Machor

I don't expect any significant increases in number of Soviet pieces either, maybe single pieces will be moved there to replace losses in existing units. It's worth noting though that 2S1s from Poland are modernized with contemporary, NATO compatible BMS and comms (same as on Krabs), AFAIK Slovakian Danas are the same. Putting some effort in retaining those in particular might be worth it. Towed pieces will go to TD, and then be retired, that's for sure.
Regarding the calibers, I did a bit of research and unfortunately it looks like 203mm ammunition was never produced outside of Soviet Union. Shame really, Ukraine has a lot of 2S7s and those are rather useful in the positional battles. I guess reverse-engineering Russian shell and setting up production from scratch would't be viable, and 8inchers will soon disappear from the field.
And of course we didn't mention the ubiquitous Grads. BM-21 is not going anywhere, it soon will be the only true area saturation weapon in UA disposal (unless some M26 rockets can be found?). At least Poland produces quite modern 40km+ ranged rockets for it (including DPCIM and AT mines) and so does Czechia and Slovakia.  We plan on keeping the caliber even after HIMARS is bought in numbers, and many other countries do too, at this point it become almost a NATO standard.

Sorry for spamming so much, but that's worth mentioning. Imagine how pissed off this guy has to be. A tragic character indeed, I hope he finds his peace.
 

Yes, but the Russian military budget is not just for shells. There is some evidence they have been underinvesting in traditional artillery (all those hypersonic/stealth/nuclear Wunderwaffe don't come cheap)

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3099/RAND_RR3099z1.appendixes.pdf

 
 
 

Msta-B/S can use standard 152 mm ammunition. Only Giatsint-B/S uses its own 152 mm ammunition.

Sometime ago there was discussion about whether RU forces can live next to dead bodies of their comrades. Also, we discussed reports of recruiting criminals into RA. Here is an interesting quote - a recent sketch from RU front line. 
Marines are supposed to be an elite. Yet this group of marines are either low level thugs or outright prisoners. Chifir is not something pleasant to drink and is not used in the Armed Forces.  

"Ukrainian platoon commander Mariia rests in a trench at a position in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, July 2, 2022. EFREM LUKATSKY / AP"

Brutal video of death of Ukrainian soldier who tried to cover his wounded collegue. Brave guy - in US, for such action he would probably earn Medal of Honour. In this war there are probably dozens if not hundreds of similar nameless feats.
 
Also, tension remain sky high in Belarusian direction- medics are forbidden to left the country, Belarussian soldiers are keep in the field constantly training already for some time, there is also visibvle movement from ammunition depots. Lukashanka's statement hardened as well in last several days (he said he "made decision long ago'); judging by his rants, both countries are already at serious war. Perhaps Putin pressures him to do something, but it still seems he is doing everything he can not do to anything...
Ukrainian officials (Podolyak lately) constantly send messages to Belarus to **** off, they seem to believe Ru+BL soldiers in the North may at least harass their troops along the border to keep their forces occupied there.
This may still be a game "I know you are bluffing so I will bluff too".

Reference the 'stans, somebody else was playing in that space recently ...
READOUT: U.S. CENTCOM Commander meets with Tajikistan President, Defense Minister, and Chief of General Staff, June 17th, 2022 > U.S. Central Command > Statements View
I wouldn't make too much of the Taliban being around the corner - they have plenty of their own problems to deal with right now.  With their "Pashtunization" policies, all they are doing is alienating the non-Pashtuns in their support base.  These non-Pashtuns would be the vehicle by which the Taliban would stir up trouble on its northern borders so the capability is just not there. 
In terms of intent, deeds speak louder than words.  Both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are being courted by the Taliban for trade, in fact there is an Afghan trade mission in the latter now. 
The outlier is Tajikistan with which the Taliban has a cool relationship because of a number of reasons.  Tajik fears over one of its 'troubled' regions Gorno-Badakhshan which sits on the Afghan border.  Massoud's National Resistance Front, although not overtly encouraged by Tajikistan, are using the country as a safe haven.  Tajik President Rahmon likes to play the defender of the Tajiks card to whip up domestic support as well as spout ludicrous claims for the number of Islamic militants in Afghanistan's north east to get security assistance from China, Russia and the CSTO.  In reality, Rahmon is faced with a tricky balancing act which does not involve actually stoking up tension and this is shared by the bearded folks here in Kabul.
Russian weakness as a result of its 'special military operation' certainly has changed the dynamics in its relationship with the 'stans as it is clear that Russia is no longer the 'go-to' security backstop that Russia heavily promoted itself as in the aftermath of Kabul's collapse last year.  It is certainly true that all three of Afghanistan's northern neighbours have security concerns about the regime here in Kabul but current reporting does not support the assertion that hordes of Taliban-sponsored jihadists are going to swarm northwards.  For a start, they're not in Afghanistan in those sorts of numbers, the latest UN estimate puts the number at about 9,700 of which a large proportion are Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan and therefore not interested in going 'oop north.'
Rather than worry about expanded Chinese influence or a mythical Taliban-sponsored Islamic wave, the US should see this as an opportunity to ratchet up pressure on Russia by parking in its backyard and to reestablish an intelligence collection footprint in Central Asia.  By the looks of the June 17 CENTCOM visit, this is an opportunity that is being pursued.

There aren't any other nearby airports. You'd have to set up one. The combat range of, example, an Mi-28 is 200 km with 10 min loiter and 5% reserve.

Again back to the video with destroyed PAntsyr S1
UKR military journalist Yuriy Butusov claims Ukrainian artillery used German-designed SMArt 155 artillery rounds. This shell contains two autonomous self-guided top-attack EFP submunitions. Range - 27,5 km. Can be used in PzH 2000 and M109 howitzers. Manufacturer claims this weapon is effective even against armor, equipped with APS.
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155
Butusov claims that destroyed yesterday Pantsyr S1 was hit with SMArt 155. Also he writes on 2nd July Russian column was shelled with this ammunitions and 8 vehicles were damaged or desroyed (ok, I hope we will see a video soon)
https://censor.net/ru/news/3351716/vsu_nachali_ispolzovat_nemetskie_samonavodyaschiesya_snaryady_smart_dlya_unichtojeniya_bronetehniki

Hmm, T-84U Oplot operating with the 3rd Tank Brigade. That's an ex-reserve formation that uses T-72s, so pretty unusual for them to be given that.
 
 

Wel, to say it has a cult status is an understatement. A few generations of Poles were raised on it, most actors made huge careers and it was an export hit very popular in the whole Warsaw Pact.  I have no idea how many times I sang the opening song while drunk with my buddies
It is available online, and Youtube's auto- translated subtitles are reasonably good:
Authentic "Rudy 102" tank they used for filming, a T34-85 with one side cut open for the cameras is on display in the armor museum in my city:

Bigger gallery
https://gloswielkopolski.pl/muzeum-broni-pancernej-w-poznaniu-jedna-z-atrakcji-czolg-rudy-102-z-serialu-czterej-pancerni-i-pies-zdjecia/ga/c1-14483589/zd/3921617
And museum webpage:
https://muzeumbronipancernej.pl/

Ah, this rock arrangement of the "Four tankers and the dog" movie theme - my favorite movie in childhood 🇵🇱 
 
 

If you think RU cannot get even crazier:
In Ekaterinburg somebody glued Putin portrait to a gas distributor surrounded by a fence as an obvious reference.

Big problem for local authorities. They could not leave it like this because it is Putin portrait. But they also could not scratch it off because it is Putin portrait. 
However, they found a solution. They covered it with cloth! 
 

There's a mobile version in NO service. I wonder if with standard radar setup UA uses, it is possible to detect RU aircraft and helicopters that do the "rocket toss" attacks from low altitude -  if yes, the active homing missiles will get them. Really can't wait for the videos...
https://www.joint-forces.com/defence-equipment-news/52204-new-nasams-hml-deployed-on-cold-response-2022

Answered
 
 

As far as I remember once unanimous RU aviation guy claimed that RuAF cannot destroy UKR Air Defence because UKR Air Defence does not do what Air Defence supposed to do (from RU point of view). From RU point of view glorious Air Defence must gloriously defend an objective and if it comes to it then gloriously die defending it. RuAF would easily destroy such Air Defence.
But being inglorious UKR Air Defence instead of defending the objectives, started to hide and hunt RuAF airplanes. RuAF could destroy such Air Defence but only after sacrificing an unacceptable number of airplanes (I got impression that they literally had to bait AA with real airplane losing it in the prosses). AFAIR, he complained that it was wrong because Air Defence is not as important as an objective.
 
1. No. The lack of maneuvers we see is because both sides have not developed comprehensive counters to enemy drones' tactics yet (and seems have issues with CB). Any vehicular maneuver is very dangerous now. So, both sides frequently resort to infantry-arty slog. Imagine trying to fight WW2 where both sides cannot counter other Air.
2. No. It is just Suppression of Enemy Drone Systems (SEDS) is mandatory now for vehicular offensive. As long as SEDS is done, and you have enough vehicles with APS offensive is still possible. 
3. No. Leaving SEDS aside we generally do not yet have enough information about the weak sides of the drones. For example, we think of drones as a kind of all seeing eyes. But that is not the case. Civilian drones heavily used by both sides are relatively small. Their speed is not high, their endurance and range is rather low. Their signal range is also not that big. As a result, they operate around 1-2-3 km from drone team. Because you want to put most of your drone teams at front line there is indeed Gray Zone (1-2-3 km front line) where surprise is very difficult to achieve.
But outside it is different because to see there you need to use bigger specialized drones. But being specialized you do not have a lot of them. They are not readily available. They are higher up the chain, so info goes down slower. Finally, they usually just fly higher and are much more vulnerable to AA. 
As result it looks like RU developed the following tactics. They keep the front line with infantry teams but concentrating bulk of mechanized forces several km behind. The idea is to build up enough forces along the front line to be able to attack across several axis driving fast through gray zone. And the goal is not to breakthrough in to UKR rear but to reach an urban terrain several km behind front line before UKR starts bringing reinforcements with drones.
Urban terrain allows RU to mitigate to large extent UKR drone superiority and arty accuracy. So, it enables RU both defend and advance, suffering much less losses (relatively speaking). As far as I understood this is how they managed to dismantle Zolotoe-Gorskoe bulge.
 
Yes, feel the same. Even drone tactics are in infancy just like design of current drones. So far, we see important but still just a small glimpse of the future war. 

Excellent observations and questions.  Like a lot of things about this war - we simply do not know, let alone understand a lot of what is happening, let alone why, air competition is just one more.
A lot of this was has been about denial, in fact it often looks more like a competition of denial than anything else we recognize at times.  Denial - a defensive strategy designed to make it prohibitively difficult for an opponent to achieve objectives (https://www.britannica.com/topic/denial-military-strategy), which is a sub-strategy of the broader strategy of exhaustion.  Ukraine has elevated Denial to a strategic level, in a modern context, and frankly we are still trying to figure out the implications.
How did they do it?  That is the first question.  As far as we can tell from the evidence, my guess is that they quickly adapted C4ISR and the benefits of the modern weaponry they had to create very broad denial effects across the Russian capability portfolio, while the Russians have relied on traditional mass based systems, which are extremely expensive but can create a Denial effect for the Ukrainians as well.  Ukrainian defence has leveraged some major changes in modern technology on a broad scale and that applies in the air as well. 
Suppression of Enemy AD (SEAD) - so this is more than a single capability, it is an entire system.  It encompassed a massive C4ISR effort, air platforms that rely heavily on stealth, and even integrates SOF; it is a lot more than HARMs and Growlers.  In many ways SEAD is an entire specialized operation in itself, aimed at clearing and sustaining clearance of Integrated AD Systems (IADS).  IADS is an umbrella term; however, it leans towards large multi-layered integrated systems that link C4ISR to a network of AD systems designed to cover from the ground up (even into space).
The issue modern IADS have is UAS.  IADS were designed with large manned aircraft systems in mind form tac aviation to higher altitudes.  UAS bend these systems that by being extremely small and hard to detect, able to "pop-up" without any infrastructure needed to support them beyond two guys and some batteries, and low cost = every-freakin-where: we designed IADs to hit eagles, not sand-flies.  The most powerful thing UAS bring to the battlefield is ISR.  Strike is nice but the ability to extend the range of tactical ISR, and then integrate it into an operational system is one of the key takeaways from this war: seeing beats flanking.  Further, the RA reliance on concentrated mass makes them very vulnerable to this because it is very hard to hide a BTG.
The last brick in the wall are MANPADs.  A lot of the next gen MANPADs are passive and as the name suggests "man portable".  The reality is that MANPADs were always a problem for SEAD, no military has a baked in capability to counter two guys in a bush with a Stinger.  This is where air-land integration was supposed to come in, the land forces could support the air through control and sweeping of MANPAD threats (little threats), while air supported them by hitting the big stuff - a mutually supporting system.  Within SEAD, MANPADs were also a managed threat.  The theory was that if you blinded an enemy IADs system and took out the big radar guided systems, MANPADs would be minor nuisance, largely isolated and with limited range and altitude (5000 feet).  More something for tac aviation to worry about, and why we up-armoured stuff like Apaches. 
So UAS and real-time space based ISR and communications on the back of redundant civilian systems (including space based) makes the "blinding portion" really hard, maybe impossible.  I have no doubt in Ukraine we have distributed forces with UAS seeing CAS much farther out, handing off to others which then link back to MANPADs who can now position to wait for the aircraft - this is not even considering satellite based stuff being fed by the US.  And then MANPADs did not get the memo on "5000 feet", some of these systems can hit up to medium altitudes (e.g. star streak = 16k).  Finally, those traditional IADs are still integrated but not how we thought.  A higher altitude capable SAM that employs radar can now hide in silence, wait until the distributed C4ISR system picks up the fast movers and turn on at the last minute....like a big ass MANPAD.
Note that the above is what I think we are seeing in the UA system.  The RA is relying on traditional AD but the UA does not have a lot - so this is really air self-denial by virtue of very limited Ukrainian air capability.
So What?  Well we have air parity, largely through denial on both sides.   Ukraine has far too little, and generating massive airpower takes years.  Russia has significant capability but it was never set up for this environment, no one was.  I am not sure NATO could handle what is happening to be honest.   We would make something work but the costs would be much higher than we are used to and we would have to accept loss of air superiority at some altitudes as a basic assumption going in.  The Russians could likely achieve local air superiority above 20k right now but it would be very costly.  Going below 20k feet is very dangerous as we have flooded the UA with MANPADs, and the C4ISR thing I was talking about.  I expect they are saving it for an operational emergency or for the UA to put enough density in one place to make the effort worth it - trading a fighter-bomber for a single tank is not a good equation.
As to offence-defence.  Well Ukraine made defence offensive in the first phase of this war as Russian over-extension collapsed in the north.  I think they are doing versions of this right now in the Donbas as we have entered into an attrition-based contest.  Russia's answer to this has been to devolve in terms of warfare, falling back on a very old form of over-mass.  The only report of the Russians stopping the UA unmanned-indirect fire- infantry system has been in Severodonetsk, and they did so through extremely high concentrations of forces. That mass of Russian EW did nothing against space-based assets, so we do not know how badly they got mauled, nor Russian artillery.  Russia did show that if you push enough into a small space you can advance by inches - we do not know what it cost them nor how long they can sustain it.
This leads to some fundamental and big questions:  What does modern mass look like (sburke, don't do it!)?  Is manoeuvre warfare in trouble?  Is offence in trouble?  Is a principle of war - surprise, dead?  What does modern C4ISR really look like?  Hell, we are questioning Mission Command because in this environment higher commander may very well know much more, in higher resolution, than lower commanders.  
Nothing is definitive, but a whole lot is on the auction block right now and implications are pretty big if even a few of them are confirmed. 
I would close that the Russo-Ukraine war is an indicator of change but it is likely showing the tips of icebergs.  For example, we have not really seen what self-loitering can (or cannot) do in this war.  We know the US sent the smaller Switchblades, but I have seen no reports of significant numbers of the 600 series which can hit and kill with a Javelin warhead at the same ranges as the HIMARs.  We have not see NLOS ATGM or anti-vehicle systems like Spike.  We have not seen military grade micro and small UAS.  Sticking some grenades onto a few commercial drones is one thing, a swarm of military grade micro-drones that cannot be jammed, all armed with precision DPICM is something else entirely - and we have that technology right now.  Same goes for C4ISR, this is what Ukraine could do with a fairly ad hoc civilian backbone, some of the stuff being developed is truly impressive - and we have not even started to see the effects of AI/ML.
The Crimean War of 1854 is often referred to as the "First Modern War", well history is a circle, and I suspect the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 will likely go down in history as the "The First Future War". 
 

The CAESAR is also known to be able to fire it. There are only rumors but I haven't seen any evidence so far of a possible delivery. And then from what I know, it's a very rare shell in the French army's stocks.

Anybody know if the US delivered this, with the M777?
 

🦀🦀🦀🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱💪💪💪
 

Regarding NATO vs RU Arty ammo issues from Myrakhovsky
 

From RU Nat forum
 
Either RU ran out of other PGMs or they switched to terror strikes but with plausible deniability of we are just using less accurate missiles. 
[UPDATE] quote from civilian "Girkin" (Nesmyan)