop a new Iron Curtain, and fund the hell out of NATO - in fact there are likely big winners in this scenario who know it.  We won the First Cold War, we can take our chances on a Second.
So, no, total 2014 lines are not the only victory in this war by a long shot.  In fact those territorial lines might not even mean victory if they were attainable.  We are very likely looking at a stop line, like in 2014, somewhere in the middle.  Then we will get some sort of shaky ceasefire that we will need to exploit, quickly.  We need to set the conditions to strategically deny Ukraine from Russia.  We know Russia can be deterred, this is why we do not have deep strikes into Poland happening.  We will need to move that deterrence line.  We will likely have to pound Russia until it drops its ridiculous negotiating position and we can land on something more reasonable.  Whether that will take a full on collapse is unknown, we can only hope if it does that we are looking at a soft collapse of political position and not social controls within Russia.
Finally, framing the war the way you have supports Russia.  You are making this war nearly unwinnable via these maximalist rhetoric.  As such, a reader of this thread could easily walk away agreeing with you but arriving at a very different conclusion - unwinnable war = GTFO, because we have already seen this movie twice in the last 20 years.  Which is exactly what Russia wants.
You have narrowed down the acceptable narrative only to those ardent extremist viewpoints that agree with you.  By leaving no middle ground you violate a core component of war: negotiation.  There is no negotiation in your position and that immediately sets off warning bells.  We hear this everyday now coming from all sorts of corners over so many issues.  I vehemently disagree with your analysis, narrative and conclusions based on this fact alone.

Day 1 buy for me. Perhaps in the future we can see Norway with local forces and USMC. Maybe even the Southern NATO front with the Greek and Turk forces fighting alongside NATO.

Freedom ain’t free.  Someone has to stop Russia from doing what it is doing which is definitely not “perfectly fine”.  In reality the kid did not run away, his family did when he was 16.  Now that he is 18 and of age; he is “staying away”.  I think every citizen has a duty to protect their nation in times of crisis.  A duty to protect each other when threatened.  If they cannot or will not do that then they really are no longer a nation.  This is one thing I think we have lost, and it will come back and bite us.  There is a solemn duty in being a citizen, and even a greater one in a free nation.  It is one that takes sacrifice for the greater good.  Now this kid could be from a pacifist ideology or religion, ok there are a lot of ways to fulfill this duty to serve.
What I disagree with is that is all fine for a young man like this to selfishly protect himself while his own people are suffering.  Running away to “embrace life” when Ukrainian children are dying back in Ukraine does not wash with me.  Personally I have been in two wars that really had not much to do with Canada.  We were really doing it for some greater global good (really did not turn out well in the end) but we all believed in it and honoured kids maybe a year older than this one who died in crappy places no one will remember in 50 years. The idea that one could “sit out” an atrocity like this invasion of Ukraine and still claim citizenship or ethnicity does not sit well with me at all.  It is shirking duty and letting others pay the price.   As we have discussed this kid does not even have to fight.  He can be in a support trade or work in industry or even humanitarian.  But his people and his country need him right now which is more important than how he gets to spend his twenties.  It is more important than him as an individual.  
Mark my words on this, we have more of this coming.  The future is likely going to demand more sacrifice for the greater good not less.  We will have to stand or kneel in the end.  And right now to my eyes, that young man is kneeling.

Hang on, this kid is 18. The conscription age was just lowered to 25. He has 7 years to make a few kids and basically be exempt until he's in his 40's.
This whole thing looks like a complete nothing story. What is he even complaining about? He can cross the desertion bridge if Ukraine drop their conscription age down to 18.

That Vladimir Putin makes bad decisions from our perspective is not the same thing as him making irrational decisions.
In that light, I think you should ask yourself whether or not the Russians would have preferred the US to be still mired in Afghanistan while also trying to support Ukraine. And you should ask yourself whether or not Putin would have preferred a safely pliant Ukrainian government (being coerced not just by the Kremlin but also the White House) over the risks associated with going en banc with a full attempt at conquest. Finally, please come up with a single evidenced example of Trump giving Russia or China pause in their foreign policy behavior. This claim is often made yet nobody can point to one…though moments of pause and dismay abound among American allies during the same time period. 
Putin’s timing wasn’t about losing the restraining hand of what we are supposed to imaging was an intimidating Trump administration vis a vis Moscow…it was the recognition that a window of opportunity was closing. Indeed, events have shown Putin didn’t realize it already had.

To restate the points I made earlier in this thread:
Bolton and others have said directly that Trump had planned to pull out of NATO in a second term and there is no evidence that he now intends the contrary. Trump has also quite publicly rejected the Pentagon’s top generals who restrained him from this direction in the first term and there is no constituency in Trump world that has a stake in European stability. Quite the opposite, in fact, as they can anticipate making enormous amounts of money off of the Russian oligarchy should the US swing into acquiescence to a Russian dominated Eastern Europe. Don’t kid yourself. If he wins, NATO is very likely to die.
It is also a canard that Putin was holding back on Ukraine before Trump left office. The reality is that Putin’s regime was involved in a full court press to pressure Ukraine into subservience with the willing assistance of political appointees in the White House. Russia hasn’t gone to war because Putin didn’t think he needed to and clearly the Russian government expected Trump to win a second term. War was decided when it became clear that Biden had won and the immediate focus of American power was going to be on containing Moscow. Putin’s clique imagined that the US was still too shaken politically from the previous four years and too involved in Afghanistan to reorient rapidly while the Ukrainian military wouldn’t be able to put up significant resistance. Virtually wrong on all counts. 

The US Congress added an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requiring consent from 2/3rds of the Senators or an Act of Congress in order to leave NATO ( Congress passes bill to prevent the president from leaving NATO without approval (msn.com) 
A President could sort of leave by not co-operating, I suppose.  

Who stole my barn? Anyway the french got there first

and US aid is back on track for now

If I did this right, I gifted the article and it gave me a gift link (I think), for those who want to read it. If it doesn't work for you PM me and I'll try to get it right.
https://wapo.st/3vZhk1f
Dave

If I’m Putin, I want to grab as much territory as possible, at whatever the short-term cost. Putin knows tanks + apcs likely won’t be of much use in defense, and is betting that mobiks and mines and trenches and drones will maintain the defensive, just like last year. The calculation he is making is that however costly it is to obtain this territory, it will be costlier for Ukraine to take it back. In addition, it is better to get this territory before US supplies arrive, making offense much costlier. Also, in order to reverse-Maidan, it needs to happen April-May-ish. With these conditions, he hopes to break Ukraine and the West’s will, and thus force negotiation or withdrawal of support.
The way his calculus fails (IOM) is as follows:
Ukraine can maintain it’s attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure, crushing the Russia economy and logistics and thus the ability to attack Ukraine is able to mass sufficient drones to deny defense on a sufficiently large front (say 40km wide) that it is able to not only clear lanes through minefields, via drones or otherwise, but also clear trenches with minimal boots-in-trench.

your attempt to play the both-siderism game is pathetic and shows an incredible amount of ignorance, both in historic and in current events.  What Gingerich did was completely unprecedented.  What McConnell did was completely unprecedented.  And Trump is off the charts for breaking both norms and laws.  ANd where on the left are the insane ones that are wielding power?   Where's the dem Matt Gaetz?  MTGreene?  American democracy is on the brink and it is due to one side and one side only.  Guess what --  Biden won't attempt to throw the country into a civil war to unlawfully try to cling to power.  Trump's been doing that for last 4 years, including a full on mob-coup attempt that left people dead.  So just WTF are you even talking about?  Clearly you've been watching Hannity or some other bull**** monger and now you are parroting their bulls--t.
So stop watching Fox & newsmax.  It makes you look like a damn fool.
Oh, and please respond by telling me how it's the dems fault the GOP held up UKR aid for 3 months.  Dems aint the ones on Putin's payroll.  
 

I stumbled across this article about using face-hardened and RHA armour, specifically for the Panther. It seemed to align with my basic knowledge, but I wanted to pick the group's wisdom on whether the article was accurate and your thoughts on the site's quality overall. Thanks!
https://tankhistoria.com/wwii/panther-armor-quality/

Some time ago this was biosphere reservation "Sribnianskyi forest" (Kreminna area). Complete devastation. Filmed by "Azov" brigade on retaken positions.
CM should have this type of trees after period of intensive shellings - just a standing or falling down barrels without branches and leaves. 
 
 

Here’s a question: Of the truck-based artillery, which is better, Caesar or Archer? Archer sounds great from the whole shoot and scoot perspective and automation (and thus less injuries carrying stuff and TBI), but Caesar appears to cheaper and lighter.

Yet you do!!! Time again you do!
What has it to do with Ukraine?
🙄

It's currently being reported that the House has passed the Ukraine aid deal 311-112.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/house-vote-ukraine-israel-taiwan-aid-04-20-24/index.html

How to bypass a government not doing what you want it to do.
Not sure it would work in America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68843542
 

Made a post a while back after (almost) finishing the Soviet campaign. I got to the last mission, got burnt out, frustrated and ceasefired to get a tactical defeat and beat the campaign. I think I gave fair feedback on the prior five missions but my notes on the last mission were mostly whining.
I couldn't stop thinking about it though, I had spent so much time and this last mission was a pebble in my shoe (see what I did there?). After taking a break I fired up a fresh save and started again...

I realized the biggest issue would not be M60's hiding in the trees but infantry. The first go around I attacked the junction with no artillery support and it went about as well as you would expect. My infantry couldn't build fire superiority by themselves and the tanks around Outskirts Junction Two would plaster any vehicles that tried to support them. Not to mention, spending longer than a couple turns would invite the USAF and artillery.
Also, I learned that the 1st Battalion on the left could not move out of position until the tanks around Outskirts Junction Two were dealt with. Smoke(at least when they have thermals) and artillery do not work against dug in tanks. This meant 3rd Battalion on the right would need to do most of the work. I love this campaign but it's a crime to get all these BMP's and not get use them until the end!
To accomplish this task we get the motherlode of artillery and air support. Has there been another mission with this much artillery? Another lesson though, you can't use the aircraft until a good portion of AA is dealt with. Sending them in at the start is a suicide mission.
With that in mind, where do we put this artillery. My motto is "better to use too much on too little than to use too little on too much" so we will focus an unholy amount of firepower on a few key locations. (yellow for artillery and purple for air support)
Junction - I used all three 122mm batteries and a couple mortar batteries. I didn't want anything to slow me down here Industrial Yard - After shelling the junction I moved all artillery except for the mortars and cluster munitions here to make sure my attritted 3rd battalion could quickly secure the objective and make way for 1st Battalion Above Outskirt Junction Two - I left the cluster artillery on call in case I found an M60 I wanted to take out. In hindsight I should have just added it with the rest. It didn't take out the one tank I wanted but it sure destroyed everything else! Eurdorf - Before moving on the final objective my air support would be clear to soften up the town. Junction Objective
After a massive bombardment my tanks and BTR's moved up and dismounted on the south side of the highway junction. My infantry took out the few remaining stragglers. Next, I brought up AT-7's and engaged the tanks in the tree line around Outskirt Junction Two and used my BTR's to rush the TOW vehicles on the flanks. With the objective secure I moved the infantry to the trees west of the Highway Junction and began to spot TOW vehicles around the Industrial Yard. I brought the T-62's up behind them and using the infantry spots my M-60's were able to take out the TOW's with only one loss. At this point there were three M60's left (two a little north of Outskirt Junction Two looking south west and one farther north west looking south) and I was starting to get a feel for the defense. There was a strong concentration on the East and West objectives but what about in the center?
Industrial Yard Objective
I scouted forward with a couple unmanned BTR's and only found an AA vehicle blocking my way. A couple T-62's dealt with it and my BTR's ventured to the top of the map and to the west with no contact. I had found gap I needed. I kept two tanks of the company slightly south of Outskirt Junction Two looking north to catch any tanks venturing out of the forest and moved the rest to swing behind them. Meanwhile, I brought up the infantry and dismounted them to the east of Outskirt Junction Two to flush out the tanks and bring them into my tank's sights. The flanking tanks soon got in behind the tank in the far north and the rest looked south as my infantry flushed out the two remaining tanks from the forest. It was far too satisfying seeing reverse into the sights of my T-62's. My remaining infantry and a platoon of tanks soon mopped up the Industrial Yard
US Counterattack
I have a confession. I got to this part and an entire company with most of my anti tank platoon was sitting in the Highway Junction when the counterattack occurred. They were all destroyed before I could react. I'm a coward and went back a few saves to make use of my towed anti tank guns. I caught them in a trap and made pretty short work of them.
Eursdorf
At this point I moved the 1st Battalion out of it's hiding place and prepared it to assault the final objective. After all the work I did I still lost two tanks coming down the hill. Those M60A3's are no joke. 
3rd Battalion began to clear the forest in the center of the map and found a few HQ teams then moved across the river to engage targets around Eursdorf. I brought three tanks across the river as well and sniped three M60's and an AA vehicle from their rear. I brought some AT-7's but they could never get any spots. 
At this point the air support arrived and started to pummel Eursdorf while 1st Battalion was getting their first scouts into the outskirts of town. I was looking forward to using my remaining tank ammunition to flatten the town block by block but the Americans decided to throw in the towel. 

Conclusion
This was a very satisfying mission and like the best scenarios it taught some valuable lessons:
Soviet artillery should be used in mass at built up areas like towns - The Soviets wanted freedom of movement above all and these built up areas will slow you down, restrict your movement and force your precious infantry to dismount, opening them up to artillery. Each unit should support eachother from squad/squad on to battalion/battalion - The first battalion will take over 50% casualties getting off that hill if it isn't supported but the 3rd battalion is in a great position to flank the units watching that hill. Always be looking for a gap in the enemy lines - Even the lowly T-62 can take out an entire platoon of M60A3's from behind. Know the enemies' order of battle. If you know the American tank platoon has 5 tanks but only see four, you will be looking out for that tank rather than an ignorant player who figures they know where the entire platoon is. This was a very fun campaign and really cements my preference of playing the Russian faction in Combat Mission. They have a totally different style compared to any other faction and I find playing with inferior equipment more interesting than sitting an Abrams or Tiger on a hill and watching it rack up kills. You really have to earn your victories whether it's Red Thunder, Cold War or Black Sea.

well this should make your day.  
Freedom Caucus' New 'FART' Team Sparks Avalanche of Jokes, Memes (msn.com)

Another question I don't know the answer to. The consensus of the Thread so far has been that a NATO imposed no-fly-zone poses unacceptable escalatory risks (because it would involve NATO assets shooting down Russian planes). Does that escalatory logic hold now that essentially all (all?) of the Russian incursions into Ukranian airspace are unamanned? Is there strategic room for a more nuanced ruleset - something like, "We, NATO, will shoot down all unmanned aerial objects that are within 10km of a large conurbation or civilian infrastructure target west of the Dniper?

https://forbes.ua/ru/news/ukrainskiy-virobnik-gotue-seriyne-virobnitstvo-analoga-dji-mavic-shmavik-forbes-diznavsya-yogo-kharakteristiki-ta-tsinu-17042024-20603
Via: https://mastodon.social/@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl/112296332321909985
I still don't know why Ukrainians allies don't seem able to get projects like this on the way. The cost of development is a fraction of the cost of a leopard... Peanuts to what else is being sent.