ikalugin

T90M arrive to a combat unit in Western MD.

Yes, during Zapad-2017 and Kavkaz-2016 there were similar allegations that Russia would attack. They happen every year more or less. The B52 flights were less related with the situation in Ukraine and more to the Russian nuclear posturing over the situation in Belorussia, specifically Russian Tu160 flights but there were other components to it, such as first time a joint exercise between Iskander units and the nuclear weapon handling units was done publicly, with not-so-subtle signalling, as part of reassuring our Belorussian allies who were pushing the narrative of being under a threat of invasion. Same argument was applied to the bridge. Remember how Russia could never build a bridge into Crimea, with many reasons (ie complex geology) being cited? Yet we did. Yes, I am aware of it. And guess what, this is not the first time Crimea has issues with availability of basic resources, particularly before the energy bridge was complete there were many electrical outages thanks to some Ukrainian activists who blew the power lines.

The idea is that artillery commanders (ie battery commander) would go forward with the troops and command his guns from there, acting in part as a spotter. Operating in a vacuum regiment's or brigade's artillery divizion (battalion) thus has what, 3 battery commanders and one divizion commander (?), so could support 4 manuever units (the divizion commander would be on the direction of main effort). Same applies elsewhere. http://bastion-karpenko.ru/VVT/1V126_03.jpg You could see an example here, 1В152 is the battery or divizion commander's vehicle. Incidentally becuase of this division the actual guns could be organised in various ways, ie centralised into a RAG, where the divizion's chief of staff would be handling the fires or dispersed. BTG IMO handles well as a simplification/standartisation for the tactically focussed observers.

I made my argument before, that such headlines get formed regularly and are a scaremongering tactic. Which is why I am rediculing it now.

It is late Jan and nothing happened. Where is the invasion?

Fires are normally controlled by forward deployed artillery officers, hence why separate spotters are rare. In a high intensity war BTG is actually going to be a rare unit, but other mission orientated groupings (ie forward detachment) are going to be more common. So you are likely to expect a battalion sized force on a chosen (by the attacker ofc) axis to have commanding officers from the regimental/brigade/division artillery group with links to their artillery assets. But hey, BTGs are an easy buzzword term to fetishise, especially if you are only thinking in tactical terms.

3 to 1 is the norm driven by historical experience and lanchester laws. That said the ways you achieve 3 to 1 norm (or better) are varied, you could reinforce, you could use a strike or deception measures to reduce the enemy force or... you could reduce attack frontage (concentration of effort), etc.

It is poorly/lazily researched in general. Examples below: 1) GRU was reformed before 2017 and no longer existed under this name. 2) Those are nominal figures, note the nature of the 2016-2017 change.

Sadly the quality is, ehem, not uniform. And in some cases it is real sad, ie the DIA paper.

That sounds like a bad idea.

Would be nice to see any (all) of those programs reaching massed use.

Also includes maps, analytics. While I do not agree with all the points made it is a relatively good work. Link: https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/IOP-2020-U-028759-Final.pdf

Post 2000 books tend to be decent, good enough for a layman/enthusiast due to the availability of better source base for him to use.

Well it is December and the Russian massed offensive is somehow is still not happening.

I guess I would return to this problem after the next POTUS gets sworn in.

It is November, when was this invasion meant to happen?

The economy argument is poor, as it as a rule uses nominal GDP statistic, which, due to the weak ruble, does not represent the real size of Russian economy accurately. Same applies to military spending figures, CNA published a paper to that end, after they adjusted for PPP and imports Russia had ~1/4 of US spending (and greater than any of the Europeans), China had ~3/4. As to the regionality of Russian power - due to the Russian geographic position we have either direct influences in many of the key regions (Arctic, Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, Far East) and some indirect influence elsewhere (ie Russian operations in South America and Africa). So while Russia is not the deamon behind all world ills (we don't have the capacity or will to be that) it is still globally relevant, if weaker power.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/11/getting-the-fait-accompli-problem-right-in-u-s-strategy/ Interesting article by Kofman.

A At that bit they are moving towards loading area into the helicopters. The assumption would be that this movement is being done in the rear so to speak. The 31st Air Assault Brigade was using airlifts to enable the larger force to conduct counter strokes, from what I remember.

A cheesy documentary by Zvezda. Some neat footage though.

For detailed day to day coverage of Kavkaz-2020 I would suggest following this author: https://russianmilitaryanalysis.wordpress.com/tag/kavkaz-2020/

Considering early Russian posturing around the Belorussian crisis it concerns me significantly more than the Kavkaz-2020/Crimea story. For context this was the first time 12th GUMO has been seen exercising together with Iskander units, amongst other things (ie the Tu160 flights)

Or this is a part of a scaremongering campaign that happens every year and with every exercise. Remember the times where the land bridge was being justified with the impossibility of building a normal bridge into Crimea? Or by impossibility to supplying the peninsular with electric power? Incidentally the parts of Crimea with the most Russian interest (tourism, military) are the ones in the southern coastal area and not the central/northern Tatar populated plains most affected by water shortages. But I would suggest that we avoid really going to deep here as this may, ehem, turn political, so we can agree to disagree.

It is more likely to be related to Russian posturing due to the Belorussian crisis. It is now happening in mutual cycles.

@HaidukI am familiar with the Ukrainian narratives on the Crimea. Still, Kavkaz-2020 began, no invasion so far