How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[hcrof]

48 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Yes, Maginot Line wonderfully worked indeed. Like the Mannerheim line, the Gustav line, the Sigfried Line, the Molotov/Stalin Line etc. All of them were a great success stopping cold the enemy offensives they faced and allowing their side to win the battle, didn't they? Especially for the French, who expected a war of attrition, denial and corrosion but found themselves facing a war of movement and maneuver instead.

 

I don't think this actually responds to what I said. Rather than derail this thread however, I will direct you to this discussion which I think sets out my position better than I could:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cr2ly/why_would_france_think_that_something_like_the/

[Grigb]

Sorry to interrupt the lively discussion about US politics, but I'd want to add my two cents regarding the Avdiivka situation.

3 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

3rd assault going to "save" Adviivka?

Most likely, it will attempt to halt or slow down the current RU attack on the O0542 route. It is the most dangerous RU attack, with the potential to collapse the entire Avdiivka pocket rapidly. If 3rd manages to stop or slow this RU attack down, we could argue that 3rd indeed saved Avdiivka from quick collaps.

 

3 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

To me this is smelling like the unfortunate end of Bakhmut all over again.

Most likely, Avdiivka is going to fall because the Russian gliding bombs (UMPK) have not been neutralized yet. Essentially, RU are simply leveling with UMPK UKR strong points that their meat groups encounter. The system works as follows: an RU meat group meets a UKR strong position, dies while the RU command watches it through drones and then RU command orders a bombing of the strong point into oblivion. A fresh RU meat group is then dispatched forward. So, given enough time and bodies, RU will capture the place that once was called Avdiivka. 

 

3 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

No point in "no step back" orders, when the situation is not advantageous in the current positions anymore.

The situation is advantageous to UKR in Avdiivka. Avdiivka is the most fortified area in UKR. Even with UMPKs, the Koksohim plant and south urban areas are incredibly tough to breach, and RU losses are horrific.

The problem is there is a certain critical vulnerability that RU have found and are trying to exploit now. If they succeed, Avdiivka will fall swiftly. Much faster than it would be otherwise.

Let's discuss the overall situation and then look at my quick map.

RU failed to encircle Avdiivka via Stepove > Orlivka (north axis) and Vodyane > Tonenke (south axis). The assault via Tsarska Ohota (48.11372615890259, 37.77596770282691) toward the major urban area (that pipe infiltration) was originally successful but is now slow and painful. Finally, since the Azov Steel battle, RU want to avoid any major assaults on large plants such as Koksohim.

So, using their standard tactic of persistent pressure by meat groups along the front lines, they discovered the weak spot.

The O0542 road is the primary communication route for the Avdiivka defense sector. Assaulting via Avtobaza and Brevno is the shortest way to reach it. There are not many urban-style buildings in this village-style area. As a result, it provides sufficient concealment for assaulting RU meat groups while providing substantially less cover for UKR defenders against UMPKs.

If UKR manage to neutralize this assault they could hold Avdiivka a lot longer. So, I believe this is the reason UKR commit 3rd assault "to save Avdiivka".

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I don't think this actually responds to what I said. Rather than derail this thread however, I will direct you to this discussion which I think sets out my position better than I could:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cr2ly/why_would_france_think_that_something_like_the/

Probably the most interesting thing to develop in this war, in terms of broad strategic shifts, is that defensive lines appear to once again be practical.

The Maginot Line's primary flaw is that France lacked an immediate Plan B if it was breached.  For a myriad of reasons (I did a senior thesis on this topic, in fact!) this left the rest of the line vulnerable to being irrelevant.

Now things seem to be very different.  The ability to concentrate enough force to move through a breach, and maintain an exploitative thrust worth mentioning, is near zero if the defender has the sort of weaponry that Ukraine has.  Namely, drones, PGM artillery, ISR, etc.

What we've seen Ukraine (and Russia) do is what Germany tried, and failed, to do on the Eastern front in 1943/44.  Namely, "hedgehog defenses".  Germany's inability to man a large front created this concept and it just didn't work because the Soviets were free to build up anywhere they wanted to and bypass the strong point.  Germany would then counter attack with mobile forces reserved for exactly this eventuality, either pushing them back or at least arresting their advance.  The problem was Germany's mobile forces were in decline while the Soviets were in ascent.  To over simplify this, Germany simply didn't have enough tanks to keep plugging gaps.

So if the Baltic states made enough "hedgehogs" and back them up with the sorts of things Ukraine has (which they do, in fact, possess) even a completely rebuilt Russian Army will fail to do more than an incursion.  Provided, of course, Russia doesn't figure out some magic solution to this problem while fighting Ukraine.  Given their insistence on "fight harder, not smarter" I don't see that coming about.

Steve

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

 Especially for the French, who expected a war of attrition, denial and corrosion but found themselves facing a war of movement and maneuver instead.

RU are currently incapable of maneuver warfare. Due to the apparent serious vulnerabilities of their tanks and planes, and serious shortcomings of their artillery and AA their current doctrine is late-World War I infantry-based attacks (+ UMPKs and helicopter ATGMs). They are considering rectifying it eventually, but it would need a large rearmament program, something they cannot afford at the moment (they have money left for around 1 year of fighting).

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Sorry to interrupt the lively discussion about US politics, but I'd want to add my two cents regarding the Avdiivka situation.

Welcome back!  You are always very welcome to come here and interrupt

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, Grigb said:

If UKR manage to neutralize this assault they could hold Avdiivka a lot longer. So, I believe this is the reason UKR commit 3rd assault "to save Avdiivka".

When I saw the 3rd Assault Brigade being moved to the area I assumed it was to stabilize something specific, not to throw them into the Russian buzzsaw for no other reason to hold something for sentimental reasons. 

Having 3rd Assault keep the road open seems logical and even probable.  The other possibility is they are there to provide enough force to effect an orderly withdrawal of the 110th and other units.  My guess is it's both.  If the front can be stabilized, good, otherwise the 3rd will hopefully avert a disaster.

Once again we see Ukraine forced into a bad situation with few viable options.  Withdrawing from Avdiivka doesn't put an end to Russian glide bombs or meat assaults.  Russia will simply choose some other sector of front and smash into it as soon as forces can be redeployed.  And where that might be is unknown, whereas Avdiivka is known.  The choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't know is no doubt part of Ukraine's thinking about sticking to Avdiivka.

Steve

[Centurian52]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Once again we see Ukraine forced into a bad situation with few viable options.  Withdrawing from Avdiivka doesn't put an end to Russian glide bombs or meat assaults.  Russia will simply choose some other sector of front and smash into it as soon as forces can be redeployed.

It's far from an ideal situation. But continuing to inflict Pyrrhic victories on the Russians until the West provides enough aid to enable to Ukrainians to attempt another major offensive is not an ineffective strategy. I don't think the Russians have ever really recovered from Mariupol, Severodonetsk, or Bakhmut. It makes sense to me for the Ukrainians to try to hold Avdiivka for as long as it remains a strong position and the Russians are willing to throw their lives and equipment away there, even if it turns out that it can't be held in the long run.

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Once again we see Ukraine forced into a bad situation with few viable options.  Withdrawing from Avdiivka doesn't put an end to Russian glide bombs or meat assaults.  Russia will simply choose some other sector of front and smash into it as soon as forces can be redeployed.  And where that might be is unknown, whereas Avdiivka is known.  The choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't know is no doubt part of Ukraine's thinking about sticking to Avdiivka.

Steve

There is also a political component to it: capturing Avdiivka before the elections will unify and empower the War faction within Russia. Failure to do so will further destabilize Russia (see Wagner march after Bakhmut).

[Centurian52]

Just now, Grigb said:

There is also a political component to it: capturing Avdiivka before the elections will unify and empower the War faction within Russia. Failure to do so will further destabilize Russia (see Wagner march after Bakhmut).

Another reason why it makes sense for the Ukrainians to try to hold it for at least another month or two, even if it can't be held in the long run

[dan/california]

8 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

A story from January, but still interesting:
 

 

Others already brought it up, but the defensive lines are a thing again. They are REALLY a thing when you have NATO airpower to hammer any breakthroughs. The big question is are they willing to start laying mines in time. It is the mines that make everything else work.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ugh, that is a recipe for a legal trainwreck.  The suites and counter-suits will be epic.  I am no expert beyond what tv has told us but it looks like Trump would essentially need to dismantle the US federal legal system to pull some of this off.  The fractures in the law enforcement spaces could be terminal.  It will be fun and games until someone starts shooting.

FYI, this is exactly what phase 3 of a Subversive Warfare campaign looks like.

 

They way to avoid a LARGE train wreck is to beat Trump at the ballot box. Their are three things on the side of sanity, Trumps is losing it before our eyes, his speeches are deteriorating by the week. The entire Republican side has been so busy grifting and feuding that many parts of their system are flat broke and disorganized, and the abortion decision is still savagely unpopular. It should be enough, just. Vote and donate like civilization depends on it, because it does.

 

Grigb is back, HURRAY!

 

Edited February 12 by dan/california

[Kinophile]

 

 

[poesel]

15 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Wot? 

 

With such a defensive line, aren't you basically giving up the territory between the line and the enemy? Because that line works both ways and will make supplying the western side very difficult.

Train cars seem to also be very susceptible to HE fire so you can't put anything in them. You can hide behind them, but why?

I don't understand how this would be useful at all.

[poesel]

26 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

 

I read a lot of 'too little, too late' comments to this post. I have some experience with production lines and at that scale it is usually one year to plan, on year to build. Under the assumption that the decision has already been made and you have the funds.

In this light, this is not too bad.

[dan/california]

49 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

 

 

19 minutes ago, poesel said:

I read a lot of 'too little, too late' comments to this post. I have some experience with production lines and at that scale it is usually one year to plan, on year to build. Under the assumption that the decision has already been made and you have the funds.

In this light, this is not too bad.

You are quite correct that it is not bad. Not bad may or may not be good enough. Among other things no one in NATO ought to be counting on South African production of anything, they seem to be busy joining the other side. 

 

Quote

In 2025 Rheinmetall using all its factories in Germany, Spain, Hungary, Australia and South Africa will have the capacity to produce 700,000 artillery shells per year.

 

Edited February 12 by dan/california

[Carolus]

37 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

You are quite correct that it is not bad. Not bad may or may not be good enough. Among other things no one in NATO oughtto be counting on South African production of anything, they seem to be busy joining the other side. 

 

 

Just because a Rheinmetall plant is in South Africa does not mean that South Africa has any control over the product. It is not a nationalized industry like in the USA. It's a private enterprise.

If a European country orders shells from Rheinmetall, it does not matter where the plant is located - all locations will work to fulfill the contract. 

If you think South Africa could in any way meddle with that, you are vastly overestimating the influence of South Africa. The only thing that could realistically hamper ammo production for a NATO customer in SA is the fact that half the country experiences rolling brown-outs while the other half experiences rolling black-outs of its electricity grid. 

Edited February 12 by Carolus

[JonS]

Sanctions are working

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350176938/russias-planes-are-falling-apart-west-blocks-repairs

[poesel]

25 minutes ago, Carolus said:

If you think South Africa could in any way meddle with that, you are vastly overestimating the influence of South Africa.

RSA could restrict the export of arms & ammunition. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure they have laws for that. But I doubt they would use that card unless they want to be cut off from western arms, too.

[Carolus]

34 minutes ago, JonS said:

Sanctions are working

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350176938/russias-planes-are-falling-apart-west-blocks-repairs

That's maple syrup on my pancakes eh, as the Canadians would say.

13 minutes ago, poesel said:

RSA could restrict the export of arms & ammunition. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure they have laws for that. But I doubt they would use that card unless they want to be cut off from western arms, too.

Yeah, that would be a card they can only play once.

[Ultradave]

3 hours ago, Jiggathebauce said:

If he ignores a congressional declaration of war like that, it's treason 

Sure, and like I mentioned, he could be impeached - even a Republican House would, I imagine, if they did in fact declare war. Would he be convicted and removed from office? I don't think there's any guarantee of that, even in that situation. But assuming the Senate convicts him and he's out, then what? His hand-picked VP, whichever MAGA sycophant that is, takes over. Does anything change? Or does everyone suddenly throw off the yoke and act "normal" because he has no power anymore?  50/50 - there's still the 8-10-12 however many die-hards in the Republican Party who want to stop everything. On the other hand, if Democrats take over the House, then that crew loses ALL power they have. 

Sorry for being pessimistic, but if Trump gets elected, it will be messier than last time. He (or more really his closest advisors) won't make the mistake of putting anyone with any integrity in any position of power. 

I'm also pessimistic about the election in general. If Trump wins, well, we've covered that. If Biden wins, does anyone think that Trump will just say "Congrats" and go home? Nope. We could easily see worse than Jan 6. 

I'll stop now and get back to play testing and reading everyone elses' commentary, which is always interesting, no matter the viewpoints.

Dave

[Pablius]

Regarding Trump, hi from Latin America (Argentina) land of great football and sometimes populist egomaniacs...

I´ll just paste something I wrote in January of 2017 on another forum:

"Coming from a country with it´s fair share of populists in it´s history, let me tell you a couple of things about what will happen:

First: it´s not about policies, it´s not about facts, now it´s only about power and how to keep it

Second: the only thing that will be rewarded is loyalty, it may or may not align with skills, it doesn't matter any more

Third: it´s not about liberal and conservative, It´s not about democrat or republican, now it´s about trump or anti trump, there will be no middle ground to hide, both coalitions will have members of previous coalitions, those won´t matter much anymore, more republicans will be on Trump´s coalition because he was elected as one of course

Fourth: his only objective is reelection, and after that a third mandate, and a fourth and so on, to this end he will push any policy he deems useful, left wing or right wing, won´t matter, he sometimes will be align with former liberal/democrat ideas, he will take ownership of anything that promotes him, claiming it was his idea all along

Fifth: any source of check and balances will be targeted as traitorous, anti american, etc., this includes the press, other parties, the supreme court, whatever, anyone he sees as a member of the anti trump coalition is now a target, for now of rhetoric only, time will tell how far he will be allowed to go, and don´t think for a second there is something he won't do, or that he has any moral limit, he doesn't

Good luck trying to rationalize his government into anything other than an ego trip

His only weak point is succession, like every populists he hates the idea of giving power up, to anyone, even his children, he won´t groom a successor and get mad every time this point comes up

I sincerely hope current checks and balances work, but I´m not optimistic, lots of people will come under the spell, it´s tough times for anyone that can´t escape facts, reason, science, for those are now the enemies of the US government."

 

Not spot on in every point, but It came close to happen the first time around, now he has evolved and learned, it will be worst.

The paradox is that it was in the hands of Republican Senators to impeach and keep him out of office for good, they failed.

 

 

[billbindc]

16 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

I'm also pessimistic about the election in general. If Trump wins, well, we've covered that. If Biden wins, does anyone think that Trump will just say "Congrats" and go home? Nope. We could easily see worse than Jan 6. 

I'll stop now and get back to play testing and reading everyone elses' commentary, which is always interesting, no matter the viewpoints.

Dave

Having seen the changes in security here, I'm not worried about a coup. The way Trump could have prevailed was in his control of the security services. He has none of that now.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Sanctions are working

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/350176938/russias-planes-are-falling-apart-west-blocks-repairs

A little more details:

https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/ural-a320-forced-landing-crew-made-unreasonable-decision-to-divert-inquiry/155755.article

Trying to blame crew error but the machinery shouldnt be failing in the first place.

They cant fly it out so dismantling in situ.

https://airlive.net/news/2024/01/12/ural-airlines-finally-took-decision-to-scrap-the-a320-that-landed-in-a-field-near-novosibirsk/

 

[billbindc]

Sorry for the length but this is well worth reading: 

 

Less Than Meets the Eye - Parsing Tucker's Putin Interview

JOHN GANZ

I was probably one of the relatively few people that sat through the entire two hour Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin. To call it an “interview” is not quite right: Carlson essentially allowed Putin to discourse at length and only occasionally tried to prod him in the direction of his own preferred talking points about the war in Ukraine. Any appearance of tension or journalistic effort only occurred because Carlson seemed to have the expectation that Putin would cooperate with his own line and appeared frustrated (“annoyed,” he said in his prefatory remarks) when it immediately turned out Putin seemed to have his own ideas . Essentially, the interview consisted of a melange of multiple, sometimes contradictory, lines of propaganda about the war. But to say that it was “propaganda” also might gave a misleading impression: it suggests that there is a “real” underlying motivation for the war, while the justifications are merely self-serving deceptions for public consumption. But what it actually might reveal is superficiality and incoherence of the case for war itself. Instead, there were a number overlapping and shifting messages to different constituencies. is not a single overarching ideology at play, but rather a succession of “ideologemes,” little snippets of ideology: themes from Russian nationalism, Western far right cultural pessimism, anti-colonialism, and Soviet nostalgia all crop up—even little remnants of Putin’s Marxist-Leninist training appear, like when he talked about the “excessive production capacities” of the West. Putin doubled down on the theme of “denazification”—evidently somewhat to the irritation of the America Firster Carlson —while at the same time offering a revisionist picture of the start of World War II, sympathetic to Hitler’s territorial aims and essentially blaming the war on Polish intransigence, saying “they pushed Hitler to start World War II by attacking them.” This speaks to the awkward position of Russia claiming simultaneously claiming to embody the continuation of the Great Patriotic War’s anti-fascist crusade while being the darling of a far right at home and abroad, which views it as the last remaining hope of “white civilization.” 

This synthetic, “postmodern” quality does not reflect devilishly clever strategy, rather its incoherence directly reflects the fragility and fragmentation of Russia’s entire post-Soviet political project. The Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ischenko writes of “a crisis of hegemony” in the post-Soviet world and that both Putin’s authoritarian, “Bonapartist” rule and its consequent war arise from the same “incapacity of the ruling class to develop sustained political, moral, and intellectual leadership.” His regime is ad hoc: a cobbled together arrangement of veterans of the security services and the rent-seeking oligarchs who accepted Putin’s settlement. Prighozhin’s mutiny made this provisional and brittle nature of “the state” clear. Rather than reflecting position of strength the strongman antics of Putin reveal fundamental political weaknesses and failures. As Ischenko put it in an interview with The New Left Review:

"Putin, like other post-Soviet Caesarist leaders, has ruled through a combination of repression, balance and passive consent legitimated by a narrative of restoring stability after the post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s. But he has not offered any attractive developmental project. Russia’s invasion should be analyzed precisely in this context: lacking sufficient soft power of attraction, the Russian ruling clique has ultimately decided to rely on the hard power of violence, starting from coercive diplomacy in the beginning of 2021, then abandoning diplomacy for military coercion in 2022."

The political fragility and insecurity of the ruling class, its cliquishness and insularity, its inability to shape a single coherent narrative of national development, its preoccupation with finding tactical expedients to avoid the chaos of the 1990s and the humiliations of the collapse are all wedded to the cult of “special services,” from the former KGB officer Putin on down. As early as the 2000s, Dimitri Furman noticed this aspect of the regime, writing in his Imitation Democracy: The Development of Russia’s Post-Soviet Political System, that a growing number of “activities, essential to the maintenance of the system, were in essence ‘secret special operations.’ Rather than rare exceptions, they were fast becoming crucial and lasting dimensions of all political activity.” With that in mind, it’s worth noting Putin’s insistence on calling the war in Ukraine, not a war at all, but a “special military operation” and its simultaneous development of contradictory propaganda campaigns directed at different audiences rather than a single, articulable vision of Russia’s role in the world. Putin can’t escape looking at everything as an “op.” (Not for nothing, this confusion of war, propaganda, and secret police subterfuge along with the subordination of politics to the needs and views of the national security apparatus is something usually associated with totalitarian states.)

In so far as anything approaching a worldview emerges from the interview, it is Putin’s preoccupation with the central role “special services” purportedly play in world affairs, particularly his apparent belief that the United States is not governed by its political leadership but by its national security bureaucracy, which accords with Carlson’s view of a “deep state.” This is less of ideology than Putin’s own déformation professionnelle, one that’s so deeply rooted that he felt the need to bring up Carlson’s onetime attempt to join the CIA. (He even seemed to coyly suggest that Tucker might actually work for the CIA, which I’m sure Carlson found flattering.) 

From the very beginning, Carlson’s generously offered Putin the chance to present the war in defensive terms, asking,

"On February 22nd, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started, and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears, that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?"

Instead of taking that route, Putin immediately launched into a nearly half hour disquisition on Russian history, the point of which was to stress the original unity of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. Carlson averred in his opening remarks that he was “shocked” by this, but Putin has been harping on this theme since before the war. In July 2021, he published his essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which states “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Of course, “sovereignty in partnership” is not really sovereignty at all. Despite Putin’s open and lengthy statement of what the Old Bolsheviks would’ve called “Great Russian chauvinism,” Carlson came away from the interview stating, “Russia is not an expansionist power. You’d have to be an idiot to think that.” From both Putin’s rhetoric and his behavior, you’d have to be an idiot to think otherwise. Carlson is just employing the propagandist’s trick of employing abuse and invective when the facts clearly oppose their case. But, as Michael Tracey’s recent Substack post makes clear, Putin’s open statements of Russian grand imperial ambitions are troubling for Westerners otherwise predisposed to be sympathetic and who have spent a great deal of time rationalizing Russia’s actions or presenting them in a defensive light. 

In the minds of the Russian ruling class, there’s really no contradiction between defensive and offensive conceptions of the war: they both involve securing of their system, and in moments of more grandiose transport, their civilization, against Western encroachment. The other overriding theme of Putin’s discourse, connected to the fixation on “special services,” is the characterization of the Maidan as a “coup d’etat.” The fear is that the example of success of Ukraine’s political revolution might spread to Russia itself. This concern on the part of the Russian elite is not new: it has its origins in the collective trauma of the Soviet collapse. More proximately, it dates back to the “Color Revolutions” of the 2000s that toppled Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine, Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan, and Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia. As Furman writes, 

"These men had headed systems highly comparable to Russia’s, if substantially weaker, and their ousters aroused an irrational panic of the kind seen in tsarist circles after the French revolutions, or in Soviet circles in the run-up to the Prague Spring. To acknowledge the naturalness, the predictability of these regimes’ collapsing would mean acknowledging the inevitability of the collapse of Russia’s regime, too – an impossibility. Those in power in Russia thus concluded instead that these revolutions were all the work of Western security services (very much as Soviet leaders had blamed similar forces for unrest in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland)."

Since that time, Russia’s foreign policy in its “near abroad” has since been fundamentally counter-revolutionary. As Ischenko notes the tempo of revolt had been picking up in the run up to the invasion:

"Such uprisings have been accelerating on Russia’s periphery in recent years, including not just the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014 but also the revolutions in Armenia, the third revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the failed 2020 uprising in Belarus, and, most recently, the uprising in Kazakhstan. In the two last cases, Russian support proved crucial to ensure the local regime’s survival. Within Russia itself, the “For Fair Elections” rallies held in 2011 and 2012, as well as later mobilizations inspired by Alexei Navalny, were not insignificant. On the eve of the invasion, labor unrest was on the rise, while polls showed declining trust in Putin and a growing number of people who wanted him to retire. Dangerously, opposition to Putin was higher the younger the respondents were."

Again, the war is a piece of domestic policy as much as it is foreign policy: an attempt to consolidate a regime that feels itself to be vulnerable. The acquiescence of the population and the resilience of the Russian economy in the face of sanctions may prove that it was a successful expedient, at least temporarily. It would be dangerous indeed if Russia’s regime concluded that such “operations” redounded mostly to its benefit. 
 

 

 

[Kraft]

"Ukraine’s Pokrova Spoofing System Tells Shaheds To Get Lost" - Forbes

Most likely active since 3rd of February.

Quote

On February 3rd, the Ukrainian Air Force’s official Telegram channel noted that 11 Shahed had been shot down the previous night, and “In addition, at least seven attack drones did not reach their targets and were lost locally.”

Quote

Shahed drones are well protected against electronic warfare. The current version have the Russian military Kometa-M navigation unit, a digital antenna array allowing it to identify and exclude jamming signals. According to the makers drones with Kometa-M can still find their way when the jamming is tens of thousands of times more powerful than the satellite signal.

The Shahed also has a backup inertial navigation unit or INS. This works even when there is no satellite signal, but drifts rapidly over time. The backup system provides accurate navigation for perhaps one minute – long enough to hit a target protected by a local jammer, or fly through a band of jamming before it can recover a satellite signal.

Spoofing is much harder to detect than jamming. If the spoofing signal is relatively subtle – gradually moving further and further away from the real location – the drone will have no way of telling that it is being spoofed, but will end up some distance from the target.

 

[omae2]

27 minutes ago, Pablius said:

Regarding Trump, hi from Latin America (Argentina) land of great football and sometimes populist egomaniacs...

I´ll just paste something I wrote in January of 2017 on another forum:

"Coming from a country with it´s fair share of populists in it´s history, let me tell you a couple of things about what will happen:

First: it´s not about policies, it´s not about facts, now it´s only about power and how to keep it

Second: the only thing that will be rewarded is loyalty, it may or may not align with skills, it doesn't matter any more

Third: it´s not about liberal and conservative, It´s not about democrat or republican, now it´s about trump or anti trump, there will be no middle ground to hide, both coalitions will have members of previous coalitions, those won´t matter much anymore, more republicans will be on Trump´s coalition because he was elected as one of course

Fourth: his only objective is reelection, and after that a third mandate, and a fourth and so on, to this end he will push any policy he deems useful, left wing or right wing, won´t matter, he sometimes will be align with former liberal/democrat ideas, he will take ownership of anything that promotes him, claiming it was his idea all along

Fifth: any source of check and balances will be targeted as traitorous, anti american, etc., this includes the press, other parties, the supreme court, whatever, anyone he sees as a member of the anti trump coalition is now a target, for now of rhetoric only, time will tell how far he will be allowed to go, and don´t think for a second there is something he won't do, or that he has any moral limit, he doesn't

Good luck trying to rationalize his government into anything other than an ego trip

His only weak point is succession, like every populists he hates the idea of giving power up, to anyone, even his children, he won´t groom a successor and get mad every time this point comes up

I sincerely hope current checks and balances work, but I´m not optimistic, lots of people will come under the spell, it´s tough times for anyone that can´t escape facts, reason, science, for those are now the enemies of the US government."

 

Not spot on in every point, but It came close to happen the first time around, now he has evolved and learned, it will be worst.

The paradox is that it was in the hands of Republican Senators to impeach and keep him out of office for good, they failed.

 

 

I see my country in this picture and i don't like it.
Funny thing how when its started i didn't realize whats going on. I even argued their point of view with pals when we drinked. Now they have the country and its nothing really left to do.