Livdoc44

When viewed from space Elon musk’s ego causes a minor eclipse of Zelensky’s balls, but only briefly. 

Hi, 
Another guy from Poland, have on forum for years, usually only Reading, been following the thread since around March, usually few pages behind. 
Best place to get current info, reasonable opinions, experts on details etc. 
Helped me calm down in stressful beginning of this war and pass hope to some friends. 
First time I managed to find something of interest, some of you may have seen it but I think it was not posted. 
 
The second video shows explosion in slow motion.
 

Geez. Heck of a juxtaposition, Steve. Legit got chills.

I was born in summer of '81, so I'm just barely young enough to count as a Millennial...or barely old enough to count as a Gen-X'er, but I think 1980 is more commonly used as the dividing line than '82. Either way, I'm just old enough to remember losing sleep over nuclear war as a kid in the late Eighties.
This reminds of once back in '01 when my best friend and I were in a college course together and he mentioned being attracted to a young lady in one of his other classes who was slightly older than he was (i.e. about my age). As an example of how she was a bit older, he mentioned how she had talked about growing up in Czechoslovakia and having been afraid the U.S. would attack them back in the Eighties during the Cold War. I looked at him with a mixture of surprise and bemusement and said "what, don't you remember being afraid the Soviets would attack us?" He didn't... I think that might have been my first "that makes me feel old" moment.

It might be good to overload them with applicants and bombard that address with "willing" time wasters?

The casual racism in this video is disgusting.
It makes me wonder if NATO could not give the Ukrainians a precision guided cruise missile to take out this studio during a live broadcast. Now that would be TV worth watching!
 
(I jest of course. Well, half jest).
 

Looks like Putin and X are attending a funeral. I trust it's a metaphor for the future. 

Speaking from almost 40 years experience teaching in NSW (Government) High Schools ... very little to do with students, more to do with a s**tload of completely meaningless record keeping increasingly imposed on Teachers and an increasingly incompetent leadership resulting from 'promotion by merit' (as a Union Rep I served on several Interview Panels and all you get are people who are good at spouting the party line and sucking up to Bureaucrats rather than being good, or even competent, leaders - don't get me wrong, the old Inspectorial System was flawed, but at least tended to promote a greater degree of competence).
Pay is was a lesser problem for my generation as we were in a Defined Benefits superannuation scheme which was ended in the 1980's and replaced with an accumulation only one ... the Union estimated that (then) those in the new scheme would have had to have had a pay increase of $8-12000 pa (about 10% of gross salary at the time) to even come close to what we were going to get. Needless to say, they got b****r all extra.

Looks like they need to break out CMBS, visit my Battle Drill blog and brush up on their basic movement and react to contact drills.   
Bil

Heh, clearly never taught in US or Canada.  Unpleasant, undisciplined and lawyered up.

Since I can't give you a "Like" directly, I'll give you one from here 👍.

Definitely has that collapsing feeling doesn't it?  Answer likely is: the Russians spread themselves too thin, wasted people and resources to take tiny patches of ground in the Donbas, for "reasons", UA HIMARed them in depth breaking logistics, and now the whole rotten side of the house is caving in.
A little later than we had hoped (I think we were talking Jun-Jul) but hey, looking very promising.

Driver dropped his cigarette?

I avoid anything that starts with TWIT
 

RU is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel equipment-wise... 
 

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested.  First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow"  (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion)
So what is this fog-snow thingy?  Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery.  So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems.  It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?"
In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist:
1.  Establish pre-conditions.  Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent.  Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky.  Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains.  I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea.  I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe.
2.  Project friction.  This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas.  They slammed fields and fields with HE -  careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction.  "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization.  So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation.  Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct.  I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. 
Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war.  They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2.  We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul.  My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves.  Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. 
So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3.
3.   Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow".  A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog.  It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically.  Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work.  We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv.  Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to:
Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1.  Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging.  ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.)  You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'.  We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line.  So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything.
Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints.  Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions.  If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business.  Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated....
Finish.  Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster.  Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. 
The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says.  Key here is tempo.  This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2.
And here we come to more questions than answers:
- Will it work on the offensive?
- Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder?
- When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over?
- Have you gauged the enemies system correctly?  If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly.
- Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure?
I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago.  I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does.  If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing.  So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works.  We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. 
Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open.  If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it.  If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.
    

But I think that's the thesis of 'fog eating snow' that's being discussed here (aside:  that's either 'snow that eats fog' or 'fog that eats snow', or maybe both, I dunno). Punctuated equilibria or sumfink.
.... Trying for that Big Buildup (Mass!) followed by that 1944 or 1991 'Big Push to the Green Fields Beyond' at this time in miltech only seems to bog down in a bloodbath of more-or-less accurate heavy artillery. Neither side has really made it work since Feb, or not at an acceptable price.
So it seems better now on the attack to eat the elephant one bite at a time:  avoid presenting dense targets by sending only enough forces into close contact to force the defender to reinforce (it's also possible some of them may crack and rout). Then whack those noobs while they're still on the move and not dug in.  Eat the snow (or the fog)!
....If you're HIMARs-rich, you also whack their entire LOC as far back as you can, railheads, airfields, HQs, etc. 
There are several variants on that theme, but that's my current dumbed down grasp of it.
 
 

Yep, thats how I understood it also. The 6-packs are placed wherever the firemission is planned and the "empty" launchers drive from mission to mission.

Reduce power levels to very low level, disconnect from the grid, shutdown the plants, either leave them in hot standby for restart or cool them down to cold shutdown.  Done.  20% of UKR electricity cut off.
There is no danger to the plant, or to the environment to do that. None at all. Nuclear plants, and for that matter ANY electrical generation plant, do that ALL THE TIME. There's absolutely no reason to cut the plant off from the electric grid to stop it from operating and providing electricity. I would think by cutting it off they mean cut off IT from supplying electricity to the grid. It can still draw from the grid for it's own power loads. But if they did do that (cut off completely), there are backup diesel generators to supply power for cooling, unless of course someone blows those up. Fukushima was a problem because the DGs and their fuel were located above the design basis tsunami water level. They had what they call a "beyond design basis" accident. 


Dave

You are on a forum of a game company that the VDV stole screenshots from for their manuals.  We gotta thousand problems but weird is not one of them.

regarding the narrowing of decision space and your statement as to why Putin isn't doing more to try and ease the conflict
 

Here's a link to the latest IAEA statement on the nuclear power plant situation. Concern. Good that all the safeguards data is being received, but that's not really the major concern. 
For review, when they discuss safeguards, they aren't talking about the safety of the plant. What they are talking about is monitoring facilities to ensure that nuclear material (for example, spent fuel) is not diverted for "other" uses. All nuclear plants have them. Saying that, new fuel is a poor material for say, a dirty bomb, and impossible for a nuclear weapon. Spent fuel is so highly radioactive that while it might make material for a dirty bomb, handling it to do so would be incredibly difficult and dangerous, requiring a lot of special equipment and shielding. And while there is Pu in spent fuel, the processes to extract it are only owned by a few countries. 
The bigger danger by far is significant damage to the plant, which could cause a radiation leak. Breaching both the containment and the reactor vessel is not too probable. More likely disabling safety systems that control spent fuel pool cooling (a la Fukushima), leading to the breakdown of the fuel and radiation release.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-91-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine

Dave

From this forum's Kabul correspondent ... let's well and truly bury the Afghan thing.  As is generally the case, the most obvious explanation is usually the right one.  The timelines were simply those dictated by the February 2020 US-Taliban Agreement.  Biden arrived in office with a short timeline in which to take the decision to follow through with the withdrawal commitment in the US-Taliban Agreement.  The decision was announced on April 14, 2021.  According to the Washington Post article:
"Just weeks before the essay appeared, Biden and Putin had held a June 16 summit that both declared was “constructive.” At that point, Ukraine was a concern, but one that White House officials felt could be dealt with. As the White House delegation left the meeting, held in Geneva, a senior Biden aide would later recall, “we didn’t get on the plane and come home and think the world was on the cusp of a major war in Europe.”
The article states that it wasn't until October that the US was confident enough in its assessment that Russia would attack to take it to the President or put another way, sometime after the last US service member walked up the ramp of a C-17 in Kabul.

LOL!  Sad, looks like they could only afford CMx1 - Steve, you might want to get a press release out to explain that BFC did not violate international sanctions. 

These illustrations from a VDV textbook on urban warfare look oddly familiar…