Russian arty is less accurate because the equipment is inferior, but also because their tactics are different. Russian doctrine is typically to spam artillery and people across the line willy-nilly and consolidate gains as this slowly causes enemy attrition. The Ukrainians don’t have enough ammo or people to do this. Russian artillery is often barely aimed, and it shows. Which is my long way of saying that I agree; those ratios are highly misleading.
Those repurposed anti-tank mines are shockingly effective; not a sandwich I’d want to eat. It’s good that the Ukrainians are able to use those old mines. There are vast stockpiles of those things from the Cold War.
Even though we have been kinda shit at it and in many ways doing it from a Machiavellian mindset, providing arms so that Ukraine doesn’t get overrun is the best thing the US has done in a long while. If we allow enough to permit Ukraine to win, it’ll be an insurance policy against 100,000 American deaths in Poland in 2030.
I am 100% certain many of the switches, routers, etc., made in China are backdoored and compromised by the Chinese. And we’re gonna find that out the hard way when Taiwan is attacked.
Ukrainian FPV drone takes down a Russian Mavic drone about to perform a drone drop.
WTF is that drone carrying? That’s not an explosive. Food? If so things are getting dire on the Russian side if they are ferrying rations with drones.
I believe these numbers are real as the Ukrainian loss assessments match independent ones consistently. And that’s insane for a single day (Or it might be five days? Context was not clear.) of fighting. The Russians are throwing away just vast amounts of everything, every day. Five days or one day — still just staggering losses for modern warfare.
When we go to war with China, expect the internet mostly to be broken for several years and for GPS to be largely unavailable. But at least we probably won’t starve (unless some nukes get used).
Warning: People die in this.
I just cannot get over Russian tactics. What was the fucking plan here? Pull an APC right up to well-defended trenchline and immediately leave the troops you drop off exposed by hauling ass as quickly as possible? Never fire the main gun at all? It’s not even pointed at the enemy. I know a lot of that old Russian crap doesn’t work at all, but Jesus Christ, a literal child could have come up with a better assault plan than that.
Against an established, defended trenchline, even if they’d sent 30 dudes they all would’ve still died. There was zero suppressive fire and no cover or concealment.
To Ian Welsh, this is winning. To anyone who’s not a pitiful putzy Putin bootlicker, this is fucking psychotic insanity.
I do realize there are various conflicts in Africa occurring. And it’s not that I don’t care about them or that they don’t matter, but the fact is that they are just less relevant to my future and the future of any areas I am likely to be present in or have anything to do with. And if that’s racism, so be it.
But what happens in Ukraine might directly affect me one day, if for no other reason that if we do not get that right my country might be fighting Russia in Poland in 2030. What happens in Sudan almost certainly will not have such a major effect.
War is terrible wherever it occurs. However, I am only one person; I can only pay attention to those conflicts that are likely to intersect my and my country’s future.
Trying to decide if I should go ahead and create separate categories for the Russo-Ukrainian War and the nearly-inevitable war with China, or I should just wait.
Think I’ll just wait and leave it as “War” for now.
‘Doing the least obvious thing’: Ukraine embarrasses Putin with surprise assault on southern Russia.
That has been a political and propaganda win for sure. I thought the Russians would beat this attack back much more quickly than they did. So the incursion (as the article says) has been deeply embarrassing for Russia and will increase Ukraine’s support. The longer they can stay in country, the better.
And as I already mentioned it’s causing the loony left (Ian Welsh et al.) to go fucking nuts. And that is beautiful to watch, too.
Indeed. Tight, coordinated combined-arms exercises is what the US military really fucking excels at. Ignoring prep time, the US military could completely spank the Russian forces in Ukraine in 6 weeks. It’d be an embarrassing slaughter. All the drones in the world would not change that. A passel of AGM-88 HARMs for a few weeks, a wing or two of A-10s, many more Bradleys and a healthy sprinkling of JDAMs dropped from F/A18s and F-22s and Russia would be routed just by air power alone. (Not that Bradleys are air power, but you get what I mean.)
To the extent that the Russian military looks good, it only seems that way in comparison to a country with 1/4 its population, 1/10 its GDP, nearly no close air support and a severe lack of ammo. The US would absolutely annihilate the Russians without much effort.
Good for them — though I still think the operation is strategically pointless from a military perspective. Politically, though, it’s been a rousing success. It shows that Putin is weak, Russia is overextended militarily, and that Ukraine can execute a meaningful op if they are not held back by absurd restrictions on their use of force against a brutal occupying enemy.
And not as important but still funny, it makes the Putinoids like Ian Welsh fucking apoplectic. That is a small reward, but a nice one nonetheless.
That’s probably accurate. It also matches the US and UK estimates. Note that “combat losses” include killed and injured enough to not return to combat. Probably 120-200K KIA. I’d put that on the high end, probably 200K or even more.
So much for that 30 day special military operation Ian Welsh insists Russia is handily winning!
Ukrainian HIMARS Strike on a large Russian convoy.
Don’t be deceived; those are all hits. The missiles that the HIMARS fires* have a very, very large shrapnel radius. It’s classified but it’s probably around 600M for likely significant damage. Those things seriously fuck shit up in other words. Here is the battle damage assessment. Note that there is no gore, but a lot dead Russian soldiers and/or mercs in the backs of those trucks.
By the way, that is an remarkable feat; those missiles cannot be guided in flight. They can only hit a spot provided by GPS in advance. That means the Ukrainians had to do all of these things very, very quickly:
1) Have recon and drone overwatch in place and ready.
2) Determine the convoy’s current location.
3) Determine its likely continued path.
4) Determine its likely forward speed.
5) Get the launch coordinates dialed in and confirmed.
6) Launch missiles at the spot the convoy would be in the future.
To do all that and hit a convoy in motion it had to have been done in about five minutes. In military terms, that is insanely fast.
*The HIMARS system can fire various munitions. Those were probably M30A2s.