danfrodo

China attacking Taiwan is an utterly insane, self destructive choice for China. They are dependent on trade and world is dependent on them. Attacking Taiwan wrecks all that. There is simply no cost-benefit that is in 1000 miles of making sense. And so maybe China will actually do that. considering it was insane for Putin to make this move. Actually Putin's move was less insane than Taiwan attack would be -- Putin was staging a coup that went sideways. China would be full on war. I guess insane cost-benefit ratio doesn't really mean a dictator won't do actually pull the trigger.

Good write up today here by Markos (ex arty soldier). Talks about the arty situation and some kharkiv w some good clarity, speculates on where & when the UKR heavy brigades will be employed. LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN RISK. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/13/2104025/-Ukraine-Update-Ukraine-won-t-get-all-the-artillery-it-wants-but-it-doesn-t-need-to

That is some serious delusion: "are we meant to complain to Putin?". He cares so deeply about his people, especially in DPR. He definitely will make your troubles vanish if you just escalate your complaints. If you can just make so much noise that you get Putin's attention, you'll surely never have another thing to complain about, guaranteed.

that is some serious nostalgia right there. One of the hit records from way back in March -- 20,000 syrian fighters on the way! somehow that song just doesn't age well.

Poland is arming! This is a serious threat and provocation! Putin must invade now before it's too late! He is only doing this because he has no choice, since later he will be at the mercy of the culturally and ethnically aggressor-nation Poles!

That is so ridiculous. Basically the reporter involved is talking to people that really aren't living in reality, which means they are some pundit type I suppose. I subscribe to NYT but there war coverage can sometimes really be infantile. Yes, this could happen. Except that Lyschansk and Kramatorsk are 100X harder to take than Severodonetsk unless the cities are cut off. Of course, the only forces available to do the cutting off..... are getting severely depleted in Severodonetsk and will face worse as they try to advance out of Izyum & Popasne. As if losing this city means some kind of amazing breakthrough. REPORTER, LOOK AT A MAP. geeeeez

If that makes me feel this good here in the US, I am guessing that video makes our UKR friends really happy. That's a bunch of ordnance & tubes that won't be killing the good guys. I hope mix of interdiction & targeting/countering RU arty can make a significant difference to the soldiers trying to hold the lines.

Great posts all, thx. I am caught w the overnight stuff. I only have a couple things to add 1. As far as 'land for peace' goes, it's waaaaay too early for us to know how things will shake out. RU military collapse, overthrow of Putin, etc, all of these could occur. Why would UKR agree to Crimea or LPR/DPR trades when there might come a time when they can walk in? If the price for getting these lands back becomes too high, maybe they'll make that trade but it's much too early to decide any of that. Trading away something you can never get anyway is not a happy thing but at least it's a leverage point. 2. as per The Capt, Severodonetsk city is really militarily stupid for the russians. It's only value is in face-saving measure for Putin who can play it as final victory and then go on the peace offensive, which will be utterly sickening. This whole war has reached such insanity of pointless death, destructive, theft, and impoverishment that it just boggles my mind. Here we are in 21st century yet one single psychopath does all this, simply for his own personal profit. Unbelievable. Maybe UKR will, in the end, have to settle for the Feb22 boundaries. But I think we all (UKR and its allies) need to do everything possible ensure that Putin does not profit from this misadventure.

wow, thanks Bearstronaut & SeinfeldRules. That was very enlightening. My first guess is they put so much emphasis on mine survival that it ruined the vehicle for anything outside of driving down mine-ridden roads. That's messed up.

how come? Ya left us hanging....

I would rather be in a unit that had lightly-protected mobility (MRAP/armored cars) than driving around in shiny white zero-protection hyundai mini SUV.

maybe UKR's TD forces are not adequately supplied. But maybe that's a prioritization issue. There's a ~6-800km front, mostly manned by TD except in pretty hot areas. Assume there's regular army units available somewhere in each area that can respond to RU attacks within a day or so, because if that weren't true RU would've had bigger breakthroughs. If your strategic objective is to build up enough offensive military power to drive the orcs out of the shire, then maybe the TD forces are just expected to make do. Maybe the training & equipping of the regular army is simply taking up most of the available resources, and the TD forces get what is left over & trickles in. -- kinda like the US marines, who the navy doesn't ever want to properly fund because the navy prioritizes ships, planes, and sailors. So I am saying that maybe the under-equipping of the TD forces my simply be a calculated risk in order to prioritize the units that will actually achieve the nation's strategic objectives. Having said that, I would be pretty salty if I were in the TD in an active area.

Fun use of strykers as a rolling smoke barrage. 3rd battle, Charge of the Stryker Brigade campaing. I need to cross a river over a long causeway. I have infantry who've crossed on my right on a human-only ford, but to get my main force across I need that causeway. I can use artillery smoke source but rounds land in the water. Wind is blowing from my side of bridge to enemy side. Stryker pulls up to edge of woods and shoots smoke. Smoke moves toward enemy side along bridge. Advance to edge of smoke and shoot more smoke. Then next stryker leapfrogs to edge of edge smoke screen and pops more smoke. Below, smoke removed to show the leapfrogging strykers. infantry bursts out of the smoke to form initial bridgehead. Maybe should've delayed them another 15 seconds as they have outrun the smoke. Fortunately my artillery prep of the opposing shore did a good job. Main force sprints across thru the smoke, covered by the initial infantry bridgehead. Main force deploys infantry and begins to spread out and advance before the enemy artillery can smash the bunched up force. I feel good about finding a new way to use strykers, which would only work in situation where the wind is friendly. But it worked really well. Now to help out my Ukrainian friends by putting some more hurt on Putin! Wish I could see the look on his face when he finds out the americans have crossed here & taken the town. Someone's going to be...demoted

I guess I should just keep calm until we see evidence that UKR has advanced to the main highway running N out of Izyum. I really would like some kind of victory dance opportunity.

Which one's Pink? Meanwhile, not to promote the video, but Task&Purpose has a video up saying how militarily vulnerable Estonia is. Uhhhhhhh, that's part of NATO, Dude. He has great videos on weapons but I am continually shocked at how utterly clueless he continues to be on anything above the most basic tactical level. I bring this up because there's lots of this stuff on the interwebs and I am just not understanding how these folks don't seem to live in an evidence based reality. Like "Russia could attack Poland!" -- with what? Or the ongoing 'Great Russian Hordes' stuff.

yeah, exactly a fear I have had last couple days. Easily fordable rivers. Meanwhile I am on the edge of my seat about Huba's post on alleged UKR Izyum attack. I am check here every 5 minutes hoping for something solid.

So let's assume for second that UKR is planning bigger operational moves -- like maybe what Huba mentioned above to cut off the Izyum salient. Maybe the alleged low artillery fire rate for UKR in the donbas sector is because they want to spend those shells elsewhere. If I am looking to collapse an area then a sector, I want to be able to pound the local low quality troops, hopefully starting a stampede. I want arty that can keep punching as my units advance, so either long range or mobile. So maybe UKR actually has a lot of its assets elsewhere than in the 'honeypot' (as per The Capt).

Reminds me when a guy I used to work with said "a lot of folks are saying Obama is the anti-christ". I said "huh, darn, I always expected the anti-christ to be a lot more effective. Really disappointing." NATO is operating the way democracies operate. Frustrating, contentious, and sometimes pretty effective.

There's a dude really out of time. He would've been an amazing political commissar in the good ol' days of the Great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A state entity so popular and beloved that it had to imprison it's own people (and the people of its hostage nations in eastern europe).

Wow, what a great bunch of posts from everyone. Spent a solid hour this pouring rain morning just going through the two pages that came in overnight. Aragorn, TheCapt, LLFlank, others, thanks! My takeaways: 1. Collapse: I look at this as local/sector which could then lead to front collapse -- like potential for the current UA Kerson-front attacks to lead to local collapse, then panic sets in leading to bigger collapse (abandoned roadblocks, troops just retreating w/o orders), leading to UA being able to cut off large RU forces, leading to front collapse. In Severodonetsk region, there's no good avenues for UA to cut off RU forces due to terrain and strong RU forces. Izyum and Popasne are possible for Kyiv-front-style collapse, but I don't see that for Severodonetsk. 2. So, Severodonetsk. No serious military strategic or operational value. But high potential propaganda for Putin plus could give him enough gains to try to diplomatically freeze the status quo -- can he bribe enough politicians and influencers to pull this off? -- for example, the most watched news-channel show in the US is 100% Putin propaganda. Yeah, it's only the brainwashed that see it, but it does have influence. Putin clearly hoping the poison will spread outward once he starts talking peace and love. What do y'all see as the strategic purpose for each side in putting so much into the fight for this ground? 3. more Severodonetsk: is this flypaper to attract and attrit RU strength in a way that has nearly zero strategic risk for UA? Or does UA really care about this ground such that Kherson attacks are hoped to draw away forces?-- I doubt this one. Does UA have some other major operations in the works that require Severodonetsk to tie down RU forces???? 3. LLFlank quote above: yeah, these UA soldiers are getting hammered. Sure would be nice to significantly degrade the only tactical advantage RU has -- artillery. 4. Jeebus H Kristo, will this rain here never stop???? It's June, monsoon season should've ended many months ago. But my actual point is that I read in some posts that the rivers in Ukraine are lowering dramatically w the dry summer season. I wonder what this will mean for operations that are currently heavily restricted by waterways.

Who's chemical works??

Machor, I think it's been the full 40 years since I watched Conan. I guess I gotta get back on that horse, thanks! I read most of the Ron E Howard Conan books ~10 years ago. Actually really really good stuff, Howard was truly gifted. So Turkey civil war? What will that game be called? CM... CM... CMErdogan? CMOttoman?

So it seems Putin's plan is to get the little bit of Donbas that hasn't been taken so he can declare victory, then attempt to freeze the status quo. He'll talk about wanting cease fire, peace, etc, and will hope that bribing enough politicians and influencers in the west will sway public opinion to a negotiated settlement w RU keeping all their stolen land. Then he'll go return to his ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the west (via social media and bribery) as he's done for a long time now, which is certainly cheaper than war and has nearly zero risk.

I don't know the outcome but this has got to be better than no visit. Hopefully seeing the destruction will help this to sink in and spur more aid. Putin is a serial mass murderer and is an ongoing threat to all of europe. Defeating his military in Ukraine is not just the right thing to do for the future of freedom and humanity, it is good for Europe. If Putin had won in Ukraine his next stop would've been Georgia, then Baltics, Finland, or maybe even Poland. He would've used some make-believe border terrritorial dispute to make small military incursion or fake insurrection which would not be enough to start a wider war, like in the Donbas & Crimea. Then he'd wait for the status quo to stabilize and do it again, over & over and over again.

So basically warlord 'state'. lovely.