We will weaken Russia by sowing unrest any year now. But before that time, don’t be surprised to see more Brits moving to Russia for its freedoms …
Awww, I'm really sorry, I thought this was a message board about hot world topics I could have some fun in. Didn't realize there was a 5 war cover charge to be allowed to speak about current events without a military representative to structure my assertions properly for battlefield use. I was born during a war my country was involved in and probably will die in one it is involved, does that count? By the way, have you ever met the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet Marines at a lecture he gave? You ever met a Russian at solider at all? How about a Ukrainian? Ever meet one? Had dinner, discussed the war and how they felt about it? Been on German military base where you were an honored guest? Been in the CIC of a Ticonderoga class cruiser? Walked the E-ring of the Pentagon and met officers of all branches with your brother in law, who worked in the US Army Operations Center? Toured USSOCOM at MacDill? or a thousand other things I have been privileged to do concerning military matters? So I know it might be really hard for you to understand this but, I am really doing fine on my own. If you want we can sit and discuss the merits of the elastic defense Russia put into place in October 2023 in southern Ukraine (thought to be new, but really used at Kursk in 1943) but if the offensive had begun in early 2023 and been properly supported by Ukraine's allies with the promised equipment we were late in delivering - they would have primarily faced positional defenses forces utilizing pre-registered artillery kill zones, obstacles and aircraft. With use of proper doctrine on the part of the UAF this could have been overcome by focus on counterbattery radar, mobile artillery counterbattery fire, and rapid advances through those kill zones by armored vehicles like Bradleys and Leopards they actually used later, led by mine clearing vehicles and utilizing smokescreens and firing back through IR sights at recon assets, utilizing EW, and judicious use of decoys, feints, etc. to keep the eyes and weapons busy elsewhere during the advances. This however would have depended on us actually delivering the equipment before the Russian doctrine changed towards an elastic defense in which they would defend an initial defensive line, fall back to the second, and then counterattack once the UAF forces were disorganized and attrited by artillery, drones, minefields, IEDs etc. which is basically trading space for time. The same tactics were attempted after the Russians built more fortifications and changed over to an elastic defense in late 2023 and the advances were stopped by the inability of the Ukrainians to counter this doctrine due to not identifying minefields, secondary positions, recon assets etc. and suppressing them with artillery fire while the attack moved through the first line of defenses and associated kill zones and into the secondary positions. I believe they could have achieved the coast of the Sea of Azov in early 2023 had they been properly supported in a timely fashion - especially after the successful maneuver warfare the UAF conducted in Eastern Ukraine in late 2022. It was their last best chance to avoid positional, attrition warfare that they now find themselves in. Of course they advanced into Russia in Kursk, so possibly they have developed better doctrine than in late 2023 in Southern Ukraine. Also, the math for the GLSDB range would have worked from the coastline to the Kerch bridge in early 2024 to attack what would have been the last supply line into Crimea. It still works now for ATACMS, but as we've placed restrictions on these weapons and, as the land bridge is still open, it doesn't make sense, but you won't read this far anyway. Imagine you stopped after the first sentence, which is fine. Maybe I'll get a better discussion out of the rest of the folks being stomped on by the "military experts".
Colonel Douglas Macglregor thinks 1.2 million Ukrainians are dead compared to 90,000 to 100,000 Russians
Good read. Thank you. Do ATACMS have enough punch to take out a concrete bridge? Do they have 3 - 5m accuracy required to hit a bridge? It seems that Biden and boy Sullivan may have killed as many Ukrainians as Putin with his go slow policy Have you noticed a significant decrease in strikes of HVTs since dt took office? As in someone cut targeting info or limited them?
That’s still not enough dead Ukrainians to sate the voracious appetites of the chickenhawks among us.
Well, compared to Trump's go backwards policy, I would argue that Biden saved a lot of Ukrainian lives. But I do agree, that if Biden were to go all-in on the aid to Ukraine (cranking up artillery shell production, etc.), Ukraine might have won by now. Biden took a very slow, incremental approach.
Obviously, someone’s gotten to Trump and briefed him on how the war is really going. Three weeks ago he was painting a picture of a bloody stalemate in which Ukraine had suffered massive losses and Russia even more. Trump gave Europe three weeks to sign off on Ukraine "surrender": MEP
Sounds like Putin got to him and sold him on some Russian propaganda, and told him "things" would be less embarrassing for him if he went along with it.
An ATACMS with a unitary M57 500lb warhead has a CEP of 10m or so. It could target and hit and damage the bridge roadbeds or rails, possibly collapsing spans. However its accuracy can be affected by GPS jammers. Although it does have a backup inertial navigation system (INS), it accumulates drift errors over time, making it less accurate the further it goes if the primary GPS system is jammed. I would imagine however this would be in the terminal phase of the flight (Mach 3+ or 1km/s) when it would come into GPS jamming range at the target, so not sure how much time it would have to be affected on a ballistic trajectory, maybe 10-20 seconds? So as always, a proper fire plan is important. Not sure about the decrease in HVT strikes since Trump took office, I think it is possible for a number of reasons - conserving valuable munitions that might not be replenished, Elon screwing with StarLink etc. We will have to see.
Here’s Trump who has weathered every scandal, including out-and-out sex crimes … but Putin has that scandal Ina box that’s going to finish him. Kubler-Ross had you in mind when she wrote her book.
BTW, whatever happened to the 150 flying tin cans, AKA: ATACMS we gave Ukraine ? Did they go the way of all those Abrams ?
In early February 2022 Biden said he knew when Russia would invade. He said it would be on February 16. That just happened to be the exact day Ukraine started their artillery shelling of Russian-speakers. Ukraine fired a greater number of artillery rounds each day and finally Russia invaded on February 24. Seems like the US and Ukraine wanted to goad Russia to invade and use the invasion as the excuse to deploy sanctions they thought would devastate Russia and cause Putin to leave office. The people calling the shots at the highest levels of our gov't were just using Ukrainians as a tool to hurt Russia. Pretty reprehensible
I'm not completely sure why so many liberals hate Russia with such a passion: Is it because Russia was communist for so many years or is it because Russia is no longer communist? Were their opinions assigned to them by Deep State psy-ops?
I think he just thinks Ukraine is a bad investment. He wants to cut losses now while salvaging as much of its value as possible. People ask why he's giving everything away to Russia even before starting the negotiation, and there's a very simple explanation for it: He's not negotiating with Russia. All he wants from Russia is to allow him to salvage some value from a bad investment, and Russia is all too happy to do so. He is, in fact, negotiating with Ukraine and Europe, and the way he's going about it is exactly as he outlined in his book. He's setting the price very high, asking a lot, and then negotiate down from there. He made an impossibly demanding offer to Ukraine, and is refusing to even talk to them directly. He's trying to make them come to him groveling, begging for a more merciful deal.
U.S. and Ukraine Appear to Move Closer to Deal for Minerals Amid Leaders’ Public Feud Ukraine Promises Swift Deal for Minerals as Trump Cuts Kyiv Out of Peace Talks From the article: Mr. Trump boasted at the White House that he was nearing a deal that could bring up to $500 billion to the United States. “So we’re signing an agreement, hopefully in the next fairly short period of time,” he said. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine likewise said his country was working on a draft agreement between the two governments, seemingly tamping down the tensions that had flared with Mr. Trump over a deal. “This agreement can add value to our relations — what matters most is getting the details right to ensure it truly works,” Mr. Zelensky said in a social media post on Friday.
Trump's securing (promises for) $500 billion is nothing. It's a joke. I could have, if I were in charge, won over $2.5 trillion for the U.S. Start by ramping up artillery shell production in the U.S. by any and all means possible, and by sending more 40-year-old equipment like Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine at 30+ tanks per quarter and whatever Bradleys we can spare, plus any other 1980's era hardware we can send them. Get serious with our military aid to Ukraine, and dig Putin's grave. Ukraine would win the war within 12-18 months, with Russia's economy collapsing during that time frame. The cost of that would be a couple hundred billion dollars, but the net savings to the U.S. for the decade after Ukraine won the war would be closer to $3 trillion. The U.S. would save that much money in defense spending over the next decade, just like we did in the 1990's after Russia's economy collapsed. You're welcome.
