Maciej Zwolinski

In this case the drone shot of Russian bodies stacked one on another with blood flowing out of their heads was circulated first. It looked very much like execution. I think they released the more detailed video of the whole incident as damage limitation

Where could I find Mashovets' reports? My ability to read Cyryllic is extremely rusty, but getting better, so I may give it a go. Thanks!

They must have had some carrier. But theoretically it could have been another drone, just bigger and more seaworthy.

I think torpedoes would actually be most useful. Once the weapon goes underwater, the rules of the game change completely. ASW is so much more difficult than shooting down flying objects. And once torpedo is in the water the usual defence is to try to evade it/run away from it - good luck doing that at anchor.

That is a book by Norbert Bączyk, quite prolific author, but wriiting mostly in in Polish. I will see if I can find it for you.

While it is perfectly understandable, why the Russians are pulling out of the Kherson bridgehead, I am not sure why Shoigu and Suroviking thought it is a good idea to publicly declare this on the TV, while the withdrawal is still underway. The Ukrainians gained some additional clarity on the Russian plans and and it could not have been good on morale of the Russian troops. Did they want to make the declaration for political purposes, to try to spin it as another "goodwill gesture"? Or a tacit offer of semi-truce to Ukrainians, alolng the lines of "if you do not shoot now, we will go quietly anyway"?

It would have a good reason to do so. With the internal revolt developing in Iran, surely they will concentrate on the internal threat first. And it is reasonable to expect, that the level of Western support for the rebels would be to some extent proportional to Iran's being a pain in the *** in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Ah, the weekly. I am not that interested in the new procurements, so I tend to give this a pass.Thanks!

Care to post a link? Thanks!

Imagine how pissed off Strelkov must be

I read an opinion, that one of the best weapons for engaging Orlan could be 57 mm S-60 reintroduced to the service and coupled with a modernised FCS. Does that make sense?

In Severodonetsk it was mostly UKR territorials. With different levels of training, which may encourage Russians to try the same with chmobiks. The obvious difference is motivation, but so far chmobiks when put in contact with the enemy did not surrender en masse, but tried to fight. They did badly, but made the Ukrainians expend time, materiel and men. On the other hand, if UKR do not storm Cherson and do not blast it to oblivion with artillery, the would have to starve the garrison out the old way, even discounting the odd ferry sneaking across Dnieper (in Severodonetsk all bridges were down at some point, yet materiel was coming through on boats). So in each scenario except for Russsians running away without significant fight, garrisoning Cherson with low quality troops as sacrificial rearguard is better than cleanly leaving the entire Cherson bridgehead, which is in turn better, then trying to stay in the bridgehead indefinitely. Which is why I think the RUS will take that options (that, plus the rumblings about fortifying Cherson & some preparatory sad tales about the new Panfilovtsy emerging in the Kherson bridgehead in RUS military blogs)

Could the radar pick up Schnorchel? I do not think so. So possibly they solved the problem, but in any case too late

That is debatable, and moreover, it is entirely for the RUS to decide whether to upset that equilibrium by withdrawing pretty much from everywehere other than Kherson, leave some low quality troops in the city itself and force the UKR to demolish the Ukrainian city block by block with artillery to take it back. For the Russian then to make a propaganda point that UKR are no better than RUS as regards the treatment of civilian cities, and actually are worse because the RUS took the civilan population out of Kherson, and UKR did not evacuate Mariupol. I think it is just a combination of casualty aversion (even when withdrawing, the RUS still have enough artillery in other locations to fire defensive barrages, and the VVS are uncharacteristically active in the Kherson area) and - possibly unappreciated - a lot of landmines being left by RUS. This is anecdotal, but many reports about the Kharkiv offensive, where there was a significant pause in the middle of operation, explained that pause by the need to clear up landimnes. Or described situations of people being blown up on mines, and the rest slowing down because of that. For the life of me, I cannot understand why any country bordering Russia would ever sign that idiotic Ottawa Convention. Our and Ukrainian politicians who got us on the signatory list should be tried for treason, seriously.

No disagreement here. But: 1) regardless of how many paras and marines can be extracted from the other bank, getting them to Zaporozhie is a bonus, not hindrance for the RUS there; at the very least, they will reconstitute them into a couple of BTGs or use them to train mobiks; 2) Kherson's costing the RUS dearly would be the effect of hanging onto it for too long, not withdrawing from it; one more reason to relocate as soon as the RUS find their optimal moment (I think this will happen when Cherson is fortified for the mobiks to make their heroic final stand there and some strong winds and autumn storms happen which will make drone operations difficult and so facilitate withdrawal over the river). As regards the butcher's bill balance on Kherson, of course this is a guess. Mine, to make a historical analogy, is that this time Verdun has ended somewhat in between Falkenheyn's original plan and Prince Ruprecht historical execution. The defender has suffered more than the historical approx. 10% excess casualties, maybe 20% over the UKR. They were very tough battles for the UKR too.

Actually, that seems like a reason for the Germans and other West Europeans to develop a defence industry not dependent on US conventional arsenal, rather than exploring the options of cozying up to a bloody dictator waging a war of aggression. Even more so now, as by this moment in time, the Russians have repeatedly presented the war in the Ukraine as a war with the West. The "diplomatic option" without getting the RUS at least back to the 24.02.2022 borders would be for many intents and purposes a surrender on terms, not only of the UKR, but also of Germany.

Surely they cannot be less advantageous than in Kherson. Yet Russians did manage to supply critical materiel and even rotate troops by ferries and the Kahovka dam bridge hastily filled in with rubble and earth to the extent necessary to hold on for what, four months? And the defended area is not going to be so small, to prevent dispersing of units and cause Russians to mass excessively. They basically have the square Vasylivka -Volnovakha - Mariupol- Melitopol at their disposal, which is a lot of real property. So yes, getting additional troops from Kherson and Berislav areas to strengthen the Zaporizhe direction will be beneficial to the RUS. After the RUS withdraw from the Kherson bridgehead (actually, I think they will not withdraw fully, but will rotate most of regular units with heavy equipment out and leave mobiks in Kherson city to die fighting; I think they are going to do basically a reenactment of the defence of Severodonetsk but on the defender side; provided they do not care about mobik casualties - and they do not -this would be optimal for both political and military purposes ) I think the Ukrainians will not attack in the Zaporozhe front in the foreseeable future, there is a reason why they have not done so until now. They will keep using the potentially decisive character of this sector as means to keep as many valuable units as possible off other areas of the front. I think the Ukrainians will keep trying to succeed in the North Luhansk sector throughout the rest of the autumn and winter or (if RUS loose control over how many people they spend in frontal attacks near Bachmut) possibly attack straight to Doneck, if the Russian lines get thinned there during the winter. Zaporizhia is actually the last place I would expect the Ukrainians to try and mount a winter offensive. They have no purchase there and would have to start developing the battlefield for breakthrough, only to attack into the teeth of relatively best enemy units. Not particularly attractive option.

Some of them must genuinely come from very different assumptions. I think they may take it as granted that Russian army will suck for at least the first year of the war, and then will become gradually more effective through sheer Darwinian attrition. And may assume that in a long war, Russia will just outlast its opponent simply through the depth of manpower and materiel and disregard for losses. And that the morale of Russian units just works in a diffferent way, the threshold of lossess and general misery after which the unit surrenders, runs away or mutinies being significantly higher then elsewhere. Etc. Obviousy, there is a large amount of bat**** crazy stories about Boris Johnson directing the war from Kiev or brigades of Polish mercenaries which are just that. However, some of Russian military bloggers' viewpoint must be at least partially based in reality, because Russians, while not getting closer to any kind of victory, are not losing quickly as predicted by many in the West.

There is another very good sci-fi book which projects drone warfare even further into the future, "The Invincible" by Stanisław Lem. I am not sure how well known it is outside of Poland, but it is very good. It is not military sci-fi, but unmanned warfare is a part of the plot, and it is scary as hell (wont' say more not to spoil it). Notably it was written in 1964.

Before we reach that stage, I think IFVs will specialise in anti-drone warfare. In a combined arms unit, the autocannons on IFV are not fundamental for the unit's attack power vs ground targets. They are nice-to-have kit, but both infantry and light AFVs can be engaged more effectively with tank guns. On the other hand, drone defence is becoming a life-or-death capabliity. So I think that we will see the next generation of IFVs with a bigger calibre autocannons (for altitude) and some kind of dumbed down radar or IR tracking equipment.

Judging by Afghan weddings and funerals, turbans will suffice

Actually, they coluld strip KPV and DshKs from the BTRs and ship them to cities to be remade into anti-drone batteries. They seem to be marginally more effective than rifle calibre guns when mounted in APC's, but could really do God's work when fighting cheap drones. Bringing back the 57mm AA gun into service would be even better, provided not all of them have been scrapped. Until lasers can be used for anti-drone work or fighter drones are perfected, the return to gun AA looks like the only way to fight cheap drones without the defender being forced to expend his AA missile stock on them or spend a fortune constantly restocking.

Actually, they are sowing dragon's teeth so that some warriors grow up from them. Chmobiks have turned out to be not quite warrior material.

Who's the young fella here? I have been reading this forum since 2003, steadily lurking at periscope depth. Well, I lost 1 account and had to open another, so maybe not so steadily, but that's mere formality, a lawyer's quibble I say.

As a side note: You are mixiing up two Polish armies. The Anders Polish army was organised in 1941 out of those, who were not shot in Katyń, survived Gulags and transportation to Siberia or Central Asia. Soon they left Soviet Union via Persia to Palestine and went on to fight in the Middle East and Italy with the British. The other army, which had been organised in 1943 and got the influx of men mobilised in territories reconquered in 1944 was called the Polish People's Army (going by the commander's name, Berling's army, not Anders'). On the main point: I am not interested in whether Red Army is whitewashed or villified by anyone in this forum, I do not think this discussion would lead to any edifying conclusion. It was a horrible organisation, how horrible? How long is a piece of string? What I am interested is this: I have read opinions that by 1944 (or 1945) Red Army was so depleted on men that it had to rely on people mobilised in the reconquered territories in order to keep fighting effectively. I have not seen any data to prove or disprove this point, though, but maybe someone else on this forum has. The Wikipedia data about losses during the entire war does not really weigh on this point either way, being too aggregated.