Machor

A lot depends on how the question was asked.  In my opinion--most Republicans associate the ridiculous gas prices with Biden's closing the Keystone pipeline and playing games with US fuel assets, not the Ukrainian war.  Thus, any Republican response to questions related to the tolerance of high gas prices is going to come back negative.  And the Republicans are going to try and hammer Biden and the Dems on inflation and gas prices this Fall.  I realize this is only a tiny sample, but my conservative friends unanimously support US efforts in Ukraine.
LIke others, I'm surprised that Putin is flying to Iran.  Surprised that Assad is sending a representative and not going himself.  And...will be shocked if Erdogan aligns himself and Turkey more closely with Putin and Russia.   Talk about joining a losing battle with an extremely isolated and failing partner who's military hardware has been shown to be of little value and who's economy offers virtually nothing.  I don't see any "win" for Erdogan.

RE: Mini and Micro UAV Defence
Turkey is fielding a native system named 'Şahin' (falcon) based on the Mk 19 - while they're too broke to field other systems they've advertised in numbers, I do expect this one will be prioritized for Syria and Northern Iraq:
It fires airburst grenades:
Aselsan develops Atom 40 mm high-velocity air bursting munition (HV ABM)
I remember @LongLeftFlank asking about using 40mm against drones.
 

Let's not take this to the toxic depths of US domestic politics, but focus on the article's argument: Ukraine's strategy, like that of Russia, is also constrained by politics, in this case the dynamics of US domestic politics [I have no idea why acronyms haven't been capitalized.]:
Is America growing weary of the long war in Ukraine?
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/07/17/is-america-growing-weary-of-the-long-war-in-ukraine
 

Almost the same role played our seals from 73rd Maritime Special opeartions Center in 2014. Though, during Debaltsevo battle they worked in one episode by own speciality - they destroyed the dam on small river, conducting some underwater works. 
When our forces landed recently on Zmiinyi island, teams of 73rd MSOC and 801st  Detachment to Combat Underwater Sabotage Forces used micro-submarines to reach the shore and search approaches to the island for landing groups on Willard RIBs.
On the photo - this group before or after Zmiinyi landing - micro-submarine in right lower corner and Willard, armed with M2 behind them

So much for Canada returning the turbine - it was shipped July 17, although as I read news reports it has to pass through Germany before going to Russia.
So, Russia lied about why Germany was getting so little gas, and we fell for it again.  Lucy and the football.
Putin is doing this now because because he got the turbine in motion yesterday, and if he waits until winter the reservoirs, or whatever stores gas, will be full which reduces the value of any gas threats.  Right now the gas reservoirs are very low.  So by shutting it off now he is proactively crippling German industry and setting the public up for a cold and dark winter.

I don't know where you get the CEP figures for those from, but I'm pretty confident it's not 100 m against land targets for the radar ones. Even KSR-5 from the 1970s with radar is credited with a CEP of 1-2 nautical miles against land targets. For comparison Block-I nuclear Tomahawk (TLAM-N) had a CEP of 80 m using TERCOM and INS from the 1980s.
Both Kh-22MA and Kh-22NA with TERCOM only have thermonuclear warheads.


From airwar.ru:

Out of those 1000, how many are Kh-22N/NAs? How many Kh-22s are even left? It is known that Ukraine returned 386 Kh-22s to Russia, but another 423 were scrapped by Ukraine. I doubt they are going to use all their Kh-22s (especially new ones), they still need them in case of a confrontation with NATO for the Tu-22M3s.

Kh-22 almost certainly does not have a top cruise speed of Mach 6. That's hypersonic. The original Kh-22 has a cruise speed of between 3,000 to 3,600 km/h.


I don't have the numbers for the Kh-22M/N, but I suspect the speeds you are quoting are the maximum in the terminal dive phase.

None of these are low-altitude terrain-following missiles like Kalibr. They should be interceptable with S-300P as well as S-300V in the cruise phase. Probably in the terminal dive phase you might need S-300V.

http://www.airwar.ru/image/i/weapon/x-22_cx_n.gif
The main problem is Ukraine doesn't have enough S-300s to protect every city.

Russians are moving further to the rear their large ammunition dumps out of HIMARS/Tochka-U ranges. Also they now trying to disperse own command centers, creating false and reserve command points, also new field command centers they will be dig in deeply. 
Of course, redeploying of ammunition dumps in the deep rear will demand more trucks, more fuel for continuous supply of BTGs  
Here the assesment of DefMon how will increase the time of supply on different directions

Indirect evidens that Russians managed to catch some element of UKR 19th missile brigade, armed with Tochka-U (and now partially likely with HIMARS). Senior lieutenant, officer-psychologist of this brigade,  Olha Tymoshenko has died from burns in hospital in Zaporizhzhia on 5th of April. The car, in which she drove was hit. She was 27. Signed contract in 2019.
 

"Relatives and friends pay their last respects to Liza, a 4-year-old girl killed by a Russian attack, in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, July 17, 2022. EFREM LUKATSKY / AP"

I havn't account on twitetr, so can't watch the video. But this is fact - BTRs can survive several RPG, western light AT-wepon (like Matador and other) or even ATGMs, because they just a metal box with engine and without dozens of powder charges for several-kg HE rouds inside. If HEAT doesnt' hit engine or 30 mm gun ammunition, there is just nothing to burn inside APC. You can recall Russian video from Mariupol, when the tank tried to pull damaged BTR-82A - it got three RPG-7 in front full, but didn't set fire. Also you can recall a video how UKR forces ambushed BTR-80 with some light western AT-weapon. BTR got two hits, but kept capability to move and only third hit to rear part caused fire. 

RUMINT - currently RU produces 50 Calibers and 30 Iskanders per month. Possibly average missile expenditure per day = production. However, Iskander number most likely inflated. 
 
 

The CEP of the Kh-22 is not 500 m, it's more like 3 miles (~5 km) in land attack mode. 500 m is with the radar against naval targets, which cannot be used against land targets.

They don't have an infinite number of Kh-101, Kh-555, and they can't launch all of them anyway because they need to keep some for use against NATO and/or China etc.

The Kh-22 is very much not impossible to intercept. It's a 1960s missile with 1950s technology. It's just that Ukraine doesn't have enough of the tools needed. Hopefully that will change.



 

Yeah, it really depends on the echelon the dump supports - bde, div, corps, army. Below bde (bn or bty) the stocks 'should' all be on wheels.
The following pseudo-calcs are based on very not-Russian doctrine, and instruction to the level of "enough to know what the blanket-folders care about" rather than "enough to do the blanket-folder's job", so the principles should be about right, although the particular numbers will vary.
Generally, stocks are held in dumps based on days-of-supply (or some equivalent term) which is - as you can probably guess - the expected consumption per day in units of fire, rather than a specific number of rounds. For a ~150mm calibre gun (152, or 155) 1 unit would be 80-100 rounds^ at standard rates of fire. This is equivalent to the 'basic load' or 'first line' of 5.56mm that riflemen carry, or the standard loadout of a tank of IFV. You might double or triple it for high expected intensity, or halve it for quiet times, but 1 unit is as good a place as any to start. Then, 'all' you have to do is count up the number of guns in the echelon, multiply by the number of rounds in the basic load, and multiply all that by the number of days the dump is to support. For a bde you'd expect the dump to be able to support 2-3 days, a div 3-7 days, a corps something like a week to a fortnight, and an army ... well, whatever.
So, for a bde, you're looking at something like 18 guns x 90 rounds x 2 days = ~3200 rounds, or a bit over 400 pallets.
For a div, it'd be something like 4-10 times that amount, or 12,000 - 30,000rnds. (54 guns x 90 rounds x 5 days = ~24,000 rounds/3,000 pallets)
A corps would be about 4-10 times that (50,000-300,000rnds), although presumably split into multiple dispersed div- or bde-sized dumps.
If you then apply some level of safety thinking, and split the dump into multiple separated 'blobs' so you don't lose the whole lot to a single accident or enemy strike, well, a properly organised and run dump takes up a LOT of real estate. Each dump would expect to receive a flow of rounds arriving each day from the next higher dump, and in turn push rounds down to the next lower dump or have rounds pulled out out by the firing units. The dump therefore acts as a buffer so that local variations in the amount received or the amount consumed aren't felt by the firing units or their supported arms. If the amount received is less than the amount consumed ... the dump gets smaller. If the amount received exceeds the amount consumed then the dump swells. In either case the guns should experience no disruption in supply.
The pic below shows an 8-round pallet.
 
^ itself made up of a pre-determined mix of HE, illum, smoke, etc projectiles and a pre-determined mix of fuze types - PD, prox, time, etc

And, of course, that's only gun ammo. There's also mortar ammo, fighting vehicle ammo, small arms ammo, ATGMs and MANPADS, fuel, mines, engineering stores, personal consumables, medical supplies, bridging equipment, spare parts, batteries, ... the wonder is not that armies move so slowly, but that they move at all.

Apparently more than 20 kids from some Putinjugend DNR organization “Young Republic” were “volunteering” to load ammo at the depot near Shakhtarsk, with majority now dead or wounded:
 

It wouldn't help anyway. GMLRS uses GPS for minor corrections. The bulk of the guidance is inertial, which the jamming would not affect. That of course assumes that they can jam US military grade GPS systems anyway.

According to this interview, these are ages of some of the volunteers (Google Translation)
https://www.kp.ru/daily/27416.5/4615321/
 
What is the age of the volunteers?
- Our with you, Alexander. Well, different ages: 50+, there are up to 50 years old - 46, 47.
Volunteers have no age limit - you can join these units until retirement.
Also in this interview:

- Why - "Tiger"? Who came up with it? Governor?
- These are the volunteers themselves - they offered several names, and now they consulted and decided to choose this one.
 

That is not how military operations work...even in the Russian military.  You never have enough of anything, no matter how much.  Russians have a lot of old ammo stockpiles - a lot of that ammunition is very questionable and I would love to see the dud rates for Russian arty right now.  However, that is not what is important, it is their ammo production capability in relation to the burn/output rate.  In a longer war, which everyone is concerning themselves over, we are really comparing an ammo production competition between Russia, and the entire Western World.  Russian stocks, no matter how big, cannot sustain middle-chain attrition such as we are seeing for very long.  And this middle-chain attrition makes the production competition much harder for the Russian side as the West has no such interdiction in its supply chains - beyond the "knee shaking" at the political level.
The military operations are highly complex but the equation is pretty simple: the West needs to keep out-producing, out-supplying and overmatching qualitatively compared to the Russian military until it breaks, the only thing standing in our way...is us. 
The Russians are employing old-school iron mountain logistics, and once again demonstrating a major weakness in concentrated mass on the modern battlefield (Sburke...no!).  Iron mountain logistics has enormous redundancy built in but it relies on being far enough back, hidden or shielded enough from deep strike (see: air superiority).  On a modern battlefield where tactical weapons have ranges we used to rely on aircraft for, and ISR to the point that it is impossible to hide anything...well you see the results: 1 missile = 1 ammo dump.  We, in the west, have been moving to "just in time" logistics to try and remove the iron mountain concept, but that is highly sensitive to disruption...which again is almost a guarantee on the modern battlefield.  In short our concepts of mass are in just as much trouble in a near-peer environment because - logistics.  
All that talk about tanks is just noise, it is the refuelers, ammo trucks, depot system and maintenance that makes mass of just about anything but light infantry particularly challenging.  "But we will have APS and C-UAV!"  Sure, but you now need it the entire length of the operational system (e.g. every fuel truck), and even then we are not close to re-establishing the conditions we have been training and operating in since the end of the Cold War.  Hell, this does not even look like the conditions we trained for during the Cold War.  We have just scratched the surface of unmanned (UGS anyone?) and modern ISR looks like it s choking out at least one principle of war.
This is going to be one crazy ride. 

Despite there are no videos of TLGM usage, but here at least captured box with two Russian tandem 9M119M "Invar" (AT-11 Sniper) of "Reflex" TLGM compex for T-80U and T-90 family.
Recently in March or April I've seen captured TLGMs 9M119 of Svir' TLGM complex for T-72B 

 

Despite AFU has many modern ATGMs, SPG-9 still in service

This is true. Bayraktars can effectively work only in clear sky or below the clouds. UKR UAV Horlytsia, designed by Antonov with equipment which can operate above the clouds, stuck in testing phase 

Checked interview of RU nationalist expert Maxim Klimov (former RU Navy officer). He was supposed to talk about Mobilization, but they talked about many issues.
Below are notes of the useful bits

Abandoned T-62 was set fire by grenade from the drone. The tank with name FARN (ФАРН) belonged to volunteer battalion "Alania", formed in Northern Osetia. Battalion has T-62M/MV tanks.

 
Some about voluntert battalions, which now are establishing almost in each federal unit of Russia. If recently there were mostly infantry units with some exceptions like "Don" cossack battalion with BMP-2M (but unknown either full battalion set or just a company), that now, as write on LostArmor, many battalions establish like supernumary battalions of regular military units, deployed in different federal units. They wrote, for example, on Far East, on the base of 155th naval infantry brigade, the volunteer battalion was formed with tank company of T-80BV, which were taken from storages and this is as if will be usual structure now likely for mobilization methodic working out.
Next example - volunteer battalion is forming in Nizhniy Novgorod oblast
  
And on LostArmor tell this battalion also will have T-80BV, which are delivering by Il-76 from some distant storages

PS. Information about increasing the squads from 7 to 9 can be about theese volunteer units, which can havn't armored transport but just tank company. Then really instead gunner and driver squads can get two additional riflemens. The same thing was in UKR motorized infantry squads in 2015-2019, which unlike mechanized had only trucks, but had also additional rifleman and 30 men in platoon instead 27 in mech. Then, when motorized units got BRDM-2L their squads also became 7-men

Why we should ignore “news” from British tabloids (and other sources uncritically repeating such news):
 

"A British FV-103 Spartan armored personnel carrier is unloaded, in the countryside near Bakhmout, eastern Ukraine, July 9, 2022. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP"

UKR police still a problem of Ukriane. Reform of police obviuously failed. Old corruption system, saved by Avakov and old Ministry of Internal Affairs officials, which avoid lustration or resumed their positions through corrupted courts showed own rotten fruits. 
In occupied towns of Luhansk oblast most of local police servicemen like and in 2014 betrayed Ukraine and brought the ouath to LPR. In theese days ceremonies pased in Svatove, Novoaydar, Troitske and other. Also to LPR poice joined many former polivemen, fired from police in 2014-2015 due to lustration or dismeiised by the own will, because didn't support "Maidan authorities". Though, most of new-employed since 2015 patrol and KORD policemen in eastern regions remained faithful to Ukrianinan oath and fought with Russians (like this was in Mariupol, though in neighbour Berdiank defected almost all police, including patrol). Most of traitors are detectives, investigators, district officers, clercks, police chiefs etc - most of them didn't change since 2014. Many of them still have either pro-Russian or "who cares which flag?" moods and this didn't concern SBU or poice inner security all theese years.
But not only Donbas police showed own pro-Russian expectations. In first days of invasion many police chiefs of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolaiv oblasts either fled or claimed "neutrality" and adviced to citizens don't provoke Russians. Now they returned to own duties and claim they just "departed for orders receiving". 
But traitors must be on-alert... Several days ago in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson oblast defected 26-years old police officer, which betrayed Ukraine, provid active pro-Russian agitation and was appointed deputy chief of police was shot dead in own car by some of local resistance. Fast-paced carreer... but too short.