MOS:96B2P

....Which so far have been 100% pure drive-by opinion, untainted by any documentation.
At least meme or something.

A few new screenshots off this master map. Its almost finished.
http://www.mediafire.com/folder/ad5d9f4mt45zjtq,6f378tecq8fms34,f9mgrg77p98kmp0,fo1mlnwo3g7xj0y,4uzjk143si53rzh,xiyhjru4b3pmqjh,t6bw8r1jxesi84n/shared

In their defense, they don't actually have many washing machines.  In fact it is rumored that Putin began this war due to a shortage of washing machines and toilets in Russia.

You may call me old and cynical, or just East European (and I am all of these things), but truly there should be no need to look for any more reasons for supporting the Ukraine if  c) applies. The West at a reasonable cost may undermine, hopefully crippple, the West's self-avowed enemy. What's not to like? What's more to think about?
a) and b) are obviously nice to have as arguments to use on the undecided or die-hard moral highlanders , but even if they were not applicable, c) clinches the deal.

Never forget that one of the constraints on adoption of new equipment is the Ukrainian military itself.
It is undeniably true that deploying the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries, from soup to nuts, logistics to BDA, would make the Ukrainian armed forces incomparably more fearsome than they already are.
It is ALSO undeniably true that wholesale adoption of the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries etc etc in one fell swoop would utterly break the force, indeed any force, that tried it. It would break them if they tried it in peacetime, let alone attempting it in the middle of an existential war. It is mildly implausible that Putin would step back, saying "oh, fair play, we won't do anything for the next 18-24 months while you figure out how to use, employ, and maintain all this new stuff. Give us a call when you're ready to go again?"
Keep in mind that every time you argue for comprehensive and sudden re-equipping. Either you're arguing for a fantasy, or you're arguing for a Russian victory along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's short story Superiority.
There is, of course, a middle path - upgrading as fast as practical whilst maintaining a credible and capable force. And there always is, and always will be, debate about whether the process is proceeding too quickly or to slowly. However the answer is never at either end of the spectrum.
 

I respect the right of my elders to be grumpy curmudgeons, but if a statement about how the Western refusal to allow Ukrain to act according to international law makes other people doubt how many other terms of international contracts some Western nations would adhere to makes you want to sit idly by and watch an invasion with genocidal or at least culturally genocidal intent, then it crosses the line into "boomer tantrum".
Here are my reasons of why we support Ukraine.
a) it supports the UN charta, which has practical legal benefits
b) the ethical and moral arguments fall more in favor of it than against it
c) in a Machiavellian sense we are destroying the military capacity of an enemy that has been actively working on destroying the West for at least 15 years (albeit with non-conventional means), which support international terrorism and would be a potential ally / supporter / provider of military goods to another active enemy of the West in another war, like China, and it is done at the minimum cost imaginable
d) it allows to massively improve our own military potential via observation and remote learning as well as investments in production facilities, which have been woefully neglected despite active enemies building up their own potential and messaging their clear intent of careless murder on a global scale
That's why we are bankrolling it. 
And yes, the AD ambushed across the border were the best thing since sliced bread for Ukraine and Western politicians throwing a tantrum over it is neither legally not militarily nor politically rational.
 

I have been thinking some more about the lessons of Ukraine for future warfare, as well as the conversations on this forum, and have been trying to develop a coherent concept on how to fight in the transparent battlefield of the present/future. I will try to keep this post as short as possible but this is a complex subject!
Throughout I will be referring to the concepts in this thread:
How to attack: I have talked about this before a bit, I think you need to mass drones and long range indirect fires to blow a hole in the enemies line. You cannot mass forces in the traditional sense because they will be identified and destroyed so you need to send a swarm of vehicles together in roughly platoon sized elements into this breach in order to exploit it. These need to be extremely mobile because artillery can hit slow or static vehicles at extreme range and also because you should expect the enemy to use mobile assets like drones, fast moving artillery (Caesar) and mobile reserves to fill the breach. 
Large armoured vehicles are very hard to hide so enemy resistance in the local area will not likely consist of tanks or other mobile elements, since they will be largely destroyed in the initial strikes. Local resistance will consist of relatively isolated, but well hidden, infantry. However even a single enemy squad with lots of ATGMs and a radio threatens to slow the advance, especially since the attackers are lightly armoured and dispersed. The attackers must accept attrition of the leading elements (recon by boom) and have large quantities of organic fires to reduce these strongpoints quickly. Mobile mortars, 105mm guns and drone carriers have the range for the swarm to offer mutually supporting and responsive fires even when dispersed.  
The vehicle swarm needs to protect itself from incoming artillery and drones. The key points if the "survivorability onion" are: speed to avoid being hit by indirect fires, extensive drone surveillance to destroy direct fires before they are a threat, a combination of simple radar with autocannons and "goalkeeper" drones for self defence (see the other thread for the maths) and mechanical redundancy to keep vehicles moving even after taking damage. 
So what does the swarm look like? The leading edge is a picket line of (ideally) unmanned car-sized tankettes armed with autocannons and a few AT/AA missiles that aggressively recon by fire, covered by a lot of surveillance drones. Should the enemy fire on them then the source of fire is very quickly identified and eliminated. Following this are simple APCs carrying infantry and command vehicles acting as sensor fusion and drone control platforms (they look exactly like APCs) as well as air defence. Then you have specialist elements such as the mobile guns, drone carriers, engineering, heavier tanks(!) etc. interspersed with the APCs. Finally you have small car-sized unmanned logistics carriers pushing supplies forward, as well as a stream of new tankettes to replace losses (an advantage of unmanned platforms is that they are 100% replaceable even in combat).  A bubble of surveillance and defensive drones surround the swarm at all times and this bubble is the key to identifying and eliminating the majority of threats before they enter line of sight. This may all be visible on enemy radar but it will be difficult to identify patterns and to distinguish important fighting elements from random (and expendable) logistics carriers or even quadbikes with radar reflectors - the protective drone/AD bubble prevents enemy drones from clearly identifying what is going on. 
Operationally the force never masses in one point. The prepositioned leading edge of the attack is mostly tankettes and some APCs that have been dispersed: either concealed (easy with a car-sized vehicle in a village) or moving to look like random logistics vehicles on radar. A previously stockpiled FPV drone swarm largely destroys the enemy and the prepositioned elements begin the attack as the leading echelon. The main echelon are organised and fuelled across a zone potentially of hundreds of km in radius. They deploy "from the march" with wheeled APCs self-driving and tracked tankettes being carried by civilian grade trucks (maybe 3 per truck) and unloaded a few tens of km back from the front lines. By the time the enemy knows the main direction of the attack, the second echelon is already beginning to arrive. Eventually (before the drone/AD bubble is exhausted) the infantry will dig in and the tankettes and other supporting elements will withdraw to prepare for a new attack. 
The key here is not to gold-plate things, especially the tankettes and logistics carriers, which need to be cheap and replaceable. But humans are spared the worst of the attrition since their job is to sit in APCs and get delivered to key points rather than be subject to enemy fire. Also I have not covered minefield breaches, but that is for a different post...

Was he Ukrainian though? Some of things he wrote did not seem like things a disgruntled Ukrainian would write, more like an active Russian supporter. One way or another, those comments were also pure troll and fully justified a ban regardless of where he hailed from.

With half a million Russian casualties, and every square kilometer that Ukraine has given up looking more cratered than the Somme, this is the single dumbest bit of Russian propaganda you have spouted. That is a strong statement, too. You are spouting nonsense at a group of people who have been paying attention since the beginning. Try harder, or go away.

According to pro Russian propaganda, the AFU has been in a 'critical' situation for years and yet nothing has really happened. This is literally just conjecture. 

I have been a long time lurker enjoying this thread for years and I just cannot sit by and watch a clear propaganda account spout such rubbish. I know several Ukrainians who would literally punch you in the face for suggesting that Ukraine 'should just surrender man' after the disgusting acts committed upon them. 

You claim Russia is 'fixing' its corruption when in reality its just one faction cleaning out the other. Both are neck deep in said corruption all while while new stooges are brought in. They arrested general Popov who was specifically trying to point the many flaws in the Russian military system last year (And got fired for it) and seemed to be one of the few who actually gave a damn about the lives of his soldiers. 

Russia is not fixing anything, they are just assigning fall guys and pretending nothing is wrong. 

Well you have me convinced...I am sure Ukrainians can expect much greater freedoms under Russian rule, plenty evidence of this in occupied territories.
So now more to the point - so pass onto your master in Moscow that this war was a phenomenally dumb idea. It is going to put Putin's legacy right next to Nicolas II on the list of Russian Imperial blunders.  There is no winning solution for Russia here.  NATO and the West got Sweden, Finland, about a decade of NATO defence budgets, and Ukraine.  Russia got humiliation, a shattered ground force and about 7-8 percent more of Ukraine than they already had on 21 Feb 24. 

Just as a general comment about propaganda, I have continually been impressed from page 1 that the overwhelming majority of posts have been well vetted, or if not, along the lines of "I found this, can anyone confirm?" There are people here with vast experience, and not just militarily, who aren't easily fooled by specious claims. Posting the verified facts and then getting some good discussion on what those mean is very good reading.
So basically, good job everyone, and keep it up.  I don't post too much - just mainly about things I really know a lot about, and sometimes do catchup reading, but I do read almost everything, and follow a lot of the links.
Dave

For the record, all, I’m well aware that ZellZeka’s posts so far are almost comically familiar in tone, content and even syntax to a certain category of posters this thread seems to attract one of every couple of months.  As noted previously I think it’s always important to engage in good faith on the off chance that such is reciprocated.
If/when we find out it’s not I will happily drop out and let nature take its course.  

Just to lighten things up a bit
 

Rural house turned out into mass grave for Russian infantry after "fat drone" strike
 

A pressure on Presiden't Administration is continuing. I hope, this will bring result on background of position UK and France (though on the words for now)
Indeed, ATACMS already seveal times hit Russians in "their" "sacral" Crimea and no nuclear strikes on Wasshington yet.
 

I wonder is China restricting the use of Chinese weapons to only Russian territory.

I think this list contains 2 points which were major contributors not only to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, but to the Soviet state collapse in general.
The first one is the economic situation, which is kind of obvious. Soviet economy peaked in 1950s when it looked like SU can give the Free World economies a run for their money, but then it could not and started failing. There is however one potentially pertinent point: AFAIK the Soviet economy got a large boost in 1970s when the Middle East fuel crisis made fuel prices soar and Russian oil &gas exports actually became the Soviet economy, the rest paling into insignificance. During the 1980s a high price for oil became the make or break factor for the Soviet economic results, and their ability to support their budgets, and it is so today for the Putinist Russia. End of 80's is increased stabilisation in the Middle East, increased US  political influence among the oil producing countries, increased US domestic oil production, which creates the perspective of fuel prices going down and staying low for a long time. At that, Soviet economy tanked to the bottom & the rest we know. This makes me wonder, if at the beginning of the 2022 invasion there was a way to repeat this successful formula and wage the economic warfare against RUS in a more effective way which would already be giving significant results.  In the actual scenario, the Western counries tried to decrease their imports of oil and shrink the demand for RUS exports that way. That makes sense, however mostly in the long run. I am wondering about doing the opposite and increasing supply. Unfortunately, the Biden administration at the time was acting strongly against the oil economy, thus creating the opposite trend to the 1980's trend discussed above: conflict with Middle Eastern oil producers, ban on increasing the domestic production. I am wondering, if adopting a more flexible approach re this could have worked better. Temporarily increasing supply and driving the oil price down below the levels profitable for Russians would make them spend their reserves quicker and then force them to adopt war economy measures which are very damaging to the general economic power and potentially unpopular.
The second is less obvious. In Poland after the historians got at the post-communist archives it became quite apparent, that the commies were not particularly concerned about the hearts and minds of "the working folk of the cities and countryside", as they had been officially referred to. They were  procedures for when the proles mutiny.  What really became a problem, is that the members of the political and security apparatus themselves started to be sympathetic to the regime change. The fact, that they were the kings of the communist world and much better than the rest of the society stopped mattering as much as the fact, that in absolute terms, the colonels of militia and chairmen of local party organisations were worse off than even the lower strata of the societies in the West.  The nail in the coffin were the results of the 1989 elections (which had been intended by the commies to be just a tactical retreat and the Polish United Workers Party had very much been intended to remain the dominant political power) except not as much in general, but in the "special voting circuits" - in military and militia garrisoned units, among prison guards, etc. The opposition won even there. The obvious conclusion was that the threat of using military force as the communists BATNA became void, soldiers would not fight for them, so the gig was up. With regard to the present situation in the Ukraine war, the parallel is that it is perhaps not necessary to change the heart of the ordinary Russian on the street. But finding a way to turn the low-and middle management of the Russian state and power apparatus against Putin could be it. For the avoidance of doubt, the individual sanctions against top oligarchs will not work, too simplistic and too restricted, we are not talking about turning a few selected people against Putin, but a whole group. I actually have no idea how to achieve this.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

IIRC, the ancien regime also encouraged the Komsomol/managerial class youth to go, with the idea that it would solidify their socialist principles and toughen them up. (kind of like Great Helmsman Xi talks about today, although he isn't putting it in practice)
So the bereaved parents in this case had some clout.
...In contrast, also IIRC, Putin has been shielding the elites in the metropoles (Moscow, StP) from conscription, instead draining the rust belt towns and countryside (that are demographically way short of non-geriatric men, particularly skilled trades), as well as immigrants, criminals, etc.
The current and future effects of all this on 'Russian' society are manyfold.
****
So when we speak of avoiding a collapse of central authority postwar (or rather, following the death of Putin) we may really be talking about 'managing' a slow-mo collapse.
...or in practice, which factions we back (likely driven by who the Chinese back).
Basically, the next 'Great Game' could well feature Russia as the chessboard, not the player.

I said president of Russia (in rus. genetive Rossii), but not Raisi ! 

Bet those seaside apartments across the bay are really cheap these days...
 
 

I'm completely with you there. Refineries are obviously legitimate military targets, and I am struggling to understand why there is any controversy in Ukraine attacking them. I have never understood our prohibition on Ukraine using western weapons to attack targets inside internationally-recognized Russian territory (we don't care about what Russia thinks is Russian territory). But that isn't what Carolus was suggesting.

I am deeply dismayed that the US is not currently organising a round-the-clock airlift delivering CIA agents from all bull**** posts in the US and worldwide directly to Georgia and Armenia. Hell, Special Forces too. This is a golden opportunity to open a second front, such as the Russians were doing all over Africa and Middle East (I am firmly convinced that Hamas attacks in October 2023 were inspired by Russians). A lot of Georgians are actually up for it, I don't think the pro Russian party is that overwhelmingly strong.
In particular, Russia has a ready reserve pool of hundreds of thousands of people employed in their various security forces and even regular army units stationed in the Caucasus, Siberia, etc. They can redirect them to the army in the Ukraine basically at will. Except if those security units are actually engaged where they are currently stationed in actual security tasks....