Billy Ringo

So I totally get the impulse to unpack this attack, especially from a forum of - let's just say - "detail orientated" wargamers.  Kudos to those that continue to Zapruder this thing, and I am sure in time the details of how the UA pulled this off will come out (my bet is missile strike, but I would not rule out one helluva SOF black bag job - could be both in reality; complex attack).
But for all the lurkers out there I would recommend we all keep an eye on the follow-on impacts of this strike on a strategic and political level.  We bounced around this a few pages back but here are some thoughts:
- All war is communication and that is a complex concept of 'the message', 'the means to send the message', and 'the method of transmission'.  Every piece of those components in themselves create information that is interpreted in multiple dimensions.  For example Ukraine said things thru this attack that create certainty and uncertainty - in case the second one is the most powerful:
Ukraine stated, with certainty, that they can hit a high value target with extreme precision at 225km (at least) behind Russian lines.  I say 'extreme precision' because it appears they did more damage with the secondaries than the initial strikes, and that takes a very high level of precision in time and space.  This was not lobbing a missile at a target, they hit exactly where they needed to in order to create a very high profile "boom".  That is communicating 'capability' that I am pretty sure the Russians were sure they understood, right up until yesterday afternoon - based on the scrambling narratives in the Russian info sphere. Ukraine has clearly communicated intent.  If they wanted to hurt Russian airpower, they would have cratered the runway and then FASCAM'd the thing...but this was not about airpower.  They were signaling that they are coming for Crimea, and the Russians were not safe...anywhere.  This will likely create a lot of uncertainty in Russian thinking, as the pretty much figured they had Ukraine pinned down in the Donbas in a grinding war.  We talked about it before but this is strategic manoeuvre thru strike.  The kind of thing the US does by hitting Afghanistan from the other side of the world back on 2001 (https://www.airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2016/December 2016/1216hours.pdf).  This was a high profile attack that both demonstrated and signaled intent and resolve in a very visible manner - that is certainty creating uncertainty in their enemy. I don't care how constipated the Russian political machine is, and it is already trying to spin this in crazy directions to blunt the message - they get that much.  No way to dodge it, this is very bad news for the Russians.  They have been relying on the narrative of "hopeless cause": Russian has 'escalation dominance', it can create a never-ending 'stalemate', it can and will fight forever...there is no way Ukraine can win: so stop spending your money in a pre-recession...look we even have Steven Segal!  This is clearly playing on the western psyche and our recent scars from places like Afghanistan. Ukraine just demonstrated that they can still hit a strategic target, with breathtaking precision, at the time and place of their choosing.  That directly attacks the Russian narrative.   Militarily, this type of attack creates enormous uncertainty.  The fact we have people on vacation on a beach watching this happen, and then blow it up all over social media, is a clear indication that Russia considered this area outside the warzone.  You can ignore or sidestep "industrial accidents" and the rash of weird fires we saw back in Mar-Feb, you can ignore HIMARs that hit your logistical system within 70-100kms.  You cannot ignore a strategic strike, that just happened in front of the entire world, at over twice that range.  The Russian military now needs to not only figure out how to secure itself at ranges it thought safe, it has to figure out how to defend Russian certainty, which just got seriously mauled. So what?  Well the first reaction will be "it was a lucky one off", and "this is war, these things happen".  However, information is funny with humans, we cannot un-think it.  As a minimum, Russian has to re-think the battlespace, significantly.  That is a lot of assumptions that just cracked in military planning - the fact that they did not see it coming in time to interdict is the biggest one.  Russians may try to ignore it, but I am betting western ISR is picking up a lot of scrambling going on in the Russian rear areas right now.  Again, this is more friction being imposed via uncertainty.  And that uncertainty will spread like a virus.  All those beach goers will scramble back home with it.  The Russian reaction will be key to determining just how badly this strike hurt them. 
Now the war is not over.  This was not positively decisive, at least not yet.  The UA will have to follow up with more of these, humans are also able to ignore reality - which is paradoxical I know.  More of these strikes will build up pressure until something gives.  But for the west, this is a clear demonstration that our proxy is not only still in this thing, it demonstrates they are getting better at it.  Better they are emulating warfare we recognize - high precision deep strikes on clear military targets with almost zero collateral civilian casualties.  Nice, clean and very western - worth investing more into.
I have heard at some pretty high levels the idea that "Russia has shifted this war into one that favors them"...well strikes like these send the message that Ukraine is shifting it back.  May have been a 'one-off' or a lucky day; however, it is going to cause the Russians a lot of hot and bother to figure that all out...and in a war, that is good communication.

We need to put a Marine division on Taiwan. It needs to be done with highly dispersed basing and build the entire support structure on the assumption that it can rain Chinese missiles any time. An integral part of the Marine deployment should be a training center to get the Taiwanese up to speed. And the whole island needs to sink a foot or two under the weight of small to medium missiles waiting to ruin the PLA's day. and it has already passed but the new law to build more U.S. chip production needs to implemented with all deliberate speed.
There needs to be a new law for dealing with nations that are hostile and untrustworthy, but too big to apply the current state sponsor of terrorism law too. The current law would require secondary sanctions on India and every third world nation that is buying Russian grain, oil, and fertilizer. That is simply impractical to do with Russia and China. What the law does need to do is make impossible the kind of elite capture that Londongrad represents to even be attempted. It should be illegal for any law firm, any lobbying firm, any bank, or any kind of advertising/public relations firm to do any business with Russia. Just make them AND THEIR MONEY absolutely persona non grata in elite circles. Do it to Russia and tell the Chinese to think real hard about if this where they want to go.

No. This forum is exempt from Godwin’s Law. Else most discussions here would be extremely short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
 

Fresh Girkin assessment but with map. Because you know everything is better with map.

 

So...who is no longer posting?

So...who is no longer posting?

Is this the same thing? (And can't speak for the validity of the source.)
 

Not really - this is a laser guided bomb, while I'm talking about non-line-of-sight missiles which are usualy ground launched. Check out the sale video:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_(missile)

Some key foundational truths to consider: 
1. Nobody ever honestly thought Afghanistan was a vital interest.
2. Everybody sees peace in Europe as a vital interest.
3. Nobody believes that Russia will stick to any peace deal that it is in any shape to challenge.
4. Everybody sees what happens in Ukraine as linked to what China believes it can do in re to Taiwan.
I am quite sure there will be unhappiness this winter in Europe. I'm sure that attention will wax and wane. But Putin made the cardinal mistake of creating a situation in which the geopolitical incentives and penalties are entirely obvious and inescapable to his enemies. Worse, a successful Ukrainian effort is possible if only Poland and the US give it wholehearted support. So, I get the pessimism and I don't disagree with the stressors you identify but none of them counterbalance the need to stop Russia now or make sure China doesn't use the precedent later.
 
 

My perspective is from a purely business side, not military.  But...in my line of work retail and wholesale optimization we try to use massive amounts of low-level granular data to continually analyze, optimize and re-calibrate the decision process.   AI and machine learning entered this arena about 15 years ago.   I've had the good fortune to work with some of the best in this business.  Observations that may be applicable to the military front:
1. "now that we have all this data, what do we do with it?"   The most effective analysis comes from very smart and deeply experienced individuals that constantly think and re-think what data to use and how to use it.  Constantly changing the algorithms and/or deciding what and how information goes into the ML and AI process.
2.   In retail/wholesale, the claims of success and capabilities are MUCH greater than actual results.  Every systems company claims to have mastered AI/ML, but few have any verifiable results.  (Lots of smoke and mirrors.)
3. "We don't have a crystal ball.  We are just looking for directional guidance."  Quoted about 10 years ago in the middle of a sales presentation to a large retailer by one of my associates...and I've used it many times thereafter.  At this point it still takes a human to take the results and then make the best decisions. 
 

It reminds me of my first acid trip at a dead show.

Many many years ago in my freshman economics class, the professor made a very interesting point:
Over the next four years you are going to study the affects different economic factors have on each other.  Price of oil goes up, inflation goes up.  Interest rates go down, housing starts will increase.  And these will seemingly make sense.  But it doesn't work that way.
In theory we can predict and model certain outcomes.  But the world doesn't function in a vacuum.  There are 1,000s of moving nuanced and varied factors that all have impacts on the economy and can turn things completely upside down from our calculated expectations.
This discussion reminds me of that first economics class.

Make the bastards pay, Ukraine.

Excellent reporting by the BBC's former Russia correspondent Sarah Rainsford, who was kicked out of Russia before the war; I will quote only the introduction, a part about possible crimes against humanity, and the conclusion, but highly recommend reading the whole article - it should be accessible to all without a paywall unless if you're in Russia:
Ukraine's shadow army resisting Russian occupation
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62333795
"A resistance poster reads: Zaporizhzhia, land of death to the occupiers:"

This is why the Ukrainians shouldn't or won't let any Russian walk away from Kherson or anywhere else. 

This is why the Ukrainians shouldn't or won't let any Russian walk away from Kherson or anywhere else. 

This is why the Ukrainians shouldn't or won't let any Russian walk away from Kherson or anywhere else. 

I wouldn't put it in such absolute terms because winning a battle does not automatically win the war. Destroying your enemy's capability to fight the next battle is a valid goal, too.

As always Phillips OBrian is worth a read:
Suggested paper:
Business Retreats and Sanctions Are Crippling the Russian Economy by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian, Franek Sokolowski, Michal Wyrebkowski, Mateusz Kasprowicz :: SSRN
 
 
 

I don't want to take the thread OT either, so leaving this here without comment - as factual as it gets:
F1 driver says 'what happens in Alberta is a crime,' feels responsibility to speak about climate change
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/sebastian-vettel-oilsands-alberta-climate-change-1.6493309
"Sebastian Vettel arrived at the Montreal Grand Prix wearing his thoughts about climate change on his T-shirt.
The Formula One star from Germany arrived at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in a T-shirt with "Stop Mining Tar Sands," and "Canada's Climate Crime" under the picture of a pipeline. He's wearing a helmet with the same slogan this weekend.
"I think what happens in Alberta is a crime because you chop down a lot of trees and you basically destroy the place just to extract oil and the manner of doing it with the tarsands, oilsands mining, is horrible for nature," Vettel said, when asked about the T-shirt at a news conference Friday.
...
His team Aston Martin is sponsored by Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco."

I think it would be naive to assume Russian and Saudi interests would not quietly and monetarily support....Russian and Saudi interests in other countries.  You've got a former German PM in Moscow as recently as...today. 
Starting to wonder if Godwin's Law is now being tied to Trump instead of Hitler.

I get the "terror strikes" component to put pressure on the Ukrainian government - problem is, when has "terror" or "shock and awe" ever really worked as strategy?
Human beings are a funny bunch, we exist in imaginary social constructs - nations, provinces, duchies, towns, neighborhoods etc.  We invented these structures to sustain order when our populations expanded well beyond what we were originally designed for - but here is something I have suspected for a long time: we are still wired for our real social structures.  Those few dozen people we are directly linked to by blood or dependency.  
These are little social bubbles - hell in the pandemic we could map them - that comprise the real ocean of humanity.  We actually care about them.  These are the people we go to war for, we also go to work well after we want to for them.  We get dragged to church on Sunday by them and we dress like them, talk them and eat like them.  We buy the same stuff, dress the same way and consume the same information, thru the similar lenses.  We are still really tribal after all this time.
Now the energy in those bubbles is incredibly powerful - like running into a burning building, powerful.  However, it is also incredibly local.  We hunker down in our particular tree and tend to keep our heads down, even when the tree next to us gets chopped down.  It takes a lot to get us all going in the same direction.  We invent all sorts of mechanisms to create and generate power from these little bubbles - the Chinese did a massive and brutal social engineering exercise in the 60's to try and re-build those bubbles in such a way as to give the state all the power...it did not work because people. 
So what? Shock and awe, terror strikes and what not, have an effect but it is 1) very hard to line up in the direction you may want it to go, in fact it might create massive counter pressure (see The Blitz 1940) and 2) getting that effect to translate broadly across and entire macro-social system can be very hard, even impossible under some circumstances. 
Humans are highly unpredictable - I think we talked about 3rd order chaotic systems - and as such lobbing really expensive and limited missiles at them to get them to do anything in concert as a primary strategy...well it is not optimal.  Sociologist have no idea how "Springs, revolutions or movements" really happen.  We can see them easily in hindsight but predicting them ahead of time is nearly impossible right now.  So what magically triggers things like The Crusades or Hippies is really difficult - a sum of pressures and human turbulence that is highly unpredictable, and people have spent empires trying to crack that Riddle of Flesh.  
If Russian power brokers sat down and figured "we will simply hit them with missiles and they will all give up" then they are 1) complete amateurs, and 2) dangerous amateurs who do not really understand the dynamics of application of military power against human-based social structures - s'ok, they are not alone in this. 
My point is that they should have been looking at military impact if they wanted to win a war, and it is likely too late to "get smart" now if they could.   Directly impacting micro-social Will is a game for subversive warfare, not missiles and Russia clearly mis-read what war it was in, and now has to come to terms with how to lose it.

Ok, big article incoming. It is written by infamous RU Nat writer and opinion journalist Maxim Kalashnikov. Girkin strongly recommends to read it. I can summarize it - Big Storm [1917 alike] is coming because everything looks worse than RU gov say. But if you are interested in the point of view RU Nats leadership, I recommend reading it in full.
 
 
Enemy plan for RU is mobilization trap
RU troops are experiencing fatigue and losing capability to conduct any offensives The strength of RU defenses is highly uneven and full of holes static fighting and failures at front line will lead to major breakdown of RU war machine To win RU has to mobilize but RU gov is scared to start it due to swift drop of popularity and difficulty  
RU battlefield state is bad
There is a huge problem of mass refusniks. It is really disturbing for RU Unlike Kiev RU apparently do not have strategic reserves By the autumn the issue will come out [explode]  
RU armed forces capabilities are bad
RU Armed Forces could perform several critical tasks While they had enough missiles there were critical failures with drones, ammunition, comms, recce, targeting and control These problems must be resolved are quickly as possible  
RU economy front is bad
RU did not use gas blackmail enough to bring Eu on its knees RU gov is not doing anything to prepare to mitigate bad state of RU industry    
RU external and internal position is worsening
RU is losing respect outside RU gov is acting irresponsibly harshly inside  
Kremlin Endgame is wait till EU Armageddon
The Kremlin is counting on the fact that the strongest socio-economic and political crises will begin in the West in the autumn and winter of 2022 It will cause the West to negotiate with RU lifting sanctions and force Kiev to accept peace deal However, the above is not given. Also, a global crisis will threaten RU as well. So, RU must expect the worst.  
Prep talk for the coming Winter RU civil war - summer is last period of calm before the storm.
 
Discussion: RU state is always worse than you think - Art of Anti RU War.   
As we all remember, back in April-May there was a lot of expectation of impending RU collapse due to mass desertion. It was the right conclusion for a Western-type Army. But as we discussed RU is a pressure cooker. It can hold intact longer than you expect, then it explodes. RU could hold on with tricks until August. Probably it can hold even august as well. But 500ths chickens are coming home to roost RU.  Finally, I need to note that our field agent Murz correctly reported that RU will face major manpower crisis in July-August. There are a lot of talks about stalemate and long war. All while neither kremlin nor general RU public are preparing for long war. RU has no appetite for a long war. This is not a narrative but cold hard fact RU Nats are fully sensing social explosion as soon as current Autumn. Simple coup is not a big deal now because even if it happens it would not satisfy neither RU Nats nor Liberals (general RU public will simply move to one or another side). It can tear RU apart if RU Nats are strong enough.  However, at this stage we do not know RU Nats real strength and their ability to convert RU social explosion into a full-scale civil war. Remember that RU heart - Moscow is liberal stronghold. USSR military could not handle an uprising there in 91. On other hand RU Liberals are pussies not fighters without appropriate leader.

Very bad. It could seriously tank our economy. The government is frantically trying to find alternatives but if it was easy it would already have happened.
 
Of course we plan for the worst. But everything on top of that gives us a little more room to maneuvre. Pride is a bad advisor and should never guide a government. And while I fully agree that we should get rid of the stuff asap, on a rational level I have to concede that the better strategy is to take what gas we can now while we are busy finding alternatives. Even if we were to stop buying anymore gas now, we'd still have to get the energy from somewhere. Germany is a rather wealthy country, so I assume we will be able to obtain it. But with limited supply that means we are putting more money on the table than someone else who then will just go without energy. Darwin sends warm regards.

Panzermartin. The constant in your posts on this subject, as far as I have seen, is that you make no firm claims that you back up with facts. You merely apply a constant pressure of “what if”, “what about”, “maybe”. When you have been called out here you have back off, graciously waving a hand - “oh I was only voicing a thought - but I do understand your opinion”. But you don’t qualify your opinion, instead you merely shift focus - sliding sideways.
Personally I am immensely grateful for this forum precisely because it is not defined by people posting half baked opinions and then just leaving them. Instead real facts, as good as we can get them, are being weighed and analysed, and informed conclusions/assumptions made from from that.
The thing is, in July 2022 we are now beyond talking nice and moral ambiguities with russia . This is full on Germany 1939 with all the bells and whistles. We see all the signs of violent authoritarianism, in what is being said and in whats is being done. That really is all there is to it. How russia, and it’s supporters, rationalises it’s actions is now irrelevant, it is merely the words of a abuser/killer in action. Talking about justice for the perpetrator in that context is to insult and co-abuse the victims.
If I may suggest, or indeed urge: Take a stand, for or against - completely. This is now, or will be, a matter of supporting or opposing the 21st century equivalent of Nazi Germany. It defines you in the eyes of others.
And by the way, showing a “generous understanding” for the opponent’s strong emotions, his/her “personal” side, is front and center in the textbook of social media tactics. I mean, we all know that “hysterics” can not possibly be correct. So lets really highlight that bit in in the mass of facts that the other party produces.
Over and out.