The_MonkeyKing

A couple of recent related podcast episodes:
John Spencer is joined by retired Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Tamir. He served a long career in the Israel Defense Forces as an armor officer holding positions from tank commander to division commander. In 1973, he was an armor battalion commander during the Yom Kippur War. In part one of the conversations, he reflects on his career as an armor officer from a secret trip to Germany in 1964 to learn about American tanks, through his service in the 1967 Six-Day War, to the Yom Kippur War. The discussion lays the foundation for part two, which covers the role of tanks in urban warfare, including drawing lessons from the 1973 Battle of Suez City.

(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. 

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
 

Not "pointless" when you compare the aftermath of the latest strike. No matter the placing, it is going to take multiple tons of explosives to get those results.
It would be a different story if there were just pillars blowing up ext
 
 

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
 

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
 

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. 

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
 

Interesting that a detailed first person account does not go further into the geostrategic ramifications of "bloody attritional fighting for months." For example, is it sustainable? Which side benefits. What would it take for the west to go all in to prevent said months long attritional fighting? Waiting for a sudden collapse while feeding reserves into the fight lacks a lot of imagination on NATO's part if they really want to kick Russia out of Ukraine soon. If they want this to be a forever war (Korea/Middle east) then fess up.   

Thanks for sharing. Can't tell if accurate but from my arm chair general's point of view this fits the observations better than "these are just probes, the real counter offensive hasn't begun yet" or "this is all part of some genius Ukrainian master plan to lure Russians into doing X". Also nice touch saying how difficult this is to pull off and how many NATO armies would struggle even more.
Re Western AFVs and combined arms, I think @The_Capt had a lengthy discussion with someone (@holoween ?) a some months ago about training an individual crew to manage a tank vs training crews to work effectively in a combined arms environment. I think he predicted just this.

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
 

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
 

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

Absolutely listen, I shall. 

Perhaps rail bridges have higher engineering requirements (a loaded goods train has a lot more mass in a small area than any road traffic), meaning that an explosive USV isn't a feasible way to damage the rail bridge reliably, while the road bridge has a high chance of being completely severed.

I wonder why the rail bridge was not targeted

I wonder why the rail bridge was not targeted

Mother of all mine threads:
 
 

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/russias-economy-dealt-crushing-blow-000937531.html
Russia's current-account balance has collapsed, in another blow to the floundering economy.
The nation's surplus tanked 93% to $5.4 billion last quarter from a year earlier, Bank of Russia data show.
That comes as Western sanctions squeeze Russia's energy exports.
Russia's economic woes are worsening, with the latest blow coming in the form of a collapse in its current account.
The nation posted a current-account surplus of $5.4 billion for the April-June quarter, which marks a 93% plunge from a record $76.7 billion in the same period of 2022, Russia's central bank data show. That's also the smallest excess since the third quarter of 2020.
The worsening trade dynamics are also reflected in the plunging fortunes of the ruble. The Russian currency tumbled to a 15-month low of around 94.48 per dollar earlier in July, hit hard by the country's weakening terms of trade.
"The decline in the surplus of the balance of the external trade in goods in January – June 2023 compared to the comparable period of 2022 was caused by a decrease in both the physical volumes of export deliveries and the deterioration in the price situation for the basic Russian export commodities, energy commodities made the most significant contribution to the decline in the value of exports," the Bank of Russia said.
Moscow's key source of revenue is through sales of its oil and gas products, but price caps and bans imposed on Russia's energy exports by a pool of nations following its unprecedented attack on Ukraine, have meant its commodities business has taken a huge hit.
In June, Russia's Finance Ministry revealed that revenue from oil and gas taxes fell 36% compared to a year ago to about 570.7 billion rubles, while profits from crude and petroleum products tumbled 31% to 425.7 billion rubles.
 
 

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. 

It would make defence more complex for the Russians- for example:

ATACMs flies on a ballistic trajectory while Storm Shadow is a cruise missile, so one of each fired at the same target presents two different air defence problems at the same time (fast but telegraphed ATACMs vs slower but stealthier Storm Shadow). Mix in decoys, Storm Shadows changing direction etc and things can get real confusing real fast.

This might prompt the Russians to concentrate more air defence on more important targets, leaving other (still important) targets less well defended.

There's also the EW game- the Russians are inevitably going to get their hands on some kind of salvageable internals from whatever weapons are used, at which point they can dig into the systems and figure out how they can jam or spoof them. They've already apparently gotten hold of a Storm Shadow, so from here on out there's a possibility that Storm Shadow strikes can be degraded by EW effects.

Having more different types of weapons in the mix keeps things fresh (as it were), so there's always something up Ukraine's sleeve that the Russians haven't developed a counter to yet. At the same time, depending on the specifics, even if the Russians have worked out how to jam ATACMs and Storm Shadow, they might not be able to jam both at the same time because EW cna be finicky, or if they can, they might need more rare, expensive EW assets concentrated to do so.

Stuff like that.

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. 

The other option would be to break down the campaign into scenarios with uncam and then you could replace the units in each scenario.
It wouldn't be a campaign, you'd have to manually enter the remaining forces from each scenario into the next one.