Butschi

So true. Well, you could get those small plastic soldiers. But real war games? Board games were about playing with the family. At some point I managed to grab Axis&Allies in a shop in the Netherlands. We were a bunch of weirdos playing that every Friday. Those were the days. 🙂

I never played any of these games. At that time in the 80s those ‚war games‘ were shunned. Only crazy militarists would play that. If you didn’t live in a big city you would never have seen something like that. Even then it was unlikely. Access to porn was much easier.  

Heh, the hilarious part is that when I was an armored Engr troop commander we had those German vehicles. I am intimately aware of what the AEV and AVLB are capable of, having spent hours and days jumping in on maintenance and operation of them. 
The Boar nee Ogre is trying to replace the ploughs and rollers of the MBTs, as well as the line charge launching systems…along with what looks like some route clearing and detection tech. It stuffs it all on a very expensive chassis on a single platform that will likely remain dependent on other engineer support to do a job that likely cannot be done under the current conditions. It is capability designed for previous wars, not the ones we are likely to face. It was ordered years ago well before this war but is now potentially a large waste of money and effort. As well as a liability if it becomes a bottleneck in breaching operations.
 

Where was that proven?  The only thing that has been "proven" in Ukraine is that breaching a defended belt has been proven to be so difficult it hasn't been done successfully to allow any tempo to offensive operations.
and before you suggest it, I am not saying that it has no use.  What I am saying is that there isn't a successful breaching operation you can point to with the exception of Kursk and the primary reason for success there was a lack of covering forces by the RA.  I can't say I have even seen a video there where an explosive option was used.

Considering that I am likely the only one in this conversation that has commanded AEVs, AVLBs and sappers on mechanized minefield breaching training, I am pretty confident I understand the situation quite well. 
That "Boar" is a multi-million dollar highly specialized vehicle doing that mine plows and line charges on trailers did. It will still need AEV and Bridges, and likely sappers. Which kinda makes me wonder - what is the point? An overly expensive piece of equipment that is going to be challenged to do what was already being attempted, and still needs support for stuff it is missing.
This sounds like a big military "sexy" purchase that may be dead on arrival.
 

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

A professional assassin who missed from ~150 meters?  Not very professional.  Fortunately for Trump the nutjob used an AR15 and not an actual hunting rifle.  
Back on subject, the TheCapt above discusses whether we'd be better off with more/cheaper than expensive high tech in the context of armored mine removers and armor in general.  Always an interesting tradeoff study -- better or more?  We all love WW2 panthers but having lots and lots of cheap T34s or shermans wasn't a bad way to go.  

Norm Augustine published a bunch of plots showing the extrapolation of things like this in "Augustine's Laws".  One of them is that by 2050 or so, the USAF will be one aircraft and it will cost the entire US GDP.  Tanks are a bit cheaper than aircraft, so the US army won't be reduced to a single tank until maybe 2080.

More sexy corporate sales videos. Well this one is in my wheelhouse at least.
This is the major problem. The military industrial complex and military force development have formed an unholy union. This has been decades in the making. First the political level reduces funding, which puts pressure on future procurement. Rather than being able to purchase capacity, we instead invest in increasingly capability-dense platforms. This keeps total costs down because we save on crews/human costs (which is a significant slice of military funding btw - for Canada "pay" is about 51% of our overall defence budget) and infrastructure. Per unit costs go through roof. In the end we do spend less and fit into political funding envelops, while keeping capability.  But something has to give...capacity.
We design and buy a tank that can theoretically kill 100 older tanks. It costs about as much as 100 older tanks but we are never going to get enough money to buy 100 newer ones. So we buy 10, put them in ever shrinking unit and formation sizes and tell ourselves "its ok, we can kill 1000 tanks with this unit."  Wait a decade or two and we are down to 5 super-tanks.
This beast is a classic example. So in last-gen mine breaching we spread these capabilities across no less than 4-5 platforms. But all those platforms come with crews and as budgets shrink or come under inflationary pressure we need to downsize. So we mash 4-5 capabilities onto a single platform and create "efficiencies". Super breachers that cost a freakin mint per unit but they can breach mines like no ones business. This is great for a peacetime military. We can roll these bad boys out on exercises, parades and the odd small war to show the politicians that they spent their money well. 
But is absolutely sucks for war. Beyond the capacity and manufacture issues, the problem tactically is that we create a single point of failure. An entire formation may have 4 of these monsters, needing at least two per breach. If you lose them the entire formation is screwed pretty quickly. No politician is going to shell out enough money to buy 100 of them, and industry could not make that many in a hurry anyway.
High cost, high capability but low capacity is exactly the wrong way to go...and this war is a shining example of why. Cheap, easy and fast is great. Smart cheap, easy and fast is freakin lethal.

Interesting.  This is being pushed out by the China channels one assumes, Asia Times being Hong Kong based.  The usual suspects have been banging the drum in Europe about Putin being serious about nukes this time, and Putin himself has made a speech indicating that Ukraine using long range missiles to attack targets in russia will be construed as an act of war by Nato.  Russia will thereafter be at war with Nato, he says, despite having presented the conflict as a clash with Nato since the early days.
One senses desperation from Putin.  Ramping up the nuclear rhetoric alongside the empty threat to stop exporting uranium all looks like Moscow is in panic mode.  Calling in the propaganda assets to amplify his message about being serious is equally desperate.
A desperate man with lots of nukes needs to be taken very seriously.  I am glad I am not the one to call his bluff.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

The only thing I have to disagree with is this constant acting as though the US are the only grown up in the room and have to manage the squabbling or fearful children. It is easy to scoff at the fear of others when you are far away on a different continent and armed to the teeth with nuked and not next door neighbor with Russia (and no, Alaska doesn't count! 🙂).

If it's ok...I can pass on a personal experience on this front. I actually ran into a French influencer while on a trip in Japan who, when he realized my wife and lived in DC, proceeded to regale us with the glories of his life in Saint Petersburg and how immigration was ruining France. He did not, for some time, realize that we know France quite well and also assumed because we played dumb that we didn't understand anything about the war in Ukraine. It was utterly fascinating to see in microcosm how the game is played by these folks and how in his version it was tailored to a French perspective. And he is one of quite literally thousands. 
What we did not know until today is that, as an RT employee, he works pretty much directly for Russian intelligence. 
Coda: after we let him yammer on for a while, he stumbled into a critique of 'decadent art' only to discover that my better half is a working artist and topic expert. He was gone, in outraged confusion, within three minutes. Personally I felt cheated I didn't get my shot. C'est la vie. 

Deleted as per Steve's request.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

Can we just be done with all this preaching, virtue signaling, the whole holier than thou attitude, and this "if you are not for me you are against me" stuff? Your country has not declared war against Russia, yet? Put your face into the dirt and apologize on behalf your whole country!
Last time I looked, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the war and not ensuring everyone knows that we 105% support Ukraine and despise Russia.

Sorry, I think you have misread, I am really undecided as to whether this constitutes pro-Russian propaganda...I have not seen the film. All my posts call the absolute as Russian propaganda into question. From some neutral write ups it does not look pro-Russian but I would need to see the film in order to really decide.
I am more than willing to attack misinformation or pure opinion without factual basis. In fact, we need to do this in healthy discourse, it is called "challenging." It can get heated but if a poster comes onto this thread pushing biases, skewing or outright lies...they need to be challenged. I have gone after pro-Russian and MAGA drive bys just as vigorously.
I am not going to agree with a position just because a poster is Ukrainian or is pushing a pro-Ukrainian point, if it is based on misinformation or lies. "NATO warplanes escort Russian drones to strikes on Odessa" was an outright lie. If the poster who posted it felt insulted by my calling them out...well then they are insulted.
I have no problem with disagreeing, but if my opposition wraps themselves in the blanket of uninformed biased opinions, they are going to get called on it. For example, openly calling out Canada for supporting Russia in this war is twisting events at best but you have shown no restraint or consideration before making that accusation. Is that an insult to you? Or is it what I have seen happen this morning?  

I've mostly refrained from commenting on this topic because I no longer live or pay taxes in Canada, but all this pile-on is making me feel for our German friends who seem destined to face ritual bashings on this thread for not rerouting their entire budget to the AFU.
My personal feeling is that this movie is fairly sus. The filmmaker has a bit of a shady background. The topic is at best insensitive, especially given Canada's significant ethnic Ukrainian population (already 3.5% in the 2021 Census).
However.
The Canadian federal budget is getting up in the range of 500 billion dollars. This movie received something like 350 thousand dollars of funding for the arts, coming from a pool of money that both the federal government and Canadian cable TV providers pay into, some of which is granted to regional public broadcasters. One of those public broadcasters decided to invest in this movie, presumably after receiving a grant application, and perhaps not doing all of its due diligence. Or perhaps they did do their due diligence and decided nevertheless that this documentary might still provide something of interest to the kinds of viewers who tune in to watch Antiques Roadshow and Michael Palin and the Ontario provincial assembly question period. 
Ironically due to the Streisand effect this movie is now getting way more press than it probably ever would have if it had just done the festival circuit and then disappeared onto public access TV.
For sure, this is a political blunder - and it has since been acknowledged as such by all involved - but let's not pretend like a drop in the bucket of the Canadian federal budget going to a propaganda flick for the bad guys is anywhere near as problematic as literal billionaire media moguls pumping out the same nonsense and worse on major commercial networks, cable news channels and social media. It's important to keep things in perspective.

Ok, well first off your point about not funding Russian propaganda is absolutely correct. No argument there.
But in this particular case we have not actually established that the film was indeed Russian propaganda (without seeing it), or was it honest freedom of expression. Even the Ukrainian diplomat admitted to not seeing the film. Does this film somehow assist Russia in achieving its military goals? Based on what I can find the answer is, "no". It is an anti-war film that portrays the disillusionment and horrid conditions Russian troops are living under...that is not going to help Putin in anyway shape or form. Just because it does not portray every Russian soldier as an inhuman monster does not play into Russia's hand.
As to "Canada helping Russia," again, here we go with leaps of opinion being sold as logical argument. This belongs right next to "NATO warplanes escorting Russian drones" it is outright misinformation. Without digging into the baffling Canadian Arts funding schemes too far, in this country the federal government sets aside piles of money to promote Canadian art (because few others will). Those pools get dolled out to the provinces and national organization. The provinces and organizations all do up nice annual reports showing how well they spent that money, all in line with federal policies.
At the provincial level, they do the same thing. Toss money out to producers and organizations who then are responsible to push onto the artists. Everyone takes a cut on the way down (sigh) but the money is eventually handed out to artists who all apply for these grants through various schemes.
So one of those producers TVO in Ontario dolled out some cash to the film maker. Who produced this film, which may or may not be pro-Russian. Taking that and turning into "Canadian PM cuts federal cheque to support Russia" is exactly what I am talking about as a problem on this thread. And it is getting worse not better. In fact, doing what you, and Kraft, and others, are doing is essentially an form of information operation in its own right.
The problem as I see it, is that there is actually very little new information on this war right now. So people are making up their own from the bits we see. People are promoting positions, some honorable others less so. But we are very light on facts. Worse, some of you are attacking anyone who points this out.
Yesterday, two posters made a run at me because I offered an opinion that the recent move by the US to authorize deep strikes into Russia was a deliberate escalation, in line with the larger US strategy to date. The yips and howls that I was pulling this out of thin air filled the halls. When in fact, 1) I have said this exact same statement repeatedly, with citations, on this same thread going back hundreds of pages, and 2) then provided more citation and mainstream assessment to back up the opinion. So, yes, I offered an opinion. It was informed and supported. Readers can take it or leave it.
In this case, you have offered an assessment of a situation. I disagree with some of it, and have posted citations to back that up. Is it possible that the bureaucratic morass of Canadian government funding screwed up, absolutely. Is this a deliberate supporting of Russia in this war by Canada? No, that is an outright falsehood and needs to be called out.  

Hold the phone now. So are movies like this Ukrainian propaganda that we should not trust either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_on_Fire:_Ukraine's_Fight_for_Freedom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Days_in_Mariupol
We are well aware of Russian information operations - I am convinced we have seen it right here on this thread. But not every film that does not portray Russian as inhuman monsters is “pro-Russian”. We also have this thing called freedom of speech, a messy but important concept, wherein people are free to express opinions. This is not a “weakness” it is in fact a strength and critical in a functioning democracy. 

So from what I can tell it portrays some soldiers doing it for money amongst other reasons. The film states specifically that they went forward without permission from the Russian MoD. But your points on control do ring true. On the other hand given the chaos in the RA…?
However, until we get someone who has seen the film the rest is pretty much highly charged opinion. 

The only thing I have to disagree with is this constant acting as though the US are the only grown up in the room and have to manage the squabbling or fearful children. It is easy to scoff at the fear of others when you are far away on a different continent and armed to the teeth with nuked and not next door neighbor with Russia (and no, Alaska doesn't count! 🙂).

Well first off anyone tossing Latin phrases around as window dressing to show us all how very smart they are will most definitely remain on my ignore list.
This is pretty much it. There is no master schedule, that would assume there some sort of deterministic framework here. Escalation is conditions based and a form of negotiation. We have posters on this thread who continue to call for rapid, bordering on uncontrolled, escalation every time Russia violates a norm. They then claim the West is cowardly, complacent and/or negligent in its response. This is not true.
In reality the US and West have managed the escalations in this war about as well as can be expected. This is an extremely complex and volatile strategic situation. We have a regional partner we are supporting in an existential war for them, while being a proxy war to re-exert western rules based order. At the same time Putin seems intent on playing chicken with his entire nation on a brutal quagmire war that may very well destroy it. Repeatedly, the US and West have tried to shape things to ensure Russia that there are consequences on the board while also leaving off-ramps for them to find another way out. While never perfect this effort has been well played as we have seen Russian red lines slowly pushed back - thought experiment: how do we think things would have gone down if the US was supporting ATACMs strikes directly into Russia in 2022?
Now as to the clever Latin fluent children in the back - so what are the metrics to demonstrate that escalation has been a failure? Or are we in some post-fact world where nothing is true? We can safely remain critical of everything and never be wrong, which I am betting is the real aim here. The simpler way to describe their point without sounding like a second year philosophy major is causation versus correlation. So my position is that this latest escalation is a direct result of a conditions based consequence of a Russian action - the Iranian short range ballistic missiles is what my news is saying this morning:
Of course we have no direct evidence of this until governments admit it. But I think that until a better theory comes along this one is workable. That is causation, not correlation, and it appears deliberate and measured.
So the real question here is: is the Western strategy working? Well the criteria are stiff on this one. On one hand this war has not suffered uncontrollable escalation despite the conditions for this to happen. At the same time the US/West have escalated and the pressure on Russia has increased. On the other hand, this war has not ended. Russia has not taken an off ramp and continues to hammer on Ukraine. While not the primary objective of western escalation strategy, it is an overarching objective this approach supports. So, as normal in these things, all we know right now is that we are in a messy middle. We have not driven off a cliff but are still in the mess. Strategy is warfare is almost never good and bad, it is bad and worse. The US/Western strategy still lives in bad but has avoided worse. That is irrefutable as of today in that this war has not blown out of control. Could it have been better? Probably/maybe but this is very hard to determine from the outside without the full suite of information available.
So this latest move fits the pattern of deliberate escalation management strategy conducted by the US/West pretty much from the beginning. It will always be “too little too late” for some but in the end it is better than “worse”. And while I know it has become au fait [oh my, this Capt fella must be pretty smart because he knows other language terms too] that to worry about uncontrollable escalation with an unstable nuclear power is “sooo Boomer” - complete with teenage eye rolls - now checking cellphone to fill hole in soul. The reality is that it is a hard factor. It is in fact built into the revised post-WW2 nature of warfare. And no amount of post-modern rationalization is going to change it. The old red gods are back in the driver seat on this one. And from history (and my childhood) it is best to tread carefully when this happens.
 
 

We are all a bit testy today (me too), how come?

That reminds me of a statistic I heard a while back. Apparently around 80% of people believe they are above average drivers. Probably a good figure to keep in your back pocket if you ever need an example of cognitive bias.