danfrodo

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

By the by; 100kg probably isn't enough for a soldier and their equipment. It's /probably/ enough for a wounded soldier, on the assumption they're stripped of weapons, webbing, helmet, & armour before being loaded in 'the coffin.'
A 200kg max load would give an adequate performance margin in most circumstances I should think, or possibly 150kg if you're prepared to accept failure more often (because hot and high, or "just one more" AT4 stuffed in there, or etc).
But otherwise I quite like the idea of the flying coffin as a platoon mule. As Syd Jary once wrote, bring back my carrier (talking about bren carriers at the platoon level).

I think was DanCA.  I actually hope they'll spend this money on drones.  Maybe one version would be like one seen here recently, that can carry a person-sized payload.  Comes in, delivers a soldier or ammo or food and leaves w wounded soldier.  ~100kg payload should do it.  Someone mentioned that it could get shot down -- a lot small target than a helicopter medevac, that's for sure.  

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

In 2008, the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup. They started persecuting those who did not accept the coup, and it was indeed a coup. They created a threat to Crimea, which we had to take under our protection. They launched a war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started. There's a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large-scale military operation, then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO's.  -- V.V. Putin
*****
It was Gimli the dwarf who broke in suddenly. 'The words of this wizard stand on their heads,' he growled, gripping the handle of his axe. 'In the language of Orthanc help means ruin and saving means slaying, that is plain. But we do not come here to beg.'

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

How does telling lies on TV for years, lies that actually kill people (vax disinf), along w election lies, jan 6 lies, 'prepare' anyone for anything?  What the hell do you think fox news is?  It's a lie machine.

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

you're f--ing kidding right?  TC is an experienced interviewer?  He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster.  WTF?  You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?  
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)

@FlammenwerferX and I are again engaged in a pretty epic tank battle.  
Here my Panthers are pummeled by artillery but patiently wait it out.

Amateur historian chiming in, so take it for what it's worth: yes with a but.
I'd suggest that there are two kinds of war, the second of which is relatively uncommon. I'd distinguish them based on what the victor gets at the end of the war.
The first kind of war is a war-for-things. The aggressor wants to take some things (which can be abstract things) from the defender. The victor gets to keep the things. For example, when the United States fought Mexico in the 1840s, that was a war for things. The victor kept Texas and California. Or the Roman conquest of Gaul: Caesar plundered everything that was not nailed down, and functionally annexed modern France to Roman rule. These are pretty common, and World War II was, from one side, a war for things: Germany wanted Lebensraum, Japan wanted the rich resources of the indo-pacific region (particularly oil). Note that I'm defining wars-for-things in terms of the spoils, not the rhetoric that surrounds the spoils. I'd note that modern war is so mind bogglingly destructive that rational actors have concluded that protracted war-for-things is a suckers game. There are no things you can get that are worth the destruction on the things you want!
The second kind, which is relatively rare, is a war-for-rules. The aggressor wants to impose (or maintain) a particular rule set on a collection of polities. The ancient examples of this would be Roman expansion in Italy (which ended with the defeated state bound into a treaty structure rather than obliterated) and the inter-Polis wars in Greece (which were by and large prestige competitions). The victor incorporates the defeated party into a particular rule-set. The objective is not to take things away from the defeated party.
We've also seen asymmetric combinations of the two. For example, Gulf War I. Iraq was fighting a war-for-things against Kuwait, but the Coalition was fighting a war-for-rules against Iraq (we did not annex Iraq at the end of the war, we said, "no annexing neighbors, bad Iraq").
So the war in Ukraine is a combination of these two. Russia is fighting a war-for-things against Ukraine. They are attempting to take the whole of Ukraine's territory, and stealing grain and people. Simultaneously, Russia is fighting a war-for-rules against the Status-quo Coalition. The rule change they're attempting to effect is a return to the "annexing-neighbors-is-ok" rule set that preceded WW2. Ukraine is fighting an existential war-for-things against Russia, and wins if they exist as an independent state at the end of the fighting. The Status-quo Coalition is fighting an existential war against Russia as well: the absolute lynchpin of the status quo is that annexing neighbors is not OK. If that rule falters, it will blow up the international order and allow a renegotiation of lots of the status quo by actors not enamored of the status quo (the Baltics, Taiwan, Africa, the Middle East, &c.). Victory of the Status-quo Coalition is deterrent: showing everyone that attempting to violate the international rule set is *just not worth it*.

Well first off, I never said this war, or any war was “only” attrition.  I said these were the primary mechanisms that engineered victory.  A gross over simplification is to claim that wars can “only” be won through offensive action.
WW1 - thanks for the history lesson, I am passingly familiar with how it went down.  Now why did all those Central fronts collapse at the end of the war?  It was not “one last push” at the end of a bunch of Allied manoeuvre or even offensive actions.  It was the punctuation mark in a war of extreme attrition and exhaustion in which defensive primacy ruled.  There are any number of historical examples of decisive defensive victories - Stalingrad, Gettysburg and Waterloo.  Setting the conditions for an opponent to break themselves on a defence as a route to victory is as old as warfare itself.
As to Ukraine, there is absolutely a viable strategy to allow the RA to burn itself out to the point they become vulnerable to collapse.  In fact given the battlefield conditions we are seeing (eg denial and defence), this might be the best strategy they have.  Going back on offensive as a finishing move; like Kyiv, like Kharkiv - then becomes an option.
Conversely Ukraine could lose this war through a series of ill advised and wasteful offensives, because “we expect them to always attack seeking ‘decisions of arms’”.  
As to denying an opponent their will (I.e. stalemate) as “not a victory” - tell that to South Korea.  Or the Cold War.  History simply does not support this position.  It is possible to “win” simply by not losing and denying victory for an opponent and I have noted more than a few examples.  Not every war requires a bold imposition of Will and rolling through their capital.  In fact the majority of wars across history end without that.  For every grand decisive war there are a dozen small side shows that ended in some sort of negotiated limited victory - 1813-1815 in North America, Russia-Japan - 1905, the Balkan Wars, China-Vietnam, Iran-Iraq - hell, the First Gulf War for that matter.
None of these were total victories.  They all ended with levels of simply not losing entirely, nor winning.  In fact it could be argued the true art of war is to “not lose just enough”.  The problem we have in the West is we are so enamoured with ourselves that we only see the wars we want to see.  We only study the “real wars” which gives an extremely biased and skewed view of warfare.  I call this the Ricky Bobby school of military history - “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”  
This is not an accurate or useful viewpoint with respect to this war.  Ukraine may be “only” capable of denying Russia full control of its nation.  That is not a loss by any reasonable metric.  And to accuse them of claiming “a poor man’s victory” smacks of ill informed and shallow analysis of how wars actually work.  War is very often a choice of “bad and worse” with most the effort trying to determine which is which.

1. War includes ATTRITION. Even if you do NOTHING, you loses men and equipment. Saying that war is just attrition is a HUGE oversimplification which reduces military art to just a matter of a slower or faster attrition of your enemy. If I get a victory in battle over my enemy, I have worn out the enemy army and its will, so is ANYTHING I do is  just a matter or attrition? If everything is reduced to just a matter of how much I can wear away my enemy, what's the reason to do a military maneuver or offensive? Just rain fire and lead over your enemy until no enemy soldier, tank or gun is left, or they decide to quit.
2. Germany did lose WWI because ALL fronts collapsed under Allied offensives and there was no way to stabilize them. The Balkan Front around Salonica was pierced, so Bulgaria went out of the war. Without Bulgaria that front was fully open and impossible to stabilize. The Italian front collapsed after Vittorio Venetto, so A-H, unable to stabilize the Balkan and Italian front finally went off the war. The Turkish fronts also collapsed, so Turkey finally surrender. Germany surrendered in November 11th, 1918 , but at that moment Germany was fighting alone because all other Central Power allies (Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary) had collapsed after successful enemy offensives and surrendered. Attrition helped to undermine CP's resistance, but the final victory was won via good, old, traditional offensives that crushed entire enemy fronts until Germany was not able to keep them under control. Moreover, victory was worn by new tactics and weapons born from new military thinking, not by mere attrition. Attrition keep the war going for 4 years until new tactics and new ideas finally brought the war to and end via successful offensives.
3. If Ukraine resorts to pure defensive and strategy based in attrition, it might be able to avert defeat (if Ukrainian collapse is avoided first, that is), but it won't be able to win. Ukraine would be able to just "win" a stalemate.
In a traditional war, with front lines, etc., the pace of attrition is set by the attacker, never by the defender. The Russian army is burning lots of soldiers and equipment in their horrid meat offensives/holocausts (BTW a tradition in Russian military history that has worked more often than not), but they sacrifice just the forces they are prepared to sacrifice, not a single soldier more. If the Russian runs out  of soldiers, it just stops and recruits more meat until they have enough for more meat offensives. Then Ukraine only options are to accept the attrition exchange on Russian terms while Russia wants, or retreat to avoid excessive attrition. The only way to break that vicious circle is by finding a way to attack the enemy and put him out of balance, so you are the one who decides the attrition cicle. The only way to do it is via an offensive.
3. Sooner or later you must attack and maneuver in order to get a victory, that is , impose your will and objetives over those of your enemy . Attrition just paves the way for victory, but it is not a victory in itself until  you destroys the enemy will with successful maneuver offensives.

But let's not play the false equivalence game.  There's crazy on the left, but it's fringe, not in power.  Even a very left representative, like AOC, is still quite in the norm of a left-leaning politician in just about any western democracy.  Meanwhile, on the right the crazies actually are in control, deeply in control.  And  these people  would be considered insane and completely outside the norm in just about any western democracy.  The diff is the crazy on the left is a fringe w no power.  The crazy on the right controls the party which right now controls the house of reps.  
For UKR, this is of course terrible.  People that thought Tucker carlson was a truth teller are blocking UKR aid.  And their mouthpiece is in RU about to give interview to Putin.  I would love to see how Tucker would've interviewed Hitler "Gosh, Mr Fuhrer, now that you explain it to me I really see how very very dangerous those jews are to you and your beloved, pure blood nation.  I hope I can help more people to understand the reality of the situation because the mainstream media falsely claims the jews are somehow victims."

lots of somewhat bad news on UKR, but I did see that US shell production ramping up.  36K per months now, but 70K by end of year.  I am guessing that was 155mm.  So only 1k per day now but 2k per day soon.  On top of UKR domestic + EU supplies then UKR might get to artillery superiority by end of year.  By superiority I don't mean they shoot more shells than RU since UKR is more precise and does more w less.  I bet it would be really hard for RU if their 10k per day was matched by 5k UKR, instead of what seems to be ~2k per day for UKR now.  
Assuming of course that certain rotten US snakes don't continue to sabotage things.