billbindc

A couple of points here are worth adding: 1. The question of aid will be concluded long before the election in November. The White House is already offering pretty much what Republicans want on the border in order to get aid to Israel and Ukraine. The Senate is pretty united on supporting that. Does the House GOP go along? It too would largely support aid but Speaker Johnson lives on a knife edge (the GOP margin is *2* votes) and has to get around the extremists who will try to over throw him when/if he goes for it. So...call it a toss up but we'll know which way it's going in the next four weeks at most. 2. US and EU disbursements are not the only route in which Ukraine can access what it needs. There is something on the order of $300 billion in Russian reserves that could be seized and given to Ukraine for its defense. Taking such a step has significant legal and diplomatic repercussions but as Congressional aid gets held up the motivation to get this money for Kyiv has skyrocketed. Watch this space. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-10/white-house-throws-support-behind-seizing-frozen-russian-assets?embedded-checkout=true

The bottom line is that Mike Johnson's caucus at this point will be against anything they think will get Biden reelected. So...they are against a border deal they support and similarly they are against a Ukraine deal that also most of them support. The countervailing weight is that most of the Senate GOP realizes this is a complete electoral disaster and is urging a better strategy. We'll see.

Mark Galeotti...who I quite respect...with a nuanced on Russian prospects even in the case of a 'win': https://www.intellinews.com/stolypin-no-world-war-iii-is-not-on-the-horizon-308608/

Did you ever run into that mliko business with Pilsner Urquell? My over hopped American tastebuds could not wrap themselves around it.

That's something else I've been wondering about actually. Are the Russians getting barrels too? If not, how bad is their arty at hitting within a kilometer or so of where they aim it?

For the last day, the “Baltic Jammer” out of Kaliningrad has been messing with navigation across Europe. There are more NATO/US sigint platforms up than I’ve seen in a long time. Not sure what exactly, but something’s up.

Per the DPRK conversation, it seems like it would be strange choice for Kim to sell all of his arty stockpiles to Russia if he were planning on engaging in a full on conquest of the RoK:

I think various parties over the years have made it very clear to him that he would not.

"Look at me" has been the main preoccupation of NK foreign policy for 60+ years. I don't see any alteration to the strategic situation that would change that barring mental illness on Kim's part. Even if Trump gets back in the WH, I wouldn't rate their chances.

The folks he quotes are pretty good and yes, there's quite a bit of talk below the table. But in the end, it all comes down to reading the mind of one man for one fact: does Kim want to commit suicide or not? There's no strategic, military or economic logic to starting to toss nukes while talking about it might be just the sort of thing an attention desperate tinpot Stalin-let might do. It's got to be galling that Ukraine/Russia is soaking up everyone's bandwidth, that Kim's supply of aid to Russia barely elicited a shrug and that even in NE Asia the real money is being spent on a the potential PRC/Taiwan conflict. In short, I'll believe it when I see it, I will and won't be surprised and I don't think anyone else has much more insight than I do.

Among big things that matter:

Bottom line: Sanctions, attrition, demographic issues, labor short falls and the rest all are working as expected to damage Russian power. The only difference is the expectation in timeline. It's happening slower than we expected...just as the collapse in Russian offensive power happened much faster than we expected. We thought we had (Russian) Afghanistan II, then it turned for a while into Braveheart and now it's WWI circa 1916. This too shall pass.

I'm more interested in what damage is actually being done to the T-90. Optics? Gun? Ammo explosion? What else?

The 1905 Revolution went hot with the Bloody Sunday shootings of demonstrators at the Winter Palace. The 1917 Revolution began in earnest when soldiers revolted at the violent suppression of demonstrators also. Watch the demonstrations.

Don't sleep on the labor shortage part of this. The kind of guy in Russian society who mucks out plumbing and fixes steam pipes can easily think he will make more money in the army or because he has no krisha, he gets mobilized anyway. And at best for him, the defense industry pays better and is growing.

Just looking at live flight radar it looks like Russian commercial air which used to run up the line of the Volga is now flying well east of it until it they get north of Saratov. Could be coincidence but it's a striking difference right now from the norm.

I would strongly suggest for a good overview: "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between the East and the West" by Calder Walton

So far, I’m only at the point of thinking I want the Sov’s to come to me first and then counter.

So...if I may impose one more time...I'm looking at Stem the Tide as the American player and I haven't the foggiest idea how to think about it. Site lines are short, contact ranges look like they will be point blank and I don't have much in the way of infantry. I would be curious not for a how-to...but a this-is-how-you-should-thing-about-it approach to the problem. Thanks again!

Fair to say that at least in recon troops and fires they Sovs were far more professional than the Russian army of 2021?

That visualization is quite good but I routinely hear even the paltry invasion sites shown above overstate things and that for a variety of reasons there are only 14 reasonably useful landing points. In rougher weather, that number drops to zero and there are an average of 3 to 4 typhoons between June and October. That combination of readily definable logistics chokepoints and the friction of a long sealink make a conventional invasion quite daunting. Add in the PLA's lack of real operational experience and the risks of a purely military approach explode. If Taiwan falls, it's almost certainly going to be a political event not a military one.

This! I'm four scenarios in in three days and I'm seeing precisely what you've been describing for the last two years. I was fairly sloppy in Brauersdorf and I lost *two* TOW launchers. One of them had 7 kills. If every third split squad had a Javelin, the Russians wouldn't have made it past the pre-registered arty. It's also revelatory to my understanding of where things stood in Europe in the very early 80's. I had thought the danger zone lasted into 85 or so. Clearly not. What are your thoughts on now the Sov's might have fought differently?

Excuse me...I meant the "scientific Soviet approach to using mass in conflict with the capitalist West".

Just finished Brauersdorf after doing a little research and realizing I was up against 20+ armored vehicles. Won a major victory as the US, killed all but one Sov armored vehicle and was just about to go on the offensive to take that one out and sweep the dregs of Sov infantry off the field when it called the game on me. The ways in which Dragons, LAWs and TOW change the field was quite a revelation.

Not a fan of the Sov zerg rush vibe anyway so it will be a while.