Zeleban

Why such noble mission wasn't offered to Russia? Now these "old USSR stocks" Kh-55 and Kh-22 fly to us back, our Scud missiles  were utilized too and we begging for long-range weapon to reach Russian strategic objects.
We were forced to sign different limitations on number of usual weapon, what moved it out of service.  Hundreds of tanks, IFVs, jets, helicopters were stored and gave wide field of weapon business for corupted officials to sell all this "extra" staff to Africa, Asia and Middle East. 
We were forced to utilize all "extra" MANPADS "in order to exclude risks that terrorists will get it" - and during 12 years we utilized 1000 MANPADS, as well as 1,5 millions of small-arms. And continued to do it even in 2015! 
We were forced to sign agreement do not develop missile weapon with a range over 500 km.
We were forced to sign Ottawa Convention and utilize all AP mines except claymors and OZM.
So, how, has the world became safer after we "got rid of old Soviet weapon" in change on toilet paper of Budapesht Memorandum? 
 

Directly - nothing. Tangentially - yes. 
No need to bomb Moscow. War is money. No money - no war. Bad taste is cowardice and venality of many western political and economical elites, bad tatse to buy Russian resourses and bypass own sanctions, selling them equipment and electronic. Bad taste are families of Russian officilas flying to Europe free for shopping. This "real politic" is bad taste and ugly hypocrisy at all. So, if West will be go on in such way, yes, I will say, you deserve. 
"Capitalists themselves will sell us a rope on which we will hang them" (C) Vladimir Lenin. Despite he was a commi, his words exactly about this situation. 

This is not praise, but objective reality if we compare Russia in mid of 90th and Russia in 2013. Putin and his oligarchs took full advantage in situation that has developed (high prices on oil and gas, indecisiveness and softness of West, "real politic" etc). And yes, this is feature of "strong people" - to be able to use a situation. Yes, they accumulated fabuloes profits for own clanes, when many of their compatriots never had normal toilets, but they really raised Russia in world policy, economy and military. But then 2014 came and all turned out like in Russian "Fairytale about fisher and Golden Fish".
Way of countries, their development and place in world order depend of ruling elites capabilities. So it was, so it is, so it will. "Democracy" indeed is a just a opportunity to raise up one of several elites, backing with some financial-industrial groups. Citizens can only guard "social agreement" between ruling elite and them (if level of the civil society allows to do this) and gradually decade by decade "nurture" their elites that they took carry properly of internal development.    

Seems Russia's political manipulation and propaganda is finally paying off for them. Serbia stirring **** on Kosovo borders, US cutting support thanks to Republicans, now Slovakia. All designed to remove Ukraine's support and all great successes.
edit: this of course goes back to the whole Western strategy of trickling support, not helping too much and thus giving Russia both ample time to dig in physically, and work the infosphere.

Or could it be..
"Dislocated shoulder unsuspectedly turned fanatical Nazi into post-war resistance-hero".

Regarding Hunka.
There's a reason Nuremberg trials never accused that specific division of any single warcrime. And russians, who were a part of it, tried. Oh they did. Don't you doubt it for a second. And then suddenly a Canadian citizen of 69 years gets to be a war criminal because current year.

Because to a westerner the whole "SS" thing when mentioned means 100% Hitler worshipping fanatics, yet Red Army is viewed as liberators despite ending up raping through half of Europe. Naturally russians exploit this lack of knowledge to no end.

Act how?  Apologize for what?  “I am sorry I was not briefed?”  “As CDS I don’t do full background checks on everyone who visits Parliament?”  I call BS on that.  
We are becoming so apologist that those apologies do not mean anything anymore.  One can apologize for sins of commission or omission, yet none of these really apply in this situation.  The CDS was called to a special session of Parliament for the President of Ukraine.  Some nitwit 20-something staffer in the Parliamentary Protocol office didn’t double check on another nitwit 20-something staffer in the Speakers office - neither of whom have looked at WW2 history since high-school (and even then all we ever talk about is freakin Normandy).  The CDS stood up to honour a Ukrainian WW2 veteran, with everyone else, and then wound up wearing it when it comes to light that a 15 second Google search could have headed this whole thing off.
He has likely been ordered not to say or do anything while the Prime Minister try’s to stop the bleeding - a Liberal appointed CDS apologizing for “something” is essentially admitting culpability that Gen E is not entitled to and would be highly politicized.  So I am really not sure what the “Act” looks like in this situation.  I guess he could re-iterate that we in the CAF really don’t like Nazis?  Please do not apply for recruitment?  Nazis were really bad and WW2 was pretty big and complicated so please use Google and stop relying on Saving Private Ryan as your sole datapoint?

Twitter gives a lot of useful posts but holy **** has it become an understudy for Truth Social. Pretty tired of fighting the algorithms to get to pro Ukrainian factual posts,  and not pro-russian fascist garbage. 
Im 99% done with that platform,  was never a fan but saw its utility. The anti-Ukraine slant is at 89 degrees right now. It's  bastardized, biased and in a death spiral. "X" marks the point of impact,  for sure. What a waste. 

Kevin is that you?
Re the forever war comment I think there's a couple of points that make this quite different to previous interventions.
Ukraine wants the help it's receiving and wants western partners to be involved. This time russia is directly involved and not sitting safely behind a proxy. Diminishing russia's ability to be a general pain the *** on the world stage is a big win for everyone (except russia). Better to spend treasure than your own servicemen's lives And those are just the obvious ones.

That's an interesting opinion on what's going on.  Except that we're spending nearly 800 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR on our military.  OMG we're going broke because we used ~5% of our already spent money to actually try to do something, militarily, that will help the world be a better place.   What cumulative effect on our country??  This is just utter horses-t.  If we had just stood by & let Putin win in UKR would he then decide to not try to poison all the world's democracies?  Would he not use fossil fuels to extort europe every time he wanted to?  This is tankie nonsense.
We have mountains of gear gathering dust and that's a huge portion of what we've sent.
And just because I am on a rant on this:  How about we turn this around by saying "those that want to freeze the conflict haven't given any thought to the cumulative effect on the world of pulling Putin's *** out of the fire".  Gawd this makes my blood boil.  

Someone is clearly leaking a particular version of events to media and only some media in the usual country(s) is picking it up. Why? Because that scenario looks quite a bit like a Russian disinformation operation. 

I read the newsarticle Seedorf posted that somehow claimed new kind of evidence surfaced but everything in there was identical to the investigative report that was published in germany more in depth roughly a  month ago and was discussed here too. The german investigative report was very onesided and ignored a lot of evidence  that pointed in russian direction and it failed to plausibly establish how the Andromeda could do the northsteam sabotage.  The only  new "fact" in the dutch article was that traces of the explosive HMX was found at the site of sabotage. I am no forensic expert but there are different reasons I would be highly sceptical of this fact. But even if true. HMX would be one  of the most probable explosives that one would use for such a bombing by diver. And if the Andromeda was a false Flag, then it would be very easy for the perpetrator to plant the same kind of explosive that was used in the bombings.
You say the complexity of the operation was overestimated. Do you have any idea what kind of complexity is needed to do this kind of operation? I work in UXO,UXB, ERB disposal in the northsea, baltic sea and rivers. I work on specialised ships and with divers (most of them  with navy background) that do exactly this kind of work that would be needed for the northstream sabotage.
The complexity of this operation is a LOT more than just being able to do the dive. The equipment needed just to do the simple dive ignoring all of the  other specialised equipment: on the ships I work on this equipment is located in  containers that are half as big as the Andromeda. All those gastanks alone do take a lot of room. You need a lot more of those for a deep sea diving suit/ hard-hat than you would for a simple diving suit.
The first problem the divers  had to overcome is to find the pipelines and then the right locations for the bombing. This alone is a very big problem. To locate those you need a depth sonar or a submersible. Good luck instaling those on the Andromeda.  In those depths it is pitch black. Those divers have to work completely blind. They are trained to do so but they still need instruction  by those one the ship  with exactly this kind of equipment that the Andromeda lacks. And on top of that they did this on the same day at  three different locations. And they did the dive on a very instable plattform which means high chance of death.
Then there is the question of  the explosives. The theory that was presented in the investigative report was that only a small amount was used.  There exist seismic profiles of those explosions  and those hint  at  a  bigger amount of explosives used. It is not conclusive evidence but it points in another direction.
Not one of the divers I work with thinks its realistically possible to do the northstream sabotage from the  Andromeda in a short amount of time.
There is more  I could write but it is already late here I have to work very early tomorrow.
One thing I have to say. The reporting on northsteam really does remind me on the reporting in german media about MH17 after it happend. The media tried to be "neutral" but it was mostly pointing in ukrainian direction and sometimes it was just reciting russian propaganda. Even after Bellingcat could show exactly what BUK was used by which unit german media ignored this evidence. It was only after the dutch reports with conclusive evidence were published that the reporting did change.
 

As a DCS player I love this video. Ukrainian pilots using DCS to familiarize themselves with the F-16.
If this is not a testament to the quality of the F-16 module for DCS I don't know what is. Highly recommend trying that module by the way. 😎

Yesterday I mentioned Eric Hartmann, whose callsign Karaya has taken UKR pilot (clear sign he is hidden nazi! %) ). After 10 years of camps in USSR he became commander of FRG (already NATO-country) aviation unit and several times visited USA, where he was instructor of US pilots and tester of some types of US jet aircraft. 
Many of military strengts and technologies West got after the war from former Nazi scientists, engineers etc. 
Many of those, who fought against USSR and received a shelter in Westren countries, where used by CIA, Mi6 in those fight against communism as agents, influencers and diversants. And likley most of them should be mobilized to fight USSR in case of big war. And I doubt many journalists in that time rised a wave "Nazi! Nazi! We invite nazi! What a shame!"
Russian propaganda maybe will shout some time and shut up soon (who interested in their blah-blah-blah?), but this gift for them made not so Canadian Speaker, but local journalists.
 

I think, 30-40 years ago it would be normal and reporters would be wrote stories how he fought against "Empire of Evil". 
I know in UK and Canada legally exist societies of former "Halychyna" division combatants. 

If he is "evil-nazi-SSman", why he lives in Canada alredy more than 70 years? Maybe because after the war all former members of Division were verified and didn't found guilty? Like and division itself. Canada, USA and UK gave a shelter to members of "Halychyna" division and they never were given to USSR and under justice, despite several attempts of USSR to initiate pursuit. 
WWII in Eastern Europe wasn't so black&white like for Western. Here was a war all against all, with situative alliances, double games etc. Germans perfectly played on hatred of western Ukrainians and Baltic states to Stalin's USSR (and not only them),  so local national movements used this idea of national Waffen-der-SS divisons as opportunity to establish own trained regular troops, which would be capable to fight directly with Red Army and not sneak in the forests. Most successful in this were Estonians. Their units fought so tough, that Russians to this time consider Estonians more "fascists", than Lithuania and Latvia, having also own Waffen-der-SS units. I think it's no need to expalain here that "true" SS-division is not the same that Waffen-der-SS division, which had common only structure, equipment and name ranks, but no one in latter wasn't member of SS, because only true "Aryans" could be a members, not untermenshs.  
In western Ukraine, when 14th division was established, about 40 000 of volunteers came to enlist "to fight with Bolsheviks". Whole student classes had been come to enlistment centers. Were all they nazists? Of course, no. Ukrainian wing of OUN (M), led by Melnyk supported idea of regular UKR army establishing under German protectorate, but the wing of OUN (B), led by Bandera was strictly agaisnt any co-operation with German authorities and had seen a way of liberation only in active partisan actions and total uprising. Also most part of western Ukarine was under power of General-Governorship, where regime was more "soft", than in Raichskommissariat Ukraina and was more similar on occupation regime in Western Europe, so for locals German power seemed more "civilized", than USSR, when dozen of southands were sent to Syberia or executed during 1939-1941 (about half of them were ethnic Poles).
In Ukraine the question of "Halychyna" division (in 1945 they changed own name on 1st Ukrainian division) is disputable, but let historians study this. Officially they equalized in status with veterans of WWII, who fought in Red Army and UPA. These people lived in hard times and their choice was that. From the point of view of fighting for Ukrainian independence (= liberation from USSR) we can't blame them for their choice. 

And there's Russias future defeat in a nutshell - it loses major strategic and operational assets and all it can do is hit wounded soldiers and children. Horrible as it is it does nothing to stop another strike. 
Hit the ****ers.  Hit them again. Keep hitting them until they leave. Not so they  understand or realise the error of their ways, just get rid of them.

Assuming the Wikipedia article is accurate - it's probably not up-to-date - you can do the math on how many are available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-140_ATACMS#Variants
 
Update:
SLEP is the name of the program for updating the bomblet variants to the unitary warhead version M57E1.

The target was a maximum of 500 per contract:
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14207794/munitions-navigation-and-guidance-payloads
(290 for FY 2019)
https://www.defensedaily.com/lockheed-martin-receives-358-million-atacms-deal-readying-precision-strike-missile-testing-2019/army/

Given that they funded this multiple times, nearly all may have been upgraded by now:
https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/atacms/
 

Yeah, I have not seen any election predictions but I really hope you all succeed at getting rid of these guys, whether soon or in years.

PiS is aiming at stealing some votes from the far(er) right before the October elections, and there isn't a single thing in the world not worth sacrificing on this altar. Shameful, to say the least.

I guess some of us hoped that the war will help Poland to wake up and become something else than Hungary-aligned force always doing the wrong thing and always trying their best to destroy EU from within. To shake off PiS and become something more. It is obvious now it was too good to be true.
When crisis comes, people don't change for the better, they become more of what the were before.

As far as i understand it, the problem could be caused by the armor layout and not the capability to carry more weight.
The currently delivered Leopards have the late box type turret. It consists of an outer and inner thin steel plate with a filling of air or some kind of plastic.





Source of the images:
https://ndb51.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/thu-vi-xem-xe-tang-leopard-1a3-trong-tinh-trang-bi-cat-doc/

My guess is that the outer steel plate can't withstand the energy produced by the explosion of the ERA Brick.
The Canadians demonstrated that the Leopard 1 can handle a lot of weight by adding MEXAS NERA add-on armor kits while deployed to Kosovo and MEXAS + mine plows or dozer blades while operating in Afghanistan.
 
 
 

What air defenses? ;D
Apperently, there's less and less of them. BBC was pretty quick to report the local (my hometown) events, so you may wanna check that out.
No air raid warnings, no nothing. Nothing is happening, as always. Just bavovna and smoke. Even the announcer at the train station skips the usual "be observant and careful, careful and observant" this morning. How come, I wonder?
 
ps: I'm okay, and the windows are fine, for now.

I clicked to 3 random points.
Says UA treats prisoners worse than ISIS and the Chechens
Excuses UA PoWs being executed as work of "adrenaline"
Says Bucha was committed by Ukrainian artillery while Russians were handing out humanitarian aid
Hope this waste of a human being catches a bullet and doesnt live to tell the tale.
Or maybe he should enjoy ISIS prisoner treatment in his last days, I dont recall them ever doing Prisoner swaps for some reason.
 

Frankly,  you're very naive about this. 
1. Russia is not occupied. There's no population crying out to know whays true,  what's going on outside, if there's hope.
2. They have the internet and, controlled as it us,  they can access BBC.com any time they want. They've had very wide access since D0.  
3. External media has nothing on the RusGov control and manipulation of domestic media. It's a fart in the face of a hurricane. Russian domestic propaganda is relentless,  pervasive, omnipresent and backed by legal authority, criminal prosecution and determined political direction. 
4. UK is not at war with Russia. There's no military or political imperative to inform the Russian population about anything. Investing in BBC WS is pointless. 
5. Russian population is not going to be swayed in any shape,  way or form by the BBC world service. They don't care about western narrative or values. 

No. Each UKR soldier will tell you, that BTR-70 is a piece of sh...t in comarison with M-113/YPR-765
BTR-60/70/80 have too weak side hull armor, which can't maintain proper protection from 7.62 and often against 5.45 AP from close range, when M113 protects. Inner compartment of BTRs is too narrow for soldiers in modern equipment and body armor, because both and BTR and BMP series were designed in ColdWar era, when soldiers haven't such equipment and in design was put an avarage height of Soviet soldier in 1960-1970 as about 160-165 sm, this is one more answer, why RUS and UKR soldiers ride on the top of armor. Not only because if it hit, all will burn alive (it's enough exaggregation if it not 125 mm HE), but because of full squad of troops will waste value time, trying to disembark from narrow compartment under fire. So, UKR soldiers always ride inside M113 to enemy positions, because it much safer, and disembark time is much shorter, than from inside BTR-70
Enclosed turret of BTRs doesn't give enough protection, but instead strict natural LOS of gunner. M113/HMMMWV guneer can better to observe battlefield, when he gets targeting from comamnder or spot the target himself. 
One guy from "Azov" NG brigade wrote brigade try to get at least several dozens of M113 and he amazed, why it so hard. Even 3rd assault briagade "Azov", using M113/YPR, as he told indeed have very small of them and all M113, which you can see in their videos are the same several APC.