Livdoc44

Hmmm let russia do what it wants in Ukraine to avoid a bigger war.  Really.  Quick history lesson.
"Peace in our time" 1938. 
Appeasement of Mr Adolf, fast forward 7 years, 60 million dead. 
Whoooops.
And I'm not being flippant, just flabbergasted.
 

Man that really highlights the issue at play here.  The US is more than a nation of 360-odd million.  It is an idea.  An idea that despite it flaws, contradictions and even occasional hypocrisy that the western world signed up for because it resonated.  We all took the idea and made it our own.  It was bigger than a political system.  It spoke to themes of liberty, representation, security, justice and equality.  We built a global order to oppose Communism around this big idea.  That is what this war is really about - the defence of that idea.  
Supporting Ukraine is simply the right thing to do.  It is about pushing back a genocidal bully and declaring to any and all that would think about trying this “Hey, this is our idea and we are going to defend it.  You are not attacking Ukraine, you are attacking our idea”.

Very interesting video of small unit tactics. Tanks seem to divide, probably trying to use this characteristic enclosed berm (at first I thought it was some kind of ancient structure, but it looks too fresh) as cover, each supressing one Russian-held position, one of them being famous trench. At 4:00 ATGM Fagot is shot but fortunatelly missed. At 10 Russsians desperatelly try to throw something (AT granade?) but miss the machine many meters. They seem to be obliterated by cannon at point-bnlank range. It sucks to be infantry...
Flags at those vehicles are interesting thing to see. Also tanks use cannons to supress infantry even at closest distance rather than MG-s (did anybody even saw in this war tanks shooting their onboard machine guns?). BMP with infantry is somewhere else, perhaps more videos will come of Ukrainian grunts clearening trenches.
[edit: basically crossposted with Haiduk].

On 3:40 Wagners shot with ATGM "Fagot", but in the same moment tank gunner shot HE in front of the tank and the smoke on the moment hide the tank from field of view of ATGM operator - the missile passed through the tank. Next, the tank approached to distance, where "Fagot" can't be used - less than 70 m.
What surprised me - how Wagners could survive after several almost direct hits in trench area. Of course, they were shell-shocked, but kept opportunity to move and even to throw grenades 

Goes some way in explaining why no one is protesting this war in the streets of Moscow. Putin has clearly been building this internal security architecture, and likely using it for years. The difference now is that it is under new levels of strain. Russia is a big country and the potential blowback from this sort of system failing is not small.

Some UKR mech.brigade somewere... No western vehicles, though.
 

"Within each town the TOG would appoint a garrison commander from the Russian military who would have an assigned detachment of garrison troops. These troops would occupy a building – usually the police or fire station – and set up facilities for detention, processing, interrogation and torture.70 The fact that the layout of these facilities is consistent throughout the country, and the equipment used in torture chambers, including specialised electrocution machines, were the same across multiple oblasts demonstrates that this was a systematic plan and not improvised sadism."
https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf (pg 22)
 

I'm pretty sure that thing will end up as a CM scenario or even a small campaign.

I don't think I've seen this NYT article linked here yet - it's about the difficulty the US DOD/MIC is having in ramping up to supply Ukraine while also maintaining enough in stock to protect Taiwan.  Shouldn't be much of a surprised to anybody here, given how much it's been discussed, but it's getting higher visibility.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/us/politics/military-weapons-ukraine-war.html?smid=url-share

This! I too find the ability to port the maps and use the modern-ish (re: CMCW - although look at what the Russians are allegedly rolling out now...) and modern (CMBS) TO&E on said maps absolutely fascinating. The series, in general, is really hard to describe to those who haven't taken the plunge. I've tried ha!

My overall impression is of a disciplined and competent unit. Everyone was clean^, and actions were carried out deliberately and without stress or haste. Everyone appeared calm and relaxed (except that one guy), and they were all comfortable with each other – some banter, but a lot of pretty frank comments about how they’re feeling. The new guys seemed a little stiff, but that’s probably to be expected.
The fact they had some new guys was interesting in itself. Why are the new guys needed - casualties? Promotion? Courses? Relief for leave periods? Siphoning off some experience to raise a new battery?
A lot of the guys seemed pretty old, and kind of chubby? I guess that’s to be expected with mass mobilisation.
Overall this was a very tidy gun position with no trash or dunnage to be seen which is a sign of good discipline, and also an fairly comfortable looking position which is a sign of good morale.
They are carrying personal weapons at all times, which struck me as odd. Could be for the cameras, or could be because of the local ground threat.
I think they’re using encrypted radios? The blerp at the start of each transmission is a bit of a give-away. That’s not super surprising, other than that encrypted radios are not available COTS.

From a specifically gunnery perspective, they were firing at a very low trajectory, and with a time of flight of 29 seconds, which implies they were firing at around 10km (29 seconds time of flight, firing Charge 1 so probably around 300 m/s). But that’s a hearty guess since I don’t know the specifics of the gun/round/charge combos for the D-30. Low trajectory is good practice since it makes it harder for the enemy to sense any outgoing rounds.
The battery was set up in a woodland, which was unusual since it severely restricts your traverse - you can’t just bang a round away in any direction since it’ll probably slam into a tree a few 10s of metres away and really ruin your day. Given a static front that kind of makes sense – “all our targets are in a narrow arc in that direction” - but it does mean that this battery can’t really support any units to the flanks of the one it’s been assigned to.
It looked like they were using time fuses, although again I’m not really familiar with Russian ammunition. There was a shot where a guy was fiddling with a tool on the nose of the round at around 6:39, and the tool he’s using appears to have calibration marks on it. On Western ammo that’s the kind of thing you’d use to set the time fuze length^^, whereas switching between PD and Delay is a simple screwdriver turn between two positions and would be a completely different fuse (you can turn a time fuze into a PD fuse by zeroing the timer, but they usually don’t also have a Delay setting. Also, time fuzes are relatively rare, so you’d only use them when air burst was called for.)
It seems they are concerned about counter battery (CB) fire, since they moved into a shelter immediately after the mission, but not THAT concerned since they’ve been in the same positions for several months. There also didn’t appear to be much ground churn (from incoming rounds) but that could be due to fresh recent snow covering any wounds to the ground since there also didn’t appear to be many random tracks about the place. Mind you, that – the lack of tracks - could alternately be due to really good discipline and morale, and the guys really sticking to the track plan. Or discipline + fresh snow.
I didn’t see any evidence of vehicles – either trucks dug in or hiding under cam nets, or vehicle tracks anywhere. That implies the battery isn’t moving anytime soon, and also that the guys are having to hump ammo in from some distance away. It also implies that they – or rather their higher command – are confident that the Russians will not be breaking in or through anywhere nearby anytime soon. Raids; yes – they specifically talk about that. But no movement of the FEBA.
Given they’ve been there for a couple of months, I would expect that they have a very long list of pre-registered targets, which greatly reduces (effectively eliminates) the need to adjust before going to fire for effect (FFE).
Although only one gun was show I would expect that there was a whole battery (probably 4 guns) hidden in the trees thereabouts, although probably very dispersed. I think that because the battery commander was there, and the command post (CP) looked fairly substantial for something that was only controlling a single gun. I am assuming here that the film crew walked between the gun they filmed at, and the underground battery CP and the underground CB shelter. If, on the other hand, they drove between CP and the gun then all bets are off, but I think driving is unlikely given the radios being used – those small handhelds don’t have great ranges, especially in trees.
All the round detonations you hear are of single rounds. That suggests that this gun could indeed be a pistol gun off on it’s lonesome away from the rest of the battery, OR that they are engaging a very small or point target like an isolated building, OR in response to a very local probe. But given the weather – bright sun, middle of the day – I’d be a bit surprised if the Russians were up and moving about with small numbers of light infantry, so my guess would either be a destruction mission on a building or the like, or they’re doing a technical shoot to figure out exactly what the weather conditions are doing to the flight of the rounds right now. Those technical shoots are important since it means that engaging any targets off the pre-registered list can go to FFE immediately, which decreases the response time from ~5-10 mins to ~1min including time of flight. That would also explain the generally unhurried and relaxed attitude of the guys – when a battery is firing in support of friendly forces in contact there is a certain ... tenseness, which is absent here.
Jon

^ that could also be because they tidied up the house, washed and had haircuts before visitors came over. But I don’t think it’s just that – you can tell a soldier to go have a wash, but that wouldn’t explain the calmness.
^^ although the fuzes I’m used to have the time setting marks on the fuze itself, rather than the adjusting tool, so … ?

Ah, I see what you mean! I've gotta pay better attention to the details ha ha. Thanks for the clarification and sorry for the confusion.
And thanks for all your contributions!

So this highlights what appears to be a modern warfare dilemma forming up - concentrate force and get detected and hit well before you can use it, penny packet smaller profile forces that are harder to detect, but risk being unable to project enough mass and get cut up by inches.  It is basically the AirLand dilemma without the airpower...and now everywhere, all at once (not a bad movie, not sure it should have won) as opposed to discrete regions of the AO.
So we are back to what has worked, corrosive warfare.  One does not form up large mass, one erodes an opponent en masse until their system buckles and then break in, through and out.  I suspect the entire play at Bakhmut has been a corrosive play, much like Severodonetsk et al last summer (which also drew a lot of fire at making "no sense" and UA troops poorly trained and supported).
The UA is not "following the Russian lead' they are also constrained in the battlespace because the RA still has some ISR and strike capability which make large mass formations suicidal right now.  The UA will likely keep "eating snow" until the RA cannot hold up on it own and then mass - and smaller mass than we are used to - has, and may very well work.  So I disagree that the UA needs to solve for "larger scale" attacks, they need to solve for deeper scale attacks, but I think they have a head start on this.
  

That is not the issue.  Of course out of control escalation of this conflict is a worry.  What a lot of people in the “must not start WW3” side of things tend to forget is that Russia is just as afraid of WW3 as we are.  Proof: despite severe setback and bleeding at historic levels, Russia has not turned to WMDs in this war.  Now we know that they do have red lines and we cannot forget that; however, we should also remember that we have red lines too.  
There are lines that are worth escalation and Russia (as well as ourselves, apparently) need to be reminded of that.  Controlled escalation to be sure, but if we’re are too terrified to act in a measured response to escalating Russian aggression we basically cede the strategic initiative.  This would give Russia de facto escalation dominance in this conflict.  FDR was right, the thing we need fear the most is our own fears.
A measured but clear escalation to this drone nonsense is required and while we are keeping this war in a box, we also cannot let our fears - nor forget that they are just as nervous as we are - hold back deliberate action.
”But why are we not imposing a no fly zone/boot on ground/striking Moscow”.  Couple reasons - all war is negotiation .  Escalation ladders have  rungs one can only use for the first time once, after that they become de-escalation options or norms of conflict.  So we want to keep strategic options open.  If we jump straight to no fly zones, we have a lot less escalation room before things get to a nuclear exchange threshold.  
Second one is trying to avoid inducing strategic panic on our opponent through miscommunication.  A no-fly zone over the Black Sea may seem reasonable to us but rationality is relative.  Russia may see this as a prelude to establishing air superiority for an invasion and panic.  Putin needs a centralized and functioning control system on his own escalation and panic is toxic to that.  So in this responses must be clearly communicated and demonstrated through signalling.
So, for example, if one is going to employ offensive cyber to shut down Russian military airspace control, unlike in a Grey Zone/Subversive context, this action would have to be more clearly a communication of action - all war is communication.  The primary mechanisms of that communication are cause and consequence.  Attribution would need to be clear and message needs to be received that buggery out over the Black Sea against US assets has consequences.
This speaks to the reality that the west needs to accept, this war is as much ours as it is Ukraines.  With China now communicating along with Iran it is becoming clear that this entire thing is becoming a global decision point in just how the global order will proceed.  We are not supporting Ukraine because Russia is bad (they are in this), or “the children!”.  We are doing it because this war is an attack on the global order that demands a response or we risk losing that order itself.  In many ways this war is already moving towards a global conflict as power poles invest in it as a proxy conflict - it is becoming an indirect WW3.  And while we must do what we can to avoid a direct WW3, we cannot let that fear drive us to losing the war we are already in.

In Germany's defense, their operating assumption for 30 years was nobody in their right mind would start a major land war on the European continent in this day and age. Unfortunately, the most relevant part of that was 'in their right mind'. They didn't factor in Putin's creeping senility turning him reckless in his old age.

So on Bakhmut, we are hearing an entire spectrum from "it is a deathtrap for the UA!!  It will collapse at any moment, run away!", to "It sucks because we are not supported and untrained, arty is running out of ammo", to "It is ok and we are making it work", to "It is an RA graveyard, and we are crushing them, we have a lot of arty ammo".
This tracks with these sorts of situations in the past.  The truth is likely down the middle and the extreme POVs are happening but are somewhat on extreme ends of the experience (maybe).
One thing we can say is that Bakhmut is holding, well past mainstream news media prepping for its fall.  Ukrainian and military leadership appear united and in line on the battle.  The RA is smashing up against this fight and moving slowly, the steady stream of video (which is skewed in the west) demonstrates that the battle is costly to the RA - how costly remains to be fully seen.  My instinct, and history tells us that it is likely skewing towards "high".
The biggest factor in attrition of combat power as a whole is the force generation competition.  We are seeing older and older RA equipment and more reports of poorly trained troops.  The UA has reports of poor training and support but also a video streams of newer (and western) equipment rolling into this fight.  Add to the this the steady increase in UA asks for offensive equipment and it is clear that this whole thing is not close to being done yet.
What I am looking for in particular is culminating points. The RA might actually be past theirs, which would have been last summer and this entire thing is a zombie operation for domestic audience consumption - there is a whole lotta "righteous sacrifice" narratives floating around the RA info sphere right now.  The UA has not hit theirs yet, that point going to be key for how this war ends.  Likely culminating point scenarios for the UA:
- This spring in the event of an operational offensive that fails.  Based on Bakhmut, I would say the ability to "freeze" this conflict is in Ukraine's hands right now and this would be on the table if this is as far as the UA can go for this war.
- This summer with a successful operational offensive but no tank left in the gas for finishing off Crimea or Donbas
- This fall, or next spring after retaking a pre-2014 region - my money is on Crimea because it makes the most military sense.
- The whole perogy, likely as a result of a total RA/Russian state collapse and then we got a whole new set of regional security problems to deal with. 
Once culmination happens (and we are talking strategic here), this war could drag on but it will be more likely more in line with the 2014-2022 period of a nasty open sore while both sides try to reconstitute for another round in a few years.  The question of how that reconstitution race would pan out is interesting.

It's an interesting event on numerous levels. Russia certainly does not want to provoke greater conventional intervention by the US/EU. Knocking down drones well into international waters (I have tracked these drones and they typically do figure eights in the middle of the Black Sea) has every chance of making that happen. It also weakens the argument they must have been happy to hear from DeSantis that the war is a "territorial issue" when Moscow is tangling with US assets well out of either national space. 
Ockham's razor...they are really worried about upcoming Ukrainian moves and they think it's worth taking that kind of risk to limit US ISR to some degree. 

Yup. It was ever thus.
No matter how fancy the manoeuvre, or how complete the encirclement, or how decisive the advantage, at some point some poor bastard has to frontaly assault someone in a pit who really doesn't want to die and is probably prepared to do something about it.

Well I am not a big proponent of predictions but since we are being compared to Kofman and crew, let me make one.  The RA is building up to another collapse - when and where are pretty much up in the air but we will be the first to know.  How is getting clearer by the day.
The only question is, "will it be a full strategic collapse or another operational one?"  My bet is on operational.  The RA is going to hold onto Donetsk and Luhansk (the cities) until the dirty end.  Crimea we have talked about.  But I know Steve has been aching for a strategic one for some time now, maybe his day has dawned. 
I am saying this because we are getting a lot of signals coming out of the RA war machine that it is starting to creak, and they sound a lot like last fall - in many ways worse.  Meanwhile the UA is getting breaching equipment, next-gen UAS and loitering munitions, and freakin JDAMs.

"It’s really bad. I think they are trying to surround us" 🙃
 
 

it's true!  1 to 1.  1 squad for 1 soldier.  😎

This whole line of thinking got me onto the idea of information mass.  The old rules of physical mass have largely fallen part in this war in may instances.  But perhaps mass still applies but has been offset into another domain.  I would bet a pretty large wager that the UA has got an information-mass advantage right now.  If we measured the raw data coming in (e.g. bits), being analyzed and turned into information, and then integrated into knowledge leading to learning advantage the UA looks like the Colossus, not Russia.  Further information is much harder to attrit.  You either attack the repositories (nearly impossible in this day and age) or you let time render it less relevant.  All you can really do is attrit the mechanism of information collection and analysis/processing, and the RA simply cannot do this.
So if information mass counts as much as bullets on the modern battlefield, it may go some way to explaining why the UA has crippled a far physically larger foe.  Mass may still very well matter but just not how we traditionally think about it. 

I really like their music choice for this video.

Haven’t we been here before?  Back at Severodonetsk were we not told at length how Russia had reframed this war in their favour?  And back then the RA still had massive artillery in play, now their indirect fires appear in trouble.
Regardless, we got the same stories of the UA bleeding out and “behind the curve”…and then Kharkiv and Kherson happened.
Here we are again. I am almost at the point that I am thinking this is a blue disinformation op aimed at getting the RA to keep pushing (and dying) at Bakhmut in order to weaken the line elsewhere.  The reported Russian losses are staggering and unlike the poorly mobilized infantry, all those vehicles and equipment are not things the RA has a “bottomless sea” of within its inventory.
UA is going to take losses and frankly it is in their best interests to look desperate - just keeping that big win slightly out of reach while the RA continues to bleed out.
Here is an actual metric of the UA bleeding out: when they stop sending thousands of troops to western training centres.  Once we can no longer load Ukrainians on these course streams because there are none left willing or able to fight, we know that the UA is actually in trouble.  That or some sort of RA break through.

Did you know Angela Davis is a direct descendant of a passenger on the Mayflower?  History is freakin awesome.
Angela Davis 'Can't Believe' Ancestry Discovery About Mayflower Relative (today.com)