Maciej Zwolinski

I have no right to vote in the US election and try to stay out of very heated discussions on the subject for my own safety's sake - so this is just a brief clarification comment on the general logic of the argument. Here it goes: Is it not the whole point of Biden administration looking weak and bad that it can be blocked by a group of opposition House members (or, as some say, even one individual, the House speaker)? I mean, an administration which openly states its aims and then cannot carry them through looks weak precisely because of that.

Three FSB agents got medals for their diligent work at dislodging it.

A harrowing read. I listened to Wolski's podcast yesterday, he and the guest expert think that 110 Mech Bde is going to be refitting for the next year.

Torpedo is of course the original suicide drone so all of the above characteristics could apply to it if someone takes the effort of designing a modern autonomous torpedo. The thing which would differentiate it from the off-the-shelf or even obsolete designs is the distance over which it is autonomous - a few miles, 50 miles or the entire run from your shore to the target at sea or enemy harbour. I referred to the soviet 650 type because it is already available and requires only the delivery vehicle to be built around it which does not have all the complexities of a manned submarine. It is only worth the bother because going under the water which is a gamechanger. Once you are restricted to using sound as the main medium of detection everything becomes several orders of magnitude more difficult. Detection, defence, staying afloat after below-the-waterline or under-the-keel explosion. ASW is really a different kettle of fish. And to work, it requires a system. Which I bet the Russians let rot after the end of the Cold War. They would have to rebuild it, it is enormously costly and difficult to operate - one more strain on the Russian war economy/society. Or they would have to take submarine drone/autonomous long range torpedo attacks entirely on the chin, per 1916-1917 unrestricted submarine or 1940 Atlantic War without even a hope for developing a better defence. Frankly, if the Ukrainians develop submarine attack drones I expect Russians just to put the Black Sea Fleet and all RUS civilian shipping in dry storage.

Or create a bigger drone which would be in essence a self-propelled torpedo tube for one of those ex-Soviet wake homing monsters.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo You would not need more than 2 of those drones on station at the same time. Once the wake homer is in the water it can swim at 50 knots (27 nautical miles range) or at 30 knots (whopping 54 miles). If released from 10 miles away at an unsuspecting ship, in about 10 minutes that ship should be in two halves. And in the worst case even if the target ship notices the incoming torpedo and tries to escape, it just acquired a Moby Dick on its stern going after it for miles and miles. Scary weapon.

I am wondering if the fact that the guy has those tattoos and the fact he has a a black eye and nose knocked sideways are entirely coincidental.

Political theatre for voters, and for the other NATO partners, crude commercial negotiation tactics called BATNA bashing. "I will show you how ****ed you are if you do not agree to my terms". Not a good tool for complex international relations.

To state the obvious, this may be the way he could have negotiated commercial contracts in his company. This is not how a mutual defence alliance works

Unfortunately I read many more positive opinions on Twitter, based mostly on the following schema: "Putin speaks about history, and I am completely ignorant on the subject, therefore he seems to be a great and profound intellectual". Or "He looks more healthy than Joe Biden, therefore he seems a great leader". Those rather obviously invalid syllogisms were surprisingly persuasive. Or maybe Russian bots were repeating them, I can't tell

Absolutely, even setting aside the particularly far reaching effects of the Stalingrad battle (although I would say they occured as joint result of what happened at Stalingrad with the destruction of Panzerarmee Afrika shortly thereafter), in any battle for Germans and Soviets the nominal 1:1 parity was never an effective 1:1 parity, because of the much greater capability of the Soviets to regenerate that 1 plus adding several more units in the next wave of reinforcements released to the front. Re. the Russo-Ukrainian War I think on this board we have generally settled that 3,5: 1 is the effecitve parity at which the Ukrainians can trade casualties. Although this is AFAIK based at the general comparison of population size, so it is a bit crude methodology,

Thank you! Do you perhaps have the statistics for the 3rd phase, final surrender included ? I am wondering if the relationship between losses from 2nd phase was completely reversed

How does that concept differ from battlefield interdiction and isolation? As far as I understand, interdiction is also aimed at various enablers, and people doing it certainly try to make it targeted, precise and rapid.

But at some point in time all Germans left in the kessel surrendered and were shipped to Siberia. According to Polish Wikipedia there was 100,000 of them. That brings the total losses including POWs to approximately 1:1, right? Or does Forczyk distinguish the Stalingrad city fight (i.e. the part with Germans as the attackers) from Uranus +kesselschlacht (obviously, Russians as the attackers)? Actually it may be necessary as without such split it would be difficult to use Stalingrad for any attacker vs defender statistics due to the change of roles midway through the fight.

This is pure guess, but I am hoping for a breakthrough in the ECM domain. Likely because I know the least about it, so it is relatively the easiest to suspend disbelief and imagine an invention of some sort which makes Russian drones fail over a big area, while Ukrainian ones fly true. This would have to be exploited very quickly, because to every ECM its proper ECCM is soon created, but maybe there would be a sufficient time and space window to blast russians with concentrated drones and rush mechanised forces through the gap, with sort of a rolling barrage of drone swarm buzzing in front of and to the flanks of the attack force. Pure sci-fi stuff.

So far I am willing to give Syrski the benefit of the doubt and hope that the "Butcher" image has been unfairly created by the hostile wing of the highly politically divided Ukrainian public opinion. Maybe he will be able to placate the politicians with some actions of high propaganda value and low casualty risk, basically adopting the age old strategy of "let's don't but say that we did"

If the set of new ideas/technologies required to break the stalemate is not there, adopting a defensive strategy is better than attacking just for the sake of initiative. Better retreat to the Hindenburg Line than remake of the Somme.

There must be also consideration of what are minimum viable borders for the Ukraine after the armistice. At the risk of opening an even bigger Pandora box, getting back the lands in Donbas occupied by the Russians or being on the frontline would probably not be much of a difference to the Ukraine - they are either ruined or have been removed for 10 years from Ukrainan economy and are full of separatists. Huge economic and political investment would be required to make them useful again . But in the Azov Sea area, Russians are currently sitting in Melitopol, Mariupol and Berdiansk, very significant cities. Could an armistice with borders drawn along the current frontline in the south ever be a "victory" for the Ukraine? I am doubtful.

What's particularly pertinent for the Ukranian war, the Germans were able to break the stalemate of the trench warfare for a short distance only. They were incapable of restoring operational maneouvre which would allow them to enter the operational depth of the enemy. That required not only some new ideas, but a bigger breakthrough using the new technology of tanks, starting to come together at Amiens but really coming into effect in 1939

As I wrote, the sample is from WW2 Italy and North-West Europe. The only failed attempt by the Allies to take a city that I can find off the top of my head in that period is Arnhem. Although even that battle can be described in reverse way as a successful German attempt to storm it from UK/Polish defenders rather than failed Allied attack. So certainly the majority of actions from Allied side would be successful attacks, and those which failed, are probably temporary repulses (e.g. 1st and 2nd Monte Cassino). If German battles are included (will try to check that) you may have Bastogne from the Battle of the Bulge You are right that an failed attack on a city would probably have significantly different outcome in terms of casualty ratios, because for the attacker, the desired return on his investment in the form of POW harvest at the end does not happen. Also, I agree that these big success rates/low casualty rates in urban attack must be to a large degree the result of commanders knowing it is a difficult fight, preparing for it particularly well and going slowly. in addition to those second-order effects, the other factors are abundance of cover for the attacker and the posture of the defender, who is often determined to defend a city even from encirclement, so at the end of succesful attack, there is a large crop of POWs and all unevacuated wounded men and damaged equipment become permanent losses.

There is a recent book out by Lawrence of the Dupuy Institute on the Kiev battle during the initial phase of the war. I have not read it, but given the quantitative research background of the author, I hope for some solid data to be included.

Mariupol had two distinct phases, first was a very active defence in the whole of the city, the second Ukrainian attempt at defence of the fortress Azovstal. The second phase went quickly, Russians just bombed Azovstal with Tu-22s and cleared up with their infantry. Ukrainians after a few weeks surrendered, they had no way to bring in supplies and to defend against high-flying heavy bombers. The casualties did not seem too high at this stage and certainly not heavily skewed against Russians. 1:1 maybe or even somewhat in favour of Russians. Certainly in favour of Russians if you count the PoWs who surrendered at the end of the day. So the majority of RUS casualties had to be incurred in the first phase. Actually it seems possible, the deciding factor being troop quality. Azov was elite, whereas the RUS at first threw at them low quality units, separatist militias and Chechen tik tok warriors. Also, the secret factor - Russianness. Russians usually manage to incur more casualties than anybody else fighting for the same thing.

POWs should be included, this is a major source of casualties and a fundamental part of economics of a siege - theoretically, the attacker could decide to go full medieval,cut off routes to the city and just starve the defendant out, in which case non-POW casualties on both sided could be minimal, while at the end of the siege the defendant loses the entire force. BTW Rowland includes POWs in the above calculations - this may be the deciding factor why he always had more defenders on the casualty list then attackers.

Well, he claims to be surprised by the result, so theoretically should not be self-selecting. Regarding the force strength and adjusted force ratios, Rowland tries to work in these and other variables, which makes the whole chapter 30 pages long and makes it impossible to reproduce it all. Given that the sample is taken from Italy and post-Overlord, we probably may assume per rule of thumb the typical battle would have the attacker at small advantage in men, but significant superiority in artillery and air. My unscientific guess would be that force ratios adjusted by artillery and air support would be strongly in favour of the attacker. Will to look up Dupuy to see if his calculations shed any light on this.