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People certainly make war more than machines. However to simply characterize it as a Turkey shoot, as if any military could have shown up and performed the same is simply not showing any level of understanding. If it had simply been Abrams and GPS that won the day, then it would have been a much less straight forward conflict. As the case was an average to good third world military got taken apart by the US military at what I would contend was its height of readiness and capability relative to the rest of the world. It was a campaign that is worth reading into more than the Iraqis simply assuming their positions in front of a firing squad, and the Coalition forces simply assuming the rifles that had been laid out for them. As far as Arabs at War, there's a few very good books on the topic I could point you at if you're interested. It's not as simple as portrayed. Regardless the post (and frankly when there was still a Soviet Union) Soviet soldier delivered unto us some pretty marginal performance so I am not sure exactly what your point is in that regard. The Soviet model valued operational performance over tactical skill and it showed/shows in junior officer/NCO performance. Re: Wider troop value discussion Perhaps we're getting a bit off base. It really doesn't matter if the Iraqi forces were "regular" vs "green," as one can make arguments for both (or I'd contend on the defense they at least were somewhat competent against peer to marginally better than peer threats, on the offense, total and utter lost causes). What's more relevant is what the scenario designer wants to accomplish. We are after all, playing a game, What's important is making the scenario "work" by far more than making it "real"

Just to throw it out there, ask yourself, was the Iraq war's outcome purely because the Iraqis were "bad" or because they were an average 3rd World army that suddenly found itself thrown at a military force designed to take on the best the Soviets had and win? Consider that the Iraqi army was filled with folks who passed through a very long and bloody conflict, and was equipped about as well as your average non-Soviet Warsaw Pact military. I've always taken the troop rating to be sort of a center of mass for a unit, with some percentage being better or worse than that standard (D/2-9 IN is "regular" because it's a normal well trained US Army unit, but tanks 14, and 22 are frankly excellent crews so they're actually veteran, while tank 11 is commanded by a moron so it's actually green). In that regard, taking my own spin from the manual: Conscript: Has been adequately informed where the bullets come from on their rifle and little else. Well represents units hastily trained. Formations may include some veteran fighters, but since it's a rating for squads and crews, this effect is often diluted. Will likely still have some "green" teams that represent folks who just take to war better than others. Green: "Regular" military forces with problems. Not a bad level to represent hastily activated reserve type units (again, there might be some very good combat veterans in the formation, but the squad they lead hasn't worked together in months if not years) or perhaps units poorly prepared for combat (say something like the Egyptian Army operating outside of an internal security role) Regular: Most every normal every day Army unit, or reserve units that have had time to fully mobilize and complete train up. Nothing special, but does exactly what's printed on the box. Also forces that were "green" at the start of the conflict, not quite as wired as a regular unit would be, but no longer tripping over their shoelaces either. Veteran: Regular units that are just a bit better for some reason. Could be they've figured a lot out on the road to Donbass and they're pretty darn good at their job now. Could be they're the elite of their nation's regular military. Also good to represent a qualitative difference between two "regular" units (or a very well drilled and prepared ABCT coming off of a large exercise with the Poles running into a Russian armor Brigade that's been in garrison for the last six months. The Russian unit isn't going to be bad enough to be "green" but there's certainly a qualitative edge to the American unit in this situation). Crack: Some folks are just great soldiers. Every unit in combat seems to pick up those dudes who are just disturbingly good at what they do, and sometimes the rest of their squad/crew follows suite. Good to represent a regular team/vehicle that's seen some combat and excelled, but frankly the number of truly "crack" organizations (so a crack platoon or company) should be quite small. Elite: Should hardly be used outside of missions where you really want to set aside certain units as something special. Perhaps tank D22 is manned by the greatest tanker to ever tank, and his prowess will make or break 2nd Platoon in the coming battle. But again, elite should be virtually unheard of in peacetime regular military units, and very very rare even in veteran forces.

I think it'd cut both ways considering the state of western counter measures suites. I imagine it's always somewhat abstracted in.

Or is it? Additional armor has been discussed, but part of every M1A3/M1A2 SEP v3 model I've seen trotted out has been weight reduction. Including a new lighter main gun (same basic performance, but employing material sciences advances to make the whole assembly weigh less), replacing much of the copper wiring harness (which does come out to tons of material), and other odds and end. It's going to be interesting to see where it winds up, but "heavier" is not exactly certain.

Here's the super-sexy VHS 1990 version for those of you who like retro stuff: One of my instructors uploaded it for MCCC. The tactics haven't changed much, although some of the equipment has changed (engineers are now in Bradleys obviously vs M113s, ABV has taken over the CEV's position etc).

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. It's not intended to screen more than the vehicle itself, but it's also intended to screen a wide enough area to allow the tank to maneuver or withdraw without leaving the smokescreen. If tanks are especially close the smoke will mask all of them.

Impossible. Russian VDV will be rerouted to deal with the Japanese-Korean-USMC invasion of Vladivostok, and it's frankly impossible for much of anything to happen once the Neo-Ottoman Turkish Jihadists reach Volgograd. And all that will be simply setting up for the US 2nd, 3rd, 4th Armored that will certainly be reactivated in the face of Russian aggression coming over the pole via hovercraft. Moscow will be secured in days by specially modified EOD robots armed with laser pulse rifles, and the killing blow will actually be accomplished by physic doom troopers in the basement of the Pentagon, projecting ill thoughts straight into the minds of Russians everywhere. Re: John Barleycorn and friends It's an interesting question as to if the consumption of the booze is the disease or simply a manifestation of other issues (poor discipline, lack of meaningful ties to mission, poor unit cohesion etc). Re: Ukrainian Problems The Ukraine has a long ways to go. However historically the defender's failings are less punishing than the attacker's. A great example is how long and how much effort it took to subdue the Nazis well after whatever qualitative and quantitative edge they had was shot. The various airsofter forces are equally burdened but doing so on the offensive which makes their effectiveness dubious. A general offensive will require complete Russian commitment, and even then I wouldn't hold out as much hope. The Ukrainians have had a few years to get hard and start to fix their military. I wouldn't totally discount a successful "short" war for the Russians, but I contend long term political-economic fallout would negate it's value. Frankly a longer war would more or less dismantle Russia's place as a part of Europe. Even defeating the Ukraine there'd be no victory. NATO would expand, economic sanctions would expand several times over, and Russia's "soft" power weak as it is would be gone, and it's "hard" power is frankly too weak to accomplish much in the wider picture.

Yeah. Tried that a few times over. I think the issue is the forum saves whatever you wrote before hand if you walk away before posting it, and once it's saved it will let you delete the contents of the quote box, but you can backspace all you want and the quote box itself will not disappear.

Why thank you Vlad! Also does anyone know how to clear a quote? I might have changed my mind on actually posting something back on the 14th, deleted it, and yet, the quote box remains without text within it. This is definitely true. I once ran into a dude from India who believed earnestly the MIG-25 could best literally every western plane ever built. F-15? Easy meat. Typhoon? Handily. F-22? CRUSHED BY FOXBAT SUPERIOR.

It's all relevant to messaging and perceptions though. A mess of badly damaged Harriers was an unpleasant surprise....but a costly complicated war, another unpleasant surprise was oddly enough not at all unsurprising. The "cheap easy war" narrative wore off years before, and frankly given the transparency involved in the conflict, there never was I would argue a shocking dramatic turn for Afghanistan, it was just rah-rah 'murica until Iraq hit the fan, then the "other" war you could go that wasn't as scary as Iraq, and then the slide into "why did we even come here" it has gotten to. The Russian narrative is somehow the Russians are going to make everything better by being Russian because realistically Syria is a simple problem of terrorists and good guy President Assad, and all it will take is good Russian soldiers and guns to make the problem go away, and the middle east will return to peace and everyone will love Russia most because Russia is good! While played up for sarcasm, this really isn't far off base from Russian claims. Things that run counter to these claims like major setbacks, uncooperative locals, ineffective regime operations, the fact there's "terrorists" on both sides undermine this narrative deeply, which can make a fairly modest loss of equipment rather outsized in terms of how "major" the attack was. It doesn't help too that the lack of Russian transparency on the entire ordeal makes it really easy for folks to both totally discard the Russian account, because honestly there's still no Russian troops in the Ukraine, and the Ukrainians shot down MH-17 if we're going down that route, and then fill in a reality that is much worse than what actually happened. It wasn't just a really effective rocket strike, using insider intelligence, it was actually a kill squad of traitor ethnic Russian converts who defected, and snuck into the base murdering several dozen Russian troops who will be gradually "killed" via "accidents" in order to hide the truth of this terrible event. It was actually a battle between Russian and Syrian troops who'd found out Putin is not going to end the war, but instead keep it going forever to test out Russian weapons on innocent Syrians. Frankly, Russians are just too stupid and drunk to not smoke on the flightline, and accidentally tried to put out the fire with a gasoline truck haha stupid dumbies, etc, etc, etc. As a sort of TLDR summary, rarely will "major" victories in a asymmetrical war have much to do with actual losses, but will have everything to do with the effect the outcome has on how the conflict is seen. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a steaming disaster, and American forces proved able to take the attack on the chin, and strike back with a vengeance. However shown to a public tired of the war, the "victory" was irrelevant next to the "reality" the war just wasn't going to ever end, and by god why are we still fighting in that stupid country? The overall Russian death count might be pretty low at the end of the day, but one can imagine how even a handful of dead might become a major defeat if those dead were filmed being dragged behind trucks driven by the people the Russians came to "save."

Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus. It's rare to get mortar derived ground fires. They spit out fragments pretty well, but there's nothing especially flammable about them. You'll get lucky hits every now and then that trigger something explosive, like the FOB Falcon AHA incident, but that would be less common. The fact that much of the soot and burn pattern is disconnected is also interesting, as is the fire crossing roads and tarmac (while not entirely uncommon, it's behavior usually associated with firestorms or other high wind events). The Russian version of events, or perhaps versions of events all do not seem to be doing an especially good job at explaining what little we know about what happened. In any event it as all simply swamp gas and Venus.

I heard it was actually swamp gas reflecting off of Venus.

Oh I'm well aware of the insider stuff. I was just trying to think of situations that would be beyond simply unfortunate and well into "never speak of this again" levels of things going wrong. I certainly wouldn't rule out some especially "patriotic" and "pro-Russian" Syrian with a smart phone or even just a good memory getting the lay of the land for whatever happened next.

It could just be an extreme version of how the US reacted to enemy attacks. While it sometimes leaked out regardless, we tried to avoid giving the insurgents much in the form of battle damage information. So we WOULD release injured/killed numbers simply because transparency/it's the right thing to do for the families of those guys, we wouldn't say they died when the mortar round nailed the daily 1400 baseball game at the recreation area because it let the enemy know what they were hitting, and how to continue to make it effective. A great example of this, was on my last FOB. It had been a much larger compound before we took if over, and had preciously had a wide array of recreational activities, real buildings with foundations to live in, and indoor plumbing. When we took it over however, we only occupied a very small corner of it, away from the "nice" part of the post which was abandoned. We took rockets and mortars very frequently, but they were positively raining down on the now vacant buildings. If people had lived there, we'd have taken all sorts of losses. But instead we just kept mum about it, told our Iraqi counter parts simply that the mortars all "missed" and every attack from the first to the last went right into those buildings. It could be the Russians were hoping to do the same, by entirely not recognizing the attack or admitting any damage, that ISIS wouldn't know that it had been wildly successful, which might explain why there was never a ISIS claim of doing the damage, because as far as they knew until the news story hit, they missed. Just a random guess. It's also just possible it's deeply embarrassing that the Russians were unable to self-secure, or some Chechen contract soldier or something re-found Allah in the desert and did some serious damage. Either way it's an interesting point of data, and when paired with Russian historical deceit and lack of transparency, begs for further inquiry.

Don't worry about realism. I mean, sort of worry about it, but accept sometimes a good fight is more interesting than a realistic battle. I do micro armor table top stuff sometimes, and I usually set it in Korea. My DPRK is many times more armor focused and capable than the real one, and my battlefields are way more maneuver friendly than anywhere in Korea. It's okay if you're writing a scenario and Mariupol is your objective. It's just a bit off if you're trying to guess how a war in the Ukraine involving total Russian commitment might play out. There's some rumblings that the Russian truthiness might be running the par for the course. I think Steve might be referring to this though: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36368346 Which is rather curious to say the least.

At a glance, actually it looks like they only just barely made it into service in the very late war Pacific fighting, with most US sniper weapons being M1903A4 based.

I've got other things to attend to, so speed replies! You're not approaching this objectively. You're asking why we should take Mariupol instead of the more relevant question of if we should take Mariupol. You've already reached the conclusion it must be taken, now you're just tacking reasons onto it. Firstly, as always your "limited war" is just World War Three's opening acts. This is about the standard for your posting, but it's a distinction worth making again. This will end with the usual limited strikes on Western Europe/Eastern Seaboard of the US spiel, with the odd lack of recognition that again, you've started World War Three. Secondly to accomplish your opening acts of global war level actions, maybe Mariupol would be required. Without a doubt it's a major node, and in a long drawn out campaign it has facilities that, assuming they haven't been destroyed may become of some use. However Russia does not have the resources, national will, or intent to conduct a long drawn out campaign, because for reasons discussed, and agreed to by all parties, it's a conflict they will lose and lose badly. Which gets to the heart of the matter: There is no need to take Mariupol for a limited warfare engagement, and it in fact, is highly detrimental to Russian self interest to get dragged into fighting in a major urban center for two airfields it will never use, and access to parts of the country it may not even need to get to. The pricetag of a major urban slugfest is too much to bear for a limited short conflict both in "loss" and "opportunity loss." The Iraq conflict in 2003 is exactly why you're not getting it. The US had the national will, capabilities, and support (or perhaps lack of opposition) internationally to stage and fight a war to conventional conclusion. The way it accomplished that is going into Baghdad and blowing up statues. Al Nasiryah is a key node to get from SP to RP if that is your mission. In a limited border skirmish, which is what Russia can afford to get into, it makes zero sense to pay for and retain major real estate. A large scale raid makes sense because it offers the lowest risk for greatest reward, and preserves the most Russian forces for the future. Opening large parts of the Russian military to the receiving end of "Operation Ukrainian Liberty" in exchange for land it cannot hold, or even use if it could is deeply silly. RE: Kettler/TOS-1 Think of it like the direct fire employment of the M12 in Aachen. It was a very powerful tool that made the fight easier at times. It did not however ultimately change the battle and allow for a rapid conquest of a major urban center. Good weapons make good tactics and strategy better, they do not replace them.

Depends on what the strategy or national objectives are. If the plan is restore the 1991 USSR borders because Russia Stronk or whatever, then frankly I might as well send a pack of Putin Youth with sharp objects in because it's a fool's errand to begin with. If it's a more modest mission, damage the Ukrainian state to the degree it has to recognize the various fake-states I've carved off of it, I'm just going to bypass the city and go for softer targets. This is another wargamerism that we get trapped in. We're consistently placed in front of a difficult problemset and asked to accomplish what is usually a goal well beyond what is intelligent or practical (here's looking at you Mission 2 from CMSF). There's never the question of "why" and that's an important thing to have to dissect. Why is it important to occupy Mariupol? What national objectives are accomplished by taking that city by force? Are those objectives attainable? Is the good that will come of them worth the sacrifices it will require both in terms of treasure and opportunity? So again, assuming we're doing an Corps-Army level raid, we're just showing up to burn up enough Ukrainian stuff, demonstrate their impotence and threaten national integrity before NATO shows up. Let's look at Russia's strengths vs the Ukraine: 1. Superior fires (artillery-aviation as a net ability to break stuff over the horizon) 2. Superior maneuver warfare complex (armor-mech infantry-supporting arms teams) 3. Superior C2/counter-C2 Now let's look at weaknesses: 1. Limited campaign length. If the fight goes on too long I'll have more trouble than I can handle. 2. Robust enemy "light" formations (regular infantry or unconventional forces) 3. Enemy is fighting on his home soil with supportive population. All of my advantages favor a rapid war of maneuver, using superior mobility to strike where the enemy is weak, avoid his strong points, and inflict major damage to the Ukrainian state's economic, political and military structures across a fairly wide swath. In open terrain I can leverage my artillery and aviation freely, and Ukrainian armor is inferior to Russian armor (as formations, not simply equipment wise). However all of my weaknesses are brought to the forefront the farther I go into a city. I lose most of my advantages, and the enemy gains some advantages over me. Further I am obligated to spend my strength much less efficiently cordoning off the city, while I burn through troops in difficult house to house fighting. Unless there's instricic, and decisive value to capturing the city, I am best off leaving it to hang out while I burn the countryside for Papa Putin and his fellow oligarchs or whatever.

The short version of the story is the Marines have always had a smaller budget, and a lower emphasis on tanks than the Army (which is why they only had M60A1s vs M60A3s or M1s in 1991). Just from recollection though it was readily apparent that the M60A1 was well past its prime by the late 1980's and a lot of the issues that had kept the Marines on the fence about the Abrams (perceived lack of reliability, fuel consumption) had either simply not been true or had been resolved. However as the Marines had basically opted out of the M1's development process, there were a lot of odds and ends the basic Abrams at the time (the M1A1HA, the first model with DU inserts) lacked that the Marines considered important (mounting lugs for wading trunks, odds and ends like that). The Army was also doing some upgrades to the M1A1HA fleet at the time such as later generation DU inserts and various mechanical upgrades. As a result, a new version of the Abrams panned out as the "M1A1HC" for "Heavy Common" which denoted the "Heavy" DU armor, and that it had all the various bits and bobs to make it Marine friendly (thus "common"). The first batch of them was intended for the USMC in light of their obsolete tank fleet, and the first five or so of them went straight from the factory to the Middle East. Functionally not much different than the late model M1A1HAs in the Army use, they were strictly speaking the most modern tanks of any of the military forces deployed to Desert Storm. However in more practical terms, the majority of Abrams in USMC use were from US Army stocks, and represented a selection of M1A1HAs* (if I recall correctly, total USMC Abrams count was 1 Battalion complete plus one Company, with the remainder being M60 based). *The M1A1HA had three odd little sub varients too which confuses things further: M1A1HA: M1A1 tank equipped with the then new DU armor inserts, operational 1987 if I recall correctly. M1A1HA+: Unofficial designation for M1A1HAs equipped with a modernized DU insert that would become fleet standard in the M1A1HC M1A1: And oddly enough a few hundred older M1A1s were upgraded to M1A1HA standard in Saudia Arabia during the build up to the war. Functionally equal to other M1A1HAs, just with some minor differences.

I think you highly overestimate the ability of rotary wing to locate targets in an urban environment while someone tries to shoot them down. There were several sharp, although still lopsided fights between US and Iraqi forces in 2003 when Iraqi armor was found in urban areas. And that was with superior platforms, and a much more permissive airspace. If we're assuming this is a NATO involved war, laying siege isn't going to work fast enough to get it done before you're dodging bombers. Also in capturing key roads, you're basically missing the point of urban warfare, instead of having to secure one cohesive front, you've basically got a spider web you have to secure, which still yields much of the city to the Ukrainians who have no small amount of capability to straight up murder your logistics, or just cut your supply lines and turn the tables on your elements in the city. Sort of like Grozny. I think you'll find it shocking, but the Marines actually had the most advanced tanks in the Persian Gulf War. While the lion's share of their tank fleet was the M60A1 with ERA (they never operated the M60A3 in number), the first batch of M1A1HCs were sent straight to the Marines in the Gulf. While most of their M1s would be M1A1HAs (or their equivalent) borrowed from the Army, the M1A1HC represented the most recent M1 variant at the time. As sort of an interesting question, where do the Spetsnaz live while they're waiting the go-ahead?

It'll be a tough run. Using unconventional fighters might be helpful in taking important nodes, or disrupting Ukrainian deployments. But single points of failure are harder to find in urban settings simply because as a city, they're large interlinked grids of avenues of approach. If Spetznaz takes Victory Square intersection, they can be bypassed down 7th October Road. As the attacker you really genuinely need to conduct a deliberate clearance block by block, with integrated plan to prevent the enemy from infiltrating your rear areas. This when done effectively is rarely fast. You could do a "show" invasion and take over important landmarks, drive in RT to celebrate great victory over fascists, but that'll still leave large Ukrainian forces in control of the city, and YOU on the defensive to prevent your units from being Groznyed. Also as long as major forces continue to function within the city, it will continue to require containment and a sizable force in the city to do the actual clearance. I'll concede it might succeed if the Ukrainians just have no fight in them, the Russians literally catch everyone with their pants around their ankles, and everything the Russian Military does goes flawlessly, but that's well and beyond a reasonable expectation to plan around, and is unlikely in any event given the current level of Ukrainian resolve and the sort of attention the region has on it for intelligence collection.

Dude. Look at the Navy Ratings system and tell me that's a good idea. I dare you. Because you will so be grounded for further psychological testing because you are CLEARLY showing signs of complete madness.

Back in the day when it was relevant, in terms of CAS/CCA (The US Army refers to in the in-house rotary wing as "Close Combat Attack," everyone else wold just call it CAS), the in-house Army stuff was easiest to talk to because they spoke our language. Marines were trickier because they really got CAS, but occasionally they'd have issues with communications (I'm not sure on the exacts, I thought they used the same family of radios) or an insistence on having a Marine to do the talking on the radio because we didn't speak jarhead or something. But once you got them there they did good stuff. Navy occasionally doesn't really grasp what you're trying to do. Like intrinsically the concept of a land thing shooting at other land things is daunting and they're not really sure what to make of your strange tracked land boat. But all you really need to do is let them know where the thing you want to explode the other land boats needs to go and they'll do some crazy aviator juju and it'll happen. They will occasionally get lost in childlike wonder at even fairly modest tales of doing Army stuff on the ground***. Air Force needs to be reminded it had a sortie that day and given crew rest* to recover from the bus ride to the flightline**. It will also insist that the air element be entirely coordinated through some guy you've never seen before that nominally is "attached" to your organization. He will show up three hours late to the training exercise. *Crew rest is something that conceptually I understand as flying a thing is a pretty intensive activity and doing it after 15 hours of operation and two hours of sleep is bad. It doesn't go over as well when you're doing a training exercise, and the tanker-infantry team is on hour 20 of being awake while the aviators are playing cards and napping at their FARP within LOS of the training area. **The USAF can do great things. And it's a very lethal force that I'm glad is on my side. Institutionally though it's the least user friendly, and frustratingly least inclined to train with ground forces. ***As a funny story, I visited London as a fairly new Captain after my second deployment. A friend of my father's had a cousin who was a military officer working at the US Embassy, and through that round about connection said officer offered to host me for dinner. Again, since this was grapevine level communication it was mentioned the cousin was a Captain, so I figured he was any number of Army, Marine, or USAF foreign area officers or something. Actually I had dinner with a Captain USN (so Colonel equivalent) F/A-18 dude. Like THE senior USN rep to the United Kingdom. It was pretty cool, we talked shop, and really nice dude. But it was a really interesting conversation to talk to someone like six layers removed in rank and role from my little Armored Cavalry/Armor corner of the battlefield. It did get weird in that his family went all Von Trapp after dinner and he played guitar. His wife graciously realized they were scaring the JO and took me aside while the Captain Trapp found his guitar and let me know it was socially acceptable to flee if I didn't want to sing along. I escaped into the London night to the sounds of "Micheal Row Your Boat Ashore."

You need a lot more for urban operations. Think of it this way: On fairly open fields how much battlespace can a tank effect? It's a lot, possibly several square KM, weapons can fire out to maximum effective range. It also has enough room for other tanks to maneuver and assist it. In an urban setting, what sort of lines of sight do you think it has? How much battlespace can it effect? How much room is there for other tanks to assist it? In a narrower, more confined space, the overall effect of things that would otherwise be great combat multipliers becomes muted, and technological edges become quite dull. Also in urban settings the importance of a methodical clearance becomes central, unless you're securing virtually every house, closing off all the various subterranean access points, securing all parallel routes you're going to be getting RPGed through the back of your tank, or having Ukrainians shooting your HQ communications repairman when he goes into a house to take a leak constantly. All of these require a lot more men than normal force proportions, and 2:1 is fairly disastrous*. For instance, Fallujah was taken by 13,000+ troops with modern aviation, artillery etc against 3,000 or so insurgents with mostly small arms, IEDs, and pretty limited AT assets. And it took over a month to do. You might be able to do urban warfare fast with lots of men, or do it very slow with fewer, but you are not going to clear a major urban center against an organized military defending its homeland in a week with only a 2:1 force ratio. Further you're thinking troop-centric. Military forces are intended to be expended somewhat when the value of their destruction outweighs their loss. Forcing Russia into an urban battle that negates most of their advantages, while deploying their forces roughly out in the open to maintain the essential containment on the proverbial anvil to await the hammer is likely a good use of the defenders even if they are "Destroyed" (military destroyed vs "really" destroyed, no longer capable of missions until reconstituted), and not even an especially risky one. From the Army end of things, not that bad. We maintained something like 12/14 tanks at some level of "I am comfortable sending men to fight in this**" We hit 14/14 fairly often, and especially when getting ready for major readiness events as that's when our budget accommodated surging major repair parts. I think we dipped to 7/14 once but that was thanks to idiot mechanics*** who did our services wrong so we had to pull some engines. In wartime this would have been discovered prior to going forward (they really screwed up), and we'd have received tanks from the ORF, or even a push of complete power packs. What's difficult to gauge is actual readiness, and Fox News is not a good source for that given its sensational bend. We had times were I honestly could have claimed we had zero tanks ready to fight. Of course that was because we were doing a month-long overhaul, and we'd been at one platoon in hours, two by the end of the first day, and Company complete ready to kill by sometime the next morning (you do services in stages, with each platoon doing a different kind of services over the course of a week. The guys working on the ancillary odds and ends were basically upload ammo and gear away from ready, while the guys doing hull services had engines to put back in, and other major equipment to hook back up, then ammo upload etc). What's also interesting is that some vehicle fleets are simply not maintained to maximum readiness because of the cost vs training benefit. My tank company if it was not in Korea likely would have had less operational tanks simply because we did not often maneuver more than 4-6 tanks during our Company run training events (small training areas). We'd have been brought up to 100% for anything that required all tanks (Gunnery, CALFEX etc), but fixing literally every vehicle if we didn't need to be able to go from "peace" to "war" in hours would be wasteful. Which is really why I don't put much faith in the Fox News article. It's also interesting that they're talking about F/A-18 A-D models, all of which are extinct elsewhere and likely the first planes to be replaced by F-35s should they ever work. Basically they're planes the same vintage of your average Russian fighter (maintained on a better budget) Similarly the CH-53s are also equally old. A better metric for readiness would be how the USN's F/A-18E/Fs are doing, or even USMC VF-22s. It's really missing the picture and only the most hopelessly optimistic Russian would take it as a good gauge of the kind of hurt the US military could lay on them. Cherry picking at its worst. *There's a few exceptions, such as the "Thunder Run" but you can generally find a host of reasons why it worked THEN vs being a reasonable course of action or assumption. **Able to maneuver, fully functioning weapons, FCS, optics, and communications equipment. ***No really. Most Army mechanics were all right. Just at that point in time was the perfect storm of bad mechanic team leadership, new junior enlisted mechanics, and oddly enough monsoon season.

Read up on some urban operations and come back and try again. A 2:1 force ratio in clearing a city of a half a million is stupidly small, and the complexity of the terrain will limit the effects of most of the fire support, especially in light of the lack of precision in Russian aviation and fires (they're good at hitting targets deployed in a field environment, but in an urban fight, your target acquisition will often be next door vs 1 KM away which requires fires capabilities the Russians lack). EW will be limited to some degree as the defenders will be able to operate with a variety of low tech options (local land lines, field phones, etc). Basically all Mariupol has to do is not fall. It doesn't have to push out the Russians, break their ground forces, whatever, it just has to be too dangerous to bypass, which leaves Russian forces tied around the urban area and forced to choose compromise positions that make them increasingly exposed to NATO efforts. Also the civilians play by far more into the hands of the Ukrainians in the strategic picture. It won't take too many dead Ukrainian babies in the hands of western media to harden resolve and paint the Russians as dogs and murderers ESPECIALLY if it's a policy to keep civilians in a warzone vs an unfortunate event. Unless Ukrainian forces just folded, a week isn't enough to secure that sort of urban area while opposed. Simply going in to destroy Ukrainian military assets is also stupid, frankly damage to the enemy forces alone is rarely decisive, you need to achieve national objectives or things that grant some sort of strategic advantage. The Ukraine supported by NATO can afford to bleed a lot more than the Russians can, and again unless destroying Ukrainian military assets grant a reasonable advantage vs the cost of attacking Mariupol (which they wouldn't), it just becomes Russia's Battle of Khafji.