danfrodo

Nothing much new here, mostly more talk about UKR recent successes around Bakhmut. but do I care about these little towns that lead nowhere? All I think think of is the Steve maxim in play "kill russians". And RU seems to be doing their best to get men and material destroyed attacked to recapture.... nothing??? Even if RU lost Bakhmut it just doesn't matter operationally or strategically. Just like it didn't matter last winter when RU ran suicidal offensive to capture.... nothing. WTF is in Putin's head that he would do this, over & over & over & over again. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/18/2194032/-Ukraine-update-Bakhmut-is-once-again-the-hottest-spot-on-the-front-lines Interesting story about RU soldiers w/o proper weapons. If that were generally true UKR would already be at the coast, so I take all of those 'shovel' stories w a grain of salt. I do believe these stories might be true, but on a very small scale else there'd be a lot more territory lost. I worry about mobilization allowing Putin to fill the trenches w armed mobiks. Hopefully they will be very poorly provisioned for wet, cold weather. I thought same thing last winter, so don't want to get my hopes too high.

Just buy off the chief & his critical henchmen, like usual. And if he decides to start getting uppity, offer the opportunity of a lifetime to the next guy in line and have the troublemaker experience 'health issues'. Buying people off seems rather cheap these days, as per sarkozy, rand paul, et al.

ah yes, contact. That first casualty. Always hurts.

Yeah, I remember that in the 80s, where the idiot navy secretary, "mr 600 ship navy", brought back battleships. Which were obsolete for 40 years already. I was flabbergasted at the time. Yeah, MBTs probably not a good bang-for-buck going forward. Need mobile, protected, firepower, but doesn't have to mean MBT and there's lots of ideas out there. Smaller armored vehicles w 1 or 2 or zero crew. Remotely or semi-remotely controlled. Cheap, less fuel, less people/cost at risk per vehicle.

How embarrassingly stupid. I agree completely w your take on this, BillBinDC. Next thing he'll do is the old "romans had arena sports and fell, america has arena sports and so will fall also, just look at all the similarities".

my apologies to the CMBS world, I put my normandy screenshots above in wrong forum thread

yes, one of the 'serious people', one of the enlightened ones, just now comes to realize this. jeeeebus, now he'll f-ing lecture us all about it. Like when Bret Stephens, editorial head of NYT editorial page, finally decided a couple years ago that climate change was real and serious and told us all how serious it was. uhhhhh, mr arrogant dumb-ss, most of us have known that for a quarter century. But, anyway, thank you Mr Friedman for letting us peasants know it's ok to know what we've all known the whole time. dang, I'm a big salty today. On a happier note: Blazing88s restores my hope for humanity.

Between that the the RU guy shooting wounded comrade, I'm gonna go puke now. Maybe was a fragging incident? But wouldn't someone say "hey, those aren't shrapnel wounds!". oh, wait, russian army, nevermind.

this can't be real, in any culture, anywhere. Please tell me this isn't real. Please. And it does look very fake in the responses of the people right next the victim who didn't even flinch as the truck barely missed them

I get that this is probably going to be a thing, as sad as it makes me. But it does also say "make CM africa, CM 1941, 42, 43, where have proper fights w armor & men, as god intended.

Excellent discussion, folks. As noted by many on this forum many times, the war will continue until one or both sides are forced to negotiate an end. Our best case was RU military collapsed under pressure this summer and chose to negotiate from weak position having already lost landbridge and Luhansk. That best case is off the table for now. We at least wanted the landbridge cut, but that is unlikely too. Now we hope to at least penetrate enough to cut off Tokmak and get more of the remaining distance to the coast under rocket & arty fire. Hopefully at least get that soon. But most likely we settle for continued high attrition of RU forces in hopes of later breakthrough & collapse. Disappointing but not a crisis.

I'm wondering what you mean by that? Land invasion of crimea? Front is currently pretty stuck in attrition fight still well away from any terrain that matters operationally or strategically. Cutting Tokmak rail & road net would be something big, but not even close. Crimea might as well be on the moon right now, other than as a place to hit RU assets.

This is indeed great news, if true. It shows that RU forces can locally collapse which is what we've all been hoping for. Not much gain can be had around Bakhmut, unfortunately, but RU will still be forced to make up for loss of a large number of frontline troops to keep their line intact. We've got ~4-6 weeks of good weather, hopefully will make the most of it.

'zactly! Meanwhile, I suspect we're about to see Putin fire every missile & drone on hand at UKR cities to respond to the naval humiliation. Like usual.

Reminds me that I need to visit Italy, it's been a while. Just went from Syria 08 to France 44 and currently in germany 79. but I think The Med 44 is next.

New Denys Davydov YTube video says new smoking accident in moscow near some big tv tower. Anyone else seeing this anywhere?

deleted, as per AKD above

well said, seems we are on same page

I wasn't saying we should never go to mars. I am saying we shouldn't be 'colonizing' it anytime soon or even sending humans. we need better technology before we do that. And it would cost an insane amount of money to send even a research team there & back. At a time when we use drones to do lots of dangerous dirty work why would be send humans to mars for research right now? I am all for sending 'drones' until we get better propulsion & survival tech. Mars is a radiation soaked hell hole w low gravity and very little air, why would we 'colonize' that in near term? It's a death sentence and would cost a trillion dollars. And why would we try to send people to mars on 7-9 month trip, each way, when we don't even have a base on the moon, 2-3 days away. (note, I do think we should put a station on moon and use that to learn).

Yes, may he suffer some natural consequences of his worldview. Being a medic he should be in the thick of things, but I bet he's well back.

I think he was banned as of today. He was the smartest person in the room so will be sorely missed . I suppose somewhere else will get the benefits of his giant ego now. Sad for us.

He's made some really good choices and saw where things were headed while others had head in sand. But genius? He drunk or mental illness binge bought twitter, tried to renege (even trying to wreck twitter stock value thinking it would help his case) and was forced to do the buy. He paid $44B for a company worth maybe $20B. And now it's worth what? he then decided cost structure to high and binge fired over half the company w no plan or thinking. That aint genius. He publicly wanted to fight his competitor, Zuckerburg of facebook. And wanted to compare dicks. That's not genius. He thinks QAnon stuff actually makes sense. That makes him an idiot, not a genius. He alienated the customer base for tesla cars (affluent libs) and had to dramatically cut prices. The good news for tesla is that they are great cars and get the big tax break in US, so a lot of libs (some I know) held their nose and bought anyway, but he did serious damage. So, not a genius. He thinks colonizing mars makes sense. Except that it's insane. Maybe he promotes this because he'll make fortune on the contracts for the stupidest endeavor in human history.

good point. This might be a big factor in their long term strategy. NATO wants breakthrough and exploit, potentially at high cost, but UKR realized this wouldn't work for them and chose a different path. The old fashioned 'we can outlast you' strategy, which does seem to be working, though sure is hard to endure (for UKR, that is).

Like Steve just said, anything w a cannon and some armor is a dangerous. But it does clearly show desperation. Why would one field such things unless didn't have something better? Like something not 70 yrs old? I suspect these will be used as pillboxes and/or artillery. Someone probably pulled out thousands of old 100mm shells out of warehouses. I wouldn't want to be firing these shells, that's for sure. (edit: ninja'd by DanCA on this) On the front, I still have my main concern for the current situation: RU still able to rob sections of front to shore up others. UKR going slow & steady but does allow enemy time to respond. And there will be a new pile of mobiks this fall to at least put bodies in holes to slow UKR down. It seems like RU is starting to crack but it's rather ductile crack. Steve banned our resident genius. Wherefore wilst I go for wisdom heretofore?

deleted, not worth the vacation