gnarly

On this note, back on Day One over the CM Discord we watched the Russians rolling up to the bridge at Nova Khakova on live Ukrainian traffic cams. I recorded some footage the morning after and at one point there was at least a couple of VDV companies stacked up on the road in a traffic jam. One air/arty strike and they would have a seriously bad day.

[Edit: And here it is:]


(Then some Russians climbed up the poles and started knocking the cameras out. Which was also fun, because you could chart the progress of this one truck camera disabling team going down the road.)

The sheer volume of OSINT at the start of the war was crazy, the tricky part as always is how to deal with the information overload and exploit it in a timely fashion (if possible).

National Guard isuued information about own servicemen losses since 24th Feb: 501 KIA, 1697 WIA

What it’s like being a Chinese reporter covering the sports competition in Ukraine:
 

BINGO!



I didn't see Gerasimov, but could easily be that I just didn't recognise him

Reminder about the Russian artillery…they gotta hit the Ukrainians to be useful. Their massed artillery ain’t worth **** if they can’t kill Ukrainian artillery. 
 

Ukrainian M777s in action:
Close-up video of the knocked-out T-90M:
Someone is really intense with his aquarium: 

Roman Donik about UKR and RUS artillery on Izium direction:
Our artillerists are really gods. Counter-battery fire this is first of all a war of calibers, distance and recon. Enemy has advantage in quantity and in artilery systems nomemclature. Whether you like it or not, but this is fact. And in ammunition types too. And in UAVs. And in missiles. And in aircraft. 
Therefore, in conditions, which our artillery works, I can say confidently - nobody can work better. Because of this SP-gunners of 93rd brigade after their effective work at the enemy, almost all day chased battery of Uragans, with continuos monitoring from the sky with 2-3 Orlans. They just were stopping for short time for the rest and almost immediately taking fire. And this mess whole day. But could break away from chasing and at the morning again poured on the attacking Russians. Why we don't beat up enemy Uragans? Because let see again about advantage in missiles and aircraft. Though... Why don't beat up? Lately a battery of Grads under comamnd of "Shkval"  - the legend of the Donetsk airport defense times, in result of raid actions almost across enemy's rears, poured fire on enemy Uragan-crews, which have been deploying to shell our positions. And there is tons of such examples. 
For two days of fighting on Kharkiv and Izium directions, according to Roman Donik, enemy has conducted 19 and 37 artillery strikes respectively. 4 airstrikes.
What is artillery strike? This is not several explosions. This is work of several guns, battery and sometime even several batteries simultainously. And this can last for hours. Tons of deadly steel are falling from the sky on you. And after this attack of Russian infantry begins with support of armor. This is hard to explain by words. This is just a psyche of people under these close explosions is beyond the edge of reality, understandable to us. And immediataly after theese explosions, this people take own rifles and launchers and repell enemy attacks on short distances. 
For two days of fight OUV "Sloboda" destroyed  11 tanks, 5 BMP, 3 BTR, 4 MTLB, 1 SP-howitzer, 2 UAVs Orlan, about 65 of personnel.
On the photos - the consequenses of just one attack. Super-short distances. And NLAW is recognized world leader of equipmnet, which produce barbeque-boxes in contact way. 
 

 

      

Russians disguised 9P149 Shturm-S tank destroyer with rubbish of destroyed house, but this didn't work 
 

Strange how drone footage makes it look like something out of a game where you rotate the camera around a unit and inspect it from all angles. There's something surreal about seeing real way in this 'virtual' way, I think.

To lighten the mood a bit (not for DMS I'm afraid), Zelensky gave a hint about the expected future of Ukrainia Air Force:
 

From the other side in Popasna:
 

Some news from Luhansk oblast, looks like this guy either in action, or has communication with own comrades in 81st airmobile brigade, which elements fight both in Rubizhne and Popasna
May 1st
Gifts [ammunition+equipment] at last came to our lads in Rubizhne. Slightly calmed down orcs. No artillery support. Barely not shot with friendly fire with SBU [special force "Alfa" of Security Service of Ukraine], which draged motherf...s [captured enemies] to "zeros" [forward positios] but HQ has ruled this mess. 81st keeps strong. 
Special forces against us. They take back own "200", make smoke, armor support, all feng shui. We can't take back ours. Advantage in some places 1 to 20. On old positions sometimes came to hand-to-hand combat. The house three times a day the house changed hands. There are just f..g alot of them. Our withdrew.
About Popasna. 200 our guys were ready to go in order to maintain corridor for heroes for their breathrough, but HQ cancelled. Memory to the heroes... There is no communication with them. They in encirclement. There is no any fight there anymore. There were about two platoons [maybe exactly this episode was on long video, where Russian PMC fighters is capturing 7 UKR soldiers in Popasna]
May 3rd
Popasna. Road juction is ours. Our arty at last worked this night. Orcs began to dig in. Our tanks on positions. There will be no more offensive. Guys stood out 
May 5th
Popasna today. Right flank keeps position in the town. About 15 houses are ours. We saged there a lot for theese days, but didn't withdraw more. There is 81st only. The center. Road junction is our. For two days we have crumbled about company of SOBR [I doubt this was Russians, probably either PVC or LDPR police special forces]. This wasn't street fight. They just came at us in the open. We were fuc..g astonished. Their spetsnaz so stupid. Our tanks on the place. Our artillery today keeps silence, so we make nightmire for orcs themeselves. 
 
Other article was issued with interview of volunteer battalion (actually rather reinforced company) "Svoboda" (Freedom), which fights in Rubizhne. This guy said Russians used there own standard tactic - alot of artillery, then tanks ruined buildings with direct fire, then LPR conscripts attacked, after them - regular LPR units, after them - Kadyrov's troopers or Russian units. If they havn't success, all repaeted. Our artillery answers 1 shot against their 15-20. On their small position Russian artilelry each day is sootong about 500 shels. Thus each day on Rubizhne enemy fired whole military train of ammunition 
  
 

Frankly, I'm curious how sustained, at a large scale, this Ukrainian "counteroffensive" can be. Their operational logistics process still seems very ad hoc and often driven by local demands, rather than operational plans determined by clear strategic principles and objectives. Failure to professionalise their materials supply chain will undermine and retard any theater level offensives, giving them to short lived gains then stalemate, then another short attack grinding into yet another stalemate. 
This will doom any national victory as it will give RUS strategic breathing room. 
All these Spanky New Fisher Price Nato toys are nice, but if UKR logistics are not up to snuff and dont drastically improve very rapidly then RuA will get the stalling of the war's momentum that it so desperately needs.
Russia is on the operational offensive but on the strategic back foot. Now the strategic imperative and pressure is on UKR to keep unbalancing Russia.
But half assed UKR logistics will only give half-victories.
@Haiduk or @akd can you shed some light on the UKR logistics state, process and capabilities?
...
Ref this new UKR offensive itself, I suspect it will be series of reinforced localised offensives, shoving and pushing at battalion level, seeking the weaker (low morale) units and breaking them in the hopes of a domino morale collapse.
In comparison the RUS offensive needed to physically destroy UKR formations, as their morale is rock solid, a much harder task. They needed to blow up/kill/capture a lot of UKR gear and troops, very quickly, to have any chance of success.
They failed (indeed a plodding, arty-driven pace was the deliberately chosen tactical approach). In the process Dvornikov hollowed out his larger formations as he attempted to maintain a sharp edge against a highly mobile, tactically flexible and determined resistance. 

Aftermath of the fighting somewhere on the southern front.
Soldier says four Russians armored vehicles attacked their position, but couldn't reach it. They abandoned all own vehciles and run away across the field, but not all. He says "now we will go to take vehicles. But they damaged our tank, fortunately all alive and inact. Some more enemy knoked out vehicles there in ravine" 
Soviet ATGM Fagot on position amd UKR RPV-16 thermobaric ammunition (not enough good copy of RPO-A)
  

Looks like a different bridge: single columns in the intact picture and double columns in the collapsed picture.  

A lot has already been said, but if this was some kind of HQ, and set up like you SHOULD set up an HQ, you might be using the building for "office space", however, all the vehicles would be parked and camouflaged in the woods surrounding, and if there are radios in the building, the antennas SHOULD be scattered about in cover somewhere that is not the building. Also, for a major HQ of some kind, it should be surrounded by some sort of AA capability, even if that's just several crews of MANPADS, also in the woods. 
So that distribution looks "normal".  They hit the building dead on, whether by precision or good data. Pretty good chance they can generate an exact GPS or grid coordinate for a building like that. If not precision a precision round then it would be the number 3 gun firing at that coordinate. #3 is the center of the battery and is SUPPOSED to be your best gun crew. That's the gun you register with, and should have the most proficient crew and gun chief. At least that's how we do it (we being US and what I know of Cdn and UK - I think all NATO is pretty standard that way) And in a normal unadjusted sheaf, with no corrections applied, #3 would land center of the pattern. Unadjusted, the pattern should mimic the distribution of the firing battery guns on the ground (say they are set up at the front of a treeline somewhere, which is an irregular shape). When you have spare time, you figure out Terrain Gun Position Corrections. That's the deviation from a straight, regularly spaced line, to what you have on the ground. Apply those to each gun individually, and then your standard sheaf is a regular spaced even line (within CEP). From THOSE, you can then apply other corrections for different shapes - circular, converging, etc. BUT, if your target is significantly off your center line of fire, then those TGPCs become less accurate and your sheaf different, not the perfect line.
Looks to me like they wanted to cover the likely area of where the antennas, support vehicles, etc could be stashed and not just the building.
Dave

The aircraft situation over Romania/Black Sea doesn't look that unusual.  Right now I see two Rivet Joints and three tankers.  Pretty typical to have that many tankers, and you never see who they're fueling - I never see them coincide with the larger ELINT/SIGINT/ATC aircraft - presumably there are a bunch of other NATO aircraft cruising around without transmitting ADS-B.
I've had a window open with ADS-BExchange over Eastern Europe through most of this.  The only thing unusual right now is that there are two Rivet Joints instead of one plus some other ELINT/SIGINT aircraft.  Usually there are some BE-20 Guardrails over Latvia or Lithuania, and an E3, with one cruising the Romania/Moldova border and one the east border of Poland.  GlobalHawks over the Black Sea are less common than at the start, but that pattern wasn't that unusual.  I tend to suspect that more is going on if I don't see them all - they're perfectly capable of turning off the transmitters and they leave them on to let Russia know they're being watched.  When there are a lot of tankers and no other planes transmitting is when it's suspicious.

No, Simonov was allegedly killed during the strike at rear comamnd point in Zabavme village near Izium. The same video with first rocket of MLRS lucky shot

So I finally took MFSF up and over this area:

The punchline is that there is not a lot of good news for the Russians along this axis, if their goal is Slovyansk.  I found three rough options for something BTG size to try and break through that Severski-Donetsk River line and none are optimal but some are definitely better than other.
Axis #1 - Swing north and come across as Seredenje as there is a gap between the Oskil River and that soggy mess to the south.  Possible crossing points right at Seredenji:

It ain't pretty but it is the best of the bunch.  Problem here is that once you get to a town called Oleksandrivka :
Welcome to the Black Forest, which one would need to bust through to get to a northern approach to Slovyansk.  Big problem here is then you are on the Izyum axis on advance = traffic jam.
So then we take Axis 2 - The Russian Most Probable:
And further up:

This would be the land of those three bridges:

So Axis #2 is a hellish landscape from a manoeuvre point of view.  This would be on the back side of Lyman and it is like this for along way north and south.  Worse, it is dominated by high ground pretty to the West and South:   
Axis 2 will take the least imagination and is basically a frontal - so you know the Russians will pick it.  This is a very complex engineering problem and a major choke point where you are going to get hammered the entire way.  I suspect that the Russians already took a lot of losses back at the Zarichne/Torske choke point:

Here looking east back towards Kreminna.
And then there is Axis 3:
Still pretty messy looking that way but if you swing a bit further south and east, thing open up a fair bunch:
That is looking south.  Problem with Axis 3 is that one still has to traverse that wooded soggy bit and I could not find any major bridges.  The big advantage of Axis 3 is that it opens way op around the south end of Slovanyanks and you could set up a cut-off and break out further South.
The Russian may try a combo of these but the long pole in the tent will be engineering support - shame they lost all that equipment in the opening of this thing.  None of these are easy goes, my money is on a Axis 2 & 3 combo as 1 is easier but it really does not lead to anything.
Either way, a lot of CM battlefields here, heck there is an entire campaign in this.

I can see a BS map and scenario..... 😜

Way ahead of you ...

Had to reorient the map to get the roads to sit better.

I can see a BS map and scenario..... 😜