Livdoc44

At 20km range they are going to have to put APS on every truck, jeep and bicycle in order to keep an LOC.  
It looks very much like the UA is using drone warfare (in all shapes and sizes) to offset artillery shortfalls.  It also looks like it is working.  This development is world breaking in land warfare and I suspect things are just getting started.
I do not know what the mech solution is.  Right now dig and disperse along with EW appear to help on defence but no one has really figured out how to project unmanned into offence.  Ukraine did not last summer and Russia sure did not at Adiivka, or at least not what we saw.
So here we are again, scratching our heads and wondering what happens next.

Airplanes. RU demonstrated extreme sensitivity to airplane losses. 
 
They pulled WW2 howitzers out of storage. RU mil reporter Saponkov reported on Feb 3
Also, UKR claim that RU are replacing losses with mostly towed guns (not necessarily with D-1s) slowly downgrading to WW2 level.
 
The infantry is best transported by up armored APC. Even MRAP is ok as it can get in out quickly Close support is best provided by AFV with automatic weapon. The best is Bradley with two men crew. MRAP with 50 cal will do the job Tank (preferably with HESH rounds) provides long range (2-3 km) fire support against hardened targets (concreted bunkers) using drones for adjustment The assault technique is as follows
FPV drones take out crew manned weapons (ATGMs, HMGs etc)  around objective 155mms pound the objective Tank demolishes bunkers and other hardened targets APCs with Bardleys arrive at objective and clear out remains of the enemy The biggest difference is APS with ability to counter drones. No APS, no difference. Well, crew survivability of modern AFVs increases overal AFV formation morale and aggressiveness. 
 

If Ukrainian will collapses over this one small town, in a slow motion attack that has taken 4 months to culminate, then we are backing the wrong horse in this whole thing.  The US and West cannot supply the Will to Fight - that is all on the Ukrainians.  They have shown incredible resilience for two years and I personally doubt this will break them.  But if it does, or there are serious signs of it collapsing, then stopping aid starts to make sense because it would likely simply fall into the hands of the Russian's.  If the Ukraine are the Government of Afghanistan then it won't matter how much aid we end up sending them, this war is already lost - of course this the narrative being pushed in some camps.
I think that like Bakhmut and Severodontesk, the UA will re-set, new lines will be drawn and the RA will kill itself trying to take the next smallville in the Ukrainian countryside.  My money is that the RA will run out of gas before Ukraine runs out of small towns.

$75 billion in aid and the coordination of another $54 billion or so from our allies but hey, what have you done for me lately? 
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
Which is another way to say that if you are concentrating on particular weapons systems  instead of aggregate economic/military/diplomatic aid than I think you are doing it wrong. 
And on that note, I'm going to head out to a very excellent dive bar of my acquaintance with some friends and drink to the $450 million or so that some old pro-Putin bastard lost in court in NY today. 
Cheers.

Don't judge the Western Navies based on Russian Navy incompetence.
Let's look at Russian ship Caesar Kunikov

What protection does it have against small boats? Two twin 57 mm (2.2 in) DP guns

It is old Soviet tech, and most likely it does not work properly. If it works at all.
What else does it have? Well, guys like this.

This is absurd. It's no surprise that his tin can is now submersible (or at least what remains of it).
Now, let's look at Type 45 Destroyer because it is the main escort of the White Elefants.

What does this fellow have?
Two DS30B rapid fire cannon

Two Phalanx CIWS

By the way, here Phalanx fires at surface target
Two .50 Cals

It is already impressive but here is more. 
T45 usually have at least one helicopter

The name of the helicopter is Wildcat, and it can carry up to 21 LMM missiles. 

When this boi gets into the air, the swarm attack stops.
Is that all? Nope - as soon as vodka hits the fan 30mm will get their own LMMs

This is how LMM works (different mount)
The swarm of small boats is not a new threat. Western Navies have been preparing to counter it for a long time. But RU Navy haven't since difficulties of dumb Western Navies do not apply to superior Russian Navy and do not impede my thieving activity. Now RU chickens come home to roost.
Do not be dumb and do not be corrupt is the main lesson we can get from RU Navy drone debacle. 

Called it! Also how they took out the Ivanovets -  I think that was up to 10 drones involved f and at least 2 hit the same spot. 
No ship at sea can resist being hit repeatedly and quickly in the same exact hull section. Not guaranteed to sink but very guaranteed to lose mobility, which is death in a swarming attack.
Even a carrier would feel the effects and anything quick and serious enough to hit that would do an enormous amount of damage with compounding kinetic energy, especially I suspect, on the second hit. 
Some Observations:
It's a very gentle sea state 1,

With clear weather and clear of the coast. The mad bounce of the drones is a reflection of their speed rather than the waves. 
(The image above is very nicely accurate to the drone v ropucha size comparisons) . 
Despite the loss of previous lone ships, including a missile corvette (!)  the Kunnikov was not escorted. No search lights, very little point defense and no air cover. 
Why was it alone? Why has the BSF not yet enacted convoy-ing? Why does such a large an important vessel have no air cover on call? Why is the AVFR not immediately strafing? The ship wasnt far from shore, easily within coverage range for extended overwatch. Doesn't have to be this ship in particular, just an area/corridor with attached air assets. 
There have been exercises against drones that developed effective counter-tactics. Improved point defense and observation for sure, but also travelling at least in pairs, using organic air assets (if you dont have a helo then a ship you're with should have one (ideally 2) and also launching small boat counter attacks. There is a serious concern with the last about confliction (point defense on the ship could hit your own boats) but that is still solvable with good fire command and training.
Any one of these would have impeded the attack and stacked together would have seriously degraded the chances of success.
There's a LOT the Russians could have done with the assets and existing tech they have that would have been vastly more effective than just sailing a non-upgraded HVT unescorted in open waters and clear weather through a war zone with a previously successful known enemy attack tactics. 

They just got done swatting down a border bill that had everything they were asking for, because Trump needs that issue to run on to scare older white folks who live nowhere near a good Mexican restaurant. He has no other issue to really campaign for. 
The US mis leadership class, if willing to just allow a two bit conman to become dictator, proves that this system and those that defend it deserve every heap of scorn that radicals put on them.  
I'm not going to accept American Putinism, even if they win the election. I will not comply and I hope most of the civil service and military defies him and his thugs, openly and directly.
 
 

Sorry for the length but this is well worth reading: 
 
Less Than Meets the Eye - Parsing Tucker's Putin Interview
JOHN GANZ
I was probably one of the relatively few people that sat through the entire two hour Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin. To call it an “interview” is not quite right: Carlson essentially allowed Putin to discourse at length and only occasionally tried to prod him in the direction of his own preferred talking points about the war in Ukraine. Any appearance of tension or journalistic effort only occurred because Carlson seemed to have the expectation that Putin would cooperate with his own line and appeared frustrated (“annoyed,” he said in his prefatory remarks) when it immediately turned out Putin seemed to have his own ideas . Essentially, the interview consisted of a melange of multiple, sometimes contradictory, lines of propaganda about the war. But to say that it was “propaganda” also might gave a misleading impression: it suggests that there is a “real” underlying motivation for the war, while the justifications are merely self-serving deceptions for public consumption. But what it actually might reveal is superficiality and incoherence of the case for war itself. Instead, there were a number overlapping and shifting messages to different constituencies. is not a single overarching ideology at play, but rather a succession of “ideologemes,” little snippets of ideology: themes from Russian nationalism, Western far right cultural pessimism, anti-colonialism, and Soviet nostalgia all crop up—even little remnants of Putin’s Marxist-Leninist training appear, like when he talked about the “excessive production capacities” of the West. Putin doubled down on the theme of “denazification”—evidently somewhat to the irritation of the America Firster Carlson —while at the same time offering a revisionist picture of the start of World War II, sympathetic to Hitler’s territorial aims and essentially blaming the war on Polish intransigence, saying “they pushed Hitler to start World War II by attacking them.” This speaks to the awkward position of Russia claiming simultaneously claiming to embody the continuation of the Great Patriotic War’s anti-fascist crusade while being the darling of a far right at home and abroad, which views it as the last remaining hope of “white civilization.” 

This synthetic, “postmodern” quality does not reflect devilishly clever strategy, rather its incoherence directly reflects the fragility and fragmentation of Russia’s entire post-Soviet political project. The Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ischenko writes of “a crisis of hegemony” in the post-Soviet world and that both Putin’s authoritarian, “Bonapartist” rule and its consequent war arise from the same “incapacity of the ruling class to develop sustained political, moral, and intellectual leadership.” His regime is ad hoc: a cobbled together arrangement of veterans of the security services and the rent-seeking oligarchs who accepted Putin’s settlement. Prighozhin’s mutiny made this provisional and brittle nature of “the state” clear. Rather than reflecting position of strength the strongman antics of Putin reveal fundamental political weaknesses and failures. As Ischenko put it in an interview with The New Left Review:

"Putin, like other post-Soviet Caesarist leaders, has ruled through a combination of repression, balance and passive consent legitimated by a narrative of restoring stability after the post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s. But he has not offered any attractive developmental project. Russia’s invasion should be analyzed precisely in this context: lacking sufficient soft power of attraction, the Russian ruling clique has ultimately decided to rely on the hard power of violence, starting from coercive diplomacy in the beginning of 2021, then abandoning diplomacy for military coercion in 2022."
The political fragility and insecurity of the ruling class, its cliquishness and insularity, its inability to shape a single coherent narrative of national development, its preoccupation with finding tactical expedients to avoid the chaos of the 1990s and the humiliations of the collapse are all wedded to the cult of “special services,” from the former KGB officer Putin on down. As early as the 2000s, Dimitri Furman noticed this aspect of the regime, writing in his Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia’s Post-Soviet Political System, that a growing number of “activities, essential to the maintenance of the system, were in essence ‘secret special operations.’ Rather than rare exceptions, they were fast becoming crucial and lasting dimensions of all political activity.” With that in mind, it’s worth noting Putin’s insistence on calling the war in Ukraine, not a war at all, but a “special military operation” and its simultaneous development of contradictory propaganda campaigns directed at different audiences rather than a single, articulable vision of Russia’s role in the world. Putin can’t escape looking at everything as an “op.” (Not for nothing, this confusion of war, propaganda, and secret police subterfuge along with the subordination of politics to the needs and views of the national security apparatus is something usually associated with totalitarian states.)

In so far as anything approaching a worldview emerges from the interview, it is Putin’s preoccupation with the central role “special services” purportedly play in world affairs, particularly his apparent belief that the United States is not governed by its political leadership but by its national security bureaucracy, which accords with Carlson’s view of a “deep state.” This is less of ideology than Putin’s own déformation professionnelle, one that’s so deeply rooted that he felt the need to bring up Carlson’s onetime attempt to join the CIA. (He even seemed to coyly suggest that Tucker might actually work for the CIA, which I’m sure Carlson found flattering.) 

From the very beginning, Carlson’s generously offered Putin the chance to present the war in defensive terms, asking,

"On February 22nd, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started, and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears, that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?"

Instead of taking that route, Putin immediately launched into a nearly half hour disquisition on Russian history, the point of which was to stress the original unity of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. Carlson averred in his opening remarks that he was “shocked” by this, but Putin has been harping on this theme since before the war. In July 2021, he published his essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which states “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Of course, “sovereignty in partnership” is not really sovereignty at all. Despite Putin’s open and lengthy statement of what the Old Bolsheviks would’ve called “Great Russian chauvinism,” Carlson came away from the interview stating, “Russia is not an expansionist power. You’d have to be an idiot to think that.” From both Putin’s rhetoric and his behavior, you’d have to be an idiot to think otherwise. Carlson is just employing the propagandist’s trick of employing abuse and invective when the facts clearly oppose their case. But, as Michael Tracey’s recent Substack post makes clear, Putin’s open statements of Russian grand imperial ambitions are troubling for Westerners otherwise predisposed to be sympathetic and who have spent a great deal of time rationalizing Russia’s actions or presenting them in a defensive light. 

In the minds of the Russian ruling class, there’s really no contradiction between defensive and offensive conceptions of the war: they both involve securing of their system, and in moments of more grandiose transport, their civilization, against Western encroachment. The other overriding theme of Putin’s discourse, connected to the fixation on “special services,” is the characterization of the Maidan as a “coup d’etat.” The fear is that the example of success of Ukraine’s political revolution might spread to Russia itself. This concern on the part of the Russian elite is not new: it has its origins in the collective trauma of the Soviet collapse. More proximately, it dates back to the “Color Revolutions” of the 2000s that toppled Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine, Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan, and Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia. As Furman writes, 

"These men had headed systems highly comparable to Russia’s, if substantially weaker, and their ousters aroused an irrational panic of the kind seen in tsarist circles after the French revolutions, or in Soviet circles in the run-up to the Prague Spring. To acknowledge the naturalness, the predictability of these regimes’ collapsing would mean acknowledging the inevitability of the collapse of Russia’s regime, too – an impossibility. Those in power in Russia thus concluded instead that these revolutions were all the work of Western security services (very much as Soviet leaders had blamed similar forces for unrest in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland)."

Since that time, Russia’s foreign policy in its “near abroad” has since been fundamentally counter-revolutionary. As Ischenko notes the tempo of revolt had been picking up in the run up to the invasion:

"Such uprisings have been accelerating on Russia’s periphery in recent years, including not just the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014 but also the revolutions in Armenia, the third revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the failed 2020 uprising in Belarus, and, most recently, the uprising in Kazakhstan. In the two last cases, Russian support proved crucial to ensure the local regime’s survival. Within Russia itself, the “For Fair Elections” rallies held in 2011 and 2012, as well as later mobilizations inspired by Alexei Navalny, were not insignificant. On the eve of the invasion, labor unrest was on the rise, while polls showed declining trust in Putin and a growing number of people who wanted him to retire. Dangerously, opposition to Putin was higher the younger the respondents were."
Again, the war is a piece of domestic policy as much as it is foreign policy: an attempt to consolidate a regime that feels itself to be vulnerable. The acquiescence of the population and the resilience of the Russian economy in the face of sanctions may prove that it was a successful expedient, at least temporarily. It would be dangerous indeed if Russia’s regime concluded that such “operations” redounded mostly to its benefit. 
 
 
 

RU are currently incapable of maneuver warfare. Due to the apparent serious vulnerabilities of their tanks and planes, and serious shortcomings of their artillery and AA their current doctrine is late-World War I infantry-based attacks (+ UMPKs and helicopter ATGMs). They are considering rectifying it eventually, but it would need a large rearmament program, something they cannot afford at the moment (they have money left for around 1 year of fighting).

I would strongly recommend Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism" or John Ganz's online writings about anti-Dreyfusard and/or Boulangiste France. The model of fascism represented by Mussolini or Hitler is not quite what's happening to the GOP, subject as it is to the cultural and political mores specific to the United States. On the one hand, that's a good thing because the essentially immigrant/moderate/revolutionary/democratic foundation of the state makes blood and soil dictatorship a much harder prospect. But on the other, the United States also contains within it strains of racism and violent action that, should they ignite fully, can be positively Balkan. 
Luckily, there's one simple and decisive thing Americans can do. Vote. Vote for the current administration even if it isn't your cup of tea. Because if nothing else, it will remain within the normal bounds of politics. And (to remain on topic)...because it is far more likely to see the war in Ukraine to a positive conclusion. 

What you would get is a constitutional crisis. Trump would attempt to do various things. There would be lawsuits and in most cases the SC would judge against him. He would say "Ok...try to enforce your judgement" and go ahead anyway. Then, states would resist in various ways, the folks carrying out his orders would be sued personally as well, he would pardon them, etc, etc. And he would, as he did but more than he did last time, send what parts of the national security state who agreed against his perceived foes. Large parts of Border and Customs, DHS, etc would gladly go along. Last time around, Lafayette Park saw the Texas prison system's SWAT team threatening protesters and passersby. I know...because I was one of the latter who had that experience.
So, you wouldn't likely have a dictatorship like Putin's...you would have paralysis, disfunction, violent protest and different parts of the American state pulling in different directions. No so bad, right? Except that that disfunction would include essentially the US writing off Taiwan, NATO, etc and a far more violent response by a second Trump administration. 

I think this is a big misread of what is happening and going to happen. 
Trump was limited in his first term by a several things: 
1. He did not actually expect to win the race and so didn't come into office with a coherent program. 
2. He didn't have any idea of how things worked and still saw value in working somewhat within the system.
3. He believed that he actually had alliances within the conservative movement...starting with the Federalist Society...who would safeguard his hold on office. 
Trump today is no longer that politician. He knows that he doesn't have allies in the conservative movement but also that they don't control the party any more. He does. He knows that the Pentagon won't willingly help him achieve power and he is embittered towards the generals he would be dealing with in a second term. He also is explicitly saying...along with potential VP candidates like Vance and Stefanik...that he will ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn't agree with. Finally, at Heritage/Claremont/etc a coherent and nakedly fascist program is being articulated which includes pulling out of NATO, mass seizure and deportation on day 1 and worse. 
Trump's supporters in DC are making no bones about it. This is the big one. This is the emergency. Nobody should imagine that it will resemble the first term. 

Rare episode of UKR fighter jet uses AA missile, likely to shoot down the drone
 

Acoording to updated information UKR Su-25, lost on 7th of Feb was shot down on 17th minutes of flight by R-37 long-range AA missle, likely from Su-35. This missile has 200 km of range and speed 6M . Other carriers of this missile are Su-27 and MiG-31BM  
For the lost pilot Vladislav Rykov ("Magic"), this was 385th combat flight.

WW1 - you are confusing outputs with outcomes.  Of course there was movement in WW1 but none of it was decisive.  There was plenty of defence in WW2 but none of it was decisive either.  All war is a combination of each, however, which form of warfare that is decisive in creating outcomes shifts overtime.  I do not debate that offensives happened in WW1, I debate the idea that any of them created decisive outcomes.  WW1 was an attritional and positional war in the majority. Not decided by manoeuvre - even if it was happening in a bunch of sideshows.  To try and force that war into an offensive primacy lens is to attempt to bend the facts to fit a perception/dogma, not the other way around which is how it is suppose to be done.
Gettysburg.  Lee broke his military in that battle and never recovered.  His entire campaign buckled and collapsed after that fight.  He decisively lost a Union defensive battle.  What is so hard about this?  It happens all the time in war.  The consequences of Gettysburg were significant.  European sentiment toward the Confederacy went cold, Southern force generation started to fail and Lee’s gilding was tarnished.  That battle set the conditions for a Southern defeat - this is not really debated (except here).  But because it was a defensive victory and does not fit this strange offensive-cult mindset we are going to dismiss it?
Victory.  I have provided numerous historical examples but somehow the idea that most military “victories” are negotiated endstates that neither side can declare total continues to elude.  Turn your binary equation around, “If Ukraine can only achieve 80% of its political and strategic objectives…this is a defeat?”  
Here is another English saying for you “take the f#cking win you can get”.  If Ukraine pursues a blind “total victory or death” strategy here they could easily wind up with the latter.  They could break themselves on those southern minefield belts while western support grows cold.  They could kill hundreds of thousands of their own people until domestic support grows cold.  That could easily set conditions for that 80-20 ratio to flip violently.
Grown ups do not think this way.  They realize the stakes are much higher.  All war is a violent negotiation.  Victory is not some simplistic binary calculation.  It is linked broader political objectives, some which do not become clear until after the war is over.  This war will very likely end much like the majority of wars have, with a mixed outcome where both sides will declare victory for themselves and defeat on their opponent.  Then the wrangling will continue to try and use that as a foundation for what comes next.
I think what you, and other purists, find offensive is the idea that war is not a decisive political tool.  Well I hate to be the one to break it to you but the evidence of this is pretty overwhelming.  Wars rarely are the “last argument of kings” without becoming the first argument for what happens next.  All victories and defeats are messy human affairs.  Anyone seeking clear and definitive results due to warfare is chasing fantasy.  In fact this is the central flaw in all Clausewitzian thinking - war is not rational, nor is it decisive. Or at least very rarely so. So rarely that when looking through a long lens, all wars are in fact largely indecisive.  Nazi Germany was totally defeated, yet Germany is the major power in the EU.  We won the Cold War and are living with this. The North won the Civil War but the seeds of discontent never really went away.  
This war is not going to end in total Russian military defeat. Ukraine is not going to march on Moscow or remove Russia as a threat on its eastern border.  So we had better start figuring out how to live with whatever the outcome of this thing is and stop treating it like the skewed historical fictions we have created.
 

Amateur historian chiming in, so take it for what it's worth: yes with a but.
I'd suggest that there are two kinds of war, the second of which is relatively uncommon. I'd distinguish them based on what the victor gets at the end of the war.
The first kind of war is a war-for-things. The aggressor wants to take some things (which can be abstract things) from the defender. The victor gets to keep the things. For example, when the United States fought Mexico in the 1840s, that was a war for things. The victor kept Texas and California. Or the Roman conquest of Gaul: Caesar plundered everything that was not nailed down, and functionally annexed modern France to Roman rule. These are pretty common, and World War II was, from one side, a war for things: Germany wanted Lebensraum, Japan wanted the rich resources of the indo-pacific region (particularly oil). Note that I'm defining wars-for-things in terms of the spoils, not the rhetoric that surrounds the spoils. I'd note that modern war is so mind bogglingly destructive that rational actors have concluded that protracted war-for-things is a suckers game. There are no things you can get that are worth the destruction on the things you want!
The second kind, which is relatively rare, is a war-for-rules. The aggressor wants to impose (or maintain) a particular rule set on a collection of polities. The ancient examples of this would be Roman expansion in Italy (which ended with the defeated state bound into a treaty structure rather than obliterated) and the inter-Polis wars in Greece (which were by and large prestige competitions). The victor incorporates the defeated party into a particular rule-set. The objective is not to take things away from the defeated party.
We've also seen asymmetric combinations of the two. For example, Gulf War I. Iraq was fighting a war-for-things against Kuwait, but the Coalition was fighting a war-for-rules against Iraq (we did not annex Iraq at the end of the war, we said, "no annexing neighbors, bad Iraq").
So the war in Ukraine is a combination of these two. Russia is fighting a war-for-things against Ukraine. They are attempting to take the whole of Ukraine's territory, and stealing grain and people. Simultaneously, Russia is fighting a war-for-rules against the Status-quo Coalition. The rule change they're attempting to effect is a return to the "annexing-neighbors-is-ok" rule set that preceded WW2. Ukraine is fighting an existential war-for-things against Russia, and wins if they exist as an independent state at the end of the fighting. The Status-quo Coalition is fighting an existential war against Russia as well: the absolute lynchpin of the status quo is that annexing neighbors is not OK. If that rule falters, it will blow up the international order and allow a renegotiation of lots of the status quo by actors not enamored of the status quo (the Baltics, Taiwan, Africa, the Middle East, &c.). Victory of the Status-quo Coalition is deterrent: showing everyone that attempting to violate the international rule set is *just not worth it*.

Usually I ignore most of articles in WP/ NT about Ukraine, because many of them had been written by authors, who worked in Russia or had any relations with Russia and this is not journalistic, but sort of influence on public opinion and to sow scepticism. 
But this is article, despite had been written by "anonimous sources among UKR battalion and company commanders" (if I see "anononimous source", this is 50/50 BS) in whole reflects probably more significant problem, than artillery sjells shortage - the crictical lack of pesonnel in "line units" - those who hold positions and should go forward. Problems with mobilisation and failed information policy of the state in this sector led to army receive too few replenishment. And many of infantry, who come from Ukrainian tarining centers have very weak training. (My addition - existing 151st training center, established by volunteers and saved in endless wars with old soviet dumbs top brass from GS anD MoD gives very food training, but can't reterain more that 2-3 batatlions for one cycle)
In conditions, when units have 30-40 % of personnel, which have no normal rest, we can't think about any offensives, And if this not be solved in short perspective, this with addition of probable US aid termination can lead to very bad consequences
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/08/ukraine-soldiers-shortage-infantry-russia/

Exactly one year after the first announcement, the project is now finished. In order to avoid
misunderstandings on the part of the company Battlefront.com, I chose the name CampaignPack 😎.
The pack (as described in former threads) consists of 5 campaigns in which the player is thrown
into the events of the summer of 1944 in the sector of the German Army Group Center.
In total you will play minium 52 single missions, maximum 55 single missions (depending on one
branch). To avoid technical problems, I didn't add any mods to the campaigns. But I can, for example,
highly recommend the excellent work of @JM Stuff, especially his extraordinary mod collection of vehicles
and wrecks 👍
I recently visited the forum regularly to stay in touch with people who wanted to register. However, I have
asked the people at Battlefront.com several times to delete my profile.  This request has not yet been
granted to me, so as a quasi "undead" I will always stop by - but I will no longer take part in any discussions
or answer any questions in the forum. To get in touch with me, please write to me at:
E-Mail: f-s-zbg@web.de.😎
Of course, I can still send the campaign pack to anyone interested.
 
So all I can say is:
It was a great pleasure for me to finish this project and share it with many people.
I hope you have as much fun playing as I did creating it 🙏
 
Best regards
Mr.X 

One more caveat: 
A big difference in American politics now from even 7 years ago is that there is a lot of actual intimidation going on on the Republican side. GOP pols get swatted (i.e. have bogus hostage/shooting calls made to police with their address), their kids get targeted online, they deal with waves of threatening emails, calls and texts if they publicly break with Trump. Nikki Haley was swatted in December at her home and just applied for Secret Service protection because of the unrelenting and violent comms she gets. When 20 GOP Senators who would have killed for this border bill in 2015 run cowering from it, it's not because they suddenly had a change of heart. They were scared off it for both political and personal reasons. 
One of America's parties has entered a very dark phase and it's not going to get better unless they lose and keep losing.

I can help: I was around 12 in the 80s when my father was serving near Frankfurt, so I have expertise in the French army. Also remember the Canadians because we did our food shopping in their stores. I propose myself as artistic director with my in-depth knowledge as shown by this drawing drawn from my childhood memories:

Folks, we have a whole lot of plans for CMCW...we plotted out an entire franchise.  However, how much of it that will ever see daylight is a continual negotiation with reality.  We are only going to be able to go so far on CMx2, and then we will just have to see what CMx3 looks like.
Bil H, Cpt Miller and I are committed to this ride for as long as it lasts, but much will depend on sales and BFC bandwidth - small company, big dreams.  So one step at a time.  The fact we got green lit for a Module so quickly is a good sign, and we exceeded expectations as far as base game went - we were expecting CMA and got a lot closer to CMBS response, it put our baby squarely within the "inside club" of the modern era titles, hell we were a Charles S. Roberts nominee!  (Even told my mom...she totally did not get it.)
So beyond BAOR...we will see in the fullness of time.  And maybe Bil and I have got other ideas...maybe.

Well that is a loaded question to be honest.  Bil H will no doubt chime in but a few factors came into play as I recall:
- Resources.  We can take a really good shot at BAOR and not cripple ourselves in development for years - along with the other BFC titles.  The core team is pretty small and we were looking for a quick, but solid, follow up to the main game.  Germany would have been a lot more work, as would  any other NATO nations, and the French were just a non-starter.  Those modules will take much longer, particularly in vehicle modelling and artwork.  BAOR had a lot of new vehicle models but much more manageable in the timelines for a first DLC.
- Locale.  The Northern Plain was actually where the most likely Soviet Main effort was going to fall.  Hate to admit it but Fulda was a bit of a sideshow in the overall Soviet plan.  It made sense game wise simply because the largest market for the game is the US, and we had a lot of details on this fight - US research is a dream as they put everything out there, Canadians are a nightmare.  That said we really wanted to do the northern plains from the start and historically that is BAOR or the Germans.
- Expertise.  We had experts on both UK and Canadian orbats right out the gate, which made research a lot easier.  I joined in 1988 and had a lot of my old battlebox stuff to pull from and some old timers I still know from up the day.  On the UK side we had similar expertise.
- Timeframe.  Late 70s, early 80s is really the “tipping point” of the Cold War.  It was when the doctrine and equipment of both sides was pretty balanced, each offsetting the others strengths and weaknesses.  Before this you get the nuclear armies, which were just nuts. And after you get the  western advantage leaning into overmatch and then we start to look a lot like CMSF or BS.
- Straight up cool factor.  So how would the UK done against the Soviets?  Canadians are fun because they mix European and US kit.  You wanna know how a squadron of Leo’s would have done…well let’s find out.  Not saying the other nations are not interesting but when you add everything up it just made more sense to do BAOR next and they would be fun to play.
As to “how will they play”…totally honest…no freakin idea.  We also had no idea on the main game.  It wasn’t until I played those first few scenarios while we were early in did we see that we were onto something.  BFC doesn’t balance for gameplay or market. They literally plug in the data from research and then throw it at each other in game. The balance is almost entirely emergent.  When we do up scenarios and campaigns there is always a level of balancing that goes on but this is macro stuff like force size and enablers.  For CMCW we were amazed at how little balancing we had to do. I designed the campaigns and scenarios based on doctrine on both sides and basically how they would have gone into a fight with each other.  The fact that these led to tightly balanced fights that require deep understanding of what each side can do was all pretty much emergent design.

Cold Warriors.
  Well it looks like Steve has already dropped the mic over on the annual update thread, so let myself, Bil H and Cpt Miller (along with a small team of unwashed heathens - two of whom are actually from the UK), be the second to announce the first CMCW Module - CMCW - British Army On the Rhine (BAOR).

We are still in development so I will only outline the broad strokes of what we are working on, and insert the caveat that we reserve the right to add/subtract - 
 - Time frame of the game is going deeper backwards into the Cold War.  We are setting the clock back to 1976, so CMCW will now encompass 1976-1982 (including some minor tweaks to the existing US orbats).  As has been noted we are less interested in the later Cold War years largely because they really do start to resemble the later CM titles and we are shooting to keep CMCW distinct in its own right.
- UK BOAR - right now we have a pretty comprehensive build planned for the UK units as they transitioned from their 1974 structures - to where they landed in 1980.  As per the picture above players should be able to become deeply engaged within the historical BAOR sector of the ETO.
- And because I just have to represent the home team, we are also doing the Canadians.  That little black box is the planned 4 CMBG AO - you will note this was right at the tail end when the brigade was still part of the BAOR, although for those that really want to play First Clash and park them down in Lahr you are fee to do so because the basic unit structures remained the same.
- We do have plans for the Soviet side, but are going to hold off on details until we zero them fully in...more to follow. 
- I will let you all speculate and discuss what new vehicles and weapon systems we are talking about but there is a not insignificant list of new ones we are planning - more as we start to get some cool screen shots.  
As noted by Steve, we are well on our way and are planning for a release this year - content and full scope remains TBA.
Thank you all very much for your support, the response to CMCW has been well beyond what we were expecting and that is entirely thanks to you guys.

Updated loses spreadsheet for Avdiivka (second tweet).  Quite eye watering numbers if these are truly accurate. Like Oryx, the spreadsheet links to the evidence of each claim.
 

Example that a tank is not always easy target for drone dropped HEDP and thermobaric grenades. ERA and weakness of charge makes own work, if this is not sniper drop in open hatch or lucky hit in engine area. 
Here compilation of several drone attempts to finish of abandoned Russian tank. HEDP and two thermobaric grenades in the puddle of fuel can't set the tank on fire. Only last dropped thermobaric grenade penetrated inside the turred and caused fire. Several grenades were defeated by ERA - it's good seen how blocks dissapeared afer activation. But in one case ERA didn't activate