BletchleyGeek

Your idea is not crazy at all imo (although a battalion per pax is perhaps a bit high on expectation).

Nobody has delivered Abrams/Leo2/Leclerc/K2/etc kind of tanks. Also many countries won't have much of them at all (for example our country, we lease 1 battalion although we had a few hundred of them one/two decades ago) and stripping your own army of the few barely operational stuff they have is... not going well with the army. Only a naïve fool would expect Germany to take the first step in delivering modern Kampf Panzer to Ukraine to fight against Russia. Not now anyway, Germany just came to grips with the new world reality / is still in the process (like many other countries, in various ways). 
But if all countries 'chip in' in some way or form I don't see Germany having a big problem to carry their weight. Between all the political stuff I think Germany has done at least the same as the average country supporting Ukraine, even from a relative perspective. 
At the same time, as has been discussed here since the beginning, don't get too much romantic thoughts about hundreds of Leo2's in service at the front in large numbers on operational scale any time soon after sending them. And keeping them operational is another thing.
A few dozen is probably more doable but tanks don't have the same 'force multipliers' as HIMARS or modern 155mm with precision munitions have. 

Anyway that's no reason to do nothing imo, so I like the idea of for example all nations somehow chipping in to provide Ukraine with a modern MBT capability. Although I expect there will already be things in motion, but it is in most countries interest to keep such things on the low. 

It's like I said several times already. Germany is scared of "Alleingänge". If you want weapons from them, increase the pressure until not delivering stuff becomes the "Alleingang".

Lyman does appear to be far less useful from a defensive standpoint going west to east. The Ukrainians used it as a force-limiting funnel (along with the forests) between the Oskil and the waterways near Terny to the east during the battles there a month ago.
There's no direct road route into the town of Lyman between those features, so it would be tough to supply for an extended defense. Given the state of Russian engineering, even worse.
I'm not sure what the Russians have jumbled up in that area as of the last few days, but it seems like yet another bad place to be with those Ukrainian crossing arrows moving across the river.

You know the recently released 4th Edition of Twilight 2000 (Free League) had to assume that 1989 collapse of USSR never happened to make for a 'believable' AD 2000 war (assuming you understand that believable in this context means downright bat**** crazy!)?

Well come on, he IS German.
If you aren't pocketing at least 50,000 prisoners, it isn't an offensive.

A bit late, but there is a point not mentioned yet. Later in the interview, the general said that he is worried about Russia opening a second front in „Kaliningrad, Baltic Sea, Finland, Georgia, Moldova…". 
I don't need to ask this forum what we think about that possibility. But it shows the old Cold War mind set about the giant Russian bear lurking in the east with endless resources is still firmly set in the minds of some. Maybe that's a lesson learned from WWII or even Napoleon, that you can win a lot of battles against Russia, but still lose the war.
This is also a reason why this current victory is so important for the public. It shows that Russia can lose. Another win in Kherson in a few weeks would harden that feeling even more. And, even though some may laugh about this, taking Transnistria away from Russia now would be quite helpful (PR wise)(MHO).
 
Edit: just read the comments below the interview. Not one agreeing with the general. There's hope!

Interesting bit, on Ukraine acquiring anti drone systems via Poland
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-defense-firm-selling-anti-drone-systems-to-ukraine-by-way-of-poland/
Maybe Poland may want to buy other stuff as well from Israel.
 
 
 

Interesting bit, on Ukraine acquiring anti drone systems via Poland
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-defense-firm-selling-anti-drone-systems-to-ukraine-by-way-of-poland/
Maybe Poland may want to buy other stuff as well from Israel.
 
 
 

Of course this forum is about Russia's aggression/war on Ukraine so let's quickly close above side issue:
IMO Austrian ultimatum "simply" demanded a change to the Serbian educational curriculum - no teachers to go to Serbia:
3. To eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, everything, whether connected with the teaching corps or with the methods of teaching, that serves or may serve to nourish the propaganda against Austria-Hungary.
https://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/austro-hungarian-ultimatum-1914/
The Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia (July 1914):
Now the history of the past few years, and particularly the painful events of the 28th of June, have proved the existence of a subversive movement in Serbia, whose object it is to separate certain portions of its territory from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This movement, which came into being under the very eyes of the Serbian Government, subsequently found expression outside of the territory of the Kingdom in acts of terrorism, in a number of attempts at assassination and in murders…
The Royal Serbian Government has done nothing to suppress this movement. It has tolerated the criminal activities of the various unions and associations directed against the Monarchy, the unchecked utterances of the press, the glorification of the authors of assassinations, the participation of officers and officials in subversive intrigues; it has tolerated an unhealthy propaganda in its public instruction; and it has tolerated, finally, every manifestation which could betray the people of Serbia into hatred of the Monarchy and contempt for its institutions.
This toleration of which the Royal Serbian Government was guilty, was still in evidence at that moment when the events of the twenty-eighth of June exhibited to the whole world the dreadful consequences of such tolerance…

After all those bitter years of you waiting 😉 for the RT module, now F&R 'just' been released and more content is already almost here. Better make sure you don't get a heart attack! 😉
 
 

Today I learned that Ukrainians refer to PKMs as “Pokémons.” 😆
 

Ok, one follow up and then maybe it is best we agree to disagree because this is really going no where.  I will take your map as gospel.  So we have a pretty hard rock in the ol shoe there, some real toughies in a box. Looks like they have a river in front of them so positioning is nasty.  Looks like they are holding about a 50 km frontage in that bubble - a citadel of nasty. 
This is a tactical problem.  For example, who is securing their LOCs - which are about 100kms long back to Russia?  These guys are tough but without ammo they become a hilarious nuisance.  How is that logistical system doing?  Is it robust, multi-corridor, dynamic and self-healing?  Do these guys have any Deep Strike capability to threaten UA supply lines?  What ISR do they have beyond tactical?  I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they have decent tactical.
So what we really have is a really tough, well motivated tactical set of units (maybe a formation?) that cannot secure its LOCs north. Its ISR is limited by range, while the UA can see them from space.  I am sure they will die bravely, or better yet, if they are that switched on they should be able to see how untenable their situation is and pull back.

Ok so this is better how?  Are you telling me they picked up on the UA planning a Kharkiv offensive weeks ahead of time...and did sweet FA to stop it?!  Aaand we are back to broken operational military system.  Look I am sure these RU Nat volunteers are true believers and really cagey tough guys; however, if they have been part of this debacle then I am a little less than concerned about them walking out of a phonebooth and becoming a super army.
If they can surprise...they had better start doing it.  If this clown show picks a fight with the EU, it will escalate to NATO and frankly from what I have seen we could cut thru what is left of the RA - RU Nat volunteers included like **** through a short goose in a long weekend.
The references you are making are making it look worse for them.  They saw but were unable to do anything about the UA taking back what is now being reported 6000 sq kms, in a week.  I don't care if these guys are each super-soldiers who can do one handed chin-ups with no hands - their operational level ISR, C2 and logistics suck well beyond repair in the timeframes of this war.  They are going to be living proof that dedication and belief comes second to hot steel in the right place and right time.
And what if they are really in league with the mole people and conduct a sub-terrainian flanking?!  Like I said these a$$hats are well positioned to pull of a nasty insurgency/guerilla war in the LNR-DPR - maybe, if local support holds.  Beyond that they are living in fragmented...and getting more fragmented by the day, military organization.  What is likely to stop the UA at this point...is the UA.  They are going to need to re-set logistical lines and consolidate but so far from what I have seen the RA is not part of this equation.
In reality these clowns have the making of a VEO network that will go underground and make everyone miserable once this thing is over.  Good thing we have about 20 years worth of experience hunting humans in this context.
I gotta be honest, I am really tired of the freakin "boogy man of the week" right now.  We are jumping out of our seats because everything is really dangerous and really scary:
- The Russian Army with all that hardware
- The Black Sea Fleet & the Russian Air Force
- Spetznaz and Wagner clowns
- Russian cruise and hypersonic missiles
- Russian cyber Pearl Harbour 
- Some General Jack-in-the-Box who was a jerk in Syria.
- Russians parked around a nuclear power plant.
- Nukes!!
- the Russian 3rd Corp
- Russian mobilization!! - the other hand coming out.
- Russian escalation dominance.
- RU Nats - whoever the hell they really are
- Ukraine is going to fall
- Ukraine is going to hold on but the war will still be on when my grandkids graduate from college
- Ukraine can't possible take in all this kit and hold on.
- Ukraine can defend but could never pull off an attack
I have to be missing something.  Every week in this war we find something be be scared of, and it has all turned out to be complete and utter BS.  How about we look at the situation, as it unfolded for what it is - a historic military debacle that is likely to break the current Russian regime.  It was doomed from the start, and has only gotten worse.  Sure things could still swing and will likely get uglier but the RA in Ukraine is in death throws - it is keeling over to die, not coiling like a steel spring.  All war is negotiation and right now the Russians are negotiation just how ugly this loss is going to be.
Unless these RU Nats come with an entirely revitalized equipment fleet and logistics backbone to support it, a competitive integrated ISR system, and a completely new military doctrine...you will excuse me if I am not worried.   
 
 

I am not really sure why anyone believes that "mobilization" is some sort of magic spell that will solve this war for Russia....on either side of this equation.  We have covered this before but a review may be in order.
Key here is the term "peer-conflict".  That means a relative symmetry between military capability and architectures to the point that numbers start to matter in determining outcome.  In this situation theoretically the side with the higher force ratios will have a better chance of winning.  At this point this conflict is nowhere near a level of qualitative parity.
Beyond the morale issues, which are legion, a loose measure of military quality is DETO - Doctrine, Equipment, Training and Organization.  (Before anyone weighs in, yes there are about a half dozen national variations on this that take into account everything from policy to infrastructure, but lets keep it simple).
So, yes, Russia has a big scary population base - we are probably talking 30+ million fighting age males, assuming you could tap even 10 percent of that - excess and fit-ish - that is 3+ million troops Russia could throw at this war.  Assuming mass conscription doesn't trigger a major political upheaval; the first problem is you have to turn those 3+ million civilians into combat capable military formations - something the Russian have demonstrated problems with before the war. 
Second major problem is that one has to turn them into military fighting formations of the same or better quality than the UA.  And remember the UA is already force generating and will continue to do so long after this war is over...because Russia.  So Russia has to go from zero to hero faster than the UA are already doing.  Now before someone spouts of "mass has a quality all its own" - a truism which has died an ignoble death in this conflict - in modern warfare one still needs relative parity for quantity to matter.  I welcome any nation to try low quality human wave attacks on the modern battlefield.  In fact the UA is demonstrating the exact opposite right now - high quality empowered small is kicking dumb-large to death.  So now in order to mobilize Russia needs to meet a bar it did not have on 23 Feb, let alone in time to get out in front of things now.
Third major problem, Russia does not even have the essential skillsets to create a peer military.  And I am talking everywhere.  For example, in order to create an ISR architecture on par with the West they need an entire military ISR complex that does not exist anywhere near that level.  It took the US decades - dating back to AirLand Battle (hey go check out CMCW while you are at it!) - to construct the ISR architecture they are pumping into Ukraine right now.  Further Ukraine has a home grown system they 1) have training and technical support for from the west, 2) have a 6 month head start, and 3) are not living under crippling sanctions.  Some Iranian drones do not make an ISR architecture, it is what you plug those drones into.
So Russia can "mobilize" all it wants; however, it will be mobilizing a Cold War era military, one worse than it had before this war.  They will be nowhere near DETO parity with the UA for maybe a couple decades.  With their new drones they can watch all those columns of T55s, driven by conscripts with a months training, supported by a rickety logistics corp get hammered by HIMARs and next-gen drone swarms.  
I will give the Russians points for stubborn, they have that in spades.  This war is clearly at the "cut your losses" point.  The RA has left as much hardware on the battlefield as the Iraqi Army did in the Gulf War - when you are in that league, get out!  Mobilization will not save them, this is not 1941, it is 1905.

Years ago, the prime minister visited a mining town where I was employed at the time and enjoyed a BBQ. He said my name is Bob and cooked his own sausages. Wearing T-Shirt shorts and flip flops like the rest of us. 

seems the difference is that in the chucks map areas vacated by the Russians are presumed to be under Ukrainian control. While many other mark it as unknown or neutral.

Aye hopefully it will be 'all good fun'  thanks Steve.
Aye, this battle pack is set during the fighting between the German and Soviet armies in eastern Poland during the summer of 1944. This fighting was some of the heaviest on the Eastern Front during the entire war. This battle pack presents a series of actions recreating key moments in this fighting through the perspective of the forces involved during July and August.
It’s been a real labour of love. The genesis of this battle pack was the  series of images in the photo book Kampfgruppe Mühlenkamp published by RZM and authored by Douglas Nash and Remy Spezzano. On the back of this I started work on what became the Five Days One Summer campaign which is the key campaign of this battle pack.
This battle pack would never have got anywhere without the help and support of a whole bunch of others. I would like to give a huge shout out to all those including the BFC beta testers for all the playtesting, feedback, advice and support. I am also indebted to Mr Douglas Nash for his freely given help and support in clarifying some of the details involved in several actions involving ‘Wiking’, notably the fighting around Tluszcz in mid-August 1944. If you’ve not checked out his recent trilogy “From the Realm of a Dying Sun” its well worth doing so for the background to this battle pack. Also worth having a look at is the “Operation Bagration 23 June-29 August 1944” by the Soviet General Staff which gives a ‘big picture’ view of the Soviet operations in this period.
I hope you all, as the players enjoy these scenarios and campaigns as much as I did researching and creating them. As always, I’d appreciate any comment and feedback and I look forward to seeing how this collection of scenarios and campaigns plays out for yourselves.
Cheery!

I am unsure of how related is to the topic at hand, but Azerbaiyan and Armenia just had a significant tussle. 

Something like this would be where I'd start:
https://thenextweb.com/news/researchers-tricked-ai-ignoring-stop-signs-using-cheap-projector
The issue with AI is that as amazing as it is, AI does not understand anything, not a thing. It's all about pattern recognition and algorithms to react to said patterns. Learn to disrupt or confuse that and the AI no longer does what the author / owner wants.

Given the amount of data that has to be processed I would say it is impossible.  For the ground war alone - this is a Theater Intelligence Cell's job.  That will be a lot of people working in specialist areas - eg current battle, future plans, order-of-battle etc to feed the grown-up who's going to make sense of it and then brief it to the guy who's going to make the decisions.
I am that guy in Afghanistan - On average I read 500 individual reports a day and it takes me about three and a half hours to make sense of them all.  About an hour or so to write up the individual incidents of interest and about 45 minutes to 90 minutes to find and plot where they took place.  About 20 incidents is a busy day for me.  Databasing the incidents takes about 20 minutes.  On top of that it takes me about an hour and a half to write slightly more in-depth pieces for my daily summary.  In-depth collation or in-depth reading?  Forget it ... not enough time in the day.  This is small beer compared to the amount of reporting that's coming out of Ukraine.

Good! Though they need to evolve their tactics.
RU uses forward spotters to report movement of drones. Drone flying not high enough (like on video) is easily audible and its direction is easy to track even at night. RU notice this drone swarm from a distance and will easily guess its direction. Next, RU will move anti-drone defenses to the path of the drones. This drone swarm looks impressive, but it allows RU to concentrate anti-drone defenses in one place. Next, they will turn on EW at least to block the control channel (I do not think they have microwave guns yet) making sure it is AI who controls the drones. AI does not do evasive maneuvers and at this altitude drones are well withing effective range of even small arms. So, even without advanced anti-drone weapons Ivan will light up the skies and eventually attrite the swarm. And if Ivan gets air-burst munition it is game over for this swarm.
To nail RU US needs to go either higher and more dispersed. Or to fly lower and more compact - like bomber streams to drive them along shallow terrain features. Once inside drones can be fanned out to specific objectives.   

And this is why fully autonomous is going to happen.  EW kills the link back to operator, if the operator is onboard AI EW does not work as well.  EMP is a lot of energy to put out, and we shield everything against it based on CBRN-E doctrine.
I honestly think the solution to UAS, is other UAS.

And from my homefront we have a clear demonstration of the problem with pundits:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukraine-shows-military-capabilities-but-russia-can-still-hit-back-hard-military-analyst-1.6064197
I know Walter Dorn, he was a prof when I was back in staff college - his expertise is peacekeeping (look it up).  And now one of our mainstream media channels (one of two really) is pulling him out as a military expert.  He is way outside his lane here but let’s slap him on the front page.

So really, the single biggest factor in all of this is ISR. Without it you can have all the PGMs in the world and no targets. So the winner is the one who can deny ISR to his enemy. Age old recon/counter recon except nowadays it has all the layers of an onion and you need to have your own and be able to defeat all the layers of your enemy in order have a viable war machine.
So the next question is who other than the western powers actually has this level of ISR? Does the hypothetical large Asian country actually have this or are they assigned the superpowers that were assigned to Russia before this conflict? It seems to me that if we have a satellite that can read the newspaper dropped on the ground outside the Kremlin in real time we assume that they have a satellite so they have the same ability. Then we find out they are still dropping film cannisters once a week. How much capability have we assigned to these "peer" powers based off of assumptions?
If there is an actual peer environment, then the winning side will be the one that can push the most ISR and supporting PGMs to the lowest levels. PGMs with very short decision cycles are going to be way more effective than waiting on the Pentagon to make the target decision for the squad request. I think we see this in the current conflict and it can be a huge force multiplier. The long range 500km stuff is great for shaping and influencing the overall battlespace but the frontline PGM is going to be the tactical winner. Think of a UGV/HMMWV/whatever vehicle mounting a 6 tubed 200mm rocket with a 10km range that can be digitally connected to the platoon commander's drone and optically targeted onto the hardpoint that is holding up the advance. Or your loitering munition example that can be "grabbed" and targeted by the squad leader to reduce the enemy mg position. 
In the end I just see ISR being the single most important factor out there right now. 

Source : Le Monde