The_MonkeyKing

Yeah, indeed This war is becoming less exciting to follow by the day. Especially in daily/weekly bases. Strong trends are forming and the uncertainties are disappearing, leaving mostly "known unknowns". This is a good sign.

Great general wrap-up of the situation according to Rob Lee, Michael Kofman, Konrad Muzyka "crew" unroll the tweet(s): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1681240456754077697.html

(the tweeter is a Ukrainian officer) This recent Luhansk scare has as little to do with reality as the winter scare of "new 500k Russian army" starting a major reinvasion at the beginning of this year had. I am just going to say, a couple of months ago Ukraine did its damnedest to get Russia to commit forces up north.

The full interview is coming on Friday on the Urban Warfare Project Podcast podcast https://mwi.westpoint.edu/category/podcasts/urban-warfare-project-podcasts/

That thing has a 240 kg payload. Last year bridge explosion had around 22 tons of explosives (this figure is from Russians) This time the explosion seems to have been a bit smaller but still in the same ballpark as last time

I wonder why the rail bridge was not targeted

Mother of all mine threads:

Mainly just more long-range munitions. Compared to storm shadow capability, ATACMS might be easier to intercept (this is unknown but possible S300/S400 can intercept them like they can other ballistic missiles), and ATACMS has a better ability to saturate target areas with the cluster warheads, for example taking out helicopter forward operating bases.

I believe you have to ask them from the campaign creator.

Now this would be a worthy project!

Bad but definitely not as bad as a month ago. Cannot tell right away that the operation failed or failed to a minefield

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-military-deaths-facd75c2311ed7be660342698cf6a409 "According to their analysis, 25,000 more inheritance cases were opened in 2022 for males aged 15 to 49 than expected. By May 27, 2023, the number of excess cases had shot up to 47,000." Nice "low bar" estimate of Russian casualties.

Here are some daily loss roundups from: https://twitter.com/lost_warinua Generally, you can see Ukraine is leading in volume and in value. Russia is losing artillery, enables and armor of various, while Ukraine is mainly losing armor of various kinds.

Interesting data points from Oryx loss data over time that are relevant to Ukraines offensive. Still, most chards don't show changes. operations: https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine comparing abandoned equipment to the Russian winter offensive: Russian artillery losses have accelerated while no change on the Ukrainian side As a whole no major change: o

The fact they are DPICM doesn't matter. The fact that are artillery ammo and there are a lot of them immediately available, that is what matters. Kofman clearly stated this.on the resent podcasts.

Indeed. I just couldn't resist making that joke on CMCW

Let's hope the DPICMs headed to Ukraine pack a punch that was sorely missing in CMCW.

not surprising

We are really seeing the changed accounting in effect. That is ridiculously large amount of hardware for 800million...

aand it is official:

here is the latest: Taking Stock of the Ukrainian Offensive 07072023.mp3

You zoomed out there quite a bit, hah I toke that as meaning the likely first hourglass to run out on the Ukrainian offensive potential. There was also discussion on the "zoomed out" level like the economy likely limiting military decisions on mobilizations. For example, if Russians mobilize 500k to extend warfighting potential for another year this might cause such a shock on the economic level that on the whole Russia's warfighting potential shortens/shrinks. These sorts of long wars come to attrition and on the most "zoomed out" level we have to start comparing the GDP and population bases of the sides. And that comes to about 100:1 against Russia...

To add, later in the Q&A section: Kofman states provision of cluster munitions is the single most decisive thing the US can do in the short term and will have a significant effect on the battlefield. It is not necessary to take the efficiency of the DPICM into account for their significance. The significance comes from the million(s) of new shells being available for the Ukrainians. This takes them off from the "shell hourglass" and enables Ukraine to approach these offensives with more freedom. Of course, he included a snarky comment on how Europe was the main obstacle to this provision and also the main reason for the need to make this provision, given the Europeans made the needed artillery production decisions only 13 months into this war.

comments from yesterday: The Offensive clearly progressing slower than expected. This is stated also by the Ukrainian president. the initial assaults failed to achieve their objectives. For example, creating conditions to commit reserves to breach the main lines and exploit now we are in an attritional phase and we are likely to see alternating phases of attrition and attempts to advance, enabled by the attrition. both sides use artillery decisively and then exploit artillery ammunition as "the sand it the hourglass". it is significant how much artillery ammo Ukrainian use to achieve any given goal artillery production rates are going to become more and more important seems like this is going to towards equality between the sides in the long run

I was not expecting anything like "1940/1944 or Gulf War". I was expecting faster progress in reaching the first villages and closing the distance to the main lines of defense. It also seems Ukrainians were expecting faster progress, they have said so themselves.