G.I. Joe

This "both sides" whataboutism is entirely pointless in a war where one side is engaged in an aggressive war of conquest against a defending neighbouring country. It's a useless distraction, and a transparent attempt to create moral equivalency where no such thing can exist.

Gee I wonder who started this war in 2014 and who is responsible for every single death since then...certainly wasn't Ukraine.  

wtf a new level for you and by level I mean a lower level.  NOBODY here thinks the death of any child is just acceptable.  The responsibility for that death though is the aholes that started this war.

I'd like to point out that Austria DID fight in WW2. They even had their own leader...

No No No No

In professional militaries, it's more common than you might think. US units going to NTC expect to get (virtually) slaughtered. The USMC units tagged to go across the Berm into Kuwait in 1991 were briefed to expect very very heavy casualties, and to keep on advancing. LtCol Tim Collins was very explicit on the expectation of casualties before entering Iraq in 2003. The NZ battalions going into the devil's garden in October 1942 were told, and trained, to expect heavy casualties. All the Allied units landing in Normandy on 6 June by sea or air were told to expect heavy casualties. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
As a commander, if you /don't/ tell your soldiers realistically what they should expect, then they'll just go in to shock and freeze when the thing you knew was likely to happen happens. Not preparing the soldiers is what /bad/ commanders do.

Thanks. I have been gagging on his 'Russians = mongoloid orcs who take murder and rapine in with their mothers milk' line for the entire thread.
...That said, there's definitely something very disturbing about Russian 'high culture'. This Galeev thread gets into part of it. Curious what your take might be, at your convenience....
 
 
...FWIW, I actually take away something a little hopeful, which is that there's a grumpy strain of individualism in Russians that could shrug off all the worn out Czar worship / Third Rome suprisingly quickly if given a chance. More here...
Their crabs-in-the-bucket mentality (envy), sadly, might take them a while longer to get free of. But prosperity too, can create more generous hearts in time. Nobody is born that way.
****
P.S.  Speaking of Galeev, he's been prodding at German double-dealing for some time now....
And I can neither confirm nor deny that this *exactly* describes the dynamic in developing energy and infra projects in most emerging market countries lol.
 

Ok, time to swing back to this one.  This guy sounds like he knows what he is talking about to me.  A few points that I am not sure I am comfortable with:
- He does not really use "shaping" correctly, or at least in terms as we understand the term in the west.  Shaping operations are defined as "an operation that establishes condition for decisive operation through effects on the enemy, other actors, and terrain." (https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf)  What Russia did at the beginning of the Donbas phase does not really fit any of those criteria.  His description sounds more like positioning.
- Three guys walking down a road, somewhere, is not a rout.  The UA had weeks to decide to get out of "the cauldron" as the RA was moving by inches.  If units got caught or were sacrificed, that is one thing, but nothing in the RA rate of advance speaks to conditions for an uncontrolled withdrawal.  Nor have we seen any evidence on open source to back this up - large amounts of Russians with trophy equipment, or PoWs.  So I challenge that assumption right up front.  
- The defensive lines he draws pretty much match our own here, and make sense.  
- I am allergic to bold drawn arrows in this war; I have been let down too many times.  Neither side has been able to make large muscle movements since March (with the possible exception of Kharkiv), so the idea that "this is it, the Russians will now spring the trap!" is not credible until we see some actual success.
- Force ratios.  Seriously, what is wrong with the professional military community?  They keep turning to these quantitative-only force ratio assessments, even though they completely failed us in this war to-date.  And here on an analysis/assessment video on 08 Jul , I am still seeing "this many Bns vs this many BTGs" and we are supposed to take something from it.  What is the qualitative assessment?  I don't care if Russia has 4 times the numbers of troops, if those troops are all old men and scared kids with three weeks training, no radios, no cas evac, scrounging locally for food and unable to employ heavy weapons effectively; those are not troops, they are a uniformed mob waiting to die.  The good analyst here even points to the increasing "Russian forces vs dwindling Ukrainian ones" as a concern...but what are those increasing Russian forces made up of?
Other points:
- M777 losses are concerning as they are supposed to outrange Russian guns for the most part.  I have to wonder if there is a problem with positioning within the UA, or is this just the cost of doing business.  Russian c-battery seems to be pretty quick, which leaves me wondering why their offensive fires are so "not".  From what we have seen the Russians have basically gone WW1 on massed fires, while c-bty in seconds minutes takes pretty powerful ISR (detection and ranging) support; however, I would let the arty specialist weigh in on this one.  I also take UA messaging carefully, at the levels talking there is a strategic narrative to continue to push the west to strengthen support and provide help.  Problem is that if Ukraine cries for help too loudly, or amplifies things, the West will get nervous and wonder if we have backed the right horse...and we have a bad history with backing the wrong horses. 
-This video is from 08 Jul, so we now know that Russia has been in at least a week long operational pause.  We have yet to see Russia able to keep anything that resembles a threatening operational tempo, this is a very slow grind.  It works, but so slow and costly.
As to long war, short war.  Well at coming up to 5 months, this war is already longish by western standards when compared to its intensity.  The answer is that both are possible at this point but there are a lot of unknowns.  I would boil it down to Western Will vs Russian Will - and here I mean the will of actual Russians, not Putin and his cronies.  Western Will is fiscal, self-centered and frankly has the resolve of a skittish milk maid on a good day.  I have zero doubts about Ukraine, it has mobilized, to the point that killing Russians has taken on cultural significance - the Ukraine after this war will not be the same one that went in. 
The West, if it keeps pushing weapons, ISR and money, can keep this going forever...but, it may have to actually make some sacrifices to do so, and that does have me worried.  We are not really good at sacrifice on a large scale right now, and have not been since the 60s in reality.  We got burned, and lied to by leadership back then, and ever since we have a weird relationship with sacrifice.  "Sure I support Ukrainians...just don't ask me to do anything about it." is a disturbing trend.  This is not new, just look at GWOT and how the US had to tie itself in knots to avoid anything that hinted at conscription in Iraq and Afghanistan (e.g. stop-loss, etc).  At the beginning of this war the amount of unity was refreshing but whether we have the attention span and will to keep doing this is not a done deal.  I suspect we are in too deep to pull out now and every time the Russians are dumb enough to commit war crimes it helps us keep that unity; however, as the costs continue to rise, it is a concern moving forward.   That said, some things are already too big to back away from, such as the momentum NATO has right now.  So if asked I will always list Western Will as a concern but signs are pointing to us remaining unified and "all in", at least for now.
Russian Will is another beast altogether.  Putin and his gang are like the US back in '06, they are doing everything possible not to mobilize, while mobilizing.  They are doing so for a reason, and that reason is that Russian Will for this war is very likely not homogeneous, not solid across the entire federation.  Russia has almost adopted a Western proxy position by pushing as many LNR/DNR conscripts, and contractors into the fight as possible in order to minimize the effect on the Homefront.  But high intensity warfare is just to big to hide, the losses from this war already make it the most high intensity conflict of the 21st century, so how long is Russia willing to do this?  How long will they support Putin in doing this?  This is the calculus that is not on Putin's side.
So back to long vs short war.  My guess is that if this war does not slow down, it will likely still be short; either the West or Russia (likely Russia) will run out of runway on this thing at this rate of burn.  [Note the Ukrainians are not part of this calculus as far as I can tell, they are totally in it regardless...and who can blame them].  If this war slows its burn down, say to the sort of thing we saw in the Donbas before this whole thing, then long becomes a real possibility.  If the UA cannot solve for offence, that is a real possibility...but I am thinking that once the RA runs out of gas, or calls a political "win" the UA will then start going to work on them. 
Of course, back to a point we have made from way back...at this point when the war ends is really moot, which is sad really.  Russia has already lost any initial strategic objectives except regime survival, which is also a maybe.  In fact it has lost so much political strategic ground by this point that even if they somehow took all of Ukraine, this would still be a loss (see: loss of credible power, sanctions, isolation, Sweden and Finland/NATO, etc).  Which makes this whole fiasco so tragic as people keep dying, well past a rational point.

Here's an extremely interesting article about UA rapid drone technology development. I really recommend reading the whole thing, but some key takeaways:
- UA has AI that identifies camouflaged targets
- and probably assists in the attack itself
- decentralized, rapid prototyping approach is extremely agile and cost effective, delivering rapid improvements
Only thing missing is automatic mode - point the drone swarm into a grid square and order them to obliterate everything they find. If this war takes longer, that's what we are going to see IMO.

yeah, I agree w SBurke.  Too many folks still think of Putin's plan as an invasion cake with coup icing.  It's a coup cake with invasion icing.  Meaning the military invasion was the icing on the cake.  The Ukrainian command and control people were supposed to all be dead on day one, with puppet immediately going on television & radio to tell everyone it was already over, while local bribed traitors (mayors, etc) kept local order.  Then Putin does victory dance by day 3, western powers unable to respond because it's a fait accompli.

And Chernobyl seems to be the worst of them all, by pretty much any measure. Only Fukishima is rated "7", but the actual physical/medical/radiological effects of the Japanese disaster are very significantly less than those of Chernobyl.
 

Without wishing to carry on the derailment too much further, I will add this. I have made only two posts elsewhere on this forum since this thread began, but that is two more than I had made in the previous two years that I have had an account here. I have little enough time to play CM that posting about it had never gained priority, but once this war is over I expect I will stick around this board. The community is gaining participants as a result of this discussion.

Without wishing to carry on the derailment too much further, I will add this. I have made only two posts elsewhere on this forum since this thread began, but that is two more than I had made in the previous two years that I have had an account here. I have little enough time to play CM that posting about it had never gained priority, but once this war is over I expect I will stick around this board. The community is gaining participants as a result of this discussion.

I am not talking about CMCW (I do believe it is best CM game so far) because of an obvious lack of time. As soon as war is over, I will go to that subforum.
And my "obsession" with war stems from the fact that I wanted to leave my past in the past. But now my past is threatening my quiet European life and everything I stand for.  I cannot stop them with bullets but at least I will make their propaganda less successful, at least here. 

It is ridiculous that anyone would prioritize a PC wargame over the events we are seeing unfold on the ground in Ukraine.  These events have global impact - we have seen this already, and it is just the start, and merit staying informed about as much as possible.  Why?  Because if you live in a democracy in the western world, at some point you will be asked to use the phenomenal power of your vote to influence this war and it is your responsibility to understand what that means...or at least it should be.
The lack of sacrifice I am referring to is on anyone who is not willing to put aside hobbies and free time and actually devote that time to staying informed about this war as much as they are able.  Everyone on this thread is willing to put that work in, and yes, sacrifice time, in many cases money, and it at least one case volunteer for military service. These are very small sacrifices compared to what the average Ukrainian is going through (Haiduk's dedication and ability to keep us informed while his country is being torn apart is frankly humbling) but everyone here is at least willing to do that much, along with personal donations etc.  
Based on your posts, you are not even willing to sacrifice a distraction from a wargaming hobby.  Now, I do not know your personal circumstances - perhaps you are a humanitarian aid worker who has to deal with the cost of this war on a daily basis, and just want to come here to get away from it all.  I get that, but for the rest of us here this is where we go to put the time in and do our small part.
I appreciate the shout out for CMCW, we had a lot of fun doing that title and have future plans - trust me.  However, right now I would prefer you respect what is going on here as something more than a bunch of "war-porn voyeurism"; it is a communities' efforts to understand what is going on and support each other while it happens.  We did the same after 9/11, and Iraq '03, and Afghanistan, and the Crimea...and now the Russo Ukrainian War.  CM will be there after this war is over, it has survived a lot in the last 20 years, but for now this is bigger than my hobby.  If it is not based on your personal circumstances, hey we get that, however, there is no need to come here and make trouble for those that are just trying to sort through the mountains of information (good, bad, and ugly) and make sense of it.

No. Not really. For one thing, Douhet didn't really articulate any principles. He was writing fantasy war porn in the early 1920s when airforces were still very nascent and desperately trying to justify their own existence. Baldwin was speaking in parliament a decade later - a decade in which aircraft underwent astonishing development - about a very specific moment. Although Baldwin couldn't have realised it, the  technical superiority bombers enjoyed in the early '30s was very fleeting. After another decade, when the bullets started flying, the obsolescence of his comment quickly became apparent.
But even if Baldwin were citing Douhet ... well, that'd be like crediting Kurosawa for Lasseter's A Bug's Life because it's basically the same story as Seven Samurai. Or sumfink.
But, you know. They were both talking about civilians being bombed, so sure. Same thing

Precisely. Just look at all those lights in empty offices and other buildings at night. Just one example of how we can do better.

I also heard that Germany could consider the deployment of telework in a way equivalent to the COVID crisis in order to drastically reduce its consumption of hydrocarbons etc. I really think that we have plenty of means to pass all these tests and even get out of it, we just have to have the will...

As for Visby or such - we have a bunch of FACs armed with RBS-15, the Orkans, which still have some life left in them. One lesson for naval forces that comes from war in Ukraine is that ships without proper air defence are almost useless and it is probably even more true for the more confined waters of the Baltic. All those small ships that operate there are therefore in dire need of upgrades to stay relevant, including Visby's.
As I said, Polish Navy doing convoy escorts alone outside the Baltic is just crazy talk, but perhaps in the Baltic itself a few anti-aircraft ships could protect the traffic from Denmark to Szczecin moderately well. It's harder to justify the subs - I guess 2 or 3 would be enough to close off the whole Gulf of Finnland, but with Finnland in NATO it is no longer an important consideration anyway. Maybe hunting other subs in the Baltic? A very narrow specialty.
There's another argument for keeping the token navy though, and it is being able to participate in NATO/ allied missions. Poland follows this policy since we accessed the alliance, sending contingents for all operations (including anti-piracy mission off Somalia), with the idea being that if push comes to shove, we'll be lend assistance too. Keeping this capability is quite important politically I guess, even if not directly useful in war with RU.
And of course, ending the proud tradition of Free Polish Navy of WW2 would not be that easy politically, it's like calling for disbanding USMC... Having said all of that, I still think that from purely rational standpoint keeping it doesn't make sense. For participation in NATO operations, something like Absalon would serve us much better.
 

Did you hear that noise in the video?  That's sound of many, many Ukrainian soldiers not dying this month.  So UKR hits this right when they start (alleged) big push to take the Kherson region back.  RU now has to rush more of it's limited resources across the bridge or face the offensive undergunned.  Yeah, that's making me happy.  I wonder how much ammo went up in this?  I guess we'll never know.
I suppose RU will try to use arty from the south side of the river, dang it.

My kid and I went to the one at the Russian ambassador's residence on 16th and L. The little dude yelling "sovok svin'ya" at the embassy security goons with projectors got some funny looks.

freakin funny
Last month, activists replaced the street sign outside of the embassy with one saying "Zelensky Way." In 2018, D.C.'s city council voted to rename a section of the street officially. Instead of Wisconsin Avenue, it became Boris Nemtsov Place. Nemtsov was a critic of Putin's who was murdered three years before.
On Wednesday night, activists projected the Ukrainian flag onto the Russian Embassy building. The embassy has been cloaked in the Russian flag's white, red and blue stripes. Then the small Ukrainian flag appeared. The staff apparently rushed to try and wash out the projection with a white spotlight, and that's when things got funny.
The video shows the pro-Ukraine projection moving around the building as the Russian spotlight appears to chase it. It ended up looking like a cat-and-mouse game emblematic of Russia's struggle to bring down Ukraine.
 

If there is one thing that the history of warfare since World War II has shown, it is that "impenetrable" air defences are anything but.

The new era of Polish-Ukrainian friendship continues.

And more good news. It isn't about actual Ukrainian port though, but Romanian port in Galati in the mouth of Danube. Still an important development, as it connected with UA by broad gauge railway, both through Moldova, and directly through Zatoka bridge (the one Russians tried to destroy with cruise missiles a while ago).