How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Taranis]

Russians are building defensive structures around Mariupol and in occupied areas, British intelligence says

Quote

 

The Russian military has started building defensive structures around the occupied southern city of Mariupol, according to British intelligence. Two factories currently produce concrete anti-tank structures, "dragon's teeth", continues the Ministry of Defense.

These "dragon's teeth" were presumably installed between Mariupol and the village of Nikolske, as well as between northern Mariupol and the village of Stary Krym in Crimea - Russian-occupied Mariupol forming a strategic strip of land connecting Russia to Crimea. Such structures were also sent to the occupied territories of Zaporizhia and Kherson.

The construction of these installations suggests that Russia is trying to prepare its defense far enough behind the current front line, hoping to thwart any rapid counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.

 

Source : Le Monde

[Huba]

Iranian ambassador to Poland denied that Iran sold or intends to sell SRBMs to russia. He kept with the narrative that only small numbers of Shaheeds were sold, and only before the war. He also emphasized that Iran didn't recognize any of the territorial changes in Ukraine, including annexation of Crimea. Of course all of this has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but at least on the declarative level Iran seems to be backtracking from supporting russia.

Here's an article (in Polish, but Google translation is acceptable).

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Huba

[Offshoot]

12 minutes ago, Huba said:

Iranian ambassador to Poland denied that Iran sold or intends to sell SRBMs to russia. He kept with the narrative that only small numbers of Shaheeds were sold, and only before the war. He also emphasized that Iran didn't recognize any of the territorial changes in Ukraine, including annexation of Crimea. Of course all of this has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but at least on the declarative level Iran seems to be backtracking from supporting russia.

Here's an article (in Polish, but Google translation is acceptable).

 

The sale of weapons to Russia and their use in the war could also be causing divisions in Iran around foreign policy.

"Row brews in Iran over use of its drones in Ukraine war by Russia" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/07/row-brews-in-iran-over-use-of-its-drones-in-ukraine-war-by-russia

[kevinkin]

Analysis on the next possible escalation:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/an-iranian-ballistic-missile-storm-is-on-ukraines-horizon

"One possibility I mentioned a few weeks ago is to draw a line in the sand so to speak and tell Russia if they import and use Iranian SRBMs, the U.S. would supply Ukraine with ATACMS. While this sort of brinksmanship would be seen as clearly unfavorable by some, it could influence Russia's calculus and it would provide a clear pretext for supplying ATACMS to Ukraine. "

"No matter what, like the delivery of Iran's Shahed-136 suicide drones before them, these missiles’ use will mark a new phase of a war that so far has no end in sight and the devastation they could bring may change the calculus of the conflict on all sides."

Preemption, the ultimate form of maneuver warfare, is required before Putin turns this war into one of exchange ratios. Some will get through even advanced air defenses. How NATO can preempt the transfer of the short-range ballistic missiles is the question. Perhaps something needs to happen internally to distract Iran's mullahs away from Russia in the short term, while the Russia itself bleeds to death over the winter. The West seems to have a pretty good network in side Iran. Maybe now is the time to go all out. How about quietly playing the IDF card? Iran may try to be a choir boy in this publicly. I would not trust them a far as I can throw a church organ and plan accordingly. 

Edited November 8, 2022 by kevinkin

[kraze]

39 minutes ago, Huba said:

Iranian ambassador to Poland denied that Iran sold or intends to sell SRBMs to russia. He kept with the narrative that only small numbers of Shaheeds were sold, and only before the war. He also emphasized that Iran didn't recognize any of the territorial changes in Ukraine, including annexation of Crimea. Of course all of this has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but at least on the declarative level Iran seems to be backtracking from supporting russia.

Here's an article (in Polish, but Google translation is acceptable).

 

Declarative levels never ever matter.

After all only a week ago Iran was still 'declaring' that they never ever sold a single drone to Russia. China also won't ever admit it's their drones simply put together at Iranian factories either.

[LongLeftFlank]

On 2/25/2022 at 4:21 AM, Armorgunner said:

But I really belive, in the possibility of a Ukrainian victory! They probably will lose some ground. But Russian losses will be so big, that they have to stop. And it will be a frozen war, for a long time. With Putin always with a hand in front of the face, in every TV appearance. In shame, of the loss. That he refuses to admit!

So it was not a funny game "betting", I wanted to do. I was dead serious!  

1. For those keeping score at home, the Winnah!  Our Holy Thread, page 10. Day One.

2. Honourable mention to @CHEqTRO though, who was skeptical and posting tweets of RU bungling from very early on. And @The_Capt was like, 'wtf is Putin thinking of here, if he doesn't pull out some insider KGB coup angle, he's actually quite hosed', starting Day 2.

Our host didn't participate, at least not on this thread, until page 29 (Day 3). But his second post (page 30) did not mince words.

Ukraine doesn't have to defeat 190,000 Russians, it only has to significant degrade the first line forces in the initial attack. If it can do that, the Russian attack will ultimately fail....

I expect this war will be decided by tomorrow at the latest. The war, however, will last only so long as Putin keeps it going or he is deposed by someone who will end it.

Steve

... and outright called it on page 32 (same day).

Especially if Russia starts turning Kiev into Grozny.  Which, I'm afraid, is what is planned now that the ground war has pretty much failed. 

For the record!

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

ourse all of this has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but at least on the declarative level Iran seems to be backtracking from supporting russia.

It would have a good reason to do so. With the internal revolt developing in Iran, surely they will concentrate on the internal threat first. And it is reasonable to expect, that the level of Western support for the rebels would be to some extent proportional to Iran's being a pain in the *** in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War

[Huba]

Polish Air Force C130 trains with Rapid Dragon simulator o_0 Now that's an interesting development. Who need strategic bombers anyway?

 

[kevinkin]

2 minutes ago, Huba said:

Who need strategic bombers anyway?

Geography explains a lot. Refueling a flight of C-130s across an ocean would be a PIA 

[Huba]

Just now, kevinkin said:

Geography explains a lot. Refueling a flight of C-130s across an ocean would be a PIA 

C-17 should be way easier, though it still sounds like the Black Buck level of complication. But for Poland's needs, turning C130s into makeshift bombers sounds like a great solution. Now just to find a budget for two thousands JASSMs

[Thomm]

Regarding shooting down drones with automatic weapons:

Would this not be a perfect use case for virtual reality training tools?

Shooting down a few hundred of these things in VR should turn any soldier into a human target lead computer.

[Tenses]

19 minutes ago, Thomm said:

Regarding shooting down drones with automatic weapons:

Would this not be a perfect use case for virtual reality training tools?

Shooting down a few hundred of these things in VR should turn any soldier into a human target lead computer.

With new, shiny and computer assisted rifles just being deployed in US on new 6.8mm calibre, this will be even easier. I wonder how effectively these toys can bring down single drone from lets say 2km distance. With whole squad shooting and proper software update this should be doable.

[The_Capt]

13 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is wrong   Before I back this statement up with a narrative, let me point out something that should be very clear:

2014-2015 war between Russia and Ukraine served as base from which to build 2022 predictions on for a plethora of obvious reasons.  Right?  Right.

With that in mind, ask yourself which of these two scenarios do you think is more likely:

1. I misunderstood 2014-2015, based my conclusions for 2022 on that flawed understanding, and wound up being (largely) correct about 2022's outcome.
2. Analysts misunderstood 2014-2015, based their conclusions for 2022 on that flawed understanding, and wound up being (largely) incorrect about 2022's outcome.

Yes, I'm saying I'm 2 for 2 and the analysts are 0 for 2.

I'll post my thoughts on 2014-2015 in my next post so as to not clutter this one

Or 3.  You and the analyst were (are) basing your conclusions on incomplete understanding - both parties saw what they wanted to see - and when the coin landed, your predictions turned out to be more correct.  None of this is particularly good news as analysis is all about focusing on what you get wrong and digging into that to get a better understanding.  Self-validation creates a reinforcing effect that leads future analysis off a cliff because "you already have it all figured out".  I would say the mainstream analysis before this war did exactly that, but that does not mean you have developed a universal or unifying theory that will inform the next war based on "see, Russia Sucks".  The missing piece as far as I can see is a detailed understanding of "how and why" they are sucking, which I firmly believe the "Russia just Sucks" camp is vastly over-simplifying.

13 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Now for my interpretation of 2014-2015 at the time it happened.  I went on the record back then and since, so this is not me being revisionist...

Ok, off the mark, do you have any supporting analysis or post-action to back any of this up?  Is this your perspective of events or does it align with post-war analysis?  If so, well ok, but here is some counter-narratives:

https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf  I point to section 3 specifically (pgs 8-13)

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1498/RAND_RR1498.pdf  Pages 43-45 cover the period from May 14 - Feb 15 when conventional RA forces were fully engaged to stop the failing of their proxy Donbas forces from LNR/DPR - you can see how quickly the war shifted once the BTGs got engaged and specifically "Although artillery skirmishes continued, both sides took a break to rearm, train, and consolidate between September 5, 2014, and January 13, 2015, when Russia launched a second offensive. Following a second encirclement and defeat at Debaltseve, Ukraine signed the Minsk II ceasefire on February 12, 2015, with terms highly favorable for Moscow." (p45) This Rand document is fascinating in hindsight (note Kofman as lead author) as it gets a lot right in forecasting the weakness of Russian strategic assumptions, particularly in the political and information warfare domain.  It gets a lot wrong with respect to the potential of hybrid warfare, noting it was "inconsequential" when conventional forces arrived on the battlefield (p 70) when the RA crushed the Ukrainian defence.  I think that conclusion led mainstream thinkers down the wrong path at the start of this war.

https://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Analyzing-the-Russian-Way-of-War.pdf  Interesting peice on the link between Georgia 2008 and Ukraine - punchline the RA learned a lot from Georgia and underwent reforms which led to 2014 success...but not so much in 2022.

And finally the peice by Karber - the guy actually got so close he got hit in an MLRS strike:

https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf

In this peice Karber goes on at length at the effectiveness of the BTG and the emerging "Russian way of War", I know the US military took this pretty seriously, as did we as on paper the BTG could outrange any of our BattleGroups TFs.  We then saw similar trends in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the mainstream estimate was they would unfold in Ukraine in 2022 - nothing on "Russia Sucks".

So I do not agree that the post-war analysis nor the facts on the ground (see Rand study) support the idea that RA sub-par performance was observed.  The fact that a pretty modest interjection of RA forces in Aug 14 at Ilovaisk ("4000 troops") dealt a major reversal to the UA, and then the decisive defeat of the UA at Debaltseve in Jan 15 forced Ukraine to the negotiation table to sign a pretty bad deal for them (Minsk II).  There is plenty of evidence that the LNR/DPR separatist forces sucked, but Russia was trying very hard to keep a lid on the whole thing for deniability reasons.  Nothing in any of these assessments/analysis (and there are plenty more - Anx A of the first link has two pages of references) point to the pre-ordained abysmal performance seen in this war.

I am not sure what sources you were pulling from to come to your conclusions; however, it might just be possible that 1) all the above mainstream post-war analysis is wrong, and 2) whatever sources you were using were correct, and Russia really did suck...but - the end-state does not support that perspective either.  Regardless of tactical performance Russia achieved pretty much the impossible, it fully annexed the Crimea and over half the Donbas region without a reaction from the West.  The more I read into this, I strongly suspect that Ukraine 2014 was Putin's "Czechoslovakia" moment and he convinced himself the west was so divided (divisions he helped make worse) that we would sit back and let Ukraine fall, so go "full Poland" in 2022.  There is no way to spin 2014 was anything other than a Russian "win" both on the battlefield and on the political stage based on how things unfolded on the ground.

I am afraid that if this served as the foundation of how you saw the outcomes of this war then you too were working with incomplete concepts.  If you had gone into 2014 with "Russia Sucks due to Georgia 2008 = they will lose" you would have been completely wrong.  Bringing that theory to this war does not make it anymore correct - the theory found a war where it made more sense, but that does not make it a workable general theory.  This would be akin to developing a theory "The US Sucks at War" based on its performance in Korea (and there was plenty of evidence in the first year) and then predicting Vietnam as a US loss because "the US Sucks at War" - this glosses over so much nuance and context as to be nearly meaningless.  The mainstream analysis went the other way - "Russia is Terrifying in 2014, so they must be terrifying in 2022", which is not any less incorrect and shame on people who get paid for this work.

So what?  "Russia Sucks at War" is not a workable or even accurate foundational theory in my opinion.  It is inconsistent with observed phenomenon in previous conflicts and fails to take into account the complexities of context and evolutions of warfare over time.  "Russia Sucks at This War", how badly and why is worth exploring in depth, not the least of which is how much the UA/western backed warfare is forcing the RA to "suck".  The very tricky part is to try and distill these reasons into trends that may continue and influence the next war.  There is significant risk in porting over all the observations from this war to the next one e.g. Tanks are Dead - I cannot say if tanks are dead, they appear somewhat out of place in this war but we need to understand "why" before we can say if the next war will see the same thing.  However, I think we do agree that Russian failures and Ukrainian success do not operate in glorious isolation of each other - they have a shared causality with each other.  And the study of that relationship does not neatly sum up to "Russia Sucks", at least not from my point of view. 

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Thomm said:

Regarding shooting down drones with automatic weapons:

Would this not be a perfect use case for virtual reality training tools?

Shooting down a few hundred of these things in VR should turn any soldier into a human target lead computer.

The hard part is really detection/sensing - if you don't know where it is you can't target it, whether with a servo or a kid playing a computer game.  You sort of need layers of detection - a coarse network far out that gets rough paths and then more precise sensors as they get closer to your higher value targets.  If you have its location/route early enough it's a cruising duck.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

1. For those keeping score at home, the Winnah!  Our Holy Thread, page 10. Day One.

2. Honourable mention to @CHEqTRO though, who was skeptical and posting tweets of RU bungling from very early on. And @The_Capt was like, 'wtf is Putin thinking of here, if he doesn't pull out some insider KGB coup angle, he's actually quite hosed', starting Day 2.

Our host didn't participate, at least not on this thread, until page 29 (Day 3). But his second post (page 30) did not mince words.

Ukraine doesn't have to defeat 190,000 Russians, it only has to significant degrade the first line forces in the initial attack. If it can do that, the Russian attack will ultimately fail....

I expect this war will be decided by tomorrow at the latest. The war, however, will last only so long as Putin keeps it going or he is deposed by someone who will end it.

Steve

... and outright called it on page 32 (same day).

Especially if Russia starts turning Kiev into Grozny.  Which, I'm afraid, is what is planned now that the ground war has pretty much failed. 

For the record!

Oh definitely, we knew about 72 hours in this had not gone according to plan, and by the end of the first week it was apparent they RA was in serious trouble.  I think we bounced onto "Sieges from Hell" phase for about a day or two before it become apparent from the stream of tactical vignettes that the RA logistical system was completely failing and its C2 was not far behind.  The collapse of the Northern theatre was not a surprise in the least, in fact I think they held on longer than was healthy.

We also forecasted the slow grind to nowhere in Phase II in the Donbas and were waiting with bated breath for the UA offensive in the fall (Phase III).  I was personally very surprised at the UAs ability to sustain two separate operations on either end of the front line as both Kharkiv and Kherson were happening concurrently.  Since then corrosive warfare continues its steady march to a tipping point at Kherson.  What happens next is a likely steady pushing pressure UA over the winter, some sort of weak RA symbolic offensive as Russia tries to freeze this thing.  I suspect the UA will wait until conditions are right but I can see that infamous "land bridge" being cut down the middle.  Beyond that I have more questions than answers - how long does it take for the Russian military complex to completely fail?  How long for the Russian economy to fail?  How long for the internal divisions within Russia to start making serious noise?  How long can the West hold out in support, how long before the West gets distracted by its own crap?

All war is certainty/vision, communication, negotiation and sacrifice.  Those last two will start to increasingly impact the first two for each side over time and I suspect we will end up with a result no one is happy with at the end, but maybe we can avoid WWIII or a Russian Civil War redux with nukes if we are really lucky. 

[FancyCat]

Some levity...

It is interesting that the Russian military continues to hide losses and the population is beginning to realize the scale. I had started doubting that the Russian people could be revived to oppose the war but perhaps these massive losses will change that.

 

[Beleg85]

Damn...first evidence of hit on Krab SPG. We don't know if it was completelly destroyed or just severly damaged. Some guys watching in slow frame suggest Lancet could hit only upper parts of the turret;it is logical, as if vehicle would be detroyed muscovites would rather show burning wreck at the end.

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Beleg85

[dan/california]

41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So I do not agree that the post-war analysis nor the facts on the ground (see Rand study) support the idea that RA sub-par performance was observed.  The fact that a pretty modest interjection of RA forces in Aug 14 at Ilovaisk ("4000 troops") dealt a major reversal to the UA, and then the decisive defeat of the UA at Debaltseve in Jan 15 forced Ukraine to the negotiation table to sign a pretty bad deal for them (Minsk II).  There is plenty of evidence that the LNR/DPR separatist forces sucked, but Russia was trying very hard to keep a lid on the whole thing for deniability reasons.  Nothing in any of these assessments/analysis (and there are plenty more - Anx A of the first link has two pages of references) point to the pre-ordained abysmal performance seen in this war.

Between Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine 2014-15, Russia came up with a new tactical and organizational concept. They at least semi competently implemented it with ~two brigades worth of of troops. They did this against a Ukrainian force that had not been well treated by the Ukrainian Government whipsawing between pro and anti Russian factions. And then both sides settled for Minsk II. Russia won the info war for the perception of military competence in the wider world, Steve clearly excepted. In the Syrian civil war Russia again managed to field a small expeditionary force of similar size plus a squadron or two of fighter bombers. Against a zero tech opposing force this was sufficient to swing the balance in the Syrian civil war. This increased the perception of Russian military competence further in the wider world. This perception of Russian military competence gave Putin a significant advantage in diplomacy in general, and in his attempts to undermine Ukraine specifically. And then, well we are at 1700 pages about and then...

The question I really want the answer to is what was the Russian General Staff's opinion of its own forces? Two what extent did Shoigu and Gerasimov understand that the public perception of Russian military readiness was a sham, at least in terms of the wider force? A related question is the whole invasion vs coup issue. Did the Russian General staff just not CARE about force readiness, because it thought the FSB had this handled as long as it could manage a glorified parade? Last but not least how much of the Western response pre/early war was driven by believing the Russian's own planning assumptions, in face of countervailing evidence from other sources.

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The question I really want the answer to is what was the Russian General Staff's opinion of its own forces? Two what extent did Shoigu and Gerasimov understand that the public perception of Russian military readiness was a sham, at least in terms of the wider force? A related question is the whole invasion vs coup issue. Did the Russian General staff just not CARE about force readiness, because it thought the FSB had this handled as long as it could manage a glorified parade? Last but not least how much of the Western response pre/early war was driven by believing the Russian's own planning assumptions, in face of countervailing evidence from other sources.

Now that is a batch of really good questions.  They really orbit a central one - how much did Russia believe its own hype i.e. smoked their own supply?  I suspect that at some levels within the RA and political machine of Russia they had the exact same perception as mainstream analysis in the west.  Any dissenters were shamed, blamed and fired because "look at what might Russian bear did in Ukraine in 2014 and Syria".  If you look at the Rand study link I posted the prevalence of poor Russian strategic assumptions was noted throughout 2014, which makes me think it was less about excellent Russian strategic planning, and more about western constraints that kept the war at a level where the BTG functioned well and the vulnerabilities of the RA operational system were not well seen.

The Russian leadership went with "Russia Rulez at War!" which proved to be disastrously wrong in that they only "ruled" at very narrow and specific contexts of Ukraine 2014 and Syria.  We basically had a welterweight military convince itself it was a heavy weight - some cultural bias and identity desperation, and some because it went into a school yard and beat up children - it then decided to get into a fight that real heavy weights would have thought twice about and found itself in a jiujitsu match...whoops.

[sburke]

Elite Russian Naval Unit Reacts to Stunning Loss of 300 Men: 'Baffling' (msn.com)

[kevinkin]

I think the Russian military knew it was worse off than western forces but deluded themselves into thinking Ukraine would be a push over and slowly aligning with the west never meant anything tangible on the ground. Western militaries have not feared Russian conventional arms for years. But to casual observers in the western media, Russia remained a threat and its mission in the middle east was used to gin up the notion that Putin was a powerful bogeyman aiming to push into Europe. The cynic in me says it was used to maintain budgets and the inside the beltway military/industrial culture. And of course policy makers always need an perceived threat to fight over i.e. Russia can't attack us directly, but see see, they can via Tweets. Let's haul those tech giants before Congress and chew their asses then a head to Georgetown for a few well deserved cocktails.   

Edited November 8, 2022 by kevinkin

[Zeleban]

Mashovets...

It is obvious that the command of the enemy troops, which launched an offensive in the Ugledar direction, as well as launched simultaneous attacks in the area southeast of Novomikhailovka, did this not at all from a “good life”. It could not fail to understand one thing - the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not just so stubbornly standing in the area of Ugledar, Novomikhailovka and Maryinka ...

There was a very important and understandable reason for this, directly related to the further fate of the entire southern grouping of enemy troops, as well as the fate of the Kerch bridge ...

 

I will say more, if the enemy is still unable to solve this problem, the overall strategic situation for him will deteriorate sharply.

In fact, the fate of the entire autumn-winter campaign of this war is now being decided in the area of Pavlovka, Novomikhailovka and Vodyane.

 

Yes, and I'm not exaggerating at all. Here's the thing...

When the Kerch bridge was damaged, not all of our ordinary citizens imagined the full consequences of this event, except for the opportunity to joke on the “Internet” and troll the Russians. Moreover, the Russians quite quickly began to study the extent and nature of the damage to the bridge as a result of the explosion, and subsequently to repair it.

At first glance, it seemed that the explosion on the Kerch bridge would not greatly affect the intensity and pace of the supply of Russian troops and supplies to the Crimean direction. After all, the echelons were moving again, and the repair of the bridge immediately picked up a high pace.

But then some very interesting things came to light...

 

1. The MAIN volume of supplies for the needs of the Russian troops in the South-Western theater of operations occurs precisely THROUGH Crimea. In fact, the peninsula today has become a kind of huge rear base for the entire strategic grouping of enemy forces located in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine. From which the Russians are already distributing the main volumes of supplies to various groups deployed from Kherson to Mariupol and Volnovakha ...

2. The capacity of the Kerch Bridge is LIMITED, and the damage it received has reduced this capacity even more.

3. The Russians will not be able to completely restore the bridge crossing until the spring of 2023 (they themselves admitted this).

In addition, there are a few other things to keep in mind, and more on that later.

 

[billbindc]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Now that is a batch of really good questions.  They really orbit a central one - how much did Russia believe its own hype i.e. smoked their own supply?  I suspect that at some levels within the RA and political machine of Russia they had the exact same perception as mainstream analysis in the west.  Any dissenters were shamed, blamed and fired because "look at what might Russian bear did in Ukraine in 2014 and Syria".  If you look at the Rand study link I posted the prevalence of poor Russian strategic assumptions was noted throughout 2014, which makes me think it was less about excellent Russian strategic planning, and more about western constraints that kept the war at a level where the BTG functioned well and the vulnerabilities of the RA operational system were not well seen.

The Russian leadership went with "Russia Rulez at War!" which proved to be disastrously wrong in that they only "ruled" at very narrow and specific contexts of Ukraine 2014 and Syria.  We basically had a welterweight military convince itself it was a heavy weight - some cultural bias and identity desperation, and some because it went into a school yard and beat up children - it then decided to get into a fight that real heavy weights would have thought twice about and found itself in a jiujitsu match...whoops.

Remember those parade uniforms discovered in charred BMP's? It seems pretty clear that the MOD thought the FSB had it wired. 

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Remember those parade uniforms discovered in charred BMP's? It seems pretty clear that the MOD thought the FSB had it wired. 

The "Police Action/Intervention" bites yet another global power in the a$$.  At some point we should get into the role of military power within micro-social contexts, and just how bad an idea it is for anything but very specialized forces.

[billbindc]

Just now, The_Capt said:

The "Police Action/Intervention" bites yet another global power in the a$$.  At some point we should get into the role of military power within micro-social contexts, and just how bad an idea it is for anything but very specialized forces.

A police action versus Javelin armed opponents is a whole other thing.