danfrodo

Or maybe it shows that RU decision makers are really, really f-ing stupid? Like w endless waste of men & material to take Bakhmut? Like every other offensive they've tried this year? They have basically gained nothing while burning out huge resources. UKR hasn't gained much territory, but at least they are working toward something important -- cutting major landbridge east-west supply lines. If UKR can just get another 20km then RU in serious trouble -- but can they get another 20km?? But instead of ensuring this doesn't happen, RU burns up its reserves in pointless disasters.

nothing particularly new here, but when there's good news might as well enjoy it https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/13/2199210/-Ukraine-Update-Russian-sources-are-pessimistic-about-their-disastrous-attacks-on-Avdiivka?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web It's always lovely when RU decides to destroy it's reserves out in the open. This is huge amount of men & material that won't be around to cause trouble later.

You have been mentioning how if UKR could, it should initiate a breakthrough attack in some significantly weakened section of the RU lines. When summer started, this was I thought would happen. They'd attack at one end of the front then once RU reserves were solidly committed, they'd launch attack at other end of line. Sadly, this did not happen. But where on the line would UKR attack that doesn't require a surprise-destroying investment to get through the minefields? By the time they clear the forward lines/obstacles, RU has had plenty of time to respond, robbing from some other quiet sector to the newly threatened one. Crossing the Dnieper seems super risky, but it's the one place that isn't strewn w mines & defensive networks. And it would put UKR right into RU backfield. But how on earth to supply such an operation over time??? RU aint great at precision but they can certainly throw enough ordnance at the bridges to knock them out, over & over again. I guess Dnieper is at it's yearly lowest depth right now, which helps. But w the coming rain it will rise and also the banks will get very, very muddy. But dang, wouldn't this be amazing? I don't think it'll happen but it would be one for the history books, like you said.

when vehicle weighs many tons and is not going very fast, like typically less than 50km/hr, I am quite sure air resistance is the least of the fuel expenditures. Especially for a tracked vehicle and especially driving over dirt. I'd be shocked if it were even a measurable difference. These are fuel guzzling behemoths and I think the only thing that would make a difference is increased mass, of which these cages don't seem to be much relative to the starting mass.

Above, question of why RU men are signing up to this war. I am sure there's the usual reasons of adventure, patriotism, stupidity, but I wonder if it's just simply the money for most of them. They are in a garbage economy w/o much chance of prospering and they are offered a big sack of money to go to Ukraine. And they all think they won't be the ones dying. And I bet they mostly think it'll be like a 6 month stint before it's over.

Exactly what I've been wondering about -- will UKR be able to take any advantage of the ~14-16 hours of night that are on the way. THanks for sharing that. RU soldier shot his comrade in the dark. Gotta be terrifying to be attacked at night by folks that can see when you can't

and now we move from the attack crisis to the longer, ugly, heartbreaking, hostage crisis. My guess is Israel will hold all of Gaza 'hostage' until hamas releases the kidnapped Israelis; can't say I would do different given the situation. Maybe Israel will also agree to free some prisoners or some such to help get to a deal. But this is going to be so ugly going forward. A huge humanitarian crisis ahead while these f-ing monsters hold Israeli citizens. Hamas has unleashed and unrestrained Israeli military power in a way not seen in a very long time. Israel right now has carte blanch in (most) world opinion. This will change over time, so Israel will probably hit hard in immediate term before the humanitarian costs start to change world opinion. I get that the young palestinian men who actually did the attack have grown up in oppression. It's their leaders that have to be blamed, as they use these young men as angry tools for their own twisted strategies. As I said earlier, they should've gone very intensive non-violent campaign decades ago. That would've paid off. This just makes everything so much worse for people already generationally oppressed by both their enemies (israelis) and their allies (their arab/muslim 'friends')

This is the best post in a while. It's gonna take a while. And we don't need to get excited over every poll or pundit or opinion or conspiracy, these things come & go. Eyes on the prize, on the longer term. RU has survived the summer. Disappointing for sure. But to survive they burned up a lot of resources and further mortgaged the nation to this idiotic one-man war (meaning only Putin benefits from not stopping the war). So UKR in good position and getting stronger while RU grows weaker -- at least that's what the preponderance of evidence shows.

So are you thinking that perhaps Netanyahu will actually get some of the blame? I was thinking that he'll pass the blame on to others, successfully, but maybe it goes the other direction. As was stated in a post above, perhaps the claim that Netanyahu was so busy playing politics & cronyism that he left the country vulnerable. I can't stand Netanyahu so I would enjoy watching that.

In the end, Israel will have more land, which they will take without much notice from the outside world. They will have more power over the palestinians. They will have some weeks of the ability to engage in whatever violence they want without much question. Netanyahu will blame someone. Frightened Israelis will become increasingly right wing, as usually happens with fear response. So enjoy the violence binge, Hamas, and enjoy the hangover. Since the 90s, when the great disaster happened (Rabin assassinated by Israeli zealot), I have believed that the only weapon the palestinians could use to win was world opinion. Militarily they are ants fighting a very large anteater. So non-violence was what I thought would work best. Use mass protest -- thousands laying down in from of Israeli bulldozers, hunger strikes, anything that gets on the world's news programs and generates sympathy. That was the only way to win. But instead the violent zealots did their idiotic pinprick attacks, year after year, accomplishing nothing except leaving their people w less and less territory and less and less sovereignty, while generating sympathy for Israel and hardening the hearts of nearly all Israelis. And now this utterly brilliant move. At a time when the world sees Israeli democracy on the edge and world opinion of Israeli govt was lowering.

I suppose the idea is to start a great uprising in the muslim world against Israel? Kinda like white supremacists in US always thinking if they ignite a race war all the whiteys will be with them. Or like Tet offensive, where NV & VC thought the city folks would support them and rise up (probably true in the countryside, but not in the cities).

this f-ing dumbass does realize that he'll run out of rockets, and soon, while the Israelis most certainly won't??? What imbecility.

Hey all, I just started a new thread on the Israel war that hit us today. Hoping to keep this thread more on UKR war.

I was out for a while today, I come back to see hundreds of Israelis dead, plus hostages. And what will this accomplish for the Palestinians? More suffering. Nice binge but the hangover is gonna be deadly. Starting this thread to get the discussion out of the UKR war thread.

I needed some feel good something today, and this is it. Abrams arriving in UKR, hopefully first batch of many. This article goes into some history of the tank but also makes some good points about how it could be more useful than some other armored vehicles in the coming dark, muddy months. Abrams has really low ground pressure despite its size. And it has excellent night vision plus some bunker-busting ammo. So could be used at night to target RU strongpoints while RU has less visibility, typically. Chobham armor should give nice survivability. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/7/2197886/-Ukraine-Update-The-Abrams-was-designed-for-winter-combat-in-Zaporizhzhia?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web It's no wonder weapon, but what armored vehicle would you rather be in as a tanker? And what would you rather have as armored support?

good lord, the conflation begins. Where completely separate things are falsely tied together for some benefit to the person saying it. Like 9-11 and saddam hussein. But on a more UKR centric point, related to the tactics post above. It seems RU digs in and fights for every meter of tree line and can generate plenty of ~untrained mobiks to man the dugouts. UKR is RU attriting men, material, and vehicles at a high rate but just the slow grind of digging rats out of holes is soooooo slow. A whole summer campaign season and they've moved ~15-20km at best. The pace has picked up a little but really this whole thing is still looking like RU made a pretty good bet on their defenses. I am not calling it defeat or failure, but it does say this is gonna take a long time. And over time anything can happen. bad things or good things.

Since no one else is listening to Steve about Israel.... I am pro-Israel. And I am pro-Palestinian. Meaning they both deserve to live & have a state & have rights. In my crazy mind Palestinians and Jews are actually all....people. The attack: I hope the crazies had fun. All that will come of this is Israel killing over 10x the number of people it lost, taking land, and becoming more entrenched in hatred. Like the bus bombings of 20+ years ago, which utterly destroyed the Israeli peace movement. While great fun for some imbecilic radicals who think they actually achieved something, it will do nothing but bring death, misery and more poverty to the people these idiots claim to represent. And Netanyahu loooooooves this. He gets to be big daddy protector now, and he'll pound the hell out of whatever he thinks he needs/wants to in response to this.

latest summary from this guy here. Mostly about tree line war, which we all hate. Sharing it here because he posits that losing leaves helps UKR, as the attacker and w more precision, more than hurts. I've been wondering how losing leaf cover will affect each side. I've also wondering about night actions. With long nights, will URK use it's superior soldier night imaging & communication (w thermal image drones) to conduct more night ops against RU defensive positions? Night operations are inherently dangerous and require good training. Maybe this is part of UKR winter plans, I don't know. Since we're mostly smaller scale infantry operations anyway, maybe it will be something UKR starts attempting. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/6/2197824/-Ukraine-Update-It-s-a-war-of-the-tree-lines?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web

"Russians report one BMP-2M lightly damaged in fierce fighting"

deleted, on second thought don't want to add to the politics stuff

Here's some tankie fun, hopefully distract from US House nonsense w some UKR related nonsense. It always amazes me how filppin' stupid people can be and how zealous in their stupidity. It's great and good to be anti-war, but not when it also makes you pro-slavery and pro-genocide. This naive idiots think that we can just talk to the monsters and they will behave? The world talked and talked and talked to Putin, and then he invades UKR. Then having basically lost any good reason for continuing the war, he continues the war. All the while trying to sabotage global food, global energy, and our democracies. It's utterly amazing to me. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/5/2197568/-Ukraine-Update-Top-tankies-attack-Bernie-Sanders-claim-he-is-a-warmonger?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_9&pm_medium=web

I am sure there's still lots of GOPers that want gov't to work and would be willing to negotiate and find common ground. Sadly, working w dems (the great satan) will be used against any GOPer in a primary. They would be castigated as a RINO and a weakling and a collaborationist by some extremist usurper candidate. Our compromise form of gov't has been destroyed by the radical right. Except that the radical right is now the GOP base. Note that during last Bush admin, many dems crossed party lines many times on votes. But doing this under Obama for GOPers became almost non-existent, despite obama bending over backwards to try to make bipartisan deals. When he couldn't find anyone to work with, he just did executive orders to try to get things done.

superfluous

That is really interesting. May not sound like much but what if RU logistics put a bunch of effort over many months into making sure there was abundance of good winter clothing. And what if they stored a very big percentage of that clothing at a single supply hub in rostov-on-don because that would make things easy from a logistics standpoint. And then all the supply was burned up. I am hoping that's what occurred here. That could make a real mess as RU soldiers at front line might spend weeks or months of bad weather without proper kit. I am sure hoping this is what happened here. I real morale and combat effectiveness disaster IF that's what happened. RU probably thought it was a low value target that would never get hit.

Some good perspective on the hard, grinding war of tree lines & trenches. Plus at the bottom the post by Sen JD Vance that set me off yesterday -- bizzarro world fantasy that the pro-UKR folks are all just bleeding UKR for some kind of revenge. It's so utterly insane it's like it was generated by some really bad chatbot. But the tactical part was quite good https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/1/2196681/-Ukraine-Update-A-kew-weapon-is-making-its-way-to-Ukraine-and-it-s-better-than-ATACMS