Gnaeus

I can fully understand and sympathize with their positions and sentiments.  But lies are lies, no matter who is pushing them.  We either try and hold onto objective truth or we can just become another echo chamber showing one sided war porn and offering weak analysis.  We are challenged enough to avoid our own biases without completely abandoning what this entire thread was supposed to do in the first place.  I oppose disinformation no matter the source.

You can go to Siberia for a PR stunt, or you can go to Siberia for railroad sabotage. Choose wisely.

There is some truth to the idea that militaries are an extension of the people who make them, however, one cannot become too focused on political ideology as the sole source of an overall school of doctrine.  History, resources, infrastructure, culture, environment and even things as simple as education and literacy all play important roles in how a military is generated and employed.  We can see vast differences in communist military approaches, for example.  North Vietnam had a very different approach than the Soviets, as did China and other non-Soviet communist states.  Western militaries also differed, not only internally but over time.  There is a vast difference in US military doctrine as it went from conscription to an all volunteer force.  Its conscription based force actually favoured mass until the 70s as did many other western nations.
I think this risks dangerous oversimplification of the issue.  Ukraine is on a democracy spectrum, not a full fledge liberal democratic state yet.  Russia is also technically a democracy, but far more in the “locked in” autocratic/oligarch end.  Neither Ukraine or Russia are communist states (see their economic systems).  So boiling this all down to Russia = dictatorship = communism = Soviet system: Ukraine = democracy = western system, is a serious oversimplified lens through which to view the situation on just about every point of the algorithm.  
The initial Russian invasion was constructed pretty much as we expected - BTGs under Brigade formations.  The nature of the assault was multi-axis manoeuvre designed to overwhelm an opponent.  The RA did not employ a Soviet style military approach here, they were much closer to western military philosophy and doctrine - fast moving warfare based on strategies of rapid annihilation through manoeuvre.  We did not see MRDs in an echeloned system designed to attack in multiple waves or the massive fires complex that are hallmarks of the Soviet system - in fact if Russia had gone with a Soviet style attack, with the numbers behind it, they may very well have won.  No the RA tried to employ what was basically a western style opening attack but it failed, nearly completely.  Now why it failed is interesting and two camps have sprung up.  The main one is that “Russia Sux” and cannot do western doctrine, despite trying to look like us, for various reasons - a BTG is nothing more than a type of Battle Group.  The other camp is of the mind the RA failed because conditions on the modern battlefield have changed.  The first camp has been the loudest but the evidence in support of the second is growing.
The western school is far more than training and kit - it is a deeper military philosophy that generates strategy, which in turn generates campaigns…pretty much like the Soviet school but taking very different routes to get to a similar end-state.  Now as the war has progressed the RA quickly saw that their was little hope for them by holding onto the western doctrinal school, they appear have to fallen back on mass but even here in small bite sized chunks…why?  This is the Soviet style but descaled.  The immediate answer to this descaling was “Russia Sux..LOLZ” but this does not make sense.  Russia managed a 5-6 axis, high speed operation at the beginning of the war but cannot figure out a Battalion level attack two-years in?  The good news is that it appears the Soviet approach is also under constraints based on the environment as well.  High concentration is too dangerous so they too have to de-aggregate.
As to the UA the idea you appear to be proposing is the “one more XYZ and they can win” idea.  It is that if we can only make the UA more like us, enough, that victory will somehow happen.  This does not match observations either.  Ukraine started this war fighting hybrid.  Mixes of conventional and unconventional defence along the entire length of the RAs overstretched operational system.  That was not western doctrine nor Soviet, it was something we have seen in COIN but upscaled and empowered.  The core C2 component of the Soviet style system is centralized control and task-command.  We saw neither of these from Ukraine in the opening days of the war.  They were far more western in that resistance in that regard.
Last summer was a testament and watershed moment.  It is well documented that the UA had a lot of western equipment and tens of thousands of western trained troops. The UA tried Bn level mechanized breaches in the centre south that are straight out of the western manuals.  They clearly trained for them in Europe and operationalized them.  They also failed…dramatically.  So either the Ukrainians can’t do western (another narrative that sprung up) or there are weaknesses in the western technology based approach on these battlefields.  I argue the latter.  The single largest one is the over-dependence of the western system on air superiority.  Without that the entire western school starts to fail.  And in the modern UAS environment air superiority is impossible.  So it won’t matter how much western equipment and training we provide, our current doctrine looks like it will not work on this battlefield.  So what?  We need a new doctrine.
It really doesn’t, in Ukraine and both sides have pulled back from the western style approach as they have been pulled into an attrition war. The western school vs Soviet school is less about politics and more about military strategies. Both were built for Annihilation strategies but the Soviet school has a far higher tolerance for attrition warfare.  Ukraine has kept the high technology approach but western style manoeuvre is simply undoable in this environment at any scale.  Or it may take a scale so high that it looks more Soviet than anything else.
Your position sounds an awful lot like the militaries of WW1 - one more push and we are through. But now they just need more F16s.  The Russians have taken the same philosophy but are basing it on human capital and not kit.  I suspect both camps are incorrect.  The western school of rapid overwhelming manoeuvres may be dead due to nearly complete battlefield illumination and modern friction.  Dumb mass is definitely dead for essentially the same reasons.
Neither side will adopt either the Western or Soviet approach in full because both of these schools are 80 years old and designed for a different time.  The Western school cannot deal with a modern attrition based war and the Soviet one cannot deal with the technological realities.  Neither schools can address the realities of denial and friction we are seeing.  So we are going to see the evolution of something else.  And our job over here in the safe sidelines is to try and stay out of Ukraine’s way while they figure it out…and take notes.
In summary, both militaries started this war more western than Soviet.  It worked for the Ukrainians on defence but has failed them on offence.  The Russians started with a more western-style approach on offence but once it failed ran back into the loving arms of Soviet doctrine on defence.
The Russian have tried a much smaller scaled down version of Soviet style on offence and it has provided limited gains at horrendous costs.  Ukraine has tried western style offensives, also at smaller scales, which have essentially done as well as the Soviet system, but with much lower casualties.  So here we are, neither school is really working on offence but can do defence.  Hence the growing belief that we are into something larger than either school - defensive primacy.
So, solutions.  Well doubling down on either school is likely a dead end. We probably need a new school entirely.  One we have not seen yet.  This war, and the next one will be a race of adaptations.  We have yet to see where it will end.
My position is that neither the Western or Soviet schools are working in this war, even though they have been attempted.  We should not even try to make the UA more like the US Army at this point.  Nor will expunging “Soviet legacy” fix the situation for Ukraine.  I suspect we have yet to see a new school of military art and thought emerge.  It is largely built on a foundation of artificial intelligence/forward processing that can create massed precision fires.  Both sides appear to be trying to figure out this problem, my money is that Ukraine is ahead in the game but not unassailable.

Hi,
As a Swede I thought today would be a good day to stop lurking for a bit and drop a comment. Been playing cm for 20 years and following this forum for a long time.
Thank you all for contributing to this thread, checking it daily. Always a good source for news and discussion, so much knowledge and experience gathered is hard to get elsewhere. 
I always was all for our countrys neutral stance combined with a strong Defense but last decade has of course swayed us all in Sweden a bit. I have my background in the army, cv90. Seeing us finally start to retake our capabilities regarding defense is good.
Anyways thanks for having us in the club I guess (why am I thinking about brothers Marx)?
Carl 

I don’t think anyone of serious power in the West wants a full Russian collapse.  The overall Western grand strategy since the end of the Cold War has been “stable status quo”.  We have spent the last 33 years pretty much working on all fronts to sustain “the system”.  We toss scarfs and hats on it but at its core is a central unchanging stability.  Why?  Because stability is good business.  The West, with the US at the centre built the scheme that “won” the Cold War and want that party to keep going because we get very rich off it.  The rest of the world makes our stuff for cheap, while also buying our other stuff.  
But pretty much from Day 1 “the others” pushed back.  First was the intra-war years, interventions and then terrorism.  Now this has upscaled to “revisionist states” and “power competition”.  Russia invaded Ukraine for several reasons but one of them definitely was to demonstrate that they are not going to be bound by western rules (Hell, Putin said exactly this in that speech back in Sep ‘22).  This puts the West in a dilemma, they can either do too little and Russia threatens the system, or they crush Russia…and it threatens the system.  So they appear to have chosen the middle path, which of course is getting hijacked by the internal movements who want to…wait for it…change the system.  MAGA, alt-right, nationalists, whatever, all disagree with “the system” even though it has made everyone richer.  The reality is that it did not make everyone equally rich so discontent is natural.  Worse, power spheres exploit this so they can get more powerful (and richer).  So Rust-Belt yokels eat this stuff up and start to dismantle “the system”, which includes democracy apparently.  The reality is Trump is a symptom, not a cause and I am not sure even they realize how dangerous this game they are playing is.
So Ukraine happens and becomes a symbol of a “war for, and against, the system.”  It isn’t about the fact that killing innocent Ukrainians is wrong - hell if morales like human life mattered we wouldn’t have Gaza.  No, Ukraine is all about “the system” and both sides appear to be waging it viewed through that lens.  Russia needs to show that they are going to play by their own rules, but not completely break themselves.  One could ask “why is Russia fighting this war by half measures?”  Do they enjoy a quagmire?  No, Putin understands what he has gotten himself into and is adopting a slow burn strategy, hoping we will get distracted and caught up in our own nonsense…and he might be right.
The rest of the West is trying to step up, but frankly we have grown awfully fat, dumb and happy on the back of the US - who now is having a bipolar fit.  In the end, we can live with a fallen Ukraine.  We can shore up the borders and lock Russia out.  We can live with a partial victory in Ukraine, do we really care about Crimea, LNR and DNR?  No, we did not in ‘14 and we don’t now.  We can’t live with a completely imploded Russia.  Those are where the real risks lie.  Too many unknowns that could really break the system.  So we wind up with a half hearted war designed to punish Russia for challenging the system but not destroy them.  Ukraine is, and I am being brutally honest here, is almost secondary to the entire conversation.  It was simply a very unfortunate country where both sides could try and prove a point.  We love Ukraine all of a sudden because they are an opportunity to show that 1) Russia was wrong to challenge the system, and 2) the system still works.  
I strongly suspect this is why this war is also so muddled in military circles.  We are watching a war to defend the system..that is demonstrating the weaknesses of our own military system at the same time.  So we put blinders on and try to pretend it isn’t happening.  Our military power has to still be relevant…otherwise how can we defend the system?
So to answer your question, “yes, the US and the West know exactly how important Ukraine really is and are fighting this war based on that calculus.”  The answer however is “somewhat important”.  We care and feel bad, but care much more about our own issues.  Putin read the short game about as wrong as one can.  He may have read the long game extremely well.  The way to beat the West is not outright confrontation, it is apathy.  2 years is forever for a culture addicted to clicks and flashing lights.  Putin’s off ramp is being able to draw a victory line somewhere of his choosing and he is shooting for that.  And we might just let him get there.
Now I would not start freaking out and worry about a second attack on Kyiv.  Something that dramatic might actually get our attention again.  No, this needs to become a boring war - I am starting to think Putin’s Tucker Carlson interview was smarter than we thought.  What better way to get Western audiences to yawn and start to change the channel than a history lesson?

True, but I suspect this is where things are at.  Any ISR on the breach will mean PGM artillery and long range loitering munitions.  A lone ATGM team with a modern system can take out lead vehicles.  And standoff tac aviation has demonstrated what it can do.
To be perfectly honest our entire mechanical/explosive breaching tactic has only ever been done in one war that I can think of, Gulf War.  And we essentially did all the pre-conditions I am talking about with air power…and Blind Pew and his dog rolled right through them.  We never actually did live opposed minefield breaching operations.  We exercised them for decades and always “won” but never under real battlefield conditions, let alone modern ones.
The very uncomfortable truth of this war is that there is a whole lotta stuff we have only ever exercised going back into the Cold War.  ATGMs, air parity, denied environments, firepower parity, EW.  All things we practiced but never had our assumptions tested.  Gulf War looked like a validation but that war had specific context.  We assumed every war would be like that one and ‘03 reinforced that idea, even though the hints were starting to show up.
Then this war comes along and presents some major counter evidence that our tactics work at all.  So we say “Russia Sux”, “Ukraine Sux” “but we are good” like a benediction.  Worse we are tying the narrative to all of this.  If Ukraine can’t “win like we would”, well then it is on them.  The reality is that we had (have) a bunch of assumptions that have never really been tested and I suspect they are being tested in this war.  Some are enduring, like training quality, infantry and precision.  Others are not holding up too well at all, and it is making us very uncomfortable.  “Well we would roll over those minefields just like we did back in ‘91”.  Well this is not ‘91, and it is not that war.  This one has the look and feel of Korea, with 21st century technology.  

Our tactics underpin our operational constructs (manoeuvre and Mission Command), which all support our military strategy (short sharp wars of massive overmatch), which all feed into funding and spending in the trillions.  So when a war comes along that suggests we might be in the wrong movie, you can easily see people start getting their backs up. “Aw unmanned is a flash in the pan.  Someone will invent counters and things will go back to the way they were.”  But the evidence is piling up.  It is not just unmanned.  Precision weapons like the Javelin or artillery fires.  C4ISR that pretty much anyone can cobble together, including the Russians.  Denial, which will impact us as well.  It is all adding up to something shifting but most do not want it to shift too much.
Basically we are at the situation where if the enemy Blind Pew and his dog can see that minefield while we are breaching it, and they have a few precision smart weapons in range…the breach will likely fail because that breach is reliant on maybe 6-10 critical systems that can be hit very accurately by a number of systems we cannot fully deny.  We put APS on the breaching teams and PGM artillery drops on them.  We push back the artillery and UAS come in with more mines and reseed the breach.  We do everything right and the enemy has c-moves ready to bottle up the breach.  And this is before the real stuff that can defeat our defensive systems has even shown up (stand off EFP, ATGM sub munitions and mines with legs).
We need to start coming up with new ideas, not stuff to bolt on our old ones to try and keep them alive.
 

I think the best way to see someone like MacGregor is that essentially he believes that if America isn't going to look politically/socially/racially like the America he wants then he is quite happy being anti-American. That is the core message one gets from Tucker Carlson now too (National Review elucidates that particular case well: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/we-need-to-talk-about-tucker/ ). Looked at that way, his stances make sense. If America is the vanguard of a world woke dictatorship then Ukraine is the place such a dystopia may be blunted. If the ideological battle is existential, then a little bit of pettifoggery regarding military realities is just the lies that stand guard around the truth.  
 

$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.

I barely recognize the country I was born in any longer: 
“it still faces stiff headwinds in the Republican-led House, where right-wing lawmakers oppose sending additional assistance to Ukraine. Some have even threatened to oust Speaker Mike Johnson if he brings any bill to the floor that includes aid for Ukraine.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/briefing/senate-ukraine-aid-vote-us-strike-iraq.html

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.

Happy New Year my friends! Slava Ukraine!🇺🇦

So reviewing ISW and it hits upon particular peeve of mine with respect to western strategic mindset:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine-part-2-—-military-threat-and-beyond
If you read these toe pieces what jump out is how binary the analysis it.  We either fully liberate Ukraine and somehow live in a safer world - the impacts on Russia of a total defeat and possible follow on impacts of that on regional security are not explored.  Or we lose Ukraine entirely.  The analysis of losing Ukraine entirely is solid and I do not dispute.
What I dispute is the lack of any negotiation space.  All war is negotiation.  Most wars in history have ended in some form of negotiated end-state.  We tend to highlight and fixate on the maximalist wars because they had very “hot” impacts and make for good drama.  But most wars end somewhere in the middle - no one gets 100% of what they wanted.
So a major shortfall in the west has been a clear articulation of strategic end-states.  I am not proposing we give Russia “outs” or off-ramps but we have not even painted a vision of what a post-war order will look like.  What are our conditions for renormalization with Russia?  What is the post-war reconstruction plan?  How quickly can Ukraine be pulled into NATO?  What do we plan to do in the event of a Russian collapse?  The sum total of western declaration has been “support Ukraine to the end” without defining what that end in fact is or is not.  By failing to do this we tie victory to the map and not human conditions.  That is dangerous as we know the map may not demonstrate what we need to win, nor does it indicate a loss.
Now I strongly suspect that this thing has been mapped out by staffs in the backfield and all we hear is the party line.  However, this war may end with a complete Russia failure.  The RA may turn around and March on Moscow.  A military coup in Russia is not good news.  The last time it tore the country apart.  This time it could make things worse not better.  The absolute military victory being championed by ISW (and others) will very likely mean complete chaos in Russia itself.  We have never had a nuclear power completely fall apart below the state level.
Many simply go “meh, we will deal with it.” But then lose their minds when we ask “well what if we wind up with less than we want”.  This is called strategic scope eye: a dangerously singular focus on one certainty while neglecting the rest of the problem.
We should absolutely support Ukraine.  We should push them as much  as we can.  We must bring them into a collective defence umbrella - it is the only proven deterrence to Russian aggression.  We must rebuild Ukraine.  We must also map out what renormalization with Russia would look like.  What are the enticements /inducements?  
Finally “victory” may be a continuing work in progress.  We may have to accept partial victory now and work to a broader one later.  And accept Russia is going to do the same.  I keep coming back to this, in the middle victory spaces: there is “declared victory” and there is “real victory”.  Russia can declare whatever it wants.  Putin could be pushed back to pre-22 lines and still cry victory because he held onto Crimea and Donbas.  He will definitely crow and declare total victory if he holds onto what he has right now.  So freakin what?  Russia failed to achieve its strategic goals - undeclared and declared.  
As to “real” Ukrainian victory: if Ukraine is in NATO and seeing hundreds of billions in reconstruction as it is being fast-tracked into the EU in 2025 - how is that not a strategic victory?  By 2030 Ukraine could be an Eastern European powerhouse with a larger economy and military industrial base (as it schools the entire western world on how to fight a modern war) than it had before the war.  Russia will likely be sulking and planning…much as it has for the Baltics for decades. But it will be doing it under sanctions as a Chinese satellite.  It may not even be a great power by that point.  It ability to project regional threats will be diminished.  It will face a decision to renormalize with the west or continue to decline.
Is all that going to be a massive strategic defeat if we are stuck at the current conflict lines?  Was Korea a major strategic defeat for South Korea?  We have to deal with NK but we have shown we can…for years.  Is all this a major Russia strategic victory?
This is the problem with binary end-states, they ignore the realities of war.  The reality is that parties enter into the conflict with a certainty - a version of reality without doubt.   Those certainties are in collision and irreconcilable with the opponent.  The “war” is that violent collision.  As it progresses, a third certainty is created and each party must negotiate with it. War is as much about negotiation with oneself as an enemy.
To be clear, I am not advocating withdrawing support to Ukraine in any way shape or form.  I am not arguing appeasement with Russia.  What I am asking is that if we have run out of military option space - what are we willing to live with inside that third certainty?

Flemfire, the way you argue invites criticism. In fact, all you seem to do is argue and pat yourself on the back. I enjoy lurking this thread, maybe you should do the same. 

I agree on all point except the IFV/AFVs...I am still not entirely convinced.  That is a lot of expensive hardware that needs to be maintained.  I mean, yes, they are going to need some mech/armor.  Particularly for c-moves but I would prioritize unmanned systems, engineer and infantry training, PGMs of any and all sorts....and the guns. 
All of this is Defensive and Denial though.  I honestly do not know what offensive operations look like now.  As a min one would have to clear RA UAS from the sky and then somehow deal with their ATGMs and sniping vehicles.  And then breach the minefields.  I mean the whole thing looks and feels stuck.  I think the RA can bleed but they won't bleed out enough to collapse without a major UAS campaign.  The cost to the RA to throw human waves in and hold ground behind minefields is too low right now.  Force ratios must just be insane.  Deep strike is a must but unless the RA can be induced to collapse...well we might be stuck.  If things are stuck.  Dig in and let Russia break its hands.  My bet is that Putin will suddenly become more amiable to some sort of ceasefire (it will be a BS one but may buy some time) come March after he gets re-elected.  And then will spark things up again late summer and into the fall of '24 to try and influence the US election.
What grinds my gears, is the US far right who point blame and fingers, while at the same time actually sabotaging the war itself.  I can agree with most Republicans who want accountability and good stewardship. But trying to lose a war while blaming someone else for it is just really low.  

Ok, lets put all the rest of that uncited nonsense to the side.  I mean your theory of us "pushing" Ukraine into this war is frankly breathtakingly obtuse and directly from the red-hat camp.  I mean after this you can go back to whatever conspiracy websites you call home.
But let's just pull on this one singular thread.  So for once, I am calling on you...the kevinkin replacement we seem to get in various versions on this forum to actually prove your point beyond your own keyboard.  You state opinion like it was fact and frankly are spewing pro-Putin lines as though they are gospel.
"How is Ukraine losing this war?"  "How is Russia winning it?"  Feel free cite MacGregor.  Your position is that Ukraine has somehow "lost" by not achieving goals set out in the Summer '23 offensive.  What were those goals?  How do those goals determine the outcome of the war?
The Ukrainian military has already won this war.  Unlike whatever HBO/Hollywood narratives you subscribe to, wars rarely end in totals.  Victory parades and Johnny marching home.  The end somewhere in the middle.  In this case we have outlined repeatedly how Russia totally failed to achieve both their stated strategic objectives, and their most likely true ones.  Ukraine has achieved it major strategic objective...it still exists and is able to resist.  It retook roughly the same area of land as the size of freakin Ireland from what was supposed to be the second largest army in the world.
The Russian military is in tatters.  Blown all to hell.  They are still twitching but until I see an actual RA offensive that does not look like glorified leg humping, they are basically only good for holding the line.  NATO got Finland and will get Sweden.  Ukraine is in talks to join the EU.
So basically the Macgregor crowd - of which I am placing you - are now crowing because the UA was unable to re-take back those last few acres of the strategic corridor.  That is not only incredibly sh#tty given the loses they took in that effort, it is desperately trying to rejuvenate a broken narrative.  This war could freeze right where it is.  Ukraine could become like Korea, split.  And history will judge this a major Ukrainian victory.  
Actually, change that.  Don't even bother to try and prove your point because I already know what you are going to say- I have heard it a dozen times over now.  "Ukraine lost (yay!), we were right all along about US isolationism and the world will be such a better place if we stayed out of it altogether.  Oh and look who is blocking funding to Ukraine to keep them in the fight and then blaming everyone else because 'they are losing the war'"
Ok, we are done here...ignore.  

Because China is ROC x 1000 at manufacturing. Infiray can presumably outproduce FLIR by several orders of magnitude just for thermal modules alone, let alone the rest of China’s excellent small drone industry.
God it grinds my gears that we essentially gave Russia enough time to figure out what works, while cutting support to Ukraine.

The Republicans are essentially a revolutionary movement at this point and are going way beyond what was considered acceptable (i.e. politics ends at the waters edge) in the era of consensus. That said, as you note above, the border has been hurting Democrats politically while there hasn't been an easy way for Democrats to address it. If, perforce, the White House must accept a harsh border law to safeguard the global order, you can quite easily envisage a Dobbs situation where the politics starts running in the opposite direction. 
It is my hope that the WH can wrangle out a deal from the most irresponsible opposition in my lifetime in American politics. Ukraine aid is at best 50/50 right now. 

Used to subscribe, but won't even read it anymore after their Editorial Board article opining that step one to reducing the deficit is cutting back on veteran's benefits. Nope. 
The gist of their opinion being that veterans are getting partial disability but still able to work. Well, duh. It's not JUST about work. It's about life. What if the partial disability was that they lost a hand or lower arm and can no longer play piano, or they lost almost all of their hearing, or they were a marathon runner and lost a lower leg, or two....  I could go on, but it's about compensation for life altering injuries caused by being sent into combat. Sure, in *all* of those examples, the veteran can work, at some job, even good jobs, maybe even the job they were in before the service. But life overall has become different now, with great loss to the important things in life. It's not *just about work. As a former chief engineer who was our group leader told me once (and one of the smartest guys I ever knew), "You work to live, not live to work." 
Sorry for the off-topic but this is a huge sore spot with me. The WaPo got slaughtered in the comments for that editorial but they did not retract it or comment in any way. Someone pointed out that no one who wrote that garbage ever served. Not surprised.
We return you now to your regular warfare news.
To make an on-topic post, for myself, being essentially a Cold Warrior (although things in the 82d could occasionally get "interesting"), I would have *loved* to have the technology that is available for today's artillery. Watching all the videos of using drones to call and adjust artillery fire. These are real game changers in supporting fire. Imagine the savings in ammunition there has been because of the ability to see the enemy so much better, or to see him AT ALL, even when out of sight of any forward observer. And even at that, both sides burn through artillery ammo at a staggering rate. Coolest thing we had were the very first laser target designators and we thought that was Star Wars level stuff at the time. 
Dave
PS - I subscribe to the NYT and the Times of London, so if anyone wants an article gifted from those, let me know 🙂
 

What's interesting is that those that are constantly harping about democracy and freedom being destroyed are the ones actually destroying democracy and freedom, at least in the US.  In 2020 (and coming in 2024) we faced the end of american democracy.  A giant mob of these brainless idiots even attacked and captured the US capital!  First time in over 200 years for that!  And what is said of this on the right?  "oh, was a little dustup!".  And these same people generally think religion should be more in charge in the US, while at the same time constantly harping about the constitution which very clearly says "hell no" to that.  
The enemy of democracy is ignorance and demogogery.  Fox news in the US being the primary source of this.  Fox news viewers have no idea what's actually happening.  It's news & infotainment for people that literally can't handle the truth.  They think the 2020 election was stolen, yet have no evidence other than "some black people were seen.."  (do they even know that Fox CHOSE to settle out of court and pay out ~$750M in a civil suit because of their election lies??)   They think climate change is a hoax despite their own thermometers.  They think Trump didn't didn't do anything wrong while the rest of us have actually seen the indictments and the mountains of damning evidence.  They think Jan 6 was everything except what it actually was -- a mob induced by Trump to try to overthrow the duly elected govt of the US -- it was an atttemped coup.
So western society is not being destroyed by gays or transgenders or atheists.  It's being destroyed by ignorant, nationalist, rage-filled fools who listen to rightwing propaganda to the point where they can't even stitch two thoughts together about reality yet think they are saving america while actively trying to destroy it, through their utter stupidity.

I was going for a more mocking angle to be honest.  Since the dawn of time people - usually old people - have somehow hooked whatever social ills they see onto a crisis.  “Moral decline”, “Hippies”, “Homosexuality”, “Women who can vote”!
Human social systems are naturally a mix of progressiveness and conservatism.  And rarely, if ever, does a war start based solely on whatever social issue means most to you.  We did not start wars because “the church” since the Crusades, possibly the Middle Ages - and even then there was a whole lotta money and power at play.  We sure as hell have never started a war over any of the rest of “damn kids these days” stuff.
The West is not going to fall over the obsolescence of religion or LGBTQ issues, or whatever you are worried about.  Why?  Because it didn’t last time with “women voting”, “civil rights” and “rock and/or roll”.  In fact since those End Times, the West has continued it rise in power and wealth.  
If anything does destroy the West it will be power hungry egomaniacs that leverage all that social angst into something really dangerous.  They aren’t doing it because they really care about our church/mosque/raccoon ratios - they are doing it to take more power.  The dismantling of democracy, social divisions that turn cancerous, deep corruption and greed- this is how empires die.  Not because we decide to stop going to freakin church and start this strange new thing called “meditation”.  

I get that you might be having a bad day but there is so much unwarranted angst in this post: absolutely nobody in “The West” argues that children should have the right to choose their gender.  No-one is emptying our churches (though there are many fewer people heading in) and less than nobody is “emptying churches so they can be turned into mosques”.
Reconsider the merits of whatever media source has told you these things.  You rightly identify that we are in a collision of systems but make no mistake: it is the enemies of our Western system who promote misinformation such as what you posted above in order to foster the very division you warn against.   Seeing through that, being less angry about things that aren’t happening and therefore being a part of a secure Western system is the best way to maintain focus and win. 

It is not worthless I fear, it is bad lessons.  People will walk away with a bunch of factoids about mine breaching systems and suddenly are “experts” around the water-cooler.  From this they can draw all sorts of really bad conclusions.
The biggest reason why mine breaching systems fail is because someone kills them while they are trying to do their job.  Watching that video can easily lead someone to think “well send them better kit” - we saw this with the tanks in spades.  And then we send them better kit and it still doesn’t work.  “Well they must be doing it wrong cause the YouTube guy said…”
The entire point of putting up an information piece is to provide people with the knowledge to make better sense of phenomena.  For this one needs expertise.  We see the death of expertise in modern era.  Anyone with a channel can suddenly be an expert in anything.  For example, retired SF guys with YouTube channels talking about formation level logistics.  They never served in a J4 staff or been trained as a professional logistics officer.  But they rub SF “Ranger” patches and suddenly they know what they are talking about.
This is just misinformation and in many cases is just chasing likes and subscribes.  Problem is that it can easily slide into disinformation and outright fiction.  The worst sin are people like Macgregor who know better but keep spreading false info regardless.
I do not know what to do about it.  I am not a social media expert…but maybe if I did a YouTube channel…
I for one can only try to do the best I can in this little forum in outer rings of the information sphere.  And on this one backwater thread on a tiny wargaming companies back…we can aspire to do a bit better.  The rest of the internet will just have to sort itself out.

We will try and negotiate with it.  The threads of this negotiation are already there.  The narratives of “Silly Ukrainians, Silly Russians” are all basically saying “well sure, in Ukraine…but we would do it better”.  This sort of collective denial will be subtle and deep, at a cultural level.
Then as evidence mounts we will try and take these new technologies and bolt them onto our existing systems and doctrine.  In the west, our military tactics and units have not really changed that much since WW2.  The TF/BG concept has had all new tech bolted onto it and Unmanned will be as well.  We will spend billions on counters to try and protect that old concept.  But as you note we won’t be able to, the shifts are too big.
Next, we will get all “out of the box” and create experimental units and doctrine that looks good on the surface but in reality is designed to fail.  This will validate that the old orgs and doctrine were right all along.  We normally do this by half-measures - we do not build a complete coherent experimental system.  We just take away the old stuff.
Then we will hit a forcing function.  A real world disaster that we cannot negotiate with or ignore.  It will cost a bunch of teenagers their lives.  Then we will scramble to try and realign.  It will be expensive and brutal.  After that, well the whole thing becomes a dice roll.  It didn’t have to be, but this is where sunk cost fallacies get you.
Air-Land warfare has changed.  More, it is continuing to change.  It isn’t just the pace, it is the depth.  Fundamentals and foundational principles are challenged (eg Surprise, Concentration, Mission Command).  This is not simply “a better tank killer”, this is stuff that breaks force ratios, tempo, and basic utility of what we thought was combined arms.  The death of how we used to do minefield breaching ops is just the latest in a very long line of doctrine that look more and more obsolete.  I strongly suspect that joint warfare as a whole is shifting under our feet.  RMA has finally landed with a big enough bang to get our attention.
What will follow the Russo-Ukraine war will be a decade long argument.  But in the end, everyone in charge will have come up in the old system.  Further, we do not really promote radical Tesla-type disruptors to be GOs in modern militaries.  So we are looking at a pretty conservative bunch steeped in a conservative military culture and doctrine.  Oh, and with a trillion dollar defence industry tooled for stuff we had for the last 80 years.
Not a good start.

It does show a tactical example in this war.  And the brutality is not something people should try and ignore.  War has a cost and everyone should see what that cost is.
That said, I would definitely not recommend to vets out there as it could be triggering.  IED strikes look pretty much identical to be honest.  Worst case was trapped in a burning vehicle and it happened far too often.  Total nightmare fuel there.

Short answer seems to be a combination of ISR, PGM and Unmanned systems.  The actual job of a tank is to take a big gun, move it around the battlefield, point it at the enemy and hurl a slug/shell at them.  They carry a lot of armour and other system to allow them to survive.  Ok, so let’s just break it down:
- Mobility.  Small unmanned systems have already demonstrated extremely high mobility on the battlefield.  Even with the counters and their vulnerabilities the sheer volume of those systems combined with their small size and manoeuvrability basically positions them everywhere.  A tank has mobility but it is limited in comparison.  They can roll across the battlefield at 60-80 kph, but never really do for obvious reasons.
- Survivability.  Big heavy armour no longer equals Survivability.  Distributed, redundant  cheap systems equal survival.  A force can lose 10 drones a day and still sustain that entire system, tanks cannot.  Being small and many essentially means that entire unmannned system, plus ISR is more survivable than that of armour.
- Lethality.  That big old gun projected energy like no one else’s business…whammie.  Nothing else can put a slug down range at an opponent at over 2kms per second.  Thing is that big guns performance is not the only measure of lethality.  As far as Range is concerned, PGM have far out ranged the tank gun, in some cases by an order of magnitude.  As to actual energy transfer, well chemical energy on the target at point of impact is extremely portable and distributable.  In the past the only thing keeping chemical energy in place was accuracy.  A tank gun is extremely accurate and things like artillery were not - they were considered area weapons.  This war has demonstrated in spades what PGM can do - massed precision beats everything.
So basically we are seeing a distributed systems of chemical energy-based weapons able to move and survive -as a system- and kill with better precision and range than a tank gun, at a fraction of the cost.  How many times have we noted that it looks like the UA is maneuvering via Deep Strike?  We have seen massive trends of Denial based on the combination of ISR, PGM and unmanned.  
The tank has not been replaced by a single platform, it has been replaced by a swarm…at least for right now.  If we need to move death rapidly around the battlefield that can precisely kill, well we are seeing it. If technology shows up that can sweep unmanned systems for the sky or defeat PGM well then we are back to a new-old ballgame.
The proof of this has been building in this entire war.  How many time have we seen either side try to mass mech/armour and fail?  Tanks are noted right now as fire support.  They are either being pulled forward in 1 and 2s for sniping.  Or standing off 10kms and lobbing in shells.  Why do you suppose both the UA and RA are doing this?  Is it because both sides suddenly forgot how to put 16 tanks into a squadron and smash them at an opponent? (Btw, that is the working theory for some).  Or is it because they already tried that, multiple times, and it failed to deliver?
What PGM, ISR and unmanned has not been able to deliver is breakthrough in 2023…yet.  That suite of systems is not able to provide rapid break in, through and out of an opponents defensive.  But neither can the tank, which was its primary job.  So we seem stuck in a mutual Denial situation.  What I do not know is where it goes from here.  Are we looking at Denial/Defensive primacy in warfare? - we have been here before.  Or is this a blip until PGM, ISR and unmanned fully mature?  Can we actually build the counter-systems rapidly enough to regain a level of symmetry?
We do not know.  This entire back and forth about a single ground platform is in fact silly, but not a bad way to pass a weekend.  The reality is that land warfare, maybe all warfare is likely fundamentally shifting. This is an earthquake in military affairs.  We do not know if AirPower works the same.  We do not know if Offence works the same.  We do not know if combine arms as we knew it works anymore.  Manoeuvre Warfare, Mission Command, how we force develop and generate…they are all looking like they may be in the wind.  Hell based on the last week, I am not sure Naval Warfare as we knew it is going to survive.  Trying to figure out what still works, what does not and what will work is going to be the central challenge moving forward.  Unless we fall back on “Russia Sux” and “Poor UA just don’t get it”, which we will of course.  It won’t be until some NATO force gets crushed in some 3rd party nation that the lights will go off…or maybe we will buck the trend and get out in front of the change…we have managed it before.