How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[barbos]

Fire caused by missiles fired by Ukraine. Duh.

Nope!

Repeating false claims doesn't make them true. You've spouted this nonsense about Ukrainian KIA being in hundreds

You honesty believe that these numbers are not true and it is actually Russia losing people while Ukraine is losing 10 times less?
Are you fucking insane? Even your lying propaganda admits that russia has ~10 times advantage in artillery and yet this advantage somehow reversed in the casualty numbers?

OK. great, then why all this talks (even Elkensky) about artillery shells shortage in Ukraine ? You're doing great, Russian army lost millions and millions people, you're winning. These damn russian idiots can't do anything. Everything is going great.

 

[barbos]

And a paid shill of Kremlin.

That's your go to answer to everything.

In case of Alexander Christoforou, it's absolutely justified.

Can I prove that he's paid by Moscow? No, but it's very likely. His organization, the Duran, is just one of many disinformation outlets that Russia has all over the world. They take Russiaan propaganda and package it to local and more broadly english-speaking languages.

So you can't prove it. Hersh is paid by Moscow? Mearseheimer? McGregor?
Can you prove that anyone who does not agree with ridiculous garbage corrupt western media is spewing is paid by Moscow?
Anyone?
All of that while we know for a fact that all that pro-"democracy" opposition media is paid by State Department and affiliated organizations.
That's just a fact, they admit it.

Even if he was paid by Russia, so fucking what? Do you have anything which disproves his observations?

 

[SLD]

Barbos, you’re back! How was your trip to the front lines? How goes your war? Still haven’t defeated them have you? Still haven’t captured Bakhmut even, hundreds of kilometers from Kiev.

when do you attack Estonia?

 

[Elixir]

Barbos, you’re back! How was your trip to the front lines? How goes your war? Still haven’t defeated them have you? Still haven’t captured Bakhmut even, hundreds of kilometers from Kiev.

when do you attack Estonia?

Moldova is less fearsome. And Pootey can get Al Lukashenko to help him out. He obviously can’t do much on his own, getting his ass kicked by a Country a tenth the size of his nation in shambles.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Barbos, you’re back! How was your trip to the front lines? How goes your war? Still haven’t defeated them have you? Still haven’t captured Bakhmut even, hundreds of kilometers from Kiev.

when do you attack Estonia?

I meant to like your post, accidentally liked barbs post first! I doubt that Barbs would be so pro war and death if he had to serve in the military. I think all the old people pushing war should go to the front.

 

[SLD]

Barbos, you’re back! How was your trip to the front lines? How goes your war? Still haven’t defeated them have you? Still haven’t captured Bakhmut even, hundreds of kilometers from Kiev.

when do you attack Estonia?

I meant to like your post, accidentally liked barbs post first! I doubt that Barbs would be so pro war and death if he had to serve in the military. I think all the old people pushing war should go to the front.

I was almost 50 when I first experienced combat.

 

[TomC]

I was almost 50 when I first experienced combat.

Sorry.

Black Friday sales at Wal-Mart don't quite qualify as combat.
Tom

 

[Copernicus]

Barbos, you’re back! How was your trip to the front lines? How goes your war? Still haven’t defeated them have you? Still haven’t captured Bakhmut even, hundreds of kilometers from Kiev.

when do you attack Estonia?

I meant to like your post, accidentally liked barbs post first! I doubt that Barbs would be so pro war and death if he had to serve in the military. I think all the old people pushing war should go to the front.

Barbos served honorably in the Red Army before the fall of the Soviet Union according to one of this posts in this very long thread. That's how he got to know some Ukrainian soldiers and was very impressed with their loyalty to the Soviet cause. I'm guessing that barbos himself was the glue that held the unit together, given his jovial demeanor. Regrettably, they weren't invading any countries then, having already forcibly occupied Ukraine and a bunch of other countries. So he missed out on the opportunity for combat. At this point, he is only fit to sit behind a computer and cheer the troops on as best he can.

 

[ZiprHead]

I was almost 50 when I first experienced combat.

Sorry.

Black Friday sales at Wal-Mart don't quite qualify as combat.
Tom

Actually sometimes it does.

Man wanted in Lumberton Walmart shooting on Black Friday is in custody, police say

Jarod Denzel Lowery is facing numerous charges related to shooting someone inside the Walmart Supercenter in Lumberton.

abc11.com

 

[Copernicus]

It seems that Russia was able to destroy Bakhmut, but not actually take it. They only get a bronze in the competition for war crimes on this one, but they can still go for a gold in other places. It's not like they really need to prove how low they can sink.

Ukraine ‘managing to stabilise’ situation around Bakhmut​

Meanwhile, Putin tries again to menace Ukraine and other neighboring countries with its reckless use of nuclear intimidation:

Putin says Moscow to station nuclear weapons in Belarus, first time since 1990s​

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Barbos served honorably in the Red Army before the fall of the Soviet Union

Local Boys repel Yankee Horde

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hungry for a win, it looks like the Russians are switching from Bakhmut to Avdiivka. No matter. The Leopards, Bradleys, Strykers and somewhat longer range missiles (GLSDB) should all be coming into the theater soon. We'll see if Ukraine has enough trained personnel to push back and hold whatever they may gain.

Those glide bombs are a good idea. No powerplant so they're a lot cheaper and no powerplant makes a big problem for heat seekers.

Untested technology often doesn't pan out exactly the way we hope. First, the deployment could take a long time, despite it being supposedly launchable from HIMARS. Second, glide bombs are necessarily slower than ballistic rockets, so even if they don't have a heat signature, regular radar could spot them and SAMs have more time to react to take them out. We'll see what if anything happens.

But with no thermal signature they have to expend one of their fancy radar-guided SAMs to take it out. It's almost certainly a favorable exchange for us.

Remember the Switchblade drones from a year ago? Nobody's heard from them for a while, and Ukraine's preferred kamikaze drones now seem to be commercial FPV drones fitted with explosives. A fancy weapon that looks good on paper doesn't necessarily work in the battlefield for myriad reasons.

I suspect it's simply a matter of availability.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So two fires very far away from each other just happened to start at the same time.

Who said two fires? notice there is no visible external damage, which should be extensive.

Explosives don't actually do that much damage to metal and not that much to other solid things. Even a big charge doesn't do much to anything strong. Consider a standard 2000 pound bomb--about half of the bomb is simply metal. It doesn't need to be anywhere near that strong, the metal is there to be turned into fragments that are the real killing power. The pictures we saw wouldn't show much of that sort of damage.

It's also why experts quickly discounted the idea that 9/11 attacks were actually planted explosives. Even a lot of explosives in the building would have done basically nothing--to blow down something like that you need linear shaped charges directly against the I-beams and even that's difficult because they don't have the range to take out the center part of the I. And there's no way people wouldn't have noticed all the holes in the walls placing such charges.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Tanks, tanks, tanks.

From ISW

-Russia’s sole tank production factory, UralVagonZavod, reportedly produces 20 tanks a month.
-Russia has reportedly been losing 150 tanks per month.
-The Ukrainian military and its Western backers can confidently expect that loss rates in tank duels between M1s, Leopards, and Challengers, on the one hand, and T-55s, T-62s, or even T-72s, on the other, will be far from one-to-one.

ISW is comparing equipment. There is also whatever trained Russian tank crews that went with those 150 tanks a month. Can Russia even train any more tank crews? Seems they are relying on Belarus for training now. Seems Russia used up all its experienced military right down to the trainers. UralVagonZavod is going to produce maybe 20 T-90s a month and put poorly trained crews into these precious tanks. Worn down to a nub, you are.

A Kremlin pundit stated on a live broadcast on March 25 that Russia would pull old T-34 tanks from storage and monuments if needed.

And in other news, Russia misses a contracted delivery date of unspecified military hardware to India. Good for you, India. That's what you get for playing both sides of the fence. Good luck with future orders. What can you do, switch suppliers, systems, training. Kinda stuck, ain'tcha?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And in other news, Russia misses a contracted delivery date of unspecified military hardware to India. Good for you, India. That's what you get for playing both sides of the fence. Good luck with future orders. What can you do, switch suppliers, systems, training. Kinda stuck, ain'tcha?

If I were India I would highly suspect the quality of their purchases.

 

[TV and credit cards]

And in other news, Russia misses a contracted delivery date of unspecified military hardware to India. Good for you, India. That's what you get for playing both sides of the fence. Good luck with future orders. What can you do, switch suppliers, systems, training. Kinda stuck, ain'tcha?

If I were India I would highly suspect the quality of their purchases.

I don't know if Russia has anything akin to MilSpec but if they do, I doubt they are meeting it these days.

 

[ZiprHead]

And in other news, Russia misses a contracted delivery date of unspecified military hardware to India. Good for you, India. That's what you get for playing both sides of the fence. Good luck with future orders. What can you do, switch suppliers, systems, training. Kinda stuck, ain'tcha?

I wonder if the check has been cashed.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The Ukranian drone swarms to come.

From Forbes.

....
Posts by a blogger using the handle Russian Engineer usually get a few thousand views, but one of his latest entries has now been seen 1.9 million times. Ukrainian military and political observer Alexei Arestovich says they are preparing a drone offensive, and in January Ukrainian General Command announced the formation of new tactical drone assault units. Russian Engineer has put these together with information from other sources to predict an onslaught of miniature attack drones.

“Recently, it has become known that, in terms of drones, buyers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have bought up almost the entire market of FPV drone components in China, according to indirect estimates, by 50-100 thousand units,” writes Russian Engineer. “They have already trained more than a thousand operators of these models."
....

A new wrinkle in asymmetrical warfare.

 

[TV and credit cards]

The Ukranian drone swarms to come.

From Forbes.

....
Posts by a blogger using the handle Russian Engineer usually get a few thousand views, but one of his latest entries has now been seen 1.9 million times. Ukrainian military and political observer Alexei Arestovich says they are preparing a drone offensive, and in January Ukrainian General Command announced the formation of new tactical drone assault units. Russian Engineer has put these together with information from other sources to predict an onslaught of miniature attack drones.

“Recently, it has become known that, in terms of drones, buyers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have bought up almost the entire market of FPV drone components in China, according to indirect estimates, by 50-100 thousand units,” writes Russian Engineer. “They have already trained more than a thousand operators of these models."
....

A new wrinkle in asymmetrical warfare.

The powerful motors mean that, at some loss of speed and endurance, an FPV drone can carry a heavy payload, including an anti-tank RPG warhead or RKG-3 grenade, though it may need extra batteries. While this arrangement may not look airworthy, FPV drones are lethally effective weapons.

No they do not look airworthy. But, Godspeed.
Might be good to hit defensive positions. My understanding is the Russians are well dug in in the eastern half of the Kherson Oblast. I guess it's best to get this information out there circulating amongst the Russian troops. Let them know what all is coming so they can individually try and plan their exit routes.

 

[Jayjay]

Fire caused by missiles fired by Ukraine. Duh.

Nope!

Repeating false claims doesn't make them true. You've spouted this nonsense about Ukrainian KIA being in hundreds

You honesty believe that these numbers are not true and it is actually Russia losing people while Ukraine is losing 10 times less?

I've said before that I think Ukrainian casualties (killed and wounded) are in the same ballpark as Russia's. Exact numbers are anyone's guess, but it's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that Ukraine's KIA can't be in hundreds of thousands because the war would have been over a long time ago if that was the case.

So yes, the numbers you're peddling are unsupported by evidence, and by common sense.

Are you fucking insane? Even your lying propaganda admits that russia has ~10 times advantage in artillery and yet this advantage somehow reversed in the casualty numbers?

Russia's artillery advantage is now only about 4-to-1 by more recent estimates. And it doesn't translate directly to casualty numbers, because it's also easier to defend than attack. Russian tactic of using convicts and mobilized infantry is also inherently more manpower-consuming than just sitting in trenches.

OK. great, then why all this talks (even Elkensky) about artillery shells shortage in Ukraine ? You're doing great, Russian army lost millions and millions people, you're winning. These damn russian idiots can't do anything. Everything is going great.

No, it's not going great. I think Ukraine made a mistake holding on to Bakhmut and wasting their human capital.