Comments by "Mortablunt" (@Mortablunt) on "Task & Purpose"
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@Mike Hunt
@Mandrake92
Way to not understand the situation at all! The underlined reality was the American occupation government was ineffective, corrupt, and gave nobody anything to fight for. You should actually read the investigations into it as well as interviews with former Afghan soldiers.
A very common theme is abuse of the military, oftentimes soldiers didn’t get paid at all for a weeks or even months. The American backed regime also liked to play tribal and cultural favorites; although passions are just 40% of the Afghan population the represented almost all of the posts of any imports in the government, and they not only disenfranchised the other 60% of the people, they also abused them. Ministers used influence to enrich themselves and pull favors for their particular tribe while abusing the government to punish and oppress rivals. People we were counting on as civil servants to run the countries operated more like gang leaders.
The government failed to deliver on any kind of public good. Roads didn’t get worked, on water, didn’t get supplied electricity didn’t come, criminals didn’t get prosecuted, Schools didn’t get run, and so on. The two parts in particular about schools and law were most important. The Afghan official courts were extremely corrupt and also had all kinds of loopholes actually enforced by American occupation forces. The Taliban for all their faults actually provided a sort of education, some types of social services, and even brought some law and order to an otherwise a completely anarchic countryside.
Between the abuse, the disenfranchisement, and not getting paid for their work, there was a reason the Afghan occupation regime folded.
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Well, he completely misses the political aspect of the situation. This whole writeup is incredibly self-serving and spins like the rings of Saturn, so I’ll be succinct.
War is classically politics, by other means. Due to the strong varied resentments against the president of Syria at the start of the last decade, there was a strong coalition opposed to his rule. This included democracy advocates, who wanted more liberal government. This included Theo Kratts, who wanted a more religious government. This included social conservatives, who did not like him following European style modernization, and it also included Arabists, who dislike the fact that he of the ruling class were made of a non Muslim minority called the Alawi. Most of these groups have a little in common with each other, other than not liking the president.
At first, when hostilities began, they need to work together to prevent assured destruction by the central authority, and its military overcame many other concerns, but overtime as it seemed like the government forces were surely going to lose they had to start thinking about the realities of who is going to rule Syria next, and what the new Syria was going to look like, and how it would function. Just came at the same time as an opening power vacuum as much of the state was no longer under the control of the government.
So the groups started fighting each other, and the various ideologies started pushing for dominance. One of the very few things that united a plurality of groups was that they share the same religion, Sunni Islam. So the political Islam factions had a leg up on securing control, and the ones that became ISIS were ruthless in killing or subordinating absolutely all other Islamist factions.
Emergence of Isis politically was a response to a socialunrest, autocratic rule that opposed many values held by the Syrian people, and what they felt to be their culture. With the importance of religion in Syrian society, being led by a warrior clerk, massively helped Isis with receiving social and political legitimization from factions outside of government control. The sinful evil secular authority was gone, and in came a supposedly righteous religious authority that would rule with enlightenment. Supposedly.
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@ArchOfficial It's been a long time since I've been over the history in detail. I have old episodes of Tales of the Gun on VHS, and some more scholarly books on the shelf. The issues are more rounded and complicated than Mr. Stoner wanted the M16 but meanypants army wanted the M14 to stay and rigged everything against the M16.
You can go back to early AR15 models and XM16 models and you'll see the lack of chroming, lack of forward assist, the barrels being ultra light. The original AR15 design (as per the Armalite catalog prior to the military M16 moniker) was meant to be an ultra light and ultra accurate rifle. So extra weight was saved wherever possible -- from avoiding chrome, to shaving off the barrel profile, to eliminating parts related to reliability, and so on.
You sort of a had a 5 faction war going on with the M16 (I'll call that going forward unless refering to pre military commercial prototypes)
1. Eugene Stoner
2.General LeMay (Airforce)
3. Springfield Armory (& co)
4. M14 backers (Army)
5. Robert McNamara
And it can be 6 because some testers and generals were pro M16, heavily after the T44 debacle had put what they saw as an inferior product, the M14, into American hands, through trickery.
One thing to be clear was Springfield Armory was the army's semi in house source for everything bang. Much of the resistance came from the fact the M16 was from Armalite Corporation and not the national arsenal. There were also generals who staked singificant parts of their careers on the M14. Regardless of whether or not they beleived in it, the M14 was the home team product.
The anti M16 faction did do some rigging by setting requirements and also outright interference, such as the infamous arctic conditions test.
But, to be clear, the M16 originally trialed was an unchanged select fire build of the AR15, exactly as Stoner had made it. Upon Macnamara forcing its adoption, the generals proposed a long list of improvements to the AR15 for its transformation to the M16, all refused. The original XM16 and M16 pre a1 were disasters, even without the powder issue. The a1 incorporated over 100 suggested improvements and was a much better rifle for it. This included an assist, a thicker barrel, and chrome lining -- all features not included by Stoner and refused of implementation upon adoption.
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Zdravstvui iz Ameriki!
I will commentate a little on your fine comment.
1. I did not believe Russia wanted to take Kiev, the number of forces committed was much too small. What was accomplished, however, was to distracted 50% of Ukraine's military for 6 weeks with forcing them to protect the capital while the Azov coast (and the land route to Crimea) were captured, doubtlessly a strategic war aim. If nothing else, Russia needs the land link to Crimea. The work of the VDV with Hostomel and clearing out defenses was amazing. Supposedly Russians did go into Kiev to skirmish, but no serious assault was made, ie, no armored combined thrust into the city.
2. Russia has waged a campaign of strategic destruction on Ukraine's ability to make war going forward. Harkov was targeted because it is the industrial heart of Ukraine. Missile and bomb strikes to staging areas and supply dumps have occured nonstop. As seen by Ukraine's lack of effective counterattacks, even against the 40 mile convoy, it seems Ukraine's ability to make war is severely reduced, they have no ability to wage a meaningful strategic offensive.
3. I have lived in both countries, and I speak Russian though not Ukrainian, and both peoples are dear to me. I am very upset to see them at war. I want the Ko's and Ev's to share chai and buterbrodi, not obstrelbi and rakety. Ukraine has made prolific use of human shields, diagrams from the captured Azov Battalion headquarters in Mariupol even showed how to array human shields around a common Khruschevka apartment building. Videos I have seen on Telegram show noncombatants deliberately kept near weapons and positions. And there is no shortage of mainstream press images of military equipment located in courtyards, near schools, and so on. I also will not say Russian forces are being sinless. Russians fight war hard, and the tales coming from occupation zones are consistent with prior behavior. War crimes are most common with ill disciplined forces experiencing low morale, like say, poorly supplied young men who don't even want to be there and are upset at fighting people they see as brothers, who hate them and try to kill them.
4. Bucha happened, the Russian ration pack story is pathetic.
5. The most common AT threats are various form of RPG and ATM, single warhead HEAT. The cope cages work just fine against those. The ERA works just fine against those. In videos I see of attacks, mostly filmed by the Ukrainians, the Russian tanks are taking 3 or more hits to go down, and usually the crew manages to get to safety and then abandon the tank, IE, tanks are rarely being destroyed catastrophically with all hands aboard, meaning the tanks can be recovered, refitted, and the crews reused. I haven't seen any Javelin videos yet. I think this is deliberate; they are very valuable, so Ukraine doesn't want to risk their best operators, and their missile stocks, being hunted and killed by Russian Spetsnaz because they give their location away with a video upload.
6. Maps schmaps, it's all still very unstable at this stage. Off Voennaya Hronika's Telegram, it looks like Russia has a number of encirclements going on, ISW shows similarly. France24 is the one I like to use the most for arguing this stuff as people will leap on me for posting any Russian source. Even the BBC is showing that Russian territorial gains are significant in the Southeast.
7. My own point: Russia is deliberately using irregular, ie, Chechen and Donetsk troops to handle battles like Mariupol so they can save and ready their own regular infantry for the inevitable Ukrainian counteroffensive. Russia is saving bombs and shells for the same reason. The speed of advance is being traded for being cheaper in lives and weapons, because Ukraine can still muster an army of 200,000 which will come for the Russians sooner rather than later. Russia needs to be well prepared to defend, because it needs to prove that the taken territories won't be regained, so Ukraine will agree to peace terms.
8. My own point: I am reminded a lot of the Syrian Civil War coverage in western media. We were told every day how hopeless it was for Assad, how any day he was going to loose, how the brave Free Syrian Army was going to bring democracy, how many regime men were defecting, how FSA control kept expanding, until suddenly it turned out Assad was going to win after all. This doesn't mean one side is going to win, just that I really don't trust the western narrative that Russia is "losing" -- losing countries don't gain and consolidate ground. If things were truly as bad as our media likes to say, the whole front would have collapsed.
9. My own point: Ukraine failed for over 8 years to defeat civilian militias. I strongly doubt they can actually attack and win against the Russian regulars. They do very well hiding behind civilians and protected structures in cities, but they are not nearly so skilled at the offensive.
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@just-a-purple-ork
Go check Red Effect and Cone of Arc for clarification about the T14, the engine claim is like saying the US uses the Mauser 98 because it uses the Mauser action in the M40A rifle.
Anyway...
The gun is absolutely an important part, because it offers flexibility and cheap firepower against more numerous more delicate targets. Not everything needs a tandem shaped charged hollow penetrator missile -- men, cars, and APC's will go down just fine to the 30mm. That ability to not waste short supply priority munitions is very important when operating at scale for prolonged periods.
There are some truly huge tradeoffs for all possible substitutes for an A10/SU25 aircraft. For one, you get about 80 minutes of loiter with them, during which they can be on site to deliver precision support within seconds. Not the minutes it takes artillery to reckon out a shot and then get it over. These planes can carry more than helicopters or drones, that's important, it means they can stay combat effective longer.
Helicopters are a convincing alternative, but they still carry much less and are significantly more fragile than fixed wing aviation.
The big problem with the Bayraktar is it has a tiny payload. You get up to 300lbs across a max of 4 shots. Can't be beat for persistence, agreed.
For maximum firepower and basically unlimited endurance, nothing beats tanks, but then there's the problem with getting them there and the lack of perspective they have on the ground.
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The real problem is lack of realistic analysis driving design and doctrine.
For three major conflicts in a row, absolutely everything be looked at said infantry engagement distances are shorter then our theorists predicted, whoever shoots more usually wins, and having a handier weapon that fires faster is advantageous. In response to that we came up with the M14 which was somehow even heavier and less wieldy than the two rifles that went before it. And then we had to drop it rapidly when he got his teeth kicked in by the Kalashnikov.
Sometime in the 1980s we came to the conclusion all future wars would be fought in Europe using precision munitions, so we shrunk our artillery, putting everything on 155 mm systems with a tiny allotment for 105 mm systems for special applications. we also transitioned artillery to be a division level asset. The result was a little couple units did not come with a fire power as we are seeing Ukraine and 155 mm can’t fit all the niches it especially can’t compete with the mobility and rate of the 122 mm systems.
Around 10 years ago we came to the conclusion all future wars would be asymmetric affairs where we build an enormous advantages over lightly armed insurgencies. So we centered all training and doctrine around fighting from a place of superiority with guaranteed air control and minimal fear of enemy armored assets. Both our veterans who have been to Ukraine as well as Ukrainians who have been trained by us have said that the style in training they got for that sort of war is horribly inadequate for what they’re dealing with against Russia.
Very recently we came to the conclusion air support could make up for infantry fire power so we decided to instead switch to this heavier caliber automatic rifle style firearm meant for longer range engagements with precision shooting. This would be great for fighting long range Afghanistan style ambushes but it simply isn’t the reality in absolutely anywhere else we fought in the past century. I did the math on this and the fire power mismatch is so bad that a whole squad of Americans with the M5 could be 1.8x outmatched in firepower by a single fireteam of Russians with the AK74 even if the Russians didn’t have a machine gunner.
The lessons we need to pick up on to be ready for our most likely next big war are as follows:
1. Engagement ranges will be short; few opportunities for multi mile tank tails few opportunities for thousand yard marksmanship. Close range fighting where he shoots more wins.
2. Dumb weapons with a high manufacturing rate need to become a priority. As we have seen in every single conflict with having you so far that goes for any length of time armies that rely on smart weapons very rapidly run out of them and can’t build enough to make up for it.
3. We need to rewrite the doctrine to develop the ability to operate in contested airspaces. Both Ukraine and Russia particular Ukraine have shown that you can keep an air space dangerously contested for a very long time even against an overwhelmingly more powerful opponent. Our assumption about always being able to get air supports or medevac is completely ludicrous against any serious enemy.
4. Armor is important. There is absolutely no substitutes for the kind of immediate power having tanks on the ground gives.
5. We currently have no light drone doctrine and it is a gaping hole in our capabilities web.
6. Our kit is getting too heavy; repeatedly we see on the battlefield in Ukraine soldiers leaving heavier equipment behind simply because it slows them down too much. We need to figure out a more minimalist approach to equipping our soldiers.
7. Infantry taking on tanks with smart weapons is a fantasy. Even systems like the javelin only work about 15% of the time, and it requires roughly a full minute of enemy compliance with the operator exposed to enemy fire with line of sight. Our launchers are too heavy too complicated too fragile, and the results to vindicate our approach simply do not exist.
8. A reusable light man portable rocket system would be greatly appreciated. Range 600 yards, reloadable, takes a variety of munitions. Just keep the weight of the launcher under 12 pounds. Time after time in every conflict where they’re available especially for urban fighting, weapons like the RPG 7 are used as a kind of general purpose anti-son of a bitch machine for clearing structures, fortifications, thickets, and anywhere goes may hide. We need some thing like it that is actually light and compact enough to be carried easily by an infantryman.
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And overall a loss of trust in the idea of the West. The West hasn't done anything inspiring in our lifetimes. I'm 30. I missed the Cold War. All I've seen our governments do is bicker and sputter. Afghanistan was a necessary war run overlong into a defeat, Iraq was a crime that started a chain reaction of horror. The USA and the West haven't done anything inspiring since 1991. Shit about freedom and democracy turned out to be lies, it was about revenge and money in the end. We Millenials were sold hard on college, Zoomers got told about trades (yes we were told about them but they were treated as a kind of option for failures and idiots who couldn't get college if you read between the lines) and entrepreneurship, so they aren't going to trade their lives for degrees. I can't tell you what a 2,000,000 strong military stationed worldwide gets America. Not when we've got housing crises, people dying every 10 minutes from lack of basic health care, severe economic crunches, and decaying basic ammenities back home, none of which can be solved with big bombs. Who are we fighting? The Russians? We're too cowardly, we sent a poor regional power to be our rep and they're getting chewed. The Chinese? Same, just wait. What, is Mexico, Canada, or Trinidad going to attack us? The military is the biggest line item in the US discretionary budget. Imagine if that went into improving quality of life. Imagine if that went into a health insurance company and medical chain run as a GOC. Imagine if that went into infrastructure. Imagine if that went into drug treatment campaigns. Imagine if that went into social services. We'd make Norway look like Haiti!
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TL;DW: No.
The Wunderwaffen obsession is unhealthy and unrealistic. Saint Javelin turned out to be hype, Saint Bayraktar could only do so much, now it's Saint Seven's turn to be the subject of toasts and memes for about 5 weeks until it turns out to just be another weapon on the rack.
The M777 without the Excalibur shells AND the FCS doesn't do anything the resident 152mm systems don't do, it just does their jobs but better, and they weren't included in the packages, and the M777 requires all new training and all new logistics for its caliber. Guess what Russia has systematically made a point of destroying since its very opening act? Ukrainian logistics. Russia has made over 3400 strikes on supplies and transportation of Ukraine's military since the start.
Nothing is going to save Ukraine. Its gear was even older and in worse shape than Russia's. Its economy was 6% that of Russia's. The NATO trained troops are wiped out, the reservists are old and fat, they don't even have enough boots and rifles for everyone. Even higher up, Zaluzhny is a very bad general. He fails at basic war 101, like building up ample concentrations before attacks, he fails to seize initiative, he pins his hopes on fortresses where he puts men the Russians can kill at leisure, and so on.
A very frank assessment is this: Russia is gaining land even faster now than at the start, despite Ukraine being at full mobilization and getting so much help. Russia now controls 20% of Ukraine as a whole, 95% of Lugansk and 60% of Donbass. The land corridor to Crimea is established, several of the Natsbats have been so thoroughly devastated as to be dissolved, willing residents are becoming Russian citizens, and soon shall be able to do as they voted for years ago and formally join Russia. What will Ukraine do then? Invade sovereign Russian land and get a fully mobilized Russian response?
Our media and leadership are changing their rhetoric gradually from "Putin cannot be allowed to remain in power!" and "No Ukrainian land shall be surrendered!" to "We need to think of a negotiated settlement" and "Russia is achieving its goals."
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@N330AA Indeed. That explains the lack of commitment for it. Like it or not, about half of Ukrainian available forces had to be held back to defend the (meaningless to true Russian war aims) capital and Harkov, while taking heavy losses, while a great cauldron of Ukrainian forces were encircled around the border. As of weeks ago, the Azov coast was secured, a primary yet unspoken war aim bringing a land link to Crimea, incorporating Lugansk and Donetsk into Russia, and the mouth of the Dneipr River was captured, giving Russia an important strategic hold on the entirety of Ukraine, and a strong geographical defensive line. When you think of it that way, suddenly the plan makes a lot of sense.
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@Ramiel77 Which is weird, the longer this goes on, the more I think the Russians are more competent than they originally displayed. Whoever did the first week of operations should be shot for criminal negligence. However, with real military men in charge since then, the strategy has been reworked into something actually fairly brilliant. Position a significant force near the capital to force the Ukrainians to defend it, meanwhile, storm the Southeast, taking a land bridge to Crimea, and securing the Dneipr river. Advance slowly to spare men and use irregular forces, like Chechens and DNR militias, to preserve your main fighting strength while you dig in to secure the territory against counterattacks. The whole time, use missile and plane strikes to destroy enemy military stores and staging area, and go after their industrial capacity. With the enemy unable to move and rearm properly, encircle their now moribund forces to encircle, besiege, and destroy. Bring in reservists and policemen to do occupation duty to free up your fighters for further combat. It actually sounds quite genius now.
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I have no idea where you get that notion from. Russia has a population four times higher than Ukraine. You have to remember before this started about 6 million Ukrainians already lived in territory that did not answer to Kiev. And with the eruption into open war about another 10 million Ukrainians found themselves living in Russian control territory. And then about 7 million Ukrainians fled the country altogether. So when you factor those it’s a country with a population of 160,000,000 versus a country with a population of 20,000,000 so eight times the number of people.
You can look through the population pyramid if you want to determine how many Ukrainians could theoretically be put under arms and come out the number of approximately 3 million. Sounds like a lot but then we analyze losses. Some months ago the EU commission accidentally leaked at least 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed and in a different document leak revealed another 50,000 are completely unaccounted for so we can assume easily 500,000 Ukrainian total losses, or 1/6 of their theoretical maximum manpower reserve. They managed to lose that much in only nine months.
An analysis of Russian losses tallied by the BBC puts it at 14,000 killed, or less than 1/10 as many Ukrainians.
The populations are drastically different and the kill ratio is very lopsided, both overwhelmingly in the favor of Russia.
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It’s a very self-serving spin on it. The reality is descended from a surviving coalition of terror groups that fled Iraq and called themselves the Al Nusra Front. When the Syrian Civil War started, they formed part of the anti Assad coalition. America basically dropped guns by the barrel full on these guys indiscriminately given the narrative that they were moderate and pro-democracy voices that would save the region from tyranny and theocracy.
Well, with it, looking like the Syrian government was toast the Syrian rebel started fighting amongst themselves, and this front reemerged to take control of basically all the Islamist factions, representing a majority of the overall supposedly good guy rebels. And they did this with American guns and American money. There is a reason so many of them had things like US style camo uniforms, US issue helmet and American made M4 rifles. It’s unfair to say we created them. It’s more like we threw yeast on a mash wort, and then our did our best to keep cultivating it. Basically, for about three or four years, we were told of the people who were in the AN Front that became Isis that they were the good guys, and would definitely not do anything evil with the weapons we were giving them.
Something else very conveniently glossed over is, there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq until after America had invaded it, and turned it into a sectarian bloodbath.
Another thing about this has incredibly self-serving is it basically entirely ignores the role of the Russians in actually fighting the battles and leading the troops that defeated Isis.
The last self-serving thing is it ignores that the position of NATO troops are actually what protects the last bastions of ice is for me, wiped out by the Syrians and Russians. I also ignores about 30% of Syria is currently under American occupation more specifically basically the entire region that has the oil fields. And yes, we are stealing their oil while preventing them from finishing off Isis.
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@Elatenl The Soviets saved the Ukrainians from extermination.
There's no good evidence the Holodomor was a deliberate act against Ukraine. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine all suffered famine 1932-1933, one of many recurring famines like had plagued North Eurasia since even before Tsarist times.
Ukraine has benefitted immensely from Russian largesse. "Ukraine" exists because of Russian land grants. Russia also liberated Ukraine from the Germans, the Polish, the Lithuanians, and the Ottomans. The Russians were nice enough to let Ukraine have their own language, church, and traditions. Russia created Ukraine with a land grant in 1617, which has been expanded ever since. The last grants were giving Donbass to Ukraine in 1923, and Crimea to Ukraine in 1956, BOTH of which were extremely valuable RUSSIAN possessions. Russia also built Ukraine into the agricultural AND industrial heartland of the USSR.
And to pay them back, Ukraine inflicted 30 years and counting of genocide on the Russians after everything they'd done for them.
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Here is the Javelin manual. Yes, you can get a manual for pretty anything for free online.
https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-22-37.pdf
Just go down to the loooooooonnnnnnnnnng list of ways it can fail and the loooooooooonnnnnnnnnng list of concerns.
For those of you in a hurry, problems with the Javelin include:
* Have to assemble it at time of use, can't leave it running, it'll overheat the battery or drain it dead
* Have to run the whole startup sequence every time you begin using it
* Can't run the IR viewfinder, gotta already ID targets due to heat and power issues
* Have to be exposed to enemy fire to use the weapon
* Have to maintain a lock for several seconds
* Weapon is easily confused by: the sun, the ground, sunset and sunrise, snow, clouds, mist, anything slightly warm
* Weapon is delicate
So if you didn't read between the lines, you need to put the Javelin together and then boot it up when you want to use it, and then you have to expose yourself to enemy fire for about 45 seconds at least, hope it gets a lock, hope it chooses the right target, hope the missile is cooperate, hope the command module didn't brick itself or overheat or run out of power, and only then can you fire off.
It's pretty much useless against anyone who has tanks with thermal sighting, like, say, the Russians do.
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Russia honors border integrity with Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, North Korea, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, China, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It’s curious that it’s only countries that antagonize the Russian people or attack people the Russians are protecting as part of a set of accords have conflict with Russia.
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I genuinely don't believe the Ukrainians about casualties. If the Russians were down 60,000 or more troops, the whole front would collapse and Ukraine would be in control of the country. I also don't believe the Russian claims, either. The Pentagon estimates put it at around 4000 for Russia KIA and 3000 for Ukraine if my memory is correct. Yes the headlines claim a lot more, but the lower estimates strike me as more realistic . 21st century wars just generally don't have huge death tolls, at least for combatants, partly because it's about precision strikes on company size elements and smaller, and partly because modern medicine is amazing.
I do think the attack on the North was a kind of early Hail Mary pass, something really hoped for, but if it didn't happen, the operation wasn't hinging on it. The raw numbers needed to storm Kiev and Harkov were simply not deployed. 55% of all troops sent in went to the South, and they immediately began pumping in Rosgvardiya and FSB security services men to lock down the conquests to spare troops for more fighting. The end result was that Ukraine was unable to deal with Russia's attack while key gains were made, and now they have to face the unenviable task of attacking against prepared defenses in depth. Just to remind you, Russia's air force is able to operate with near impunity, and Russian tanks blast anything caught in the open. They seem to know their business quite well. Ukrainian offensives, with the exceptions of where the Russians let things go, all ground to halts with no territorial gains. The drones and ATGM's are useful and very effective, but they only can do piecemeal chip damage.
Russia has been wiping out Ukrainian military depots, training areas, fuel reserves, and so on. That was probably why they went after Harkov -- it's the industrial heart of Ukraine, and they are bombing every strategic target they can find.
I'm in a few military Telegram channels, and they show a few things over and over again. One is that Russia is strategically using picked forces for operations like their storm of Mariupol, this means they are intentionally saving their strength in their line infantry, and their offensive units, for big battles to come. Russia is also using far fewer bombs and shells than it could. In some Telegram channels, I've seen things from Ukrainians essentially coming out to "We have to hide all day, because if we stick our heads out, the Russians will get us." The Russian advances are being very careful, taking time to not get extended so they can't get cut off, minding their casualties, and making sure to always have heavy weapons and fire support, and ensuring to dig in to secure every taking.
One thing a lot of people don't get is that air dominance isn't something Russia nor Soviet model armies care about. They see the air as ground+, or essentially another dimension of a ground battle to be used for supporting the ground troops, not its own war to be won outright. The Russian and Ukrainian air forces live to fly strike and interdiction missions, not to battle for air supremacy. A huge reason Russians use so many trucks, tanks, and howitzers is because they do not have the operational assumption of air control.
I think Russia will win. It's going to be a slow and nasty war, but what isn't.
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From what I've seen from both Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels, Ukrainians are hopeless out in the field. Turns out ambushing barely armed trucks is much harder than overtaking a fighting position of entrenched machine guns with tank support. Those Russian tankers are good at their jobs, and that ERA stuff really works. There's no shortage of Telegram videos showing Ukrainians citing that the Russians always seem to see them whenever they peek their heads out and never let up with the heavy weapons. Russia has also spent the past whole war bombing and missiling away at Ukraine's military stores, production facilities, transportation networks, and staging areas. Whatever idiocy was responsible for the first 2 days, it's clear that at least after that the real military men were put in charge. My read could be very badly off, given Ukrainian captures of equipment, and seemingly keeping much of its regular force in reserve, but given their inability to "retake" the Kiev region until Russia literally just let them have it, and their failed offensives elsewhere, I am not confident in them. Maybe they have an epic counterattack brewing as they let Russia tire out, maybe they don't.
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Can’t handle the embarrassment of yet another superweapon failing to save the Nazis. Bradley, Patriot, Leopard, Javelin, Bayraktar, Stormshadow, HIMARS, NLAW, Iris, Airtronic, M16, F16, Maxpro, MRAP, M113…
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