G.I. Joe

Well his second thread isn't exactly accurate, as we absolutely have and account for manufacturing deviations between howitzers, and have several processes to identify these differences. We also have differences between the efficiencies of our propellants and the weight of our shells, which is why we segregate them into similar lots and track the differences between the various lots... that's probably the main difference between western and Soviet equipment, not necessarily purely a quality thing (though it plays a factor) but the fact that we more accurately account for those differences... looking at the Tabular Firing Tables of a Soviet D-30 and comparing it to ours, the amount of data they used was noticeably less. We have extremely detailed firing tables that account for many different variables, and I'm not sure if more recent Russian howitzers have improved, but I would argue that's a bigger factor then it being purely a manufacturing issue. Not every Russian howitzer is from the 1980s with completely shot out tubes, but if you have incomplete firing tables you will not be as accurate.

It looks like this may well be the war where drones "come of age." Of course, in some ways that could be said of Vietnam, the 1982 Lebanon War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and/or Iraq...we're coming up on the 78th anniversary of the first drone strike this September. Sometimes revolutions in warfare happen gradually at first and then the floodgates open. Just look at the trickle of submarine technology from the American War of Independence to World War I...

More good to know stuff on the artillery war. It isn't just range and ROF. No doubt many here know this, but there are also others like me who don't, and this is absolutely one of the fundamentals of the war right now....
 
 
Oh, and just because.....
 
 
 

Can we please leave personal things out of this discussion? It doesn't help and that road is a slippery one.

Reassuring remarks from Lloyd Austin. Hopes for tomorrow's donors conference are high!
 

Yandex is useless because it is literally heavily controlled. Google is somewhat worse engine for Russian queries. Also, I believe Russian department heavily infiltrated by RU propagandist and so at least somewhat sanitized.
It is networking - you read liberal guy, he points to another liberal guy, and if you like him you add him to your list of sources. And so on and so forth.  
By the way, by liberal I mean pro-western and not like US liberal. All pro-western Russians are called liberals by RU propaganda but many of them are very conservative by US standards. 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Note: the clear evidence that one side is losing doesn't necessarily mean that the other side recognizes that it is winning.

Some good news.
 
 

that is some serious nostalgia right there.  One of the hit records from way back in March -- 20,000 syrian fighters on the way!  somehow that song just doesn't age well. 

I keep getting the distinct impression that the systemic weaknesses in the Russian military are hitting the Air Force particularly hard (unsurprisingly, given the expense of maintaining a good air force).
There has been some commentary off and on about how many of the Russian pilots captured or KIA have been majors and up. Of course it's perfectly normal for senior officers to be flying in combat, but here it seems as if they're doing the bulk of the flying. That makes me think they either have to ration a limited number of flying hours and only the senior guys are getting enough time to stay current, they have issues in their recruitment and training pipeline, or both. Add to that the number of retired pilots they have flying as mercenaries now, and it looks like there are issues.
I also remember reading somewhere (pretty sure it was here, and I think they had a cited source) that the Russian Air Force never flew in anything larger than two-ship formations in Syria. Not being able to coordinate even four-ship flights (in NATO, that would be the basic building block for air tactics as I understand it) looks like a massive red flag regarding their readiness and training.
Also, has anyone else found the apparent lack of any attempt to use the Su-57... interesting?

🔬🔭 I found something 🔬🔭
Objective:
So, I was playing around with Google Trends to see if I could find a meaningful comparative statistic for Google searches from Russia using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine"), and that didn't bring anything up. Instead, I stumbled upon this.
Methodology:
I looked up Google Trends data from Russia for Google searches for the last three months using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Findings:
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Belgorod Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Bryansk Oblast
5. Jewish Autonomous Oblast [It is Russian populated; Jews are only 1% of the population today.]
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Kostroma Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Kamchatka Krai
5. Belgorod Oblast
Moreover, Moscow and St. Petersburg ranked 56th and 55th among Russia's 83 subregions searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") [Since this is the politically correct form, this would include searches by liberals and dissidents.], and they ranked 58th and 75th among the 83 subregions searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Discussion:
Since Belgorod and Bryansk border Ukraine, heightened interest in the war is to be expected. Otherwise, we see that those most actively searching for information on events in Ukraine since the start of the war are far-flung regions where a large percentage of the population are professional military [Kostroma isn't far-flung, but it's piss-poor, and home to a VDV regiment that got wiped out early in the war.], and also the ethnic minority Buryatia and Chukotka, where at least the former are known to have taken very heavy losses in Ukraine. That these regions are actively searching for information on Google can be seen as an indication that they do not trust and/or are not satisfied with the information from the Russian press, and search results from Yandex.
Conversely, Moscow and St. Petersburg seem to have relatively little interest in the war beyond the official channels, in spite of their large populations.
Conclusion:
The war is having an unequal impact on Russian society and Russia's diverse regions, and this is already manifesting itself objectively via online data.
@LongLeftFlank

First off, great video, thanks for posting it.
I would urge caution on reading too much in to such a short clip. It could be proficiency flying by operational pilots, or perhaps even the return from an operational mission or flight testing ex-Bulgarian aircraft before returning them to service. I can say that the plane the video was shot from definitely looks like a single -seater, not an Su-25UB, judging by the canopy framing.
I'm inclined to agree with Calamine Waffles that the Su-25 isn't ideal for earlier phases of training, especially since from what I gather (I know Haiduk posted something on the subject a while back) Ukraine already does their equivalent to the lead-in fighter training phase on operational types. However, it is arguably no more complex than a lot of advanced and lead in fighter trainers (T-38 Talon, BAe Hawk, Kawasaki T-4, T-50 Golden Eagle, etc.) Also, the Su-25 has been used in a purely training role: the naval Su-25UTG is solely a two-seat deck landing trainer to teach carrier qualifications on, much like the T-2 Buckeye or T-45 Goshawk. I don't think there was ever much consideration to an operational naval Su-25 (it would be a bit like a "Sea Hog" version of the A-10, which I'm sure the Marines would love, but I can't see the Navy devoting funds or hangar and flight deck space to such an aircraft). Also, at the end of the Soviet era, a handful of Su-28s were built: a stripped-down, unarmed Su-25UB meant as a dedicated trainer.
So Ukraine probably could, in theory, shift some of the L-39 syllabus onto the Su-25, the question is whether any advantages in time saved or shifting hours onto a frontline type outweigh the operating economics and added difficulty at that phase. Cutting corners always has drawbacks: less experienced new pilots, suitable candidates washed out because of added time pressure, etc.

Agreed, but only if we get more reactions to give...

Indeed. I generally consider it a safe bet that anyone commonly remembered as "The Great" would probably be considered an A-list war criminal by post-World War II standards...

First off, great video, thanks for posting it.
I would urge caution on reading too much in to such a short clip. It could be proficiency flying by operational pilots, or perhaps even the return from an operational mission or flight testing ex-Bulgarian aircraft before returning them to service. I can say that the plane the video was shot from definitely looks like a single -seater, not an Su-25UB, judging by the canopy framing.
I'm inclined to agree with Calamine Waffles that the Su-25 isn't ideal for earlier phases of training, especially since from what I gather (I know Haiduk posted something on the subject a while back) Ukraine already does their equivalent to the lead-in fighter training phase on operational types. However, it is arguably no more complex than a lot of advanced and lead in fighter trainers (T-38 Talon, BAe Hawk, Kawasaki T-4, T-50 Golden Eagle, etc.) Also, the Su-25 has been used in a purely training role: the naval Su-25UTG is solely a two-seat deck landing trainer to teach carrier qualifications on, much like the T-2 Buckeye or T-45 Goshawk. I don't think there was ever much consideration to an operational naval Su-25 (it would be a bit like a "Sea Hog" version of the A-10, which I'm sure the Marines would love, but I can't see the Navy devoting funds or hangar and flight deck space to such an aircraft). Also, at the end of the Soviet era, a handful of Su-28s were built: a stripped-down, unarmed Su-25UB meant as a dedicated trainer.
So Ukraine probably could, in theory, shift some of the L-39 syllabus onto the Su-25, the question is whether any advantages in time saved or shifting hours onto a frontline type outweigh the operating economics and added difficulty at that phase. Cutting corners always has drawbacks: less experienced new pilots, suitable candidates washed out because of added time pressure, etc.

Nothing new but still worth some reading.
Well, the meaning of word itself is much more obscure unfortunatelly. Word"Kraina" could cut both ways- meaning "the land" but also rather "border" or (nomen omen) something "cut out" in older slavic languages Semantically, word for heartland would be "otczyna" or something similar , and while itself "Ukraine" appears rather early in XII cent. latopis, it was in this context- "border country". The semantics of "heartland" comes form XIX cent. historian M.Khruschevsky, and as you can imagine there is still a lot of debates about its meaning, with many parties and emotions involved.
Of course that in no way dimnishes the rights of Ukrainians for their own sovereginity.
Also, on daily basis, common people inhabitng those lands wouldn't call themselves Ukrainians but rather  "Ruthenians" or "Rusichi" (*Rusowie in pl.) which Muscovites started to accquire from XII cent. early on. Later Tzars devised ideology of "Great Russia"(them) and "Small Russia" (anybody else Orthodox and using the script, including modern Bialorussians).
 
We should perhaps have separate thread for history and politics of Ukraine and Russia,  but it is so importnat to the outcome of this war. It's incredibly "ideological" conflict and Russians are unfortunatelly framing it more and more in civilizational rather than purely rational terms.
 
 

This is point of view, which was popular in period of "Independence romantiсism" at the end of 80-th- beginning of 90th. Patriotic Ukrainian society in that time tried to find the place of Ukraine in world hystory, so this researches inevitably led to manipulations by sources and creating of hystorical myths. Of course, on the wave of euphoria of 1991, when Ukraine became independent, many of our intellectuals were throwing out even the thought that the name Ukraine was derived from Russian "okraina" - "outskirts, periphery". But really the word "krayina" as "state" never used in old chronics, this is more late means, probably since 18 century.
But now, when period of romanticism has gone, nobody from our serious historians doubt that "Ukraine" is derived from Ancient Rus word "oukrayina, ukrayina" - "frontier, border land". There is nothing splended in this derivation. This is just objective fact. First mention of word "ukrayina" we can find in Ipatyevska chronicle under 1187 year, but this name related to Pereyaslav Principality. Pereyaslav - the town in nowadays Kyiv oblast, which in that times, was a center of separate principality, which was real frontier with Wild Steppe and nomad tribes. 
When modern Ukrainian lands in 14th century became a part of Great Lituanian Principality, already Lithuaninan rulers named old Rus lans as "ukrayina" - "Kyivan ukrayina", "Volynian ukrayina" etc, with the same sense - "frontier lands". Further theese names often mentioned in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthm. Active mastering of Wild Steppe in 16th century and rising of Cossacks gradually has been fixed "ukrayina" for lands on left bank of Dnieper with Kyiv and Cherkasy regions, and since the mid of 17th century this name was extended on whole Cossak-controlled territory.  

First off, great video, thanks for posting it.
I would urge caution on reading too much in to such a short clip. It could be proficiency flying by operational pilots, or perhaps even the return from an operational mission or flight testing ex-Bulgarian aircraft before returning them to service. I can say that the plane the video was shot from definitely looks like a single -seater, not an Su-25UB, judging by the canopy framing.
I'm inclined to agree with Calamine Waffles that the Su-25 isn't ideal for earlier phases of training, especially since from what I gather (I know Haiduk posted something on the subject a while back) Ukraine already does their equivalent to the lead-in fighter training phase on operational types. However, it is arguably no more complex than a lot of advanced and lead in fighter trainers (T-38 Talon, BAe Hawk, Kawasaki T-4, T-50 Golden Eagle, etc.) Also, the Su-25 has been used in a purely training role: the naval Su-25UTG is solely a two-seat deck landing trainer to teach carrier qualifications on, much like the T-2 Buckeye or T-45 Goshawk. I don't think there was ever much consideration to an operational naval Su-25 (it would be a bit like a "Sea Hog" version of the A-10, which I'm sure the Marines would love, but I can't see the Navy devoting funds or hangar and flight deck space to such an aircraft). Also, at the end of the Soviet era, a handful of Su-28s were built: a stripped-down, unarmed Su-25UB meant as a dedicated trainer.
So Ukraine probably could, in theory, shift some of the L-39 syllabus onto the Su-25, the question is whether any advantages in time saved or shifting hours onto a frontline type outweigh the operating economics and added difficulty at that phase. Cutting corners always has drawbacks: less experienced new pilots, suitable candidates washed out because of added time pressure, etc.

Interesting...thanks.
Fair point. I am reminded somewhat of how Commonwealth and U.S. practices differ on ship name prefixes: "the HMCS Vancouver" is considered incorrect because "the Her Majesty's Canadian Ship" is grammatically awkward, but "the United States Ship" works just fine, so there is generally no objection to "the USS Enterprise..."

Agreed on both. Saying Ukraine without the definite article is a bit like saying Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw instead of Kwakiutl or Nuu-chah-nulth instead of Nootka... convenience and force of habit aren't really relevant if one is more correct to the people it refers to. I'm old enough to remember Czechoslovakia and find it trips off my tongue oddly easily, but am still finding Czechia takes some getting used after being accustomed to the Czech Republic for most of my life...

I doubt you would send pilots into an Su-25 before doing basic and advanced training in an L-39. The Su-25 is not a Mach 2.0+ fighter, but it's still considerably more complex than an L-39.

Four Ukrainian Su-25s in formation, and they actually seem to be doing formation training - maybe, start with line astern and transition to line abreast? @c3k
And a tantalizing thought: Though I've never flown one - virtually, of course; I've never flown anything IRL  - the Su-25 looks like it should have docile handling and make for a good advanced trainer. Could these be pilot cadets who've skipped the L-39 and are completing their training on Su-25s, simultaneously gaining experience with an operational platform?

This is the same usage in English with examples like 'The Congo' and 'The Sudan': It indicates not so much inferiority, rather a perspective where the territory under discussion lacks sovereignty - it is precisely a colonial 'territory', not a sovereign 'nation'. Therefore, trying to return the favor to Russia doesn't make sense: It's like saying "The Congo invaded Belgium."

https://coffeeordie.com/grey-wolf-team/