ikalugin

Where did you read this?

Still waiting for those sweet Oplots, Oplots everywhere.

https://www.quiz-maker.com/Q6H4PLT Try this test.

Sadly I am less confident about modern higher education today based on my experience.

As to the Russian options - the General Staff seems to be preparing for a broad range of contigencies if the political leadership would desire to select any of them. The 080808 weights heavy on the General Staff as the predominant narrative about the 080808 war is about insufficient preparation for it. So far this resulted in formation of a division behind the LDPRs, division on the flank of CTO forces, a bunch of other formations in the area to deal with broader options. Militarily speaking I do not see a path to Kiev loyalist victory through the strength of arms as Russia can flexibly escalate to win. But in this context generating deep strike means to go after the key logistics nodes would make sense, as it would create a degree of TMA isolation, something that Georgians did not go for (they did not try to seak the Roky tunnel).

For the map sizes and engagement problems - the legacy motorised rifle battalion would have ~5km frontage in fixed defensive positions (in the ongoing conflict the positions tend to be broader). So if you are doing battalion vs battalion engagements you need larger than 5km by 5km maps as otherwise you are looking at frontal assault against a force of equal size which is very stupid. And for meeting engagements and the like the frontage could be even broader. The "lets cut of manuever part" argument is also silly as concentration of effort and mass are important principles and would lead to significantly better than 1 to 1 ratio of forces when the contact is established.

I doubt you can do regimental level battles with CMx2 style game due to the micro involved. OMG is an obsolete term. With non-linear battle all formations act in OMG-like manner.

The issue is that should Russia decide to conduct large scale operations much like CMBS campaighn assume those would be done in Army formations, with concentrated regiments, brigades (possibly divisions) and not dispersed BTGs. With a lot of artillery support but mostly exploiting the advantage in the numbers of tank units to conduct manuever battle.

The idea is that most of targets (even those that do get to the front lines - ie AFVs) are destroyed outside of the direct contact with the enemy. This is why direct fire weapons such as the (majority of) ATGMs provide fewer kills than indirect fire weapons (most of artillery). I think it is an interesting thing to think about - the impact of dumb artillery on AFVs.

It is a plaque.

Read it, in my opinion this is not a smart idea militarily speaking.

But I think we should get back on topic, or to separate this discussion from this thread, as it may kill it.

Technically speaking this discussion that we are participating is against the forum rules, though we now all share that responsibility. As to the blood - political repressions are, sadly, nothing new for the region. And unless you can both go through the war resolution process, for example via the established Minsk-2/Steinmaer's implimentation compromise or some other path, a comprehensive reform, Ukraine is not going to recover. All said I see some light, with the investigations (and court trials) into the original events of Maidan and political murders (ie that of Sheremet) advancing. Maybe we would see some grievance resolution (ie regarding the language legislation) with the Ukrainian citizens next, as well as some real reforms.

They are indeed Ukrainian citizens (well, most of them I would guess at this point due to them switching citizenship and/or moving), but there are legitimate grievances such as the ones related to the language problem, the church problem, etc. The peace thing is similar inside Donbas - the focus of fighting in civil war is on the frontlines (which drag out the fighters), unless there is a serious terroristic subtext (ie how it is sometimes with islamists). As to the scale of the militia - low rates of direct participation are fairly normal in (civil) wars, particularly low intensity ones. The citizenship initiative came in only after Kiev failed to enact the Minsk-2 relevant legislation, which was an important part of the proposed intial peace process. While those programs do exist and people do move out of Baltic states not all of them can and their right to having a passport had to be protected by the EU leadership via various measures against Baltic states. No such measures exist on part of EU or other such organisations to protect the rights of Ukrainian citizens. We can also compare the agregate economics you have mentioned in a number of ways, for example in this per capita metric Russia was in the same ballpark as Baltics till around 2013-2014: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_kd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:UKR:LTU:LVA:EST:RUS&ifdim=region&hl=ru&dl=ru&ind=false "Respecting" rights violations is not something that would improve your standing with the EU. Nor would it make the aggrieved citizens happier or more pro-Kiev, if anything this is a way to push them into the hands of ethnic nationalists (so called Russian world etc).

You are not going to make peace with people of Donbas if you do not accept the existence of their grievances and agency.

Hybrid war is a very bad term in the current usage (because it is not clearly defined) so I would prefer to avoid it. From Russian standpoint we are fairly flexible on Donbas, as there are no key interests there, so we can go ahead with compromises on Minsk-2 that seem to be less than popular in Ukraine such as Steinmaer's formula. The issue is in implimentation of those compromises both on the ground with many semi-independent actors that you need to pull from the front line and in the rear - where Kiev needs to pass the relevant (and unpopular in certain circles) legislation.

The issue for both sides is control over the actors on the ground.

Swedes looked at several NATO mobility exercises and came up with their time lines and some conclusions. You can see the relevant screenshots below. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELl5KItX0AEsiFY?format=png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELl5KJeXYAAi-sN?format=png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELl5KJcWsAAR-8B?format=png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELl5KwQXUAAc-Tw?format=png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELl5KwlWwAAzOZ5?format=png The long story cut short - it takes 2-4-6 weeks to reinforce Poland, which would imply that a rapidly developing crisis in Ukraine would not allow significant NATO reinforcements.

The practices is actually the same - the scale is different, as Russia has over 1000 (over 1400?) T72B3s, while Armatas correspond to Oplot procurement.

The mainstream is up to 3000km, note that the current Western node is still incomplete and offers only 240 degrees of coverage. The current program seems to be to complete that node for 360 degree coverage and add 3 more (North, South, East).

A direct link to the original source you are citing would be a good move forward.

Remember, politics are banned here.

O well, thanks for that clarification. So Ukraine has ~100 good T64BV mods with thermals now?

I mean the main core of the tank force seems to be composed of Soviet era T64BV with some upgraded T64BVs (Bulats and the new ones), various odd balls, some of them scavenged off export contracts that they decided to cut. A large scale upgrade program for T64BVs on the lines of the current one would be the way probably.

I think Ukraine retains around 6 of older variant tanks in service with the 50 tank contract to Thailand (which lead Thailand to switch to buying Chinese). I mean while ~60 tanks in T90M contracts (and another hundred or so in Armatas and various misc things like T80BVMs) are also underwhelming there are big ongoing export sales to India (464 more tanks with 464 more MSs being discussed) which keep UVZ afloat and happy, in addition to what, ~1500 (?) T72B3s of various mods?