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Another thing I have noticed about some of the footage is just how "inaccurate" some of the cruise and ballistic missiles are. In some instances, missing their target by half a block. I wonder IF we might be screwing with their GLASNOSK/GPS system... |
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Norway is sending 2,000 anti-tank missles to Ukraine, while the U.S. is sending "hundreds" of stinger missles, and Ukraine is taking possesion of more Turkish drones capable of making airstrikes.
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Not sure, what will come of this.:wtf: |
Is there a GoFundMe or something like that for the troops in the Ukraine?
See, I feel a little guilty. I ordered three T-Shirts from an outfit in Kyiv (ClothingMonster.com -- their shirts are great) about two weeks ago. Given what's going on there, I didn't think I'd ever get them, and I was fine with that. But last night I got a package with the three shirts in the mail. And I'm thinking -- three quality shirts and international shipping -- that could have paid for a box of ammo. Any the Ukrainians are critically short on everything. So I wonder, is there somewhere reputable where I can give to the cause? |
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...cid=uxbndlbing
Sweden and Finland are seriously considering NATO membership, and NATO seems to be receptive. Putin has already warned Finland about joining NATO. Is Finland Putin's next target? I don't think he has the troops or equipment to keep Ukraine nailed down and attack Finland, but I wouldn't put it past Putin to call for mass conscription and start pulling crappy old equipment out of storage. |
It sure hasn't gone well for them in the past, and I don't see the advanced technology and high morale that Finland has now making that any easier.
Worth noting that there have been huge overhauls to the structure and doctrine of the Russian military over the past 10-15 years. It's quite possible we're seeing a lot of friction from that, of an army or just its officers who maybe haven't quite grasped the changes. In particular, there was a disastrous attempt to privatize many of the Army's logistics services, which was aborted only a few years ago. I would not be surprised if lingering fallout from that, or organizational self-sabotage from within by invested parties, was behind a lot of the problems the Russians have had with fuel and maintenance particularly. |
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And maybe they're just experimenting with how effective some of these weapons can be under circumstances, but it's documented that the Russians don't believe GPS/GLONASS will be available in the event of a war anyway, so much of their approach has been designed around simply not relying on it at all. A ballistic missile doesn't need it, anyway. |
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Putin's Intentions Revealed [Accidentally by Belarus]
Well, I wonder if the President of Belarus who showed that Top Secret map with all the planned Russian moves... INCLUDING THE INVASION OF MOLDOVA, is still on Putin's Christmas list?
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Putin's Going "Old School" Again...
All of the news outlets are wondering what Putin is going to do with Kiyv. He is going to do EXACTLY what he did to Grozny in the Second Chechen War and Aleppo in Syria! Surround the city and shell it into oblivion with artillery. You can see the movements occurring right now on the conflict map. The media are claiming that "Putin suddenly went crazy," but this is a cold, calculated move. Not an act of passion. As Jen Psaki pointed out, the last time Putin invaded Ukraine (the Crimea) Biden was Vice President and oil was over $100 a barrel. Is it a coincidence that Russia gets aggressive when oil prices soar? I don't think that's a coincidence.
It also appears that casualties on both sides are actually lighter than was earlier claimed. I STILL remember Ukraine's representative at the UN saying "HUNDREDS of our tanks have been destroyed..." when it appears that the total is around 200. A far cry from nearly a thousand claimed earlier. Although I do wonder how many of those were replaced by abandoned or stolen Russian equipment? |
I mostly don't think it's a coincidence that Putin took a break from aggressive moves during Trump's term... the getting was too good at too low a price, don't rock the boat.
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In addition, Biden just projects weakness. Trump did not. In fact, Putin would have tip-toed around Trump knowing that pushing Trump's ego could result in a war. Just look at Kim in NK for an example of this. The rhetoric began to spiral UNTIL... Beijing summoned Kim to China and most likely threatened to withdraw their support IF he started a war with the US... since that would have sabotaged China's 10 to 15 year plan to match the US military in the Pacific. |
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By my reckoning, Biden has increased our national security by strengthening ties with NATO. |
Keep it APolitical
It can be hard not to weigh in here re US politics vis-a-vis recent developments in Ukraine but, in keeping with our forum guidelines, let's all try to keep this discussion apolitical.
Discussion of military matters pertaining to Ukraine, and/or Putin's villainy are totally in bounds, but arguments about which former and/or current US president is more to blame for this state of affairs is a can of worms we really don't need to open. Thanks for being cool, everyone. The Mod Team - |
Roger that. I'll just say I don't think it's coincidental in terms of timing, but also in how it mostly seems to be going, especially with regards to how unified the West now is in response. Putin may have expected differently in terms of comparison with, say, Obama and Merkel, but if that's what he was counting on then it seems like a significant miscalculation at best.
Meanwhile, the situation for your typical Russian citizen is getting very bad, though. Reports from the ground there about the repressive measures sound like they're getting pretty terrible. I have some friends there as well as some who are currently abroad and can't access their money, don't really want to go home but aren't sure if they might be expelled, and soon may not even be able to fly (at least within/over/to-from the US, presumably other countries as well). There is always collateral damage in war but this economic aspect is much more far-reaching than at any time in the past. I can only hope that (a) the economic pressure keeps working but (b) we don't end up in a new red scare. |
Cheaper Alternatives
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I posted the article in the Out of Mothballs thread, but Warzone (the Drive) reported that Russia might plan to use its fleet of AN-2 biplane transports as unmanned drones to trick the Ukrainians into revealing their air defense positions*. I suppose this gambit could also include provoking the Ukrainians into scrambling some of their last available fighter aircraft. Perhaps this tactic will obviate the need for AWACS. *On a historical note, the Israelis Pioneered (pun intended) this tactic quite successfully against Syrian SAM sites in the Beqaa Valley during their 1982 invasion of Lebanon. - |
With regards to the apparent performance of Russia's military in this invasion I think some points get glossed over too readily.
So an army that doesn't have a strong cultural of logistics, equipment maintenance, or even accurate accounting is going to be clown shoes against a peer force. It really looks like they've only made the progress they have through superior numbers and even then that's been limited by logistics and maintenance. I don't think there's some grand strategy of throwing conscripts out as the top of the spear or something. I think it's more their army inherited the worst of the Soviet system. Everyone from the NCOs up through the general staff have been fudging readiness numbers for decades. Blowing up irregular forces in Syria and war criming through Chechnya and Georgia has given the general staff a serious overestimate of their abilities. |
There are reports of senior Russian military commanders being KIA in Ukraine as they moved closer to the frontlines in order break the logjam and get their ground troops moving.
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I was listening to GEN (Ret) Wesley Clark, a former commander of NATO, on CNN the other day. (Yes, I know what some of you think of CNN; let's not go into that right now.) He said that while the troops and equipment are enough to make a wreck of Ukraine right now, to properly subjugate Ukraine, Russia would need on the order of 800,000 troops with attendant armor and vehicle to move the supply chain, and enough aircraft to gain air superiority over Ukraine.
The Russians don't have this right now. Mass conscription would be necessary, and the first task of the new troops would be to get currently POS vehicles running. While training for combat. However, the invasion of Ukraine is going badly for the Russians. Even Russian commanders (secretly) acknowledge that they are overwhelmed at how badly the campaign is going. The war is also very unpopular in Russia herself, and conscription is going to go over like a lead balloon. You'll need loyal troops to provide armed guards over the conscripts to make sure they don't desert, and in general start a reign of terror over the conscripts. You're also going to have a situation like in the 1960s-70s in the US, where conscripts "burn their draft cards" and generally don't show up when they are conscripted. They'll join the antiwar effort instead. Where they will be arrested, and then conscripted. There will be press gangs roaming Russia. It's going to be a mess. |
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How might the war end? Five scenarios (from the BBC)
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As I've stated in other threads, your information on this is out of date.
There is still conscription, but it is now on a one year term (although many conscripts enter with at least some training in militarily useful experience already, due to "patriotic training" that has no real Western equivalent). Since 2016, conscripts have the option to instead sign on immediately to a two (maybe three?) year volunteer contract, which offers better pay and preferential treatment. At least on paper, most of these conscripts serve in support roles, while combat roles are comprised primarily of voluntary contract soldiers. In any case, conscripts make up only about a third of manpower. However, the inequalities in pay, status, and authority between contract and conscript soldiers has been a noted point of friction and low morale even within any given unit, and it's likely we're seeing that here. (A specific case: Conscripts are not legally allowed to serve outside of Russia. In this particular case, many conscripts had their status nonvoluntarily changed to contract prior to the invasion in order to get around this law -- certainly this is probably another sore point for morale.) |
Blinken has green-lit the transfer of Polish fighters to Ukraine, which suggests we have reassured them of back-stopping thier loss. This does not mean any such transfer is iminent, but surely closer than it was a week ago on initial reports.
An unknown number of foriegn volunteers have entered Ukraine, which has lifted visa requirements. Ukraine suggests volunteers have fatigues and cold-weather gear. Putin is reported to be deploying 1,000 mercenaries to Ukraine, but those reports are unconfirmed. Big questions. Would Putin leverage captured foriegn fighters from NATO member nations to expand the war? Will NATO allow Ukrainian fighter jets to rearm amd refuel at bases outside Ukraine? Both scenarios seem unlikely right now, but things may be much more desperate by next week. |
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As an aside, Russia has already stated that foreign fighters in Ukraine would be treated as criminals and not afforded protections due to combatants, so these folks better plan on taking that into account. |
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What I'm wondering right now is what impact the refugee crisis (1.5m and counting) is going to have on EU/NATO calculus, both short and long term. Could a continuing flood of Ukrainian DPs force NATO to intervene militarily? It's unlikely, but what could happen if refugee support systems start to buckle? In the long term, if/when Russia conquers Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian refugees residing in multiple countries right next door could help sustain a very lengthy insurgency. This could cause all sorts of political and diplomatic issues between Russia and the host countries which could, again, lead to an expansion of the war. - |
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Desperate Times...
Video circulating online today shows civilian vehicles- buses, cargo and tanker trucks, even sedans- spray-painted with Z recognition markings on Russian flatbed train cars in transit to Ukraine.
Several years ago, in the In Defense of the Red Army thread, someone pointed out that one of the Cold War Soviet army's most significant but little publicized weaknesses was its relative paucity of transport vehicles. Apparently, the post-1945 Soviet military-industrial complex learned nothing from the important role that Lend-Lease materiel played in defeating the German ground forces during WW2, and the Russian military has since inherited that gap in logistical thinking. - |
Using the typical off-the-shelf Quadcopter as an armed drone. One has to wonder how many of these the Ukrainians have now?
https://youtu.be/Q3KkEMxA4EQ By the way, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Funker Tactical 530. Swag |
An Objective Evaluation Of Russian Logistics
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So Nice, I Had to Post it Twice
The Russians are bringing back the armored train.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ion-of-ukraine Speaking of recommendations, you may have noticed that I post a lot of articles from Warzone on The Drive. It's pretty much my go-to for contemporary military-related news. If you haven't already, check it out. - |
Russian strategic culture - Why Russia does things the way it does?
Presentation by Martti J. Kari, a retired intelligence colonel of the Finnish Defense Forces (03DEC18). The presentation is in Finnish, but there is English caption in the video. I recommend this to everyone who wants to see the broader cultural background of the Russian way of doing things. Col (ret) Kari has a deep understanding of the Russian way. |
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Maybe such a thing could be organized the easiest way by contacting such a firm and asking them about "care packages"? I don't know, never thought about this kind of stuff. |
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I absolutely agree on the idea of the Russian army - today and historically - sucking as an army of occupation. It's a vastly different job and Ukraine is a country of over 40 million people, nearly all of them, as of now, hostile to Russia. However, comparing Russia's expenditures on the armed forces with that of Western nations is a folly. Yes, their spending was only USD 43.2 billion in 2020, down from USD 46.4 billion in 2019. However, Russia buys most of it's equipment internally and has comparatively very low costs for personnel. Also, in Ruble, the spending actually rose from 3 trillion to 3.09 trillion between 2019 and 2020, and then to 3.2 trillion in 2021. This means, Russia can do much more with its funds than e. g. Germany, which spent the comparable sum of €46.93 billion in 2021. All in all, however, the allies of NATO outspend Russia by far, of course. This doesn't mean, though, Russia cannot create a bit of a mixed pickle on NATO's Eastern flank for some time. |
Plot Twist!
Poland looks to be exchanging its MiG-29s with the US, for American-built replacement fighters. This opens the door for the US to transfer said ex-Polish MiGs to Ukraine.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ead-to-ukraine It's a bit of a pass-the-buck move by Poland, but given their geo-political and military position in Europe, I can respect it. Is this a red line for Putin? We shall see. - |
Farmers Having a "Field [Artillery] Day"
This is just so Twilight2000 I just had to show it. When the conscript Russians run out of fuel, they simply abandon their AFVs and just run off. Only in Twilight2000 would I have imagined seeing things like this...
https://youtu.be/KOo3U32-J_g Swag. |
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