kluge

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.      

This is all part of PiS campaign rhetoric, don't take all of this too seriously, especially grandour narrations of "New Marshall plan", "PL-UA Union" etc. This is the same bonkers as Macron's "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok", Scholz "Zeitenwende" and similar. Politicians playing their dirty games to score some domestic points or pretending to formulate some kind of coherent vision, they are everywhere roughly the same.
Elections are in November, but already campaign is in full swing, very dirty and brutal. Especially close to finish we can witness increased Russian infuence, too; for example lately main military commentators noticed they are subject of very vigorous attacks by what looks like entire trolls farms. Expect scandals, more leaks of documents, bots working heavily on social division etc. It's already very bad in this respect and every month it gets worse.

there are always people that care about others/the world and the ones that care about themselves. It frightens me that a generation of the ones that care about themselves works in finance, it scares me to hell when they start to work in tech and silicon valley. I get horrified and actually start to loose hope when these start to work at farms.

That's a weird graph - it mixes branch of employment with enlistment channels, meaning that by design there is some unknowable proportion of either undercounting (if each number represents a unique individual) or double counting (if, say, the convicts are also counted in PMC )

Diagram of Russian radars and EW assets, destroyed month-by-month. Look at peaks, they preceded to UKR offensives in next month. And look at number of destroyed assets in March of 2023. Looks like we are close, but probably weather and delays with heavy ammunition deliveries delayed the start

So from the “you’re doing it wrong” file:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/the-white-papers-exclusive-report-challenges-ukrainian-tactics-used-against-russia-1.6355219
Has anyone here actually found a copy of this document?  I have searched and came up with a blank.  I am immediately suspicious when authors refuse to identify themselves.  
While I have no doubt the UA has substantial after action and learning points, this smacks of “well if you only fought like us…without air supremacy, without land power supremacy, without sea control and facing a peer force who is better equipped than any military force the west has faced since Korea…you would have won already.”
As I have said many times, given similar strategic or operational conditions I seriously doubt “more western C2 or ‘combined arms’” would have done much better.  I also am entirely convinced that if we were in a war facing the UA right now - again where air denial was in place, our loses would be so high that the shock would have likely led to a political withdrawal.  For example, as was noted by the Atlantic Counsel paper: how does one “combined arms” against ATGMs that have a 4.5 km range and 80%+ success rate?
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Game-Changers-or-Little-Change-Lessons-for-Land-War-in-Ukraine-.pdf

Even if we could develop APS umbrellas, they are going to be making a lot of noise in protecting our mass, which is hot and highly visible. We manage to create a great ATGM wall - which is a tall freakin ask when one considers sub-munitions, stand-off and decoys.  But let’s say for a second we could do it.  Well it will feel great for about 5 mins before the long range fires come lobbing in.  A combination of unmanned loitering, artillery and high trajectory missiles…we don’t have an answer for that.  And this is before we start talking UGVs, freakin EFPs with legs and a brain.
So in a fight against a comparably UA empowered force we are talking adversaries ISR outside the theatre so “no touchy” or we run escalation.  So we create a force protection dome to protect our combined arms mass. Surprise is dead at that point.  And we would need to load up the FP to the point it starts to get uneconomical to try and protect those same formations.  Logistics and technical support, sustainment etc all stack up really fast to try and build a mobile Iron Dome.  There will come a point that trying to defend our current formations stops making sense.  We are not there yet but I can definitely see it from here.
As to AirPower and “the might of NATO”, c’mon we are at risk of sucking and blowing at the same time here.  On one hand we are 20 minutes from running out of munitions and equipment to support this war, but in a comparable next-war, we now would have bottomless weight?  We would not be stumped at Bakhmut for months…because we likely would have run out of ammo in the first 6 months before we ever got to Bakhmut.
As to AirPower, good lord, Russia had the 3rd largest Air Force in the world and got stumped hard: https://www.wdmma.org/russian-air-force.php
At the higher ends of readiness (always a contentious one for Russia) they have as many fixed wing aircraft as the Gulf War:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign
Orxy has Russia with only 79 aircraft lost, so a pretty small fraction of their fleet.  Yet we are not seeing a lot of Russian air action beyond lobbing well back from front lines.  The reason for this, cited by many, is denial.  Air forces are like navies, extremely expensive and insanely long build times.  No one is going to throw them into a denied space because the costs just get too high.  Does anyone think that if entry costs escalate in a NATO war to the level we see in Ukraine that “national caveat” light are not going to light up like an Xmas tree?
 

Neither of those two factors match up with reality.  
Ukraine is employing a distributed and dispersed C4ISR system linked into western ISR which is outside the theatre.  This means that MANPADs and IADs get cued well out on incoming Russian strike packages early and accurately.  They have enough time to reposition and wait.  We do not have SEAD for passive MANPADs, we have some c-measures but they have not frankly been tested in these environments.  The EW planes cannot blind space-based assets, and OS built on civie IT networks.  And once someone puts a Starstreak on a UAS that MANPAD could hit up past 30k feet.  I am not convinced we could get full air superiority, let alone supremacy, below 20k and might even lose it to denial (A2AD) above that.  Then we are high altitude bombing which comes with so much legal risk as to make CAS nearly impossible.  Troops on the ground would do better with indirect fires and tac UAS to be honest.
ATGMs - “APS will save us”.  Well not from top-down (yet), nor submunitions or decoys.  And last I checked we were not putting those systems on every logistics truck, which is a problem as our tanks need gas too.  I have seen a lot of tank lusters working overtime to show how the tank can be protected and completely ignoring the fact that the tank is just the end of a capability system that reaches back to production lines.
As to western bias, sure.  Almost unavoidable.  But in CMs favour, the battlefield results of Russian armour are not far off how badly they get mauled in CMBS.  In fact the shortfalls in CM are that it was probably too generous with respect to indirect fires and lethality.

Assuming the public info on Russian force dispositions is reasonably accurate and hasn't drastically changed in the past month, the RAF forces at Vuhledar are under the command of the Eastern Military District. The RAF forces at Tokmak and the area to the west of it are under the command of the Southern Military District.
It doesn't make much sense to pressure one command only to switch directions and hit a completely different command.
Better to focus on the forces of the SMD and SMD alone. For reference, the "hinge" between the forces of the SMD and EMD might be more in the vicinity of Polohy.
A better "distraction" would convince the commander of the SMD to commit its reserve to an area under the purview of the SMD but away from the main thrust.

Assuming the public info on Russian force dispositions is reasonably accurate and hasn't drastically changed in the past month, the RAF forces at Vuhledar are under the command of the Eastern Military District. The RAF forces at Tokmak and the area to the west of it are under the command of the Southern Military District.
It doesn't make much sense to pressure one command only to switch directions and hit a completely different command.
Better to focus on the forces of the SMD and SMD alone. For reference, the "hinge" between the forces of the SMD and EMD might be more in the vicinity of Polohy.
A better "distraction" would convince the commander of the SMD to commit its reserve to an area under the purview of the SMD but away from the main thrust.