11:51 – Johan No.1
I once said that drones wouldn’t become the new black, which was wrong. Or they didn’t become the winning weapon (yet) but all branches of weapons are still needed in cooperation, but drones fill a very important function.
I’ve been thinking about; autonomous, very small, solar-powered, high-altitude drones that somehow, either on their own or linked to another drone type, lock onto a target from high altitude and then accelerate vertically towards the target.
Something like that would be almost impossible to shoot down and you could have say 3-5 on each target and then the chance of a hit would be close to 100%?
Like a bonus grenade but you release a swarm that patrols an area. I understand battery life, technical equipment, etc. might not be there yet but sometime in the future 🙂
12:01 – Johan No.1
Right now the discussion around nuclear weapons is that it was precisely that weapon type that the Russians have maintained well and invested all their money in – it is also the only weapon type we have not seen in combat. Admittedly, 4-5 tactical nuclear weapons are probably enough and not thousands but my money is on that they ran an Afghan scenario there too.
There are said to be 10,000 tanks or something total and they seem to get 3,500 running according to consistent sources, I think it could be more than that but still under 5,000 and then they have dug very deep down to the T55.
Same with aircraft, combat vehicles, helicopters, artillery, uniforms and all other fun stuff.
Not to mention all the new 21st-century equipment we’ve seen at all the parades, nothing except the Tigr and a few other weapon systems, some of which have probably still been under development, have appeared in Ukraine. What happened to Terminator?
Then it probably also applies to the soldiers because everyone except the elite units seems to have training that mostly consists of getting beaten, being humiliated, and working on some construction so the training unit can bring in money for the officers. They are terrible soldiers by any measure.
Kleptocracy and clan rule where the country is held in an iron grip has made an Afghan scenario fully possible. This is the very definition of a paper tiger and this geopolitical atomic bomb was actually very welcome. The Russian dictatorship has actually been confrontational and expansionist since they managed their internal unrest after the revolution. To be picky, they probably were before too but then there were many countries with power ambitions in Europe causing trouble.
Imagine the calm that will settle over the EU when Russian subversive activities cease, 100 years or so of actively breaking apart the free democracies just because they could. It’s high on my list to get rid of that. We would have had our nuclear power left to begin with…
I would welcome a Russia that allies with the EU and democratizes, if we don’t get there, the next best thing is probably that their subversive activities cease, the country is denied further special operations through NATO containment and China is prevented (how?) from tying the country to itself. China and Russia are probably not the best of friends to begin with and now after this maybe some despots are wondering what Russia would do with them if they could?
12:30 – MatsExtrude
Here is a video about Terminator, doesn’t quite seem to fit on the battlefield: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D8LlZALj_g
13:35 – Johan No.1
Looking ahead there is much positive – the elite units are running out and their last battle seems to be in Kherson, unless they pull out the VDV and man with LPR/DPR/newly mobilized.
The Russians are retreating but manage to maintain some kind of balance by throwing in more soldiers and equipment that get shot away a little slower than they arrive.
Northern Luhansk is threatened as is Kherson.
It has just emerged that Ukraine is pre-fighting towards Horlivka and there was a Russian attack in Donetsk that went disastrously the other day. Whether they are pre-fighting towards Horlivka ahead of an attack or fighting buildup and Russians in Ufa I don’t know.
The negative is that time is Putin’s friend, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if China right now is assisting with the missing components and I also wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese equipment appears in the war soon.
Seen from a despot’s perspective, Turkey, Hungary, Russia or Iran have not exactly been heavily punished by this war. China is cautious and I consider myself to know them quite well but there is also a budding nationalism and expansionism there somewhat like in Russia. I actually haven’t mentioned the Ukraine war with the Chinese I work with just because I don’t know what they think. If anything about the USA has come up on TV when having lunch with them, they have been very critical of the USA. Their hotpot is insanely hot, I might add, you really sweat, it was a few years ago but you remember if you had it… Or it came up once and I interpreted their view of the war as Russia winning and since then I’ve been cautious.
If we get a frozen conflict it benefits Putin because he can build up over time.
Right now we don’t see that, we see a Ukraine that has control and is aggressive and we see Russian counterattacks that have grown in intensity but they fail to achieve combat goals and losses are astronomical.
Highest on the risk list is if Ukraine loses momentum and there is some concern about what is happening on the Southern front right now, instead of a Ukrainian offensive and chess moves it is a Russian offensive but it could very well be that Ukraine lets the Russians wear themselves out (and they have done that before) before they strike.
What we will probably see when northern Luhansk collapses is that the Russian north-south supply line through Millerovo is subjected to long-range weapons and (all of the West’s) SOF running around carrying out sabotage against the rail network.
That is of course not enough for Donetsk, Crimea and Rostov-na-Don are littered with depots and if you take Kherson as an example they have ammunition despite I don’t know how many depots HIMARS has taken out.
Then it’s simple math, when the war drags on the West must continue to deliver equipment. Now the Western weapon systems that arrived early are starting to need maintenance and really new ones should be rotated in at the same time as others are sent to workshops. It becomes a zero-sum game if you want to be picky so deliveries don’t increase 🙂
13:41 – Johan No.1
I have been working with the Chinese since 2006 and find that country very interesting. They have weaknesses and they have strengths.
One thing they do have, however, is that they subordinate themselves to power in the same way as in Russia; it is probably quite easy to take the country in an authoritarian direction.
That said, they can also go the other way very quickly, I don’t quite understand that mechanism but in projects we have had, they have been obedient like few others and then at some point gone on strike, and then it’s not signs and slogans, it’s machetes and axes coming out trying to hunt down project managers and directors. They were never lynched but threats were used as a way to negotiate whatever it was.
It can’t be easy to be a dictator in China is my conclusion 🙂
However, the people I deal with are quite anti-USA, they see themselves as a worthy opponent to the USA and have quite a bit of nationalism and expansionism in their thinking. They are not very fond of the Japanese either for easily understandable reasons.
20:52 – Johan No.1
I think we are a bit lucky here, not only that it is autumn break but that the children have worn off the sugar rush from Halloween, and also that the new Russian chief in Ukraine went all in.
They have probably brought in the 3rd Army Corps and volunteer battalions + the 80,000 mobilized to various fronts and they are burning through them at a furious pace right now.
What is now dying in Russian high-knee attacks all over (in quite a few places actually) is the last that could go into a sensible defense apart from the elite units that are in Kherson and a couple of decent units scattered on the fronts.
When this is over, they will have lots of BTG shells and a horde of newly mobilized who have just learned to handle personal weapons, probably still with the rifle sling tied around their wrist.
Now of course one wishes that Ukraine simply bides its time and goes on the offensive as soon as this circus starts to die out but it may of course be that they have not received enough offensive materiel, who knows…
5-6 weeks with these losses now and even a vodka-soaked Russian should start to lose heart and instead sit and sulk in a half-filled muddy pit.
The low point has passed but the Russians are on their own creating a new low point, that was a bit unexpected but probably has to do with the new commander not wanting to become a suicide immediately.
We hope that Ukraine has some offensive capacity to advance within not too distant a future.
11:28 – Johan No.1
Interesting to read Inge N Ahning, it’s not exactly the two elite oligarchs who have started to speak up.
Could there be a faction behind them?
I have also noticed that Lavrov, Medvedev, and Shoigu have almost gone silent, not sure if Peskov has been out recently?
Reasonably, in the dog-eat-dog country Russia, the one with the most weapons wins and those who control the internal armies are the ones who will be able to fight for control?
If you don’t have enough protection, you get self-murdered pretty quickly, I think?