Don't forget the real cost of soldiers lives per day of combat Shock and Awe: 2.4 (Iraq and Afghanistan combined) Dither and Wither: 384 Not like military age men are important to economic strength anyway right? They started with less than half our population as well. Looks sustainable.
War is mass murder. And to be candid, it’s pretty disgusting that you cheer your Putin on to continue with his mass murder. Or, of course, their fighting for their homeland and families… but, of course, loyalty, love and the innate need for freedom are concepts foreign to Putin worshippers.
It does seem that Ukraine penned all its hopes on Bakhmut. In recent weeks it had poured in a staggering number of troops, estimates range from 19-27 brigades. Now remnants of six brigades are left and the city is effectively encircled. The only way out is over open fields where they will be chewed up by artillery. Or will they fight to the last man to defend an ‘insignificant territory’ ?
The BBC, working in conjunction with the dissident group Meduza, was recently dismayed to learn that they could only confirm 12,200 Russians dead. That includes allies as well. Is that enough Russians killed to sate your appetite as the US prepares to lose its biggest proxy war ?
Both the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan were riddled with high-level military/political incompetence after the initial military actions were successfully concluded. Blunders on an epic scale. But because the military wrote the report, they glossed over some of their own mistakes. Iraq War: 1) GWB appointed a horse show manager to be in charge of managing the peace in Iraq. 2) Failed to warn or threaten Iran to discourage them from interfering and supporting insurgents. 3) Failed to mobilize Iraqi Army to guard the border with Iran. 4) Had 12 lightly-armed and inexperienced soldiers guard a 2-square mile weapons cache (do the math: each soldier would have to defend a half mile of the perimeter of the cache by himself). All they could do was watch insurgents drive off with truckloads of high-explosives (I think it was something like 200 tons) for future use as IED's. 5) Forced nationwide democracy on a country that wasn't ready for it, and had three religious groups that still had scores to settle with each other. Those three groups needed to be kept away from each other for at least 20-30 years for any chance at peace. It would have been much more successful to bring democracy in on a local level, while the U.S. continued to manage the national issues, and turn the country over to the Iraqis after 15-20 years, with the U.S. maintaining a few bases for another decade. Afghanistan: 1) Allowed flights of Taliban and Al Qaeda to escape to Pakistan as the U.S. prepared to invade, because there were a few Pakistani generals in Afghanistan that "needed to be evacuated". They could have tried to hide and then surrender to U.S. troops. We could have eliminated most of the Taliban leadership on the first day of the war. 2) The U.S. provided weapons and ammunition to Pakistan to supply their army in exchange for their (tepid) support in the fight against religious extremism. Some elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence community were funneling these weapons and ammunition to the Taliban. About 40% of the weapons caches that the U.S. found in Afghanistan were American weapons and ammo that was provided to Pakistan. 3) Failed to keep forward operating bases adequately supplied. These bases sometimes were short on things like water. That's embarrassing. 4) Allowed Taliban spies to work on U.S. forward operating bases in Afghanistan. When spies were caught red-handed, they would be sent to a rear base (for prosecution and imprisonment), where they would be set free (to keep the locals happy). The spies then went to work at other U.S. bases and continued spying. 5) Allowed high-ranking officers from the rear bases to take over troops at an F.O.B. and go on glory-seeking missions that risked lives and did not advance strategic objectives. The thing that both wars had in common is that the U.S. government was unbelievably stupid enough to provide the enemy with weapons and ammunition to attack us with. That lesson should be sledge-hammered into every president and every military officer from Day 1 on the job. The Iraq War (or, more accurately, the peace after the war) was largely lost on the day that the U.S. lost control of the largest weapons cache in Iraq.
There are a lot of valid examples there and I’m gonna give an overly simplistic response. But at a 50,000 foot level, I don’t look at that as necessarily military incompetence, but as a natural outgrowth of the light footprint Rumsfeld model, no Phase IV planning. These are issues that were not really planned for by policy makers, they were considered unnecessary, and some stopgap planning fell to the military without resources or preplanning. First, it shouldn’t really be a primary military mission to reconstitute civil society. The military should be only in a support function after the primary hostilities and the first objectives are accomplished. Second, you have to dedicate the resources. This seems to be an indictment of the Shinseki controversy.
You gotta stop getting sucked in, man. This thread is about Russia’s unprovoked, indefensible, and strategically inept (to this point) invasion of Ukraine. We can go down a thousand roads of what-aboutism, and next thing you know you’ll find yourself arguing about whether we were just in starting the War of 1812 and whether we can reasonably tack that one up as a win. But the bottom line is that Russia needs to lose, and we need to do whatever it takes, short of starting a general war, to make sure that happens. The consequences of Russian strategic victory are almost too terrible to contemplate.
Russia's indestructible Terminator vehicle, the BMP-T armored vehicle (looks like a smallish tank with a small pair of main guns) that can take on three opponents at a time, gets whacked. Ukraine claims its first kill of Russia's 'Terminator' armored vehicle, believed to be one of Putin's most advanced weapon systems A serviceman washes a BMPT Terminator armored fighting vehicle designed to support tanks as part of preparations for the Victory Day military parade, in Moscow, April 23, 2019.Anton Novoderezhkin\TASS via Getty Images
Ukraine expects the next major Russian offensive to start within 10 days, around the one-year mark of the initial invasion. Russia prepares thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles and hundreds of fighter jets for offensive I hope those Leopards get there quick. Although it will probably be a couple months before we see them on the battlefield.
About those fur coats. Apparently, Russia suddenly became aware of the insensitivity of handing out fur coats to war widows, and decided to rectify the situation. So they took back the fur coats, saying it was all a misunderstanding. Wait until Russia realizes how insensitive it was to TAKE BACK the fur coats and leave the widows with nothing. Next time we re-build the Russian economy, I think it may need to come with some basic sensitivity training. These barbarians seem to be lacking it severely. My take: Putin says to assistant, "I said give the widows four cots, not fur coats! FIX IT NOW!!!" Widows of Russian soldiers were filmed being gifted fur coats – but weren't allowed to keep them, an anti-war group says No word on whether the women were clubbed over the head during the fur coat recovery operation.
The next six weeks will be revealing. As already posted here and projected by many military pundits, is that a major Russian offensive is either already being initiated or will be shortly. Of interest will it just be more Russian incompetence or have they learned the hard lessons yet? Is Ukraine prepared for such a massive attack. My assumption is NATO military intelligence has allowed Ukraine to position its reserves at critical points on the front up until now. Has Ukraine mobilized enough strength to plug the line or counterattack breakthrough points. Do they have enough hardware to withstand the coming storm? I wish NATO had relented a bit earlier, I am concerned some of these weapon systems will not be in place with trained operators until later in the spring. Can Ukraine hold until then? Questions, always questions..........
Russia has lost about half its operational tanks in the war with Ukraine. Russia may have lost up to half of its operational tank fleet in Ukraine, monitoring group says | CNN
Assuming that is mostly true, the biggest operational impact to Russia would be to reduce its ability to exploit any breakthroughs during this offensive. In theory (though, not yet in practice), Russian advantages are in its massive artillery and overwhelming numbers of infantry, not necessarily its armor. But without the ability to effect a breakthrough, you only have two choices: either you blast a hole in the enemy’s lines that they can rapidly fill, or take a deliberate approach to attack the whole line at once, which is slow and manpower intensive.
How America took out the Nord Stream Pipeline : Peoples Dispatch Reporting by Seymour Hirsh that he US was behind taking out the nordstream pipelines. Fascinating read.
