NamEndedAllen

I hope you are right and ISW is wrong. But one thing often described in past wars is that after a while, a larger percentage of the least experienced, least capable become the casualties; that however painful and slowly the remaining troops and leadership learn much more than what they began with. Russia in the past exhibited the ability to dig deep into its population and keep fighting despite massive setbacks. Yes, Ukraine’s matériel, inventory, training all are improving. At the same time Russia is getting something if a breather and the time to refocus its military leadership and approach to the war. I’m not suggesting they will be transformed overnight from the mess they’ve been. But it’s prudent to assume the professional military is not entirely and absolutely incapable of learning from its mistakes. Certainly under the thumb of the brutal WWII dictatorship, with all the purges and losses, Russia did learn a lot during that war. That was so despite its initial offensives not going well at all. Russia won’t be able to keep up with Ukraine. But it may be improving enough to cause a lot more pain and suffering along the way. All the more reason for the Allies to buck up, and stop all the indecision and bickering. It gives Russia hope. The piecemeal approach was understandable - unavoidable during the initial frantic months. Time now to have studied and agreed on a comprehensive and unified arming and training plan. Guys have already outlined the logic here in the forum. With each nation playing the part best suited for putting Ukraine’s military on the path to a rational outfitting in as short a timeframe as possible. With new NATO members in the offing, the exercise would be beneficial all around. Or else get out of the way of those who will.

Yep. But what else do they have besides those two? Iran, North Korea… What a team!

Gotta love this hubris! “Not only may you not attack our country while we attack yours (and you aren’t even a country, hah hah), you are not allowed to take back your territory once we take it. Because, you know, we make the rules and everyone else has to follow them. We gave nukes! Hah hah hah” I think India and China have recently made it clear that their relationships with Russia are terminated should Russia use nukes.

Damn it, YES! And do it yesterday. This is nonsense, watching Ukraine burn as Russia *escalates* its crimes against humanity. While we fret about escalating! Most here agree that artillery remains the Queen of the battlefield, along with the aid of ISR. Artillery is accounting for so much of either side’s successes either directly, or indirectly by shaping the battlefield. Is it really really really gambling on thermonuclear war to supply the GLSDB, ATCMS, and heck, even the Storm Shadow? How much more of a nuke threat is Ukraine actually WINNING? Russia being forced out of much or all of Ukraine? Being utterly humiliated, without further hope of fulfilling Putin’s dream of hegemony? Or are we simply putting that so far into the future that we don’t have to be concerned about it? And believing Russia will collapse at some indefinite but helpful time in the future, and withdraw without deadly death rattling tantrums. Maybe so. There are good data to suggest the pressure is great. But can Ukraine’s citizens, their homes, their workplaces, schools, hospitals count on for ending their agony? No. But they can and do count on the AFU. And also the resolve of the Western Allies. That resolve may or may not be infinite, beyond 2023-4. This is the year to put that frog out of Ukraine’s pond, or so much so that the long predicted Russian military or political collapse, or awakening to reality brings them to reasonable negotiations. Turn the screws as Russia has been doing on Ukraine. Ukraine has earned at least enough trust that we ought not to fret they will use USA weapons on some cockamamie attack on Moscow or its nuclear weaponry. I fervently hope that the Allies or at least the USA have been forging a coherent, layered process for step by step integrating the full combined arms modernization of the AFU at or near NATO standards, culminating by 2025 or very soon thereafter. We’ve seen significant bits and drabs - introducing HARMS for instance. But an open commitment now is needed politically, in answer to Putin’s consistent and loud public stance on only victory, and whatever that takes. Rather than what can seem like reluctant and sporadic increases, often bitterly debated among nations. And not always focused on the next logical step in a larger plan. Steve and Cap have clearly laid out why M1s or Leopard 2s are not what is needed or are most effective. For gosh sakes alive, nearly a year of fierce war has gone by. Let us all know, Russia and Ukraine first and foremost, that the process is inexorable and is coming. Sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic”!

I guess I should rummage about in the garage and dig out my FC2 box, and try this. Been a *very* long time.

After pages of debate about Germany’s politics, its leadership policies, the historical background, and how this all bears on aid to Ukraine, I am sure we can expect similar latitude in discussing the USA’s politics, leadership, and historical background as its government struggles to decide whether or not to pay its recent bills. Let alone increase or continue current levels of military and financial support to Ukraine. The recent Congressional committee assignments by the new Speaker of the House suggest…interesting times ahead. As talk that the War will continue for years becomes more prominent, these matters will become increasingly fraught for Ukraine’s most critical supplier of weapons and intelligence.

Wha? Is this an April Fool’s joke in January?? This is all just speculation by a non policy making official over stating the situation? Sorry if already picked apart. I’ve been off dealing with a family medical crisis that is worse daily. https://ukrainetoday.org/2023/01/21/the-usa-reacted-to-the-potential-transfer-of-f-16s-by-the-netherlands-to-ukraine/ “Asked whether the White House was ready to allow the Netherlands to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, the ambassador said: “We have long held the view that what our allies supply is their business. And we support the countless (defense) contributions that our allies contributed for Ukraine”.” Followed this tweet

That’s the ticket! Benjamin Pittet@COUPSURE 10h Should Ukraine eventually get these weapons, Russia will no longer be safe anywhere in Ukraine (except in Crimea). The Russians are afraid of HIMARS systems, so imagine with this new Ukrainian capability. The Russians will be targets as soon as they set foot in Ukraine.

Thanks for the map of ranges. Should be quite interesting to see where and to what extent the AFU uses these along the long stretch of the current Russian line of control. And whether usage signals where an offensive may take place, or a feint to take away attention from an intended direction. Or…the latter…and THEN the former.

Yes! I’ve been hoping for months to see provisions for increasing the effective range of Ukraine Arty/missile systems. Continue to push back Rus HQs and supply, transport - further disrupt Rus nodes within Ukraine. The ATACMS are about another 100 miles beyond this range. The Great Tank Debate is one thing, but I’m for any enhancement for larger zones of denial, or at least greater risks of disrupting Rus efforts. Not a magic bullet; nothing is. But the new GLSDB munition and its accuracy should add to the healthy rain of precision destruction from HIMARS and other systems that have proven so valuable in the war.

Elon Musk here! Me! Me! I’m so special, so me want special CMBS! Taking it with me to Mars, suckers!

It’s easy to forget the USA fundamental bipartisan European foreign policy that emerged after seeing much of the world engulfed in massive and horrendous war in the 20th Century. Not to mention the Continent’s history of lengthy and expensive wars. The USA bipartisan policy has been to prevent any single European nation dominating the Continent, ever again. Except for the rupture during 2016 - 2020. Winning or losing other issues matter much less, so long as no one Continental nation militarily dominates. And the German-French relationship doesn’t turn deadly. This, despite however loud (and often justified) the heckling of domestic political columnists and opinion writers at every juncture. Yes the benefits have been uneven. Yes, policies are often clumsy. Yes, it’s all been far from perfect. But in this instance, the idea of the Perfect has not driven out the somewhat disheveled reality of the Good. Perhaps this war will be the impetus to forge much better policies, relations, and understandings for the benefits of the millions of everyday folks in all our countries

Thanks for the update. And this extract does to an extent sum up the Barnett framework. He did however layout why those elements were rational in terms of the economies of countries represented by them vs those who did not. The critiques these days about the general term appears as you describe. “You” make the rules, and “you” break them when expedient. Personally it does make sense that a world where many sovereign nations agree to abide by a set of standards that respect human rights, forbid military invasions, engage in trade with practices that are not predatory is more desirable than not. Stepping back, the impulse for some sort of overarching standards can be seen in the efforts for a League of Nations, the United Nations, and various international agreements among some nations. Of course the devil is always in the details. And most of all of course, the players are human beings.

I first saw a specific outline of a new international rules set in “The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century” - Thomas P.M. Barrett’s 2004 book based in part on his Naval War College experience & project there, and then an article in Esquire. It seemed so reasonable in the sense of how many sovereign nations since WWII could coexist in an emerging framework that ensured vital international trade relations and prevented widespread wars. I’m not clear on how much of the rules set described there has survived since then, and how the term is enumerated today. But I do see the concept blasted these days by nearly all sides. Therefore I assume that it does indeed have still have great value! Perhaps the topic is straying from this forum, but the term Rules Based International Order does crop up. Is there in fact a *current* and concrete set of concepts as rules that many nations in both the West and the East (at least Japan, S. Korea, Singapore, etc) subscribe to? Or is it now just a loose term interpreted more politically, whether pro or con? https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas_P._M._Barnett https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-New-Map-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0425202399

Apart from the wisdom of the detailed recommendations, the fact that such a meeting and submission is agreed to is refreshing to hear. We don’t know the implications, or whether this sort of thing has been going on with other interested non official individuals and groups. But we can hope that the long considered and detailed specificity can cut through some of the major noise generated by the many special interest groups and lobbyists. So, well done and thanks.

Might that dream, or the restoration of the Soviet Empire version be shared by many more than Putin? If broadly shared in Russia, a sort of national ethos? Then efforts to do so may strike a strong chord in a society so pervasively propagandized to always view so much if the world as dangerously and permanently “against them”. What does Russia stand for, in the minds of Russians?

Appropriate to the earlier discussion about Russia escalating its asymmetric warfare, cyber in particular. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-hackers-targeted-us-nuclear-scientists-2023-01-06/ “LONDON/WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A Russian hacking team known as Cold River targeted three nuclear research laboratories in the United States this past summer, according to internet records reviewed by Reuters and five cyber security experts. Reuters was unable to determine why the labs were targeted or if any attempted intrusion was successful. A BNL spokesperson declined to comment. LLNL did not respond to a request for comment. An ANL spokesperson referred questions to the U.S. Department of Energy, which declined to comment. Cold River has escalated its hacking campaign against Kyiv's allies since the invasion of Ukraine, according to cybersecurity researchers and western government officials. The digital blitz against the U.S. labs occurred as U.N. experts entered Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory to inspect Europe's biggest atomic power plant and assess the risk of what both sides said could be a devastating radiation disaster amid heavy shelling nearby.”

Thanks for this summary. Nice work!

Family values.

First, thanks for the detailed discussion. It clarified for me how we seemed so much at odds. I’ve inadvertently muddied the discussion by not clearly distinguishing events within warfare from speculations about what follows. I certainly don’t pretend to have your expertise in the war fighting realm that you have so well described, and don’t dispute your characterization of assessing potential events in warfare. My initial post concerned what might be the state of Russia and Ukraine following the *end* of hostilities - how the hostilities play out we don’t know, certainly there exist a range of possibilities. But of great interest is what Russia looks like especially in the case of losing, one way or another. Regime change, collapse, fragmentation, non-collapse with a heavily militarized society, diplomacy challenges in all that, etc. These sorts of scenarios and many others are the stuff of estimates such as what USA National Intelligence Estimates traditionally address, among much else. Those come with the community’s degrees of confidence in their predictions and assessments, at least in the past when I read them - the 90’s, Oughts and early teens. The scales vary, can be in six term style ranging from “remote, unlikely…to very likely, almost certainly”. Or in percentages, sometimes fairly specific depending on the subject. And yes, NIEs also used broad confidence levels of high, medium and low. Where relevant, time frames are included. So allow me to bow to your knowledge here on war, and that my mentioning different ways hostilities might end overstepped into that territory. While I maintain the methods of my non-war forecasting and estimates. The NIEs cover practically every threat we can imagine, and so can be of interest beyond war topics. They often overlapped with my own career, often for strategic and scenario planning. Yes, partly in academia but also for the second largest broadcast network. Included in those realms (but obviously not limited to) were time frames and confidence levels, besides all the rest of the necessary rigamarole of planning.. There was no getting around them. Without getting into an overblown game of references, time frames and probabilities can be seen in a representative NIE or two. Here you will see time frames and such very early in the doc. This from 2021 https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/NIE_Climate_Change_and_National_Security.pdf And the famous Iran NIE on Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, from back in my time of interest, using the six step probability scale “unlikely” to “almost certainly”: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports and Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

We are speaking about predictions and scenarios, yes? About regime change, about collapse, the outcome of the war. It’s surreal to be debating whether essentially intelligence estimates do or don’t include time frames and probability or uncertainty! And there have been some predictions in the forum that indeed do include a specific time frame. Some have included a probability estimate such as “not likely”, or 50/50, or “very likely”. Now you seem allergic to the very idea. I read open source estimates and yes, analysts do routinely include these. Otherwise their assessments are fairly useless to decision makers. Because simply saying, “Well, this could happen.” Or, “Here are a bunch of very well described possible outcomes, sir. No idea about their likelihood though.” We *always* want to know how likely something is! In diplomacy and war, extraordinary efforts are made to suss that out. Intelligence estimates, clearly included. Consequences? I wasn’t posting a paper on the entire art of forecasting! Just a note on what often seems not present. I don’t believe you are arguing for stripping out assessments of “within a month “, or “before the ground freezes.” Or in terms of a collapse, “this year “, or “spring”. Or accompanying those with one’s rating, whether 75/25, or high likely…whatever standardized form one is accustomed to in practice. The obvious flaw is that asserting that a major event will happen “some day” is near useless. But yes, please do let us cease. We are talking at cross purposes and not constructively for the forum. In Washington, it was always clear that firing down wasn’t a good look. And for the record, I do prefer coffee. For reference:: “There is a critical need to produce actual figures (10%, 20%, 60% etc.) for our probability predictions in order to be able to check past performances. Obscure notions such as ‘low probability’ are not enough for lessons to be learned and might fail us in trying to achieve a genuine communication with the decision makers that have to use our Intelligence estimations.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684520801977238 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228488886_The_Complexity_of_Intelligence_Estimates A stripped down layout of scenarios with key column “Rough Probability” https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence.pdf Appendix. NIE 11–18–90, The Deepening Crisis in the USSR, p.iv Figure 1. Scenarios for the Next Year. What We Mean When We Say: An Explanation of Estimative Language https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_terror-threat_2007-07.htm Intelligence judgments pertaining to likelihood are intended to reflect the Community's sense of the probability of a development or event. Assigning precise numerical ratings to such judgments would imply more rigor than we intend. The chart below provides a rough idea of the relationship of terms to each other. Many many more examples at least from the USA are available on line and often in various workplaces.

Thanks for this link. Well worth the read. Both are scenarios we’ve pondered and discussed here. Would be strengthened were the ticking clock aspect been included, with an indication of which one they think is favored by it. Clearly a stark argument for their preferred outcome - the forced restoration of all occupied Ukraine. And a chilling warning against failure.

That’s the Big Question! When or whether the inflection point of a falling Russian capability curve clearly, irretrievably cross a rising Ukrainian curve? From the Russian perspective? Assumption being that nothing changes these curves directions.

Hah hah hah! Well played. However please do recognize that proper forecasting assessments must apply likelihood; whether by percentage or a set of narrative labels defined by percentage ranges. They should be specific, include the dependent assumptions, and time frames - not indefinite. Think of this as a scenario’s meta data, not its story line. Otherwise they become the prognostications we see in popular columnists and cable news talking heads brigade. To me, we seem understandably stronger in well-formed forecasting of battlefield events, than in the murky long term outcome of this war. PS Another element is keeping score, in order to refine forecasts. Steve does this pretty routinely, referring to past predictions and whether they have come to pass, and an assessment of how close a hit or miss was. The media columnists and talking heads rarely do this!

Hah! And in that scenario, it’s highly plausible that NATO, the EU, etc would quickly all step in to bring it to an end, a la the USA and Soviet Union repeatedly bringing Israel to a cease fire and negotiations each time Israel began threatening Damascus, and taking the Sinai. Could be a decent landing pad for the war?