billbindc

And again?

It's hard not to get the impression that the lack of preparation and slapdash nature of the bridging operation must at least in part be due to the fact that the Russian commanders are trying to operate in the knowledge that their moves are effectively transparent to the enemy give or take 12 hours. Drones are just the beginning. Commercial satellites alone would be bad enough but it's clear Ukraine is getting the fully panoply of American earth bound and space borne ISR. So sure...inept...but also probably conducted under the feverish knowledge that the rounds are going to start dropping any second.

Staying OT but perhaps useful to illustrate the complexity of circumstance on behavior and both of them on systems: the thinking is that covid drove down car times which did several things: 1 it put more pedestrians on the streets, 2 it reduced congestion which *sped* up the cars that were there and 3 all of that driving down time blunted the skills associated. That was not at all where expectations thought we would be.

A simple proximity sensor would be good enough and take almost no processing power at all.

Getting into my bailiwick here on self driving and autonomous vehicles and I can tell you...the navigation problems inherent in combat systems are an order of magnitude easier than in a self driving, public street platform. For starters, most of these systems will be to one degree or another disposable. Second, you are much less worried about damaging things on a battlefield. Third, you have no passengers that matter other than the ordinance you are attempting to deliver. Finally, while both systems have the similar routing and nav needs, self driving cars must concentrate on accident avoidance while UAV's are designed essentially for *accident completion*. The revolution in a sense has already happened, it just wants for widespread application.

The east side of the river behind Kherson is getting plastered.

The issue isn't really the legality of using the conscripts since the law in Russia merely exists to serve the immediate interests of the state and which average Russians know quite well. The issue is going to be that those conscripts...whose families expected to be gone roughing it for just a year...are going to be coming home in boxes or disappearing entirely into the maw of Ukraine and the Russian bureaucracy trying to hide what's happening to soldiers in it. Clearly, Putin sees this issue as one of the few really dangerous threats to his regime so declaration or not, I doubt now that we'll be seeing any large influx of fresh meat into the grinder.

The Russian government is pursuing a two track messaging approach. On the one hand, they are pushing the "special operation" line which was obviously an attempt to limit the reaction of their domestic audience to the conflict. On the other, Russia is pushing the idea that Russia is fighting all of NATO. That message is aimed at their domestic audience as well in order to prepare the ground for a potential loss but it is also aimed at the large parts of the world that chafe at American hegemony and so have an innate susceptibility to a Russia-as-the-underdog narrative. Think Lula in Brazil, China, India, etc. Of course, it's schizophrenic messaging and (along with the 'We are fighting Nazi Jews" line) is not something anyone's really expected to believe.

This. Australia didn't go with American subs because they suddenly decided they hated frites. It was because our version can sit on the Straits of Malacca for 70 days per tour instead of 7.

Worth mentioning that any Chinese blockade of Taiwan will likely result in a similar blockade of oil flows to the Chinese economy.

The above is a great example of why this board kills.

With a little bit of contemplation and if I had to bet, I would go with option 1 above. Putin has had decades of capital built up on the idea that he's a canny player and an astute strategist. You can see it everywhere in the DC where people just assume that he's got something else going on no matter how badly botched any particular situation appears. But the simplest and most efficient answer to the question is that he see doesn't see a dramatic general mobilization as a viable answer to his problem and...given what he and we know about that the progress of the war...that means there's likely no answer amenable to the Putin regime at all. So...paralysis.

Well...I've read Putin's speech and whatever tea leaves exist therein escape me entirely. It looks like they aren't doing a general mobilization which I think is a surprise to most close observers and now I haven't the foggiest idea what Putin thinks he's doing at this point.

So essentially, mobilization allows Russia to freeze the conflict somewhat rather than potentially suffer an imminent collapse? If that is so, I can't see how Putin doesn't take the risk given what Soldatov and others are describing is going on in the Russian military. But yes, the risk is enormous. I keep hearing variations of "Putin has no idea...and realizes he has no idea...what he might be unleashing with this".

What is the immediate(ish) effect on the battlefield?

The Russian ambassador's residence in DC tonight.

https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/fueling-secession-promising-bitcoins-how-a-russian-operator-urged-catalonian-leaders-to-break-with-madrid At this point, NATO is stacking up the reasons why a long proxy war with Russia is necessary.

FYI, claims this is altered/photoshopped. Likely happening anyway but we'll see.

So...doubling down on the degenerate gamble.

Just had a long conversation with a DC friend who is a Russian emigre and quite knowledgeable about Putin and his regime. She asked me a great question after I semi-convinced her that Russia just doesn't have the horses to win. It was "How do you see this ending?". By that, she didn't mean militarily but rather politically (via the military outcome of course). My answer was that it ends in a frozen conflict but this time, the frozen conflict acts to Russia's great detriment: i.e. an Afghanistan it's not possible to pull out of and directly on the borderlands of the central core of the Russian state. I'd be curious to hear how you gentlemen see it going.

Hey...so I think I asked this earlier without result: What is the RA doctrine for when shells start to fall on a concentration of tanks? It seems bizarre to me that they just seem to sit there in the target area and not attempt to disperse. I'd love to know (not a vet so I'm not au fait with this stuff).

This. For you folks who don't get this just imagine this scenario: say you get a pretty unjust ticket and you have to walk past a statue on the courthouse steps of a guy who owned your ancestors that is maintained by the jurisdiction you are going in to fight. I actually know someone who has had that experience in the United States. It still burns him years and year later. My reaction was to imagine my father having to walk past the statue of the squalid English landlord who kicked my ancestors off his land when they were starving and couldn't pay their rack rents during the Famine in order to contest that ticket. Actually, I'm not sure I can imagine it. He'd want to blow it up.

The argument made at the time was that the colonists were provided the rights of and as Englishmen and those rights were then abrogated by HMG in order to force us to pay taxes to which we did not agree. As a resident of the District of Columbia, I can tell you it's a hell of a good reason to rebel. Cheers.

Agree on that point. China had an opportunity to open up political space and create a more open, diffuse system. Unfortunately, the Party just wasn't able to let go of power and since then has moved towards personal rule in a way that hasn't existed since Mao. In the not too distant future, they are going to discover the benefits they could have gained from of a non-distributed power structure in distributing blame for policies that haven't worked.

I'm curious watching these videos why we don't see vehicles scattering once rounds start dropping. Is that not doctrine?