Centurian52

The West has a truly golden chance to do well while doing good. All of our major competitors/problems/enemies except Chine are pure gas station economies. Hydrocarbons ARE their economy, and among many other bad things funds the suppression of their own people. A real push, and Biden is trying, to combine mileage standards and electrification of transportation is the single best geopolitical move we have. Whatever reduction in Global warming that gets us is a pure bonus.

The US couldn't unilaterally end the war. Ukraine would keep fighting, just less effectively, even if the US withdrew all support overnight (Ukraine is a sovereign country that does not answer to Washington). I really don't think there is any party that can unilaterally end the war (except Russia obviously, but they won't).
Besides, attempting to negotiate a ceasefire now would not end the nightmare, only put it on pause for a few years. The Ukrainians know that. A ceasefire now would mean the next generation of Ukrainians will have to endure even more suffering. We don't want the nightmare to just get put on pause for a few years. We want it to completely end. And the only way to end it is to see it through.

That would seem to get at the heart of the mass vs precision debate. 10 guns each with a 10% chance of hitting their target (mass) and one gun with a 100% chance of hitting the target (precision) would both seem to have a pretty similar effect on the target. 10 guns, each with a 100% chance of hitting their target (massed precision) will have a much greater effect on the target. 

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

Or to put it simply: Whoever has more firepower measured by effect on target wins.

Speaking as a retired artillery officer....three other reasons to explain this:
1. They have insufficient radios and field phones to communicate with the battery command post.  
2.  The clearing in the trees is too small for proper dispersion of the guns.  Knowing that drones are sweeping treelines for targets, the russians may have chanced putting these guns into a small clearing in the middle of a forest with a trail going into the clearing for the tow vehicles.
3. They lack fire control calculators/computers to calculate fire patterns like converge, linear, etc.   The spacing looks about right for just doing a common bearing and range shoot to all guns and the spacing of the guns is about right for overlapping lethal burst patterns.

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

Yup. Three or four months of operations doesn't really seem like all that much when you are reading about it after the fact. But it's very different when you have to watch the months slowly grind by in real time.
Though watching a war unfold in real time wasn't an entirely novel experience for me. The effect was recreated pretty well by the week by week video series that started cropping up over the last decade. Towards the beginning of the war I couldn't help thinking that the whole experience was a lot like waiting on the next episode of The Great War to drop on youtube. Considering how close the experience of watching those sorts of series is to the real thing (somehow I managed to be in suspense about how this or that operation would turn out, despite already knowing darn well how it would turn out), I think that format can be considered a complete success.

Natural resources count for less than you'd think (this isn't Hearts of Iron). It is very easy for a country which is rich in natural resources to still be militarily and economically weak. Just look at North Korea.
In fact there is evidence that natural resources can even hold a non-democratic economy back, since they provide a means for an autocrat to fund their regime without having to actually develop their economy.

I never cease to be amazed at how completely ****ed the Russian economy is. They really don't have any long term prospects. The exodus of younger generations is only going to exacerbate issues around their already aging population, just as Social Security issues are set to come to a head.
Unfortunately battlefields operate on shorter timescales than economies. It could take years for the failing Russian economy to precipitate a battlefield collapse. Battlefield expenses are probably going to accelerate their economic collapse to a greater degree than their economic collapse will influence a battlefield collapse.

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.
The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.
The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Ukrainians are using the cluster munitions on their own territory. They aren't littering someone else's country with unexploded submunitions. They are the ones who will be bearing the cost of the UXO problem. The fact that they are using cluster munitions anyway demonstrates that they believe that is a cost worth bearing.

I never cease to be amazed at how completely ****ed the Russian economy is. They really don't have any long term prospects. The exodus of younger generations is only going to exacerbate issues around their already aging population, just as Social Security issues are set to come to a head.
Unfortunately battlefields operate on shorter timescales than economies. It could take years for the failing Russian economy to precipitate a battlefield collapse. Battlefield expenses are probably going to accelerate their economic collapse to a greater degree than their economic collapse will influence a battlefield collapse.

For sure, Carolus.  I've read military history my whole life from a detached perspective.  Ukraine war I really feel, I am totally not detached.  It makes me sick -- emotionally, spiritually, every way.  Each UKR death is like helplessly watching some serial mass murderer continually killing people and being helpless to stop him -- and that's exactly what is happening.
On the devil's advocate stuff in some earlier posts today:  Some guy, friend of my daughter (ex friend more accurately), stayed w us for a few weeks recently while he was in town doing clinicals for his phy therapy degree program.  I was watching Davydov video and he said "well, there's two sides to this conflict", some dumb view he probably got from listening to Joe Rogan or some other garbage podcast.  I said "yes, the serial mass murder-er side and the serial mass murder-ee side".  This is the most black & white major war since WW2.  No war is black & white completely but this is as close as it comes.
Would anyone say "oh, well, the serial mass murder probably had some good reasons for killing those 12 women, we should think about his needs?"  F no!

I never cease to be amazed at how completely ****ed the Russian economy is. They really don't have any long term prospects. The exodus of younger generations is only going to exacerbate issues around their already aging population, just as Social Security issues are set to come to a head.
Unfortunately battlefields operate on shorter timescales than economies. It could take years for the failing Russian economy to precipitate a battlefield collapse. Battlefield expenses are probably going to accelerate their economic collapse to a greater degree than their economic collapse will influence a battlefield collapse.

Russia's massive brain drain is ravaging the economy - these stunning figures show why it will soon be smaller than Indonesia's (yahoo.com)
Since Vladimir Putin launched the invasion in February 2022, emigration out of Russia has exploded, with some estimates putting the exodus at 1 million people. A recent analysis from the policy platform Re: Russia narrowed the number to 817,000-922,000.
That's contributed to a record labor shortage, with 42% of industrial firms unable to find enough workers in July, up from 35% in April.
The composition of Russia's exodus also points to the best and brightest fleeing the country. While a barrage of Western sanctions incentivized many to leave for economic reasons, others fled to avoid military service, skewing the numbers toward younger Russians.
Workers under the age of 35 now account for less than 30% of the labor force, the lowest on record going back 20 years.
And according to a report from the French Institute of International Relations, 86% of those who have left Russia are under the age of 45, and 80% have a college education. At least 100,000 IT professionals moved out of Russia in 2022, a Kremlin official estimated last year.
In addition, data also suggest the Russians who fled were significantly wealthier, as nearly 11.5% of personal savings that were in Russian banks at the end of 2021 were were transferred abroad in 2022, amounting to about 4 trillion rubles ($41.5 billion).
A shrinking population of skilled professionals bodes ill for the Russian economy. When highly skilled workers leave, economic opportunities depart with them, which will bring Russia's living standards to the level of other former Soviet states, the Atlantic Council said in a report.
Without migration to fill the labor gap, and paired with declining birth rates, the Russian economy is expected to shrink.
In fact, the Atlantic Council estimated that Russia's GDP, as measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), will fall behind Indonesia's in 2026, nearly two years earlier than would've been the case had Putin not launched his war on Ukraine. By then, they will switch places as the world's sixth and seventh largest economies by PPP.
 

First evidences of Challenger 2 in action. But from what tanker told it becomes clear, why these tank were in the shadow. 
This guy (he served on T-64, T-72, T-80) says, Challenger has very accurate gun and targeting system, which allows to hit enemy targets from very big ranges. This is tracked "sniper rifle", So, Challengers don't use like other tanks for "сarousel" and infantry support with HE shells. Challengers have a task to hit enemy armor from big distance in shoot&scoot way. Tanker also praises easy of service and repair works in comparison with Soviet tanks as well as these tanks give more chanses to survive after hit or even several hits. 
Tanker also told about tanks increadibly raise infantry morale and if these are western tanks, morale increasing more high, so infantry then is ready to follow them and just kick off the enemy from the trenches with a legs. 
 

Mick Ryan about the war. Ukraine needs more, Ukraine needs it faster, and letting the Russian's get anything out of this will cost us more in the end. He appears to either be a regular reader of the board, or his sources agree with ours in regards to the tactical/operational details. He does make a point that Western decision making has never adapted to the new reality. Even when we do that right thing we are too  bleeping slow. That is costing Ukraine dearly now, and it will cost the rest of us even more if China actually goes for Taiwan, or similar.

My path to Combat Mission was a direct line from more mainstream arcadey RTSs to incrementally more realistic RTSs. The first RTS I remember playing was Red Alert 2 (I remember being so excited when my parents got me the expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge, sometime while I was in middle school). As you can imagine, my standards for realism could only go up from there.
My next stop from there was Command and Conquer: Generals. Which wasn't much more realistic, but it did feel slightly more realistic at the time (some of the units' attacks appeared to involve actual projectiles). The big step up was that was around the time that I first learned that modding was a thing. I got my hands on some third party tool that allowed me to edit the units' stats, and so began my lifelong immersion into finely nuanced military history as I made every effort to make sure every unit had the most realistic stats allowable by the engine. The fact that most of the weapon systems in-game were complete fantasy didn't stop me from finding real world analogs to base the stats on for most of them. It still wasn't very realistic by my current standards, given the limitations of the engine and the fact that (with my simplistic understanding of warfare at the time) I only accounted for the capabilities of the weapons, and didn't account for the limitations of the humans operating the weapons (my personalized version of C&C Generals become a very lethal environment (in retrospect it was actually pretty Shock Force-like, so maybe I didn't do such a bad job after all (the massively increased ranges did force me to account for the depth of the battlefield in a way that the vanilla version never did))).
The next step up from C&C Generals was World In Conflict. This was the first time I encountered an RTS that didn't involve building bases, and I never touched a base builder again (except Red Alert 2, because nostalgia is pretty powerful). Vanilla WiC was already much more realistic than vanilla C&C Generals (every round is modeled as an actual projectile!). But the more powerful game engine (and my improved understanding of warfare) allowed for much more realistic modding (I actually took human capabilities into account so, while every hit from infantry small arms resulted in a casualty, most rounds missed (my infantry in C&C Generals were mowing each other down at 500 meters)).
I actually got Rome: Total War for the same Christmas that I got World In Conflict. But I exclusively played WiC for a few months before I even really gave Rome: Total War a look. The Total War games were the first games I had ever played which accounted for soft factors such as moral and fatigue (though in retrospect the moral in those games is still way too high (historically, ancient/medieval/Napoleonic soldiers generally weren't willing to endure melee combat long enough for most of them to be killed (ancient and medieval melees were probably series of short clashes that may have only lasted a few seconds each before one side retreated and the forces returned to throwing projectiles and taunts, and Napoleonic bayonet charges usually resulted in one side running away before bayonets actually clashed))). And while WiC's system of paradropping troops onto the map was better than building bases, Total War's system of recruiting troops in cities on the campaign map was the first recruitment system I had seen in an RTS that had a passing resemblance to how things work in reality. There wasn't much modding I could personally do to make Rome or Medieval 2 Total War more realistic, though I did find mods by other people which made those games significantly more historically accurate. But I did mod the hell out of Empire and Napoleon Total War*.
For several years the Total War games, particularly the modded Total War games, were the gold standard of realism for me. And then, shortly after graduating high school (this would have been around 2009) I discovered Combat Mission: Shock Force, and my gaming experience would never be the same. I still play games other than Combat Mission. Nothing beats Combat Mission for representing ground warfare on the tactical level from WW2 to the modern day. But I also have itches to scratch on the operational and strategic levels, in different domains, and in earlier eras. Command Ops 2 has the market cornered for the operational level (I always play with max orders delay). There still isn't really anything that does a good job of modeling the strategic level. I've looked into Strategic Command and Gary Grigsby's War in the East, but their turn based gameplay (alternating turns, not WEGO) lacks any sense of realistic time flow, so for now I'm sticking with a modded Darkest Hour. I like Hearts of Iron 4's production mechanics, population mechanics, and map, but Darkest Hour has better combat mechanics and lots of juicy statistics screens (I love my statistics screens!). For 20th century naval warfare I play Rule the Waves 3 (honestly it figures that one of my favorite games would be 90% spreadsheets), and I've been intending to play Command: Modern Operations (I'll probably finally get around to it once I'm done with my current Rule the Waves campaign since the time period it covers pretty much picks up where Rule the Waves leaves off, with a couple of decades of overlap). For the Napoleonic era Scourge of War has completely replaced Total War for me (it has been years since I've played a Total War game). Like Total War, it still required some modding to get the weapon ranges and accuracy right (conveniently, I was able to recycle the same research I had done to mod Total War). Unlike Total War, it does a much better job of representing the scale of warfare in this time period (in Total War 2,000 troops is a huge battle, while in Scourge of War 20,000 troops is a pretty small battle). Also unlike Total War, and like Combat Mission, it has historically accurate tables of organization and equipment. Unlike both Total War and Combat Mission it has a pretty good orders delay system. With the poor graphics and the sprite ratio I consider Scourge of War to be pretty analogous to CMx1. I've really enjoyed Scourge of War, but from the looks of it General Staff: Black Powder may soon be taking its place in scratching my 19th century warfare itch. Unfortunately I don't have anything covering ancient and medieval warfare anymore. I still don't know of anything better than Total War for those time periods, and it doesn't quite meet my standards of realism anymore. Theatre of War was part of my lineup for early WW2, but the CMx1 games have mostly replaced it in that role (I say mostly because even the CMx1 games don't go as far back as Poland 1939 or France 1940).
 
* I increased ranges and reduced accuracy among other things. Figuring out what the ranges should be was fairly straightforward. I just used what contemporary sources considered to be the effective ranges. The "battle range" (what we might call the area target effective range) of a smoothbore musket was considered to be about 200 yards, assuming that the target is a battalion in close order, while most artillery of the time should be able to fire out to 1-2 kilometers (depending on the size of the gun). Figuring out what the accuracy should be was a pain, especially since the engine didn't include any ways for accuracy to vary depending on circumstances. Single volleys fired by unbroken troops at close range could be quite accurate, while 200-500 rounds expended for every casualty inflicted was typical over the course of an entire battle. But that includes ill-disciplined troops wasting ammo at ineffective ranges, ammo fired blindly through smoke, ammo not recovered from casualties, ammo ruined by bad weather, ammo fired at troops in skirmish line and/or behind cover, etc... But eventually I figured that about 2% hits on a unit in the open in close order at 200 yards was close enough.

You're right about these simulations being addictive drugs and very large sponges of time! 
My particular addiction for CM is when new modules are released, my brain is 'MUST HAVE, MUST HAVE', but the rational part of my brain knows I probably won't have time to play it anytime soon. I just feel better for having it ready! 

The British Army's approach for essentially all of the Cold War was defence in depth and counter-attack, with the emphasis on "depth" at all levels. This is in contrast to the German approach, which had the emphasis on the counter-attack. One of the fascinating things about Cold War doctrine is that everyone was trying to solve the same problems, but going about it differently.

Active Defence wasn't about deploying in depth, but in creating depth through manoeuvre. AD had an up-front defence, with elements peeling back and rotating, creating successive kill-sacks. Counter-attack wasn't a formal part of this, and it's not clear where that element would have come from.

The issue with AD is that it's very complex, and ambitious to the point of implausibility. It's also that it lacks a real theory of victory - the best an Active Defender can do is not lose, there's no real ability to win.

I seriously doubt that cluster munitions are well suited to clearing minefields.

ISW hasn't updated their map in a couple of days, so I'm not sure how many of the recent Ukrainian advances have actually been confirmed yet (maybe there will be a big map update today?). But they did assess earlier that the current Russian line would probably be less effective than their forward positions. The Russians committed very heavily to defending their forward positions, those forces should have been significantly degraded by that fighting, and it doesn't look like they have anything in reserve.
The Russian static defenses in this area certainly look intimidating. But as had been discussed before, static defenses are only effective when overwatched by fire. Static defenses which aren't being overwatched are more of a speed bump than an actual obstacle. So if the Russians don't have enough troops left in the area to actually man all of those defenses, then they are not going to get the full potential out of those defenses.