kluge

LOL a fake plebiscite would be most galling. Many in the west are pretty upset about the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the following faked plebiscite results. So, it is pretty rich listening to you imply the results of that faked plebiscite mean that Ukraine taking Crimea back would via a "war to compel" the inhabitants under the Ukrainian government. If there wasn't so many people dying I would find it funny.
 
Again seriously. I am fully aware there have been issues of governance in parts of Ukraine but come on you cannot seriously think that people following this thread believe that the plebiscite you refer to is legitimate.
We don't know how the people living in Crimea would like to be governed. I would be fine with them getting to decide but before a fair plebiscite can be conducted you have to get the occupiers out of there and then you have to decide if the imported people should really get a say or sent home - tricky question. Not to mention the people displaced by the occupying Russians need to have the choice to return. Only then could you have a free vote. Honestly I'm not sure how that should look and I would leave that up to the Ukrainians and the citizens living in Crimea to decide. None of that can happen while its under Russian occupation.

Interesting points, but I think you might've missed the context, namely "dropping the Kerch Bridge rail without destroying the road deck".
All the "other rail interdiction" targets can be nailed whether the bridge is in range or not, if you want to just degrade rail comms. A large chunk of the terminal effects of "dropping the Kerch bridge" are symbolic as much as anything, and if they have to repair that rail link again, under fire from UKR rocket artillery... Assuming that symbolic is any use at all, that is.
Mostly, though, Crimea's problem in a siege is water, and I don't imagine they can tanker in enough water (along with all the other feedstock of the war machine and fodder for the civilian population), even if the Kerch rail link remains up. Once the UKR have sealed off the peninsula's land approaches, that's the beginning of the end for the Crimea garrison.

That’s true in a number of different ways, and I think it’s useful to think about those different ways, rather than just considering one explanation.
First off, and probably most superficial here, the equipment (especially) and organisation (to a degree) of US infantry divisions changed a lot over the course of those two years,* with increasing amounts of heavier and/or faster firing weapons the general direction of travel. In addition, by late 1944 divisions were routinely being augmented with semi-permanent attachments of units and sub-units of specialists – artillery, armor, anti-tank, AAA, engineers, heavy mortars, recce, logistics, etc – all of which significantly boosted the capabilities and resilience of the basic division.
For example, in December 1944, 1st US Infantry Division had the following attachments:
639th AAA AW Bn (Mbl)
18-31 Dec 44
745th Tk Bn
6 Jun 44-8 May 45
Cos A&B, 87th Cml Bn (4.2-in Mtr)
1 Oct-17 Dec 44
20th Engr C Bn
12 Jun 44-
957th FA Bn (155 How)
1 Aug-17 Dec 44
Btry A, 987th FA Bn (155 Gun)
1-17 Dec 44
60th FA Bn (9th Div) (105 How)
6-8 Dec 44
2d Bn, 36th Armd Inf (3d Armd Div)
4-7 Dec 44
634th TD Bn (SP) (- Co C)
1 Aug 44-6 May 45
703d TD Bn (SP)
18-31 Dec 44
3d Plat, Co C, 801st TD Bn (SP)
18-31 Dec 44
Source: https://history.army.mil/documents/ETO-OB/1ID-eto-ob.htm
That’s a significant increment of combat power, and the 1st wasn’t particularly favoured in that regard – those kinds of attachments were entirely normal in late 1944. They weren't so normal, though, in late 1942.
Secondly, it was a new division in that manpower turnover in combat units was pretty horrific. Over the course of the campaign in NWE the 1st lost just over 200% of its total nominal manpower, and those losses would naturally have been highly concentrated in the 27 rifle companies, which probably experienced turnover up around 4-500% given they collectively represent only a third of the Division’s total manpower. And those losses occurred over less than 300 days on the frontline. And before that there was the losses in North Africa and Sicily. Being a rifleman was not a role where longterm planning made a lot of sense. So yes, it was literally a different division. All the original guys were dead or wounded.
Finally, the division was made up of much more than just those 27 rifle companies, and learning how to ‘do’ combined arms with all the other units was another really notable difference between the division of 1942 and the one at the end of 1944. Turnover in the rifle companies was horrific, but that dropped off pretty steeply as you moved back from the frontlines and away from the ‘rifleman’ MOS. So, headquarters staffs at battalion and regiment and division, artillery, armor, engineer, air power – the blokes in those units all survived a lot longer and their corporate knowledge and skills improved on a pretty steep curve. Which, coincidentally, is exactly where combined arms happens – feeding the rifle companies into battle effectively supported by the other arms means those riflemen look a lot better at doing their jobs than their brethren from two years ago, even if the riflemen aren’t actually that flash at their particular role. They still need to close with the enemy, kill or capture him, and take and hold terrain regardless of season weather or terrain, but all that is MUCH more achievable when you have a lot of burly and really competent friends close at hand.
There is an anecdote from, IIRC, a US company commander writing about the second half of 1944  - after Normandy, and before the Bulge. I forget a lot of the details, but basically he said that he and his men could’ve been armed with pitchforks for all the use their rifles were. His primary and most useful role was to act as local protection for ‘his’ forward observer, escorting him forward from place to place and protecting him there while he blasted the Germans out of the next position to be taken, then rinse-repeat.
Taken together, all this means that Marshall wasn’t necessarily wrong, in an absolute sense, about 1:10 or whatever his ratio was**, but probably was about the reasons why. The vast majority of soldiers weren’t required to shoot directly at the enemy, because that just wasn’t their role. Of the ones who were - the guys in those 27 companies - most of the time they weren’t really required to either. Statistically the heavy fighting would be ‘somewhere else’, where the heavy lifting was often being done by someone else, usually their armored or artillery buddies. When the armor and artillery failed – due to circumstances or incompetence – then the infantry were in for a really bad day, and they might have to actually rely on their own Garands because everything else has failed. Examples of those bad days include Omaha and the Hürtgen.
None of this detracts from the efforts of individual riflemen and their individual experiences. But, taken in the round, those experiences were abnormal and that was by design because the Western Allies successfully implemented the kind of war they wanted to fight, one which did not depend overly much on the routine efforts of Rifleman #7, 2 Squad, 3 Platoon. That was very different to what was expected in November 1942 - it was a different division.
 
 
* And that’s just flat out amazing, right?! Only two years from the landings at Oran to the north shoulder of the Battle of the Bulge. The Western Allies really had their stuff in one sock when it came to military effectiveness in WWII. There is no other military that came even close.
** Interestingly, LtCol Wigram came to broadly the same conclusions as Marshall, based on his personal observations and experience commanding an infantry battalion in 1943/44 in Sicily and Italy. Coincidence?
 

The Russians use rail for the majority of their supply, so I'd say drop the rail right away and leave the road open for exodus. Also, leaving the road open so they can use wheeled supply will put a lot of friction into their already strained logistics. It would look better in the end as Ukraine would be seen as humanely leaving open a corridor for civilian supply and movement. 
Crimea is a possibility this year if the RA suffers some catastrophic collapses. I don't see it happening if the offensive is the slow and controlled type, but that could still result in a large collapse. If the RA runs and the UA pursues it could snowball and be a fairly bloodless conquest for the UA. As others have said, it usually goes slow until it goes fast. We'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out.

In 2014 real number of referendum participants were not more 30-35 %. Many of populaion in Crimea, like on Donbas were indifferent Ukraine or Russia. Many thought Russia would give them Moscow level of salary with Ukrainian level of prices. Naive.  New "masters of Crimea" for nine years completely killed medicine, barbarically destroyed unique Crimean nature in many places, gave many coastal territories under elite real estate building, closing access to the sea for locals. So many Crimeans maybe not enough like Ukraine, but obviously silently hate Russia and many of them in local chats recalled with nostalgia for Ukrianian times, when foreign cruise liners came to Yalta, many rich tourists visited Crimea etc. So, when UKR troops will come to Crimea, most of Crimeans will do nothing due to their conformism. Russians, who settled in Crimea after 2014 will flee in panic. Who will not do this will be deported. Of course, there will be some "idea fighters", who will try to make guerilla, but this will not be "total resistance"   
PS. Just NEVER judge by ethnicity in Ukrainian question. This is almost doesn't work here. 

My take after 6 months peacekeeping in Bosnia in '93 -  Savagery is baked into human beings.  Sorry, there is no 'better angels of our nature'  My time in Bosnia dispelled that myth real quick.  The 'better angels of our nature' happens because we employ the frontal cortex to govern ourselves.  But warfare is very primal and hits the primitive emotional centers of our brains first.   Once that happens, the excesses of violence humans are capable of know no bounds.  Which is why in the 22nd century in the future, historians and people will be examining the genocides of the 21st century and asking the same questions.

This ☝️, once armed these improvised FPV drones might be way too dangerous to bring back for recovery. Since they are improvised I am sure there are forty different ways a dozen different shell, rockets and grenades are fiddled with to ensure the go off when the drone hits its target, but I am guessing just about all of them make them less safe to handle. With drones you lose the ability to use the very high Gs of being launched/fired as the primary arming step for the fuse. Far better to send them after almost any Russian target, or even a suspected Russian target. Although both sides seem to employ the kamikaze drones with higher flying recon only drones when possible.

I thought the same, when it became clear that UKR were going to hold "indefinitely" and soak whatever the cost was. The bleeding of RUS troops strength doesn't seem to be "enough" to keep reinforcing the salient, but if they could suck enough Russian tubes into range of NATO long-barrelled 155s, and GMLRS and thin out the artillery park, that'd be a great strategic result.
I don't think we can necessarily decide that this hasn't happened, though, to at least some extent. We only have fragmentary accounts of the artillery duel, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that these will tend towards the "OMG, we're getting pounded and our arty is doing nothing," end of the spectrum, since the times when CB is effective might be assumed to be down to the Russians just not throwing the same weight of iron into the target area, and won't be so memorable.
We probably won't know the effectiveness of any rope-a-dope approaches the UKR have tried until a while after the shooting stops, and even then it's going to be a patchy picture.

Looks like "Honor" company is withdrawing for rotation. 
Serhiy Filimonov, the commander announced big movie similar to that was issued two days ago. Also he told the company for 1,5 months of fight lost 5 KIA and 40 WIA. Also he told in average "Honor" had been killing per 10 Wagners for a day.
He regrets he hadn't time to award his soldier "Myron" for killing of 8 Wagners in one fight - he could buy AR-10 rifle for him, but "Myron" was badly wounded on 4th of April. He will award sqaud leader "Tykhyi" with AR-10 + sight Vortex Razor 10x for defending of position (that was on the last video)
 
 
 

I am well marbled and hate the cold. I volunteer to go first. 

I would speculate that Patriots are intended primarily for missile defense and may be too far behind the front lines to engage Russian aviation.

Dude, c’Mon.  There are a lot of factual errors here.  Afghanistan in the 80s?  You mean support to the mujahideen?  Ok, technically I guess.  A lot of these were proxy actions during the Cold War against Soviet influence (would like to see that list with the same very liberal metrics).  Some of these like Iraq ‘91 were UN coalition operations.  I mean I like US-bashing day as much as the next guy but this is not credible research.  It is starting with a premise and then working back to try and shape facts to prove it.
Yugoslavia in 99-00?  It wasn’t even a country by then, it was a bunch of fracture states.  Serbia, maybe, because the world was a so much better place with Milosevic in power?

Like in English - ork (sing.) / orky (plur.)
@masc
Among soldiers this name "orcs" is not popular, it's used mostly among civilians and bloggers. Soldiers really name them "pidory" (Russian also often name in this way UKR soldiers). In whole, translation of dialogues and commands during this fight is VERY approximate because of many obscent lexic and jargones.  

This fight took place on 9th of April. Probably this is fight for the road near Khromove, "Honor" company of 1st mech.battalion "Da Vicnci" of 67th mech.brigade. 
Dead soldier "Norman" at first minutes of video is Oleh Kornay

Also in the same day "Honor" lost other soldier "Tyomych" - Artem Berezniuk

Tibet 1950
Sino-Indian 1962
Sino-Vietnamese War 1979
The others such as clashes with Soviet, India, Vietnamese post-WWII you'll no doubt ignore also. Won't even bother mentioning Korea ('50) or Vietnam ('60's) as you will no doubt believe they were/are freedom fighters.
You really need to allow yourself growth and accept nuance in your world view. It's not always US bad - other side good.

And in the Holy Fudge category of combat footage, we have a new king:
POV guy shows great personal courage, head is on a swivel. Top notch NCO-ing going on.

Gonna contend here that condemning china or the US or anyone else for imperial behavior is coming fron a place of team sports and not principled opposition to their hegemonic tactics, ambitions, or violations of sovereignty. So move on. 

47th mech.brigade with Slovenian M-55S and Bradley

Some intimate )))) Adult content ! )))
 

Short but Excellent article from. John Spencer on that most basic of the logistics trains -  food supply in the ZSU. I hope he follows up with more. 
https://mwi.usma.edu/an-army-fights-as-well-as-its-fed-lessons-from-the-chef-helping-to-feed-the-ukrainian-military/

https://warontherocks.com/episode/therussiacontingency/28604/expectations-for-ukraines-counteroffensive-and-listener-questions/

 
Notes on this paywalled episode:
Last week(s) was relatively quiet as the Russians shifted to a defensive posture, preparing for the Ukrainian offensive. The offensive is expected to begin by the end of this month or early next month. The only exception is the Battle of Bachmut, where Russia seeks a symbolic victory. The long-term effects of this battle will be the downstream consequences of the material(and human) cost of the battle. Mike refrains from commenting on leaks, stating that there is nothing new to the reports. It is anticipated that a series of Ukrainian offensive operations will occur on multiple fronts over several months. These operations are expected to be bloody, even if they go according to plan. The spring offensive is likely to resemble the battle in Kherson rather than Harkiv, but still with significant differences. Untested forces will be attacking untested forces, using untested equipment. Predicting the outcome of such encounters, where the unknown meets the unknown, is futile. In the past month, Kofman's opinion on the likelihood of Ukrainian success has increased. Mike does not see a major disconnect in the situation picture between the battalion level and strategic leadership of Ukraine.          In the Q&A segment:
Wagner primarily operates locally, working within the Russian military, and is subordinate to and enabled by the military. The state of the Ukrainian air defense is a top priority. They are eventually going to have to transition to Western systems The latest possible start for the Ukrainian counter-offensive has not been determined, but initiating it too soon would be unwise. Long-range missiles (ATACMS, Storm Shadow) are not considered critical, as their importance is often overstated in the silver bullet thinking, similar to the HIMARS myth. Russia's main issue with armor is attrition compared to the replacement rate, leading to the use of outdated equipment in new formations. Let's think of the counterfactual what if Ukraine's offensive liberates all possible areas? What next? Even in the best-case scenario, a protracted attritional phase is expected to follow the offensive. A successful offensive could lead to a better position for negotiations, but there's no guarantee that Russia will want to negotiate as long as Putin remains in power. In any case, a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive is a good problem to have. Historical comparisons for this war include the Winter War of 1939(this comparison breaks when the West entered the side of Ukraine), conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and India and Pakistan. The Korean War is considered a less likely "happy" scenario. The US has three main goals in this war: achieving a strategic defeat for Russia, securing victory for Ukraine managing escalation. If escalation was not a concern, the US could have intervened more directly to accomplish the first two goals a year ago.

Bradley in UKR pixel )

Well it seems to start out just a little eccentric but gets progressively weirder.  The gist of it is that US/NATO pushed Ukraine into a ware with Russia so that they could use the crisis to accelerate digitisation of the UKR government and then use Google/Azure/Amazon tech to control the country.  Also that Covid wasn't really that bad and governments were scaremongering to control citizens.  Sure, UKR gov't uses cloud services but so do lots of companies and governments, that doesn't mean these tech giants cooperate to undermine democracy or that UKR is no longer sovereign as a result.  They also say that Zelensky banned all opposition parties, not just some Russian-linked ones.
I thought the presenter's style sounded a bit Tucker Carlson and guess what, he's an ex-Fox presenter and ex-real estate investor/promoter.  The channel even states that it's not presenting news but entertainment.

Renewed rumblings within Europe over commitment to Ukraine:
https://news.usni.org/2023/04/14/france-germany-not-doing-enough-to-support-ukraine-says-polands-pm?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d
Morawiecki called the relationship between Moscow and Beijing “the key to the future of the world” because both are aggressively warring or threatening their neighbors if they don’t meet their demands on territory and trade.
China steps in and we have all the makings of a Global proxy war centered in eastern Ukraine. And Macron didn't scare anyone. 
Meanwhile Morawiecki called upon the United States to unveil a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine and for Europe to reaffirm its commitment and foster closer relations economically and militarily as Washington did after World War II in Europe.
Poland is spending 4 percent of its gross domestic product on security, modernizing its forces with M1A1 tanks, ordering F-35 Lightning II Strike Fighters and hosting U.S. F-22s, positioning air defense and long-range rocket artillery systems, Morawiecki said. It has also established a garrison post for rotating American forces.
Warsaw is also crossing over to nuclear energy to further distance itself from dependence on Moscow for natural gas and petroleum To modernize its digital infrastructure, Poland is working with Microsoft and Google, Morawiecki said.
Not surprising Poland would love to be the major benefactor of this new new "Marshall Plan".

Coming back to this one because this is how misinformation and conspiracy nonsense starts.  And again the US operates under a similar but different legal framework.  So government does have control of who they grant security clearances to, or not.  Absolutely.  However, that authority exists within a legal framework that also ensures that unlawful discrimination is controlled out of the system.  For example, imagine if this kid was black.  Does anyone think they the US government should start filtering out 21 years old who are black, or Jewish based on that alone (and if you do, please leave)? 
Security clearance in the public sector = taxpayer funded employment, and as such has to walk that oversight and transparency line like anything else.  I have no doubt discrimination happens but the system is built to ensure it is minimized as much as possible, with lengthy reviews, audits etc.  These systems are also in place to protect the employer (i.e. the US Government) from law suits of discrimination in hiring practices.  E.G.  Say this kid held onto his racial bigotry ideas and got a job in security clearances, what mechanism are in place to prevent him from simply only granting clearances to other sad, lonely white men?
Before we put this to bed for good, the reason to address it is that there are a LOT of just garbage myths and information out there on how western governments actually work.  I mean these are massive enterprises in the 21st century and it is too much to expect the average citizen to understand the layers and layers in play.  However, the problem with this is that people fill in the gaps with anecdotes and misinformation.  Suddenly the government is capable of doing all sorts of things that legally it simply cannot do, or at least do easily.  Hollywood has done us exactly zero favors in all this too.  Executive actions (i.e. political assassination's) is one such area.  If you believe TV and movies, western governments are doing these everyday and twice on weekends.  In reality the levels of controls and authorities to conduct an extra-judiciary killing (outside a defined operational box) are enormous.  Hollywood is likely much more accurate on how the other teams are operating, such as Russian FSB but have little to zero reflection on the actual work going on in western defence and security.
Probably about as far as I can take this line right  now.  Bottom line, when you hear some of these claims, just do the due diligence and cross check along a few lines to be safe.