kluge

I pour scorn upon Kori Schake. She makes the usual mistake of treating F-16's as a deus ex machina despite the obvious issues of assimilation, training and logistics. She discusses American aid to Ukraine without once mentioning that the WH has to arbitrage Chinese potential aid to Russia in response. She somehow manages to descry Biden's lack of boldness when the entire structure of international and American support was begun and relentlessly pursued by this administration 8 months before the war began. 
That article isn't analysis...it's politics. And from the cheap seats at that.
And a note on F-16's: https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/what-f16s-will-and-wont-do-for-ukraine

Interesting that UKR military officials never say about losses after the any strike. And suddenly - "airfield damage, fuel depot in fire, 5 aircraft were taken out". Even some Russian milbloggers wrote own doubts - maybe this is just PsyOps, because weren't any videos even distant with huge smoke over Starikostintyniv airfield. 
PS. Reportedly for Storm Shadows were upgraded Su-24MR 

The pith: Russia is not a mobilized state like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany and is not fighting a declared war. It sold the conflict with the idea that it was a 'special military  operation' that wouldn't impinge on the day to day lives of an apathetic population. A large drone attack on Moscow isn't a military move, it is directly undercutting the regime's credibility on the war. This was Girkin's immediate reaction as well.
 

I see it as part of the shaping operations, a lot like the Russian invasion of Russia. Ukraine has struggled all along to defeat the missile strikes and drone strikes against their cities and has had to deploy significant air defenses around population areas instead of military targets or in support of military units. If these drone strikes make Russia redeploy anti air assets to protect Moscow (and if I were Ukraine I'd do the same to every city in range) that further degrades protection on the military targets. I would be surprised if Ukraine was stupid enough to attack kindergartens and hospitals, but there are plentiful legitimate targets (think transportation and logistics) in Moscow or any other large city. 
We have said from early on that Russia doesn't have sufficient assets to properly man the front line. These ops against Russian territory give the Kremlin more tough choices. Spread resources even thinner to protect everything to give their citizens piece of mind, or don't and watch the nats and sooner or later other citizens start howling that their government can't protect them. It is good strategy and puts the Kremlin between a rock and a hard place.

Doolittle was first and foremost for domestic consumption. 
Ref Moscow,  drone attacks do more than damage things- they threaten and require significant AA/AD to properly counter. 
A Pantsir in Moscow is a Pantsir not in Ukraine.
Keep up drone attacks of random intensity and scale and the Kremlin will layer yet more assets around it. 

Kind of a Capt Special but I borrowed heavily from “US political warfare doctrine” started by Keenan (just type that in and you will get lots).  For the Russian angle I would start with Russian Hybrid Warfare by Ofir Fridman.  The steps are my own framework which is a simplification of some far more complex ones.

I think this is mostly true but we should remember that we don't see or hear about everything consequential that happens.
 

You are welcome.  And for those that want to really get into the deep end:
https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Strategy-of-Subversion-Manipulating-the-Politics-of-Other-Nations-by-Paul-W-Blackstock.pdf
Really is a lost art in the West, and one we will likely need to re-learn

I didn't follow this discussion, just stopping by to say: Come on, that is a bit cheap and you usually do much better than that. 😉 I think in this context by "winning the election" almost everyone meant "becoming president". Also, saying he did not win in the primary election is stretching the truth a bit. With 49.5% Erdogan had the most votes and almost managed to achieve an absolute majority. That is quite a feat if you compare it to, say, Macron, who got only 27.8% in the primary election in 2022. The primary election isn't meant to be won outright, that's what the runoff is there for, and it it doesn't make the winner any less democratically legitimized. True, 52% vs 48% isn't a large margin but if you go by popular vote, looking at the last two decades, almost all US presidents won by a similar or even smaller margin. Biden vs Trump was 51% vs 47%, Trump vs Clinton 47% vs 48% (!), Obama vs Romney 51% vs 48%, Obama vs McCain 53% vs 46%, Bush vs Kerry 51% vs 48%.
You are right about the tricks Erdogan pulled off, though I'm not too sure how much if a role they played. Germany has a large Turkish community and people here have free access to all sorts of information. They still voted 67% for Erdogan.

And in true fashion for this forum I have to chime in…I own a parking company and I am a paid expert. That technology is essentially 120 year old hydraulics and not new at all. 

Interrupting the economics debate for a moment...
Looking over all the open source data on the Ivan Khurs:
Multiple videos and photos from various angles of it returning to Sevastopol with no visible damage US satellite images of it being back in its usual berth in Sevastopol No claims or evidence from Ukraine or NATO of it being anywhere else No video or photos existing of any damage to the ship I think it is reasonable to conclude at the moment that it didn't suffer any serious externally visible damage and returned to Sevastopol under its own power at a pretty normal speed. 
Possibly it suffered some less obvious equipment damage, but there's no evidence for that.  Russia is saying it will return to sea once it has completed its resupply, which is the reason it returned to port, so I guess the real test so be how long it says docked in Sevastopol.  If it's heading back to the Bosphorus area within a few days,  it's probably mostly fine.  If it stays docked for several weeks,  it's probably having some kind of repairs carried out.

If someone were to fly a suicide drone into a shelter storing a (future) Belarussian tac nuke mobile launch vehicle that would get people's attention REAL fast. Russians were already panicking earlier in the week because that raid into Russia came distressingly close to an old nuke weapons storage facility which they evacuated in a big hurry. Butting nuclear launchers up against an active war zone is not the most secure thing to do.

You just Rick Rolled us! 🤣

Fair point, like I said it was one major pressure but also not the only major pressure. I do wonder if the USSR could not have reinvented itself much in the same way communist China did?  It was a flawed system however clearly when allowed to evolve somewhat can, and does work in a sense.  Of course the heart of the thing is current hemorrhaging all over Ukraine so the odds of enlightened evolution look to be slim in hindsight.
I do think the other military contribution to the USSRs defeat was containment.  Like Nazi Germany the USSR only theoretically “worked” if it was able to continually expand, pulling in more and more resources to feed the corrupt bloated monster.  Expansion was key to its survival and that was blunted and compressed a lot by western military affairs in concert with other elements of power.   
Looking forward, after this war, we are going to have a very sore Russia with less to lose - assuming it survives the landing.  China continues to rise while running out of soft/smart/sharp power runway to fuel its expansion, while it also deals with internal frictions and sore spots.  There will likely be an acceleration of the Outsiders club in pulling away from the West and pulling in more members.  This will not be a repeat of the Cold War but instead be something far more insidious and vicious I suspect.  Hard choices are in front of us, this war in Ukraine was the first real one and I am heartened to see we appear to have passed the test, at least so far.

It is simply not true that Gorbachev eschewed violence. It was that when he tried using it, the effects didn't stick. Gorbachev's Russia wasn't Stalin's Russia in the same way that Putin's isn't either...and also why he has chosen another path than Stalinist repression.
https://www.rferl.org/a/gorbachev-legacy-crackdowns-inaction-empire-intact/32014336.html

The cold war discussion is interesting and all. Wouldn't it be just great if BFC had released a game set in exactly that millieu AND had made a forum available for in-depth  discussion of both the game and the times? 
I've the perfect name!  A little on the nose but,  drum roll please! 
Combat Mission: Cold War
Right?  right!? 
Ohhh,  if only,  if only... 
 
 
But  wait a doggone second...what's this!? 

I appreciate that you allowed for the possibility of misreading. as someone who travels in Trotskyist circles, I'm not implying that the USSR was the idyllic workers paradise being unfairly assailed- I'm implying that a large group of western leaders particularly during the early 1950s and 1960s were so lacking in political imagination that they saw no alternative to apocalyptic, civilization ending war and actively wanted to initiate it in their lifetime. Wether they waged it against an authoritarian, degenerated, state-capitalist bureaucracy or an exemplary workers state was  entirely besides the point to people like McCarthy and General MacArthur. I am glad they didn't get their war.

Those antifa folks are the worst.
I mean, imagine being opposed to fascism. The nerve of some people.
 

anyone who thinks we don't have a fascist problem because folks won't take down their confederate flag to put up a nazi one does not understand that in America, that confederate flag IS the nazi one.  Not specially a response to your comment Steve, but just to point out for folks that think Americans don't blatantly display fascist trappings ought to think twice.  
Getting this back to Ukraine, if I was in the UA and someone from America came and told me they were concerned about some unit in the UA having a patch that resembled a Nazi symbol I'd be scratching my head about that confederate flag I saw on TV being marched through the halls of congress on 1/6.
The History of Democracy: Fascist Movements in U.S. History | WKMS
 

I saw plenty of Nazi regalia, had guys sneer at my multiracial kid, etc in the years leading up to 1/6 in DC. Sure, we are sort of fly paper for the worst people but  anyone who thinks there isn’t a virulent underground of this stuff is kidding themselves. As we saw with Teixeira, we have a legitimate insider threat from reactionary extremists and it’s a thing we have to defend ourselves against. How does this tie into this topic? Just take a look at some of the more obscure names on Russia’s latest sanctions list. 

You can't look at raw numbers without looking at how they were used. The A-10 is built around a great big cannon, and when they flew the sort of missions where they could use the cannon they tended to take a lot of damage from air defenses before being restricted to high altitude missions.
Ergo, the airframe can't be used for the mission it is designed to perform - low level CAS in contested airspace. Every time they try it, they take so much damage that they are told to perform safer missions that other airframes would probably be better at.

This is the kind of mission that was attempted in 2003 Iraq, and which led to some A-10s being severely damaged before they were forbidden from low-level missions. They became missile trucks restricted to high altitude, and that's a mission damn near any airframe can perform.

One thing not to sleep on is the pervasive cynicism that exists in the Russian milieu. Russians assume there are nefarious motives for people on Prigozhin's level and they assume that they are lying to put the best face on things. That Prigozhin is admitting to 20k+ losses and that Ukraine (rather than NATO) has been turned into a formidable opponent aren't taken at face value. They are taken as the *best possible way to describe what's going on*. In other words, what they are hearing from Western media using VPN is right. 

You know this kind of respected, sympathetic retired officer who on family gathering start to play plastic soldiers with kids, telling them stories about wars, armies and history? That is gen. Skrzypczak, and we are the kids.
Fuelling Lukashenko propaganda this way is irresponsible, and not the first time unfortunatelly. It's VIS24, so ofc. all OSINTers hungry for sensations multiply these "news" without actually reading article nor poviding context.
Not worth to bother, trust me.

It really depends on the version of the aircraft and weapons that will come with it, but few things that come to mind::
- way better radars when compared to MiGs and Sukhois
- Link16 giving them networking capability, so no need to emit all the time. Probably it will allow automatic exchange of information with ground based radars too, and firing missiles without turning radars on at all.
- availability of various electronic warfare equipment, depending on what we are willing to send it can be very modern
- ability to use targeting pods to acquire targets and launch PGMs independently, not only at pre-programmed targets
- ability to do CAS with said PGMs against time sensitive targets
- hugely improved SEAD abilities due to integrated EW pods and anti-radar missiles
- ability to carry out anti-shipping missions with Harpoons 
- depending on AIM-120 version they can have quite a reach. In general later C versions should have range as good or better than R-77, and D would be vastly superior to it.
- no matter the AMRAAM version they get, it will be the first time UA Air Force will have medium range fire and forget missiles at it's disposal, making defence against cruise missiles way way easier, and offering hugely increased possibilities in A2A.