Is Ukraine about to have a war?

[Kent Based]

Originally Posted by Tartiflette Fan

I was driving up the A 5/A26 between Dijon and Reims on Wednesday April 20 and vaguely noted numerous military trucks heading South:...........

I have never read of any joint Franco-British military exercises taking place in France so that's probably out, and yet I can't think of any reason that Britain would be sending any aid to Ukraine on trucks through France either.

Can anyone think of a good explanation for such a convoy ?

There's a large training area near Reims that is regularly used by the British Army. The UK and French conduct exercises together.

[NutLoose]

Perhaps Ukraine should look for some terminally ill, arm them with a couple of NLAW’s and smuggle them into Moscow for the May Day parade that will be televised across Russia, popping a couple of tanks in the parade would be embarrassing I do wonder post parade whether the vehicles will become available for use in Ukraine.

[jolihokistix]

Lord Volodymort Putin is planning to hold the May 9 parade in Mariupol, if they can keep the lid on the steelworks…

[Timmy Tomkins]

Originally Posted by NutLoose

Perhaps Ukraine should look for some terminally ill, arm them with a couple of NLAW’s and smuggle them into Moscow for the May Day parade that will be televised across Russia, popping a couple of tanks in the parade would be embarrassing I do wonder post parade whether the vehicles will become available for use in Ukraine.

What an excellent idea, maybe this should be disseminated in search of volunteers!

[fdr]

Originally Posted by NutLoose

Perhaps Ukraine should look for some terminally ill, arm them with a couple of NLAW’s and smuggle them into Moscow for the May Day parade that will be televised across Russia, popping a couple of tanks in the parade would be embarrassing I do wonder post parade whether the vehicles will become available for use in Ukraine.

the great May Day tractor pull...

[cynicalint]

FDR, Interesting points. Do you have a decode for the symbols?

[fdr]

Wil e Coyote's Acme Navy isn't specified. Pity.



RFS "Titanic"

[MJ89]

Blow it up on the 8th of may!

Ukraine threatens to blow up Russia’s strategic Crimea bridge

Kyiv claims Moscow is using the 12-mile, £2.7 billion bridge to send troops and weapons into the annexed peninsula
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%...imea-bridge%2F

[WideScreen]

Originally Posted by MJ89

Blow it up on the 8th of may!

Ukraine threatens to blow up Russia’s strategic Crimea bridge

Kyiv claims Moscow is using the 12-mile, £2.7 billion bridge to send troops and weapons into the annexed peninsula
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%...imea-bridge%2F

Nop, the sooner, the better. By May 8, the troops already passed the bridge.

Anyway, maybe some Russian burned out rust-bucket armor stuff on low-loaders, towed by Ukraine tractors on display for the May celebration in Moscow ? Just to show the Russian public how well the army functions ?

[sycamore]

Lots of stratos balloons loaded with PHOTOS /NEWSPAPER/CASUALTY LISTS/mixed with `chaff,sent up ,timed/directed for Moscow on May 9.
If `Putout `threatens Poland ,then maybe a strong `message` about a `first-strike`on `Little Russia`/Kaliningrad` on the same day might make him reconsider.Similar message to Belarus....

[Ninthace]

Originally Posted by WideScreen

Nop, the sooner, the better. By May 8, the troops already passed the bridge.

Anyway, maybe some Russian burned out rust-bucket armor stuff on low-loaders, towed by Ukraine tractors on display for the May celebration in Moscow ? Just to show the Russian public how well the army functions ?

Wont they need it to retreat across? Do the Ukrainians have the wherewithal to mount an attack? If the bridge is defended. I would have thought an air attack we require a reasonably sized package and PGMs. Is it vulnerable to missiles and do the Ukrainians have anything suitable?

I would prefer the option of denying the bridge rather than dropping it, that may be less costly.

[NutLoose]

Blimey, and I thought a missile through your ceiling couldn’t be beaten

Twitter

[rattman]

Lotsa heavy arty inbound to ukraine

100+ m777,
some PZ-2000 from netherland,
rumor are british 20 AS-90 SPG's are going to offered
italy are expected to announce some or all of the recently retired 200 M109spgs will be made available
sweden announced unspecified amount of archers are going to be donated


Rumors are ukrainians are in poland training on himars atm

[jolihokistix]

Well, I hope they don't put them all in a warehouse near Lviv.

[fdr]

Originally Posted by WideScreen

Nop, the sooner, the better. By May 8, the troops already passed the bridge.

Anyway, maybe some Russian burned out rust-bucket armor stuff on low-loaders, towed by Ukraine tractors on display for the May celebration in Moscow ? Just to show the Russian public how well the army functions ?

Nice idea, but probably going to be a hard sell to Vlad the impaler.

A reasonable alternative is a parade down the main road of Kiev, of tractors pulling Russian tanks, tractors pulling low-loaders with the carcasses of the Russian MBTs or just the lollypops, and a bunch of the babushkas armed with pierogi, who took the surrender of Russian troops. That would make a headline. Ir's too much work to drag the Moskva down the road, her barnacles would tear up the tarmac anyway.

May Day

The Russians still have a large amount of armor to throw forward down an axis if they can work out which one to go with, and just on numbers alone, they force the defenders to have a huge supply of anti-armor capability as we head off towards May Day. The reconstitution of some BTGs that got mauled has had enough time for developing a couple of motivated groups, instead of the low morale and understrength volume of groups. The map below uses NATO standard Allied Procedural Publication 6A (APP-6A) notation. How accurate it is is unknown, but the source producer is putting out some interesting info on his twitter account. The understrength status is not indicated, and some of the Red groups had very high loss levels. The Red team doesn't have a ready reserve on hand, an assumption that arises from the inability to swap combat groups out after Act I, instead of running severely damaged groups back into the current order of battle. A guess is that the Reds are running around 35-40% of normal establishments in their units. Relying on a guess would be unwise for a defender, so NATO, keep them munitions coming, the next 10 days are going to be critical to the next 30 years of Europe's history. It may be time to start running more creative supply lines to get gear to the front. IMHO... It is possible that the last 2 weeks has mainly been reconnaissance compared to a Soviet-style mass breakout. The reserves to do a soviet type attack are already depleted, but there is nothing to suggest that the butcher of Aleppo won't throw away his remaining forces to make Vlad happy for May Day. To that end, the supply officer position of the US DOD on limiting javelins etc seems to be a little on the short-sighted side; the choice is to stop Vlad now in Ukraine, or to stop him in 6 months' time in Warsaw, either way, there is going to be a lot of Javelins loosed off across the paddocks. Personally, I think it is time to get a "practice" Reforger underway, that might get the Red generals to accept that Russia has a better future without Vlad than with him. Just thoughts. E&OE.

So, today isn't 1941 or '43, the defenders have access to much better intelligence, and real-time ISR. I would think that the keyhole coverage needs to get full time for the next 10 days, as much as possible, and RQ-4, Rivet Joint, JSTARS (don't retire them... ) and everything else that can be put up needs to be put up, to determine the MLA that may develop from the East. Ukraine has expended around 1/3rd of the ATWs that have been handed to them, and for what it is worth, the Stugna-P has done a darn good job, so some organic capability is helping, but the expenditure rate in a full-scale attack is going to be prodigious, the rest of the NLAWS/Javelins/Starstreaks etc need to be available within a rapid response time of Ukraine to get resupply done.

To point this post back to being about aviation, the one aircraft that would make a difference right now to the front end is the old AN-2 style low/slow low IR signature platforms, to get stuff near the front in a timely manner. It can be expected to have a huge number of attacks against all airports in Ukraine to interdict direct resupply, so planes that can land in dirt roads seem to be a handy little thing to have. Caravans would suffice too, but they are less suited to rough field landings or roads than the old AN-2. It might seem wasteful to throw away so many aircraft and crews (1 driver per plane) but it would be as nothing compared to a re-energized Vlad ego attempting to push into Poland, Lithuania or even neighboring Moldova.

Justification

Vlad started a flawed campaign on the hope (or expectation) that his opponent was incapable of the political cohesion and military capability to put up a meaningful defense. Ooops. Hope is not a plan, and Vlad is the one person in a seat of power that has no excuse for a catastrophic failure of awareness of his opponent, or his own sides capability, and those failures are his alone, arising from the would-be Emperor's sociopathic characteristics that have blossomed since the drunkard Boris Yeltsin elevated him from obscurity to Prime Minister. As soon as that flower parade was shown to be contraindicated, there was no abort plan, there was only pile on force, so there was no obvious decision that Putin made that wasn't preordained by his stunning intelligence failure and hubris. (sound familiar?)

Arising from his disastrous misreading, he has led his army to ruin, caused the deaths of 22,000+ Russian soldiers who didn't have a real choice in the matter, destroyed his economy for the next 5 years, likely caused global famine later this year including in countries that are tacitly supporting him, and permitted his troops to conduct widespread war crimes and acts of murder and genocide. The rapes and murders have also been by his troops of the population that he supposedly went to help. With friends like Putin, you don't need enemies. All of that before lunchtime. Wonder what he can do by borsch 'o clock.

Simply put, Russia has no moral high ground for their actions. They have a historical fear of attack from any or all of the 9 gateways to Russia, but there has not been a threat to Russia in the last 75 years that didn't arise from within their own actions. Russia was an accepted global nation, and Putin has rescinded that condition for the near future.

Aviation

Russia's actions have been catastrophic to their own country and made worse by the counters they employed. How many lessors are going to ever pick up a phone call from a Russian number? Same with banks. What is the risk spread on a commercial loan to a country that has disregarded the conventions of contracts?

Defence exports

Russia has half of its economy roughly related to defense exports. Apart from the glaring examples of the poor performance of the Russian weapon systems (at least in part a reflection of Russian training of troops) how many countries will be prepared to have a supply line of junk systems from an unreliable partner, as there is no obvious way to recover the economy of Russia in the short term with Putin holding the keys to the empire.

Energy Exports

Russia has the other half of their economy based on energy exports. They just screwed over the partner companies that provided the technical skills to their system, and the thinking Russians, the technically competent ones, are way overrepresented in the brain drain from Russia. This isn't a case like NZ to AUS where PM "Piggy" Muldoon quipped that "every kiwi that leaves NZ for AUS increases the IQ of both countries...". Nope, Russia is forcing the evacuation of it's talent, those that don't believe the hype, and who want to see Russia succeed as a stable country not kept as "kleptocracy". It isn't just missing McD's, there are people like Navalny who believe in what Russia can be, contrary to Putin's kleptocracy and paranoid vision of the world. In the face of the unstable nature of Russia under Putin, any country with a choice is going to say no thanks to Russian energy. The damage to the energy sector is going to be widespread and long-lasting, and adds to the coming famine state as food costs rise on the scarcity of supply and cost of production and distribution. Thanks, Vlad.

TNWs

Sure a psycho can loose off some. That there is a disregard for their own safety was shown up at Chornobyl, and Zaporizhia. There are going to be bug-eyed Russian babies being born over the next few years. Every target would be upwind of Russia, so, well, that suuucks to be Russian. It's also upwind of China, so there would be a bit of a tiff over that, China has enough issues going on already. The Russian troops are not o the same stock as the great patriotic war; this is the Gen-Z group, who are not interested in taking risks that affect themselves, they want their western-style life back, and half of the troops are contracted as they were wanting to get paid for 2 years instead of being subsistence salary for 1 year as a conscript. they don't want to be there, and as much fun as it is apparently shooting civilians, there doesn't seem to be the same appetite for receiving incoming fire. Asking the conscripts and contracted troops to go into a fallout zone is probably going to get a lot 'o nyets. This is a group that may have forgotten about what happened ti the liquidators at Chernobyl, but they can google... TNWs are probably the fastest way for the Reds to lose the war, and they certainly guarantee the isolation of their country for the next century. This doesn't come close to the questionable decision to drop 2 x buckets on Japan in '45. There is a fairly large amount of literature on that subject, Alperovitz is worth the read, as is Henry Stimson's notes. (See refs below). It is interesting that one compelling justification was to stop Stalin without resorting to war with Stalin, and if so, we seem to come full circle.

2022 is an interesting year.




References:

Walker, J. Samuel, “Recent Literature on Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground,” Diplomatic History 29 (April 2005): 311–34Google Scholar
Bernstein, Barton J., “Introducing the Interpretive Problems of Japan’s 1945 Surrender: A Historiographical Essay on Recent Literature in the West,” in Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi (ed.), The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (Stanford, CA, 2007), 9–64
Kort, Michael, “The Historiography of Hiroshima: The Rise and Fall of Revisionism,” New England Journal of History 64 (Fall 2007): 31–48Google Scholar
Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York, 1965)
Takaki, Ronald, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb (Boston, 1995)
Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York, 1995)
Bird, Kai and Lifschultz, Lawrence, “The Legend of Hiroshima” in Bird, Kai and Lifschultz, Lawrence (eds.), Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Stony Creek, CT, 1998)
Alperovitz, Gar, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York, 1995)
Wainstock, Dennis D., The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, CT, 1996)
Nobile, Philip, “On the Steps of the Smithsonian: Hiroshima Denial in America’s Attic,” in Nobile, Philip (ed.), Judgment at the Smithsonian: The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York, 1995)
Minear, Richard H., “Atomic Holocaust, Nazi Holocaust: Some Reflections,” Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995): 347–65Google Scholar
Ferrell, Robert H. (ed.), Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1980), 53
Alperovitz, Gar, “Hiroshima: Historians Reassess,” Foreign Policy 99 (Summer 1995): 15–34Google Scholar
Bird, Kai, The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (New York, 1992), 250–52
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Skates, John Ray, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia, SC, 1994) 81
Ferrell, Robert H., Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia, MO, 1994)
Maddox, Robert James, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later (Columbia, MO, 1995)
Newman, Robert P., Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing, MI, 1995)
Allen, Thomas B. and Polmar, Norman, Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan – And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (New York, 1995)
Newman, Robert P., “Hiroshima and the Trashing of Henry Stimson,” New England Quarterly 71 (March 1998): 5–32Google Scholar
Drea, Edward J., MacArthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence, KS, 1992)
Giangreco, D. M., “Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945–1946: Planning and Policy Implications,” Journal of Military History 61 (July 1997): 521–82Google Scholar
Giangreco, D. M., Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–1947 (Annapolis, MD, 2009), xvii, 1–60
Stimson, Henry L. and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1947), 628
Hellegers, Dale M., We the Japanese People: World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution (Stanford, CA, 2001)
Chappell, John D., Before the Bomb: How America Approached the End of the Pacific War (Lexington, KY, 1997)
Alperovitz, Gar and Messer, Robert L., “Correspondence: Marshall, Truman, and the Decision to Drop the Bomb,” International Security 16 (Winter 1991/1992): 204–14Google Scholar
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Weintraub, Stanley, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945 (New York, 1995), 229
Norris, Robert S., Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, The Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, VT, 2002), 426
Bernstein, Barton J., “Reconsidering the ‘Atomic General’: Leslie R. Groves,” Journal of Military History 67 (July 2003): 883–920Google Scholar
Bernstein, Barton J., “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory,” Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995): 227–73Google Scholar
Walker, J. Samuel, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997)
Zeiler, Thomas W., Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II (Wilmington, DE, 2003)
Frank, Richard B., Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York, 1999)
Asada, Sadao, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender – A Reconsideration,” Pacific Historical Review 67 (November 1998): 477–512Google Scholar
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Miscamble, Wilson D., The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan (Cambridge, 2011)
Kort, Michael’s useful compilation of documents, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (New York, 2007)
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[peter we]

Originally Posted by jolihokistix

Well, I hope they don't put them all in a warehouse near Lviv.

what on earth makes people believe Russian claims about the targets they hit.

[Usertim]

Large oil depot on fire in Bryansk since 0124 this morning. Confirmed on Rus media who also say that "120th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense" may also be burning too.. RT.com

There are certainly 2 different and widely separated plumes of smoke.

Twitter

https://[email protected],53.2,14z

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2147.../data=!3m1!1e3

Maybe things do catch fire this often in Russia , we just never heard about it in the past

[fdr]

Originally Posted by Usertim

Large oil depot on fire in Bryansk since 0124 this morning. Confirmed on Rus media who also say that "120th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense" may also be burning too.. RT.com

There are certainly 2 different and widely separated plumes of smoke.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/s...574208/photo/1

https://[email protected],53.2,14z

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.2147.../data=!3m1!1e3

Maybe things do catch fire this often in Russia , we just never heard about it in the past

Russia seems to be quite unlucky right now with their OH&S and fire safety, almost an epidemic of fire safety breaches. I would complain to management if I was a resident. If this was a TB-2 attack, then, seriously some more Russian Generals are going to have free board and floggings at Lefortovo, and that's the best that they can expect. Seems the Putin oligarchs and their families have some health problems too, which is pretty distressing. latest report on Bryansk is 2 separate fires in terminals, one being the civil terminal and the other being a smaller military terminal. Boy, someone broke a mirror somewhere in the Kremlin. Still, like the Moskva, it is more likely that kleptocratic negligence is at play, as, heaven forbid, that the Ukrainians were able to ride a bicycle 100 miles with a BB gun to ruin the day at Tansneft. Oil Oligarchs seem to be as unlucky at present as Russian Generals and ships captains.

Russia has a real problem with their energy production, they had a shortage of storage before the 'Speshul Military Operashun". So demand increases the inventory, and the storage tanks seem to be suffering in sympathy and self imolating, Sad

https://www.energyintel.com/0000017f-6982-d580-a37f-f99bdebb0000 ]http://​​​​​​​https://www.energyintel.com/0000017f...f-f99bdebb0000

On troop losses

Assuming just losses from confirmed mechanized equipment losses, with the ORYX database to 16APR, the Russian losses are at least 17,700, and the Ukrainians had a minimum loss of 2330. This doesn't include the large additional losses from troops outside of the equipment, which would add a lot, Pick a number, but it isn't zero. Roughly, the Ukrainian reports of troop estimates seem surprisingly likely. As always, the civilians are bearing the brunt of the pain, so add a huge number of civilian casualties. The Ukrainian numbers of civilian losses seem to be greatly underreported.

On the current red forces in the East

as of about 30 minutes ago, there are a reported 76 BTGs under the red banner in the East. There are efforts to reconstitute a further 22 BTGs. Putting that in perspective, the losses by the Reds to date are around... more than 76 BTGs! That is pretty startling. In August 2021, Russia had a total force of ~170 BTGs... so doing the arithmetic, carry the one, add a bit take a bit, round down, etc.... the total commitment to the effort at present is as % of total forces across the Russian army as of August 2021, is.... about.... 68%. for the current numbers, and that is rising to a max of 81% of their force if they add the additional 22 kitchen sink BTGs.

It would appear that if Georgia is annoyed with Russia, Chechnya, or any other bit of Russia, then there is not much left in the larder at this time. Again putting the situation in perspective, Ukraine has removed from action around 24% of the Russian army force from the menu. That is consistent with the materiel losses, and the expected loss rate from the confirmed materiel losses. Ukraines losses are harder to determine, as a lot of their troops have not been combined armor, they have been in the field.

No wonder the guys are feeling a bit sensitive in their communications to home back in Russia. There are few militaries that have recovered as a fighting force with a loss of 25% of not the fielded forces, but of their total national army force at that time. The troop numbers of the Russians that were cited in the leadup to the 24 FEB seem to have been overstated dramatically, they don't add up to the forces that now exist. It isn't like Russia to tell a fib now is it?

What is the chance that the Russian army was a fraud on the Russian people committed by the kleptocracy? The total force is still substantial, but it isn't 800,000 boots on the ground, it isn't close to that. It is reckless and dangerous to underestimate your adversary, but the maths needs to be looked at closely by the intel groups of Ukraine and NATO, and to plan accordingly.

Hmmm

From THE RELATIONSHIP OF BATTLE DAMAGE TO UNIT COMBAT PERFORMANCE, Weinstein, L, 1986, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES [UNCLASSIFIED]



There are five elements the loss of which can "put a unit out of action:"
1. Loss of personnel;
2. Loss of equipment, combat and support, through destruction by the enemy or by maintenance failure;
3. Failure of supply--POL and ammunition;
4. Collapse of the command structure--death of commanders, loss of communications;
5. Loss of morale.

Sound familiar?

it continues...

The "operability" of a formation is a function of the interrelationship of these elements. Of the five the last would seem to be the most important. Only the morale factor d can explain the not uncommon pattern of heavily attrited units continuing to display good combat performance.

Where morale has been high, even very heavy losses will not put a formation out of action. On the other hand, failure of morale can lead to panic or resignation in which defeat can occur with little accompanying battle damage. That morale is composed of many complex elements and is affected by an equal range, from simple lack of sleep to the way battle damage is suffered.

Victory in battle is dependent upon the possession of two capabilities in greater degree than the enemy, namely, the ability to endure and the ability to injure. The former is primarily a function of morale and of the imponderables of leadership, training and fighting style and capacity. There are, to be sure, material factors like replacement flow, logistic supply, and medical services, but above all else is morale. If one's morale is superior to that of the enemy, it may not be necessary to injure him badly. He may collapse after small or moderate losses. There is no shortage of such cases in history. Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, in describing the 1973 Middle East War, has written, "The human element has always been important in war, and despite the technology available to both sides, the human element was undoubtedly the most significant feature in this war." The same comment could obviously be made about all the actions described in this paper. ... etc

Interesting reading

p6:
Military analysts have attempted to determine a specific casualty percentage which represents a military formation's limit of effectiveness. Commonly expressed casualty percentages are 25, 30, or 33-1/3 percent. Presumably the unit is then essentially wrecked. The point was made by one American writer:

"The large armored battles of 1943 [Russia] and 1973 [Arab-Israeli] were spent within 18 to 19 days. Tank elements were ground down to 40 percent of their [original] committed strength. Furthermore, combat exhaustion occurs in normal soldiers after 35 percent have become casualties and the combined impact of unexpected events, physical exhaustion, and loss of comrade support creates stress beyond endurance." 1 A Canadian military study states that if one-third of a fighting force become casualties, the unit will be wrecked psychologically, "if the experience is repeated." 2 The last clause represents a major qualification in contrast to the first quote. Yet there is clearly no agreement on the percentage. It is believed that the Soviets would expect a battalion to suffer 70 percent losses before being relieved.3

1 Colonel D. Gans, USA, "Fight Outnumbered and Win...Against What Odds," Military review (January 1981), p.2; 2. Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle, Kluwer Nijhoff, Boston, 1982.
3. Lt. Col. L. W. Grau, "MOUT and the Soviet Motorized Rifle Battalion," Infanta (Jan - Feb, 1985, Vol. 75, No. 1,), p. 27.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF BATTLE DAMAGE TO UNIT COMBAT PERFORMANCE


​​​​​​​

Interesting reading. It does find that there is no real discriminator between attack or defending forces as to when they lose effectiveness, but morale is the major determinant of when a force can withstand severe losses and continue to fight. That should not be a surprise to anyone who ever heard of Stalingrad or Mariupol. So Ukraine is fighting against an aggressor nation who has continuously attacked their country for 8 years, annexing much illegally, and causing death amongst their community and now causing widespread destruction, murder and genocide in the country. No wonder Putin is looking sick. Given the timely support in arms, and given the probable case that the force that will be in front of Ukraine in the next 10 days is already well aware of what they are facing, and of the bankruptcy of the ideal that the Russians are purporting to fight for, with luck, ISR and ammo, Russia may yet end up on the East side of the Kerch, within their own boundaries. If that comes to pass, then the insurgency in the Donbas region needs to be negotiated separately to determine in a fair referendum whether having been murdered and raped by Russia, whether they actually wish to be part of Russia in the pre 24FEB lines, or not. Having tasted what Russia's "care" brings, I'm not sure that the separatists will have the stomach for much of a reunion with Count Von Vlad's Soviet empire. Russia will be a long time recovering, Ukraine should not be. They deserve no less than that from us all. As far as NATO goes, a reiteration of non-aggression with Russia should be made, as they apparently think NATO is a belligerent force, not a defense force. Russia needs to cogitate its collective navel and determine if its behavior in Georgia, N-K, and Chechnya stands up to self-scrutiny. The people of Russia deserve better than the B-S that they have got for the last 800 years of corrupt governance... the rest of us could do well to consider the honor or lack of that which we have all had too with things such as imperialism, marginalization of minorities, land grabs etc... most of what has been done for the last 5,000 years doesn't say much for what we have all stood for.

​​​​​​​rant over.

[dead_pan]

Rumours circulating that some as yet unidentified computer virus (a la Stuxnet) is attacking Russian SCADA systems, prompting these mysterious fires. Maybe the Israelis are more involved than they're letting on?

[NutLoose]

The USA wants Russia's capabilities so diminished that they will never be able to carry out such an operation against Ukraine ever again.

Twitter