Bulletpoint

While I'm not a dam engineer either, I am pretty sure such structures are engineered to be strong enough that they won't break even if the dam is at full capacity. It seems bizarre that it would have been in operation for so many years and then suddenly collapse just as the Ukrainian counteroffensive is imminent. Ukraine would have no incentive to blow up the dam either, so the arrow clearly points to Russian sabotage on this one.

They caught them with their Pantsir-S down. Ok, sorry.

Is that drone even being shot down, or did it just spontaneously explode? Video quality is not the best, but I didn't see tracers or a missile, and I heard no guns firing. A bit like the drone over the Kremlin, it also looked like it was set to explode in the air on a timer or by a GPS coordinate. And just like the Kremlin drones, maybe they were intended to send a signal rather than to cause any real damage on the ground.

Strange how they keep doing these ineffective drone attacks... Surely most of those slow moving drones are being shot down by AA guns and not missiles? Which means they won't ever get exhausted. According to the BBC, they have launched more than 14 drone attacks in this month alone. If they had saved up the drones and launched them all in one go, then maybe they could have overwhelmed the defences, but it seems like they are just wasting their drones piecemeal.

Do we know where and when this was filmed? I'm guessing recently outside Bakhmut, during the pushback on the flanks?

But instead, how uselessly he toils; he is still forcing his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he overcome them; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to fight his way down the steps; and were he to succeed at this, nothing would be gained: he would have to cross the courtyard and, after the courtyard, the second enclosing outer palace, and again stairways and courtyards, and again a palace, and so on through thousands of years; and if he were to burst out at last through the outermost gate — but it can never, never happen — before him still lies the royal capital, the middle of the world, piled high in its sediment. -Kafka, A Message from the Emperor

Sure, but let's at least be honest about it instead of some people saying "Oh, they are not national socialists - they are socialist nationalists, completely different thing" or "Oh, boys will be boys, they are just having fun in the good old Ukrainian style". When we look at something like AZOV, I don't know how many of their fighters are actually far-right or nazis. But it does seem like there are some. They have been fighting really hard, and that can be exchanged for political power after the war. We could compare to Afghanistan, also invaded by the Russians (Soviets) back in the eighties. Surely it doesn't matter that the local freedom fighters that we support with weapons and money are a bit too much into an extremist religion? After the Soviets are kicked out, probably they will cut their beards and Afghanistan will turn into a free, democratic, and prosperous country...

I don't think anyone argues that the A-10 would be useless in Ukraine, just that it would not be the almighty war-winning hammer of the gods that many people in the Youtube comment section seem to think it would be.

Yes, that's why the senior American official said it. It sounded good. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/06/zelenskys-famous-quote-need-ammo-not-ride-not-easily-confirmed/

I think they are only trying to provoke the Russians enough to make them redeploy substantial forces to deal with the problem, and then Ukraine will launch its offensive in the south. Even if the Russians rush back south to counter it, it takes time to move troops and equipment.

I only meant to say that the city has now finally been taken by the Russians, all 5 km of it, after nearly 10 months of hard and wasteful fighting. The battle for the city is of course not over as long as the Ukrainians have anything to fight with. But if I were the UKR command, I would not invest my forces in retaking it at this moment. It's completely destroyed and would only serve propaganda purposes to retake. The push on the flanks seems to have only been intended to help the last defenders evacuate.

I think this one is probably because you are playing with artificial night brightness enabled. This makes the night very bright, but at a certain time, the game switches to daytime and this disables the setting at a time before the sun is up, making it seem like it suddenly gets darker.

This is also the way I think it works, but if I understand Artkin's post correctly, his vehicle's spotting is being penalised for being inside a tree square and looking out?

Is this one of the alleged neo nazi units? If no, then why are they using Nazi symbolism? I know the Wolfsangel was also used in medieval heraldry, but today, it's strongly associated with the SS. Ukraine could do better than this.

No, I think that AI setup zones always make sense. And the randomness is not a cost, but a big benefit, because it allows enemy units to set up in a random location - this is great for replayability. Say you have an AT gun and you paint its setup zone. You don't need to paint the zone as one big box - you can paint many individual squares and when the battle begins, the gun will be placed in just one of those locations, keeping the player guessing. And then you can combine with different AI plans so that in Plan 1, the Germans defend the village with the majority of their forces, but their units are semi-randomly positioned there, and in Plan 2, they mostly defend the river crossing, but again you don't know where they are exactly, and so on. I wish more scenario designers would use these tricks. The only downside is that first of all, it's a lot of work, and secondly, by painting setup zones you lose the ability to place a unit very exactly on the map. Sometimes, this means no line of fire.

I actually did a scenario like this. It's small-scale WW2 infantry combat and the German defenders have been programmed to do a fighting withdrawal with close-range ambushes. If I remember right, I did the scenario just before the proper withdraw command became available in the editor, so you won't see the Germans popping smoke, but they are set up to try to prevent getting flanked. Try it out and see if you like it, then afterwards, you can pick apart the AI plans to see if it can maybe inspire you. CMBN and Commonwealth expansion are required. https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battles-for-normandy/contact-front/

So, it seems Bakhmut has finally fallen. At least according to latest update from Deepstate, the last highrise buildings have now been coloured in red. It seems the very definition of a pyrrhic victory.

Even so, it's still a low number, I think. Compared with German wartime tank production, in 1944, as German factories were being flattened by bombing, they still managed to put out nearly 1000 Tiger tanks, and that's in addition to all the other stuff they had to produce - airplanes, ammunition, trucks, etc. Of course modern missiles are more technologically advanced than WW2 tanks, but then again, modern production capabilites are also much more advanced. And Russia is safe from bombing. Comparing with aircraft production, the Germans built 2351 planes of all types during 1944. That's 196 planes a month on average. Or maybe a better comparison is with the V-1 flying bomb which was cutting edge tech back then. According to Wikipedia, the Germans managed to build a total of 30,000 of those from 1943 onwards. I understand of course that we can't directly compare Nazi Germany to modern Russia, but I still think it puts their missile production into perspective.

Not sure what to expect, really, but my gut feeling says those numbers are quite low for a country the size of Russia.

Thanks

Who knows when the second pic was taken, and where... There's nothing in the pics that suggest it's the same place. Can't find a single match in the trees, houses, or anything else. Yet people just uncritically believe it. Could well be Bucha, just a different street that wasn't affected. Or the second pic could be Bucha before the war. Here's a Bucha comparison I think is genuine:

Could be, but didn't look like they really tried to find out.

A spunky name for an impotent weapon.

Yes, it's such a strange video. Could he be a hated officer? But even so, why steal his helmet of all things? Not a watch or a wallet or a gold wedding ring? And by leaving him alive, they risk that he makes it back to friendly lines or gets found by more friendly friendlies, and then there could be hell to pay.

Haven't seen any video of drones carrying vodka bottles. What actually happened was probably just that the Russian got drunk on his own supply. Then the rest of the story was added to make it into a meme.