The Modern War Institute at West Point—a sort of think tank chaired by Mark Esper and which is a part of the Department of Military Instruction—released a very interesting in-depth analysis of Russia’s battlefield innovations in the SMO, called:
I personally like the slow news days, as it means less people got themselves killed.
What most people never think about is after a big war how long it takes for one people to forgive the other. As a Brit with a German Missus I found the contemporary Germans friendly enough, even the parents generation, but poor Opa Villi (grandad) liked me as a person but hated that I was English... (His contemporaries at one of those huge long meals that they do so well, were quite obvious about it too. I turned to my O/H in all innocence, and asked "krauter is vegetables, right? and quietly from the end of the table I heard a deep old voice say: "they call us Krauts..."
Now you Russians seem to strongly dislike us English, and I'm told I should hate you, but I don't. I hate the "elites" who are prolonging this war and exporting DU to the breadbasket of Europe. I'm also not very keen on the people who infest the comment sections on both sides cheering on the conflict, and those who are blithely talking about the use of nuclear weapons.
I have come to hate the war itself, and see anyone who gets "enthusiastic" about it as misguided at best, properly Evil at the worst.
It's not even a moral stance, it's personal annoyance. I wanted to go to Russia and meet some specific Russian people who interest me greatly, now I can't and am very unlikely to ever in the future.
Most Brits are Russia-haters. Read the polls. This goes all the way back to the Crimean War. The Brits are getting to be as bad as the Baltic terriers. They're more extreme about Russia than the US is. There's little support for Russia in the UK, I'm afraid.
I have lived in Russia for 30 years, have a Russian wife and am the father of three Russian children. Nobody here in Russia has ever slagged me off for being English. I'm from the North of England, am Anglo-Norse, really, not Anglo-Saxon. The North of England was largely populated by Scandinavians in the 9th century. You can see and hear evidence of this in Northern English place names, family names, accents and dialects. The Northern capital of England, that part of England known as "The Danelaw", was Jorvik, now called York. When I speak Russian, Russians don't think I am English because I do not speak Russian with a Southern English "standard", "BBC", "Oxford" English accent.
It seems Russia is one of the few places left on earth where you can use the ethnic category of Russian and have it actually mean something. What does English, French, Norwegian, Swedish or American mean when their defining cultures are diluted and canceled.?
Yes and no. My understanding is that "Russia" incorporates many different ethnicities, so it is a accurate to say that a German is one of germanic ethnicity as a Russian is their own. What you get right is the idea of a Russian culture, a common identity notwithstanding the mix of Russians, Chechens, Ossetians, et al. That common cultural identity is quickly disappearing by design all over the west.
There are in the Russian language two words that are both translated into English as "Russian":
русский [russkiy] meaning an ethnic East Slav Russian (man) — a русская [russkaya] is an ethnic East Slav Russian woman;
a россиянин [rossiyanin] meaning a (male) citizen of Russia —a россиянка [rossiyanka] is a female citizen of Russia.
Hence, a Tatar citizen of the Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan is a rossiyanin but not a russkiy, he is a Tatar, a татарин [tatarin], whereas an ethnic Russian citizen of Russia is both a russkiy and a rossiyanin.
Danish, as a matter of fact, of the House of Oldenburg. One of them, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II's consort, was invited to be king of Greece. The whole gang is German-Danish.
We learn something everyday. I was referring to the thoroughly evil Phillip, son of Prince Andrew of Greece. he was always referred to as Phill the Greek in out family so I took it for granted he was ethnically Greek.
The good news is that he is now neither, he is dead.
Ukraine war has been in the works ever since Deep State DC decided that the cold war had to continue even though it was over in 1989. Just too many on the military industrial intelligence payroll to let it go. Thus, the soviet union hating morphed into russia hating and Hillary, Bolton, McCain, Lindsey joined up with BlackRock, Soros and the Blinken to embark on turning Eastern Europe into California. Holy crap. How do we stop these maniacs?
Years ago John Mearsheimer made the point that the people responsible for Vietnam were punished by being pushed out of government. Whereas the people responsible for Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc are still there.
In my own terms, far from being punished, they've been rewarded for failure. So they have no accountability and no skin in the game. They're pushing their sunk cost fallacies to save their personal reputations and worthless "careers" at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives in current conflicts and millions since they started. They think the price is worth it.
,"if there is one country in NATO that the US is most likely to die over, it is the UK. Everyone else is mere vassals, but the financial oligarchy that runs it all has its bases in both London and NYC. But that again underlines the importance of full annihilation of the UK -- it needs to be blanketed with multi-Mt ground bursts so that nothing survives and there is nobody to instigate retaliatory strikes."
that the england is in the business (literally) of arming proxy wars without getting it own hands (boots) dirty. It pretends it is not at war because it thinks no one will call it out and take it on because it has big brother and would cause much havoc for any challenger (true).
But how can it be stopped playing this game?
Will/could Russia do it?
Will/could China do it?
Will/could China AND Russia do it together?
It really needs to be put in its place, militarily, Now
UK openly says that British are bringing war to Putin's doorstep and Russia has been sitting letting England run the war and propaganda against Russia with no danger of counterattack to English pirates
"it needs to be blanketed with multi-Mt ground bursts so that nothing survives and there is nobody to instigate retaliatory strikes."
Apart from the intrinsic florid psychopathy, the statement neglects to consider our submarine based Nuclear force...
And wiping out an entire race of people has been tried before. Do you really want to sink to below that level? (I say below because you not only want to kill me and my long suffering O/H, and my child, but you also want to do in my poor cats, all my friends, the guy who just fixed my shock absorber... Even my EX doesn't really deserve to be annihilated. I can't help but feel that you are being a tad unreasonable.
Even for my unmentionable ex, a good talking to would maybe suffice...
You sound a tad delusional: “a good talking would maybe suffice…”
Maybe the proposed method is not very nice to your ex, but there are some valid points in the comment imho. How are you good people in the UK going to prevent that these evil people in power dictate foreign policy and bring the world to the brink of extinction?
Well, the penny seems to have dropped with our prime minister at last...
"Delusional" isn't really in my wheelhouse, (sadly, I note that delusional people seem to be a lot happier and better adjusted to this world than I seem to be) and I do note that "A bad talking to" was all it took to steer Zelensky away from the negotiating table, and towards the bumping off another half a million of his countrymen. Surely, it could work the other way?
I do admit to have been sold many illusions when I was a kid, and note recently how easy it was to persuade most people to to take a nefarious experimental treatment simply by redefining the concept of a "vaccine", and providing the illusion/lie that the vax would work the same as a vaccine...
As someone who's lived next to a US strategic bomber base in England, I resemble your remark. ;)
That said, I'm not persuaded the UK nuclear deterrent is independent. As early as Trident One, even I could have designed into the vehicles themselves (to which we have no access, even maintenance is done in the USA) a "dead man's off-switch" to enforce the treaty requirement to consult the USA before firing. So the USA, with an actual policy to back up the treaty provisions, surely would have thought of that. Every opportunity to renegotiate, including Thatcher's two opportunities with Reagan, have resulted in even harsher restrictions on our "independence" than MacMillan initially secured.
If the UK fired on Russia, Russia therefore would know it's a proxy attack blessed by the USA. So for that reason alone it seems unlikely the USA would ever let any UK warheads targeted at Russia to land anywhere closer to Russia than the North Pole. ;)
Anyone can spit out "news" to get attention. If I don't understand overall strategic doctrine & related tactics, the "news" becomes little more than endless repetition of questionable " facts". I follow Simpl precisely because of these "Slow news day..." analyses.
What's interesting to me is while both sides/strategies have advanced and evolved. It seems like both sides were kind of caught with their pants down in 2 areas entering this conflict. The huge impact short range drones and mines would have. With troops forced to spread out and maneuver in smaller numbers drones become more than an annoyance and a mine field can really slow down your movement.
Fair enough. You also understand my point. That it's interesting that after you theorycraft these huge changes in war and technology something so small as mines and hand launched drones cause so many problems. I just find it fascinating.
Perhaps you are underestimating what you are seeing.
Karber's 2019 presentation to West Point specifically said that Russian infantry fighting vehicles; every platoon (?) had a built-in drone. This is very different than Ukraine/AFU buying DJIs en masse to compensate for their lack thereof. The US Army or NATO forces today would almost universally be in a very similar situation.
Similarly with mines: think of a mine as a more complex artillery shell. Now consider how many mines you need to cover 1000 km front at a depth of at least 500 feet, more like thousands of feet of depth.
Sure, the mine as an absolute technology is old - but the modern mines are not the same as those used even in the Vietnam war. Vietnam war era anti-armor mines were gigantic affairs; IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan are often literally artillery shells with cell phone fuses yet clearly the Russians are sowing anti-armor mines by air both via dedicated systems and via ad hoc.
In other words: the "small" thing with mines and drones involves technology, military industrial complex capacity as well as defensive/offensive theory both in execution and in planning.
As much as everyone was caught "pants down" by the effectiveness of machineguns, barbed wire and artillery back in 1914. Even though they existed for decades and were all used in combat, effectively, nobody in the higher echelons of command adapted their stratiegies before the war.
Same happened in 1939 - Guderian wrote his book about tank warfare and blitzkrieg tactics many years prior, yet nobody anticipated how effective it would be, apart from the Soviets, who still failed to prepare in time.
And there's many such examples, big and small, all over wars. Like an idiotic thinking of the U.S. military that tanks should not fight tanks. Sure, it worked out in the end because the Germans were already weak and U.S. industrial capacity was so huge they were able to strap tank destroyer turrets on Shermans fast enough, but still - pure idiocy.
We might see another one soon, when U.S. carriers, which they desperately cling to, will be destroyed by Chinese hypersonic weapons. It's clear to everyone that nothing can protect a carrier, yet they continue to lay down new hulls.
Clearly, the continuing US reliance on carriers is more of a "they worked really well for us for nearly a century" holdover than a "what is best for future conflicts" assessment. Ossified military thinking coupled with a "the primary purpose of defense spending is for the benefit of the political class" attitude are the primary reasons for the current state of the US military - add to that the philosophy that "wokeness is more important than effectiveness" and one ends up with a hugely expensive military not fit for purpose.
But how, then do you project power around the seas? The fact is an aircraft carrier never goes to sea alone. Rather is surrounded with a battery of ships that protect and supply it. It then gets to be a question whether said protection "destroyers" can track/ destory said hypersonic missiles. What do you think they pay raytheon for?
They pay Raytheon (and other defense contractors) PRIMARILY to benefit the political classes, i.e., contributions and votes "for bringing the bacon home" to their districts. The secondary reason is to assure well-paying post-retirement positions for senior military personnel. The delivery of good, cost-effective weapons systems for the defense of the nation is, at best, only of tertiary importance.
They ordinarily can't intercept/destroy hypersonics (speed), but it doesn't matter because unless lucky hypersonics won't be able to hit ships manouvreing at sea (plasma from speed means communication is difficult). if that is right, then hypersonics are a general naval threat only to ships in port.
But how, then do you project power around the seas? The fact is an aircraft carrier never goes to sea alone. Rather is surrounded with a battery of ships that protect and supply it. It then gets to be a question whether said protection "destroyers" can track/ destory said hypersonic missiles. What do you think they pay raytheon for?
Blitzkrieg and Deep Battle both started in the same place at the same time: Russia, 1928. Blitzkrieg became usable in 1940; Deep Battle in 1944. So there's a huge lead time.
As for hypersonic: they're perfect for wiping out anything in port (which is why Bahrein may suddenly become unpopular with the USN, now that Iran has demonstrated its hypersonics). ;) But for anything manoeuvring at sea it's much harder, because their very speed (the same reason they can't be intercepted) means it's very difficult to communicate with them (plasma) even in the absence of EW.
If I may be flippant about it, this represents the Uberization of warfare. Individual commanders (drivers) are now making local judgments based on conditions observed on the ground, marshaling their individual resources (vehicles) in pursuit of an overall objective (transport). An entire centralized logistics trail, body of doctrine, and command infrastructure (the Uber app, servers, and company) are now deployed to enable, rather than to control, the commander-driver. The main reason for this, as mentioned, is that larger concentrations will simply be blown to bits. The requirements for commander-drivers will increase, and more will be needed. The greater and greater importance of a ready reserve well-trained operators and commanders could see the return of mandatory military service.
This new form of warfare turns warriors into scurrying rats. No uniform, driving civilian cars, hiding in apartment complexes... I am pretty sure the civilian population is the jungle to hide in. We are all meat shields now.
Uberization of warfare is not a bad description of Western militaries: more expensive, less reliable, inherently not viable.
You also confuse what Uber as a business is really about: monopoly control over payments, brand and customer meaning every Uber driver is just a sucker working at the whims of the company.
Being a commander-driver in the new world isn't easy either. You're squeezed hard either way.
I do agree, though, the hypothetical commander has a lot longer leash than an Uber driver. Probably makes more too, though a lot of that is hazard pay.
In a free market there can never be a shortage of labor, only of money. So whenever you have a labor shortage, by definition you don't have a free market. ;)
Yep, suckers for sure. Talked to one recently while filling up with fuel. He was livid; worked 7 hours for a grand total of $6 an hour. After expenses he would have been lucky to keep $2 per hour of that.
But at least when he's meeting chicks he can brag that he owns his own business LOL
When ride sharing first came out - Uber wasn't even the first. Uber started exclusively as a parasite scamming black car company owners; Uber's app let a limo driver working for a limo company to earn extra pay while using the black car company's car, illegally picking up passengers, burning black car company paid gas and covered by black car company insurance.
The first non-scam ride sharing was a company called Sidecar. Sidecar was specifically created to increase car sharing; it was designed to enable people getting off work, for example, to designate pickup and dropoff zones so they could take someone else with them when they drove home. Drivers were not penalized for declining ride requests; drivers could see where pickups and dropoffs and estimated ride revenue was.
But of course, Gresham's law applies to "tech" companies; Uber's flood of investment washed away Sidecar as literally the first casualty of the taxi wars.
Uber (and Lyft too, to be fair) today is nothing more than a fancy version of the medieval "putting out" system. Back in the dawn of the industrial age, wooden looms increased weaving productivity enormously but the looms were extremely expensive.
Some smart and evil dude figured out that if you loaned the loom to a weaver but forced them to buy thread from you and sell output cloth to you for a price you dictated - you would effectively ensure they could never pay off the loom loan - thus capturing the entire productivity benefit of the loom for yourself.
Ride sharing does the exact same thing: the drivers take on all the risk including insurance, not having riders, gasoline and maintenance prices, depreciation of the vehicle, riders throwing up in their car etc etc. But Uber/Lyft set the prices, own the customer interface and information plus control who gets the rides.
I do use Uber - but I clearly recognize that Uber (or any other ride sharing) should actually be more expensive than taxis. And, these days, there are more and more frequent cases where that is actually true. Studies across multiple cities and states show that ride share drivers spend more time driving to pick up people, unpaid, vs. taxis. This is "better service" but represents a cost borne by the driver since their meter doesn't start until pickup. Taxis get around this by hanging out where people are hence taxis averaging 2.5x more rides in peak weekend periods than ride share.
During WWII, both Soviet and German doctrine called for smaller units to take the initiative and adapt to what was around them instead of blindly following orders. This was a newer idea for the Red Army than it was for the Wermacht. But by the end of the war, the Red Army had gone a great distance toward adopting and practicing this doctrine. Under Hitler's tutelage, the Wermacht went a considerable distance in the other direction.
I would say it differently. Any army at war comes to expand the initiative of junior commanders. Any non-belligerent army punishes initiative and moves to a rigid hierarchy.
I wonder if communication security is a factor in deploying smaller self-contained "A-Teams" with the ability to coordinate over wire coms or visual signals. The techbros may be replaced by the signalman.
The wireless communications and air defense radars seemed to be giant "kick me" signs with the Russians putting a 500lb boot in AFU/ NATO butts.
Perhaps the old-school field telephone wires will come back to fashion. Unless the enemy cuts the wire or taps on it physically, the EW signature is close to 0, the problem is of laying such wires in highly mobile battlefield.
Reminds me of my grandfather, who started his weird military career in 1918 as an army mounted(!) signalman laying wire (before serving in an air force and two navies as a naval aviator). ;)
Anyone unbiased who wanted to know what is happening in this war would gain a lot from reading this article. Further confirmation for us who read a lot because we care. I expect that one reason why Western Media has been so easily manipulated by the fake narrative is because they're a actor-led culture. Hollywood is not a war expert giving lessons on how to save lives. Bravery is not running to certain death. Foolishness is judging a war like its a movie with an expendable sidekick the hero has to avenge.
The Western Media gets paid to lie, they aren't manipulated, only by money, and the power they receive to be liars. The citizens are the ones manipulated because they don't care and are stupid, tell-e-vision. That is all they know. Jimmy Dore, "do your own research, it is called reading". I will try to find the clip, it made me laugh out loud.
Jimmy Dore has made me laugh too but I dropped him and a helluva lot of other bookmarks because following over 100 people was exhausting.
Sure, its about salaries as bribes. But I'd like to add a caveat for the salary worker, and forgive me cause I'm sure you've heard stuff like this before.
People used to be poor and survive. Dad worked, mom stayed at home pushing out babies that got a decent education. This is not about misogyny, just the existing-as-okay aspect.
Then the wealth transfer began, people manipulated into thinking they needed things they didn't so that a few could profit. Marriage suddenly required a diamond ring to be legit (you can blame my country for that - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHIGGdxZe64). Freedom became an SUV that sucks as much petrol and spurts as much carbon as possible (blame the USA for that). I'm not going to dig into housing ' cause you're getting my point.
So Mom had to get a job, and kids grew up with out moral guidance, giving their teachers hell, and consequently giving them only enough education to become a mass shooter or an ignorant salary worker.
The irony is that believing in the fake world we were sold made it reality. If you don't work, you become homeless.
My point is that in this world of masters and dogs, and dog-eat-dog world wherein the salary workers are the dogs, they do whatever they can to hang onto that deposit at the end of the month. It's what they've been taught.
But this caveat is an sympathy explanation and not an excuse for publishing lies that gets lots of people, who are also just trying to survive, killed. Fake news is a weapon of mass destruction.
I hear ya, it does get exhausting, but I do need my humor fix.
Along w/mom having to get a job came the perfect opportunity to create fast food, microwave meals, frozen dinners, and all the other dietary toxins to poison us, because you know, it made life easier.
Amen, "fake news is a weapon of mass destruction". That is a FACT.
I would like to add, that high status wealthy women have always needed to be bribed with wealth and trinkets, most men were too poor to do this in the past.
Marriage in of itself is a bribe, marriage is the divorce contract, men promise to pay out when the woman decides to cash out of the relationship. This is how women want it, and men are willing to pay the price.
Well said. I would add that when the family couldn't earn enough because of the wealth transfer upwards they went into debt for everything including the unnecessary higher education where you need the useless degree to get in the door so several years of your life wasted and you start working pre indebted. Meanwhile media of all ilks combined with academia have destroyed society and the working classes families. I don't see any changes until millions are in the streets prepared to do violence on the ruling classes. I'm not hopeful.
You talk about bribes and whatnot, but I have a degree in Journalism, I've worked in the field, and I've been dealing with these stenographer whores my whole life.
You know how there's this vast set of social rules you have to follow if you want to succeed in life? A lot of them are idiotic, ridiculous and even non-adaptive, adding a bunch of stupid extra steps to things that could be done much more efficiently?
Well, most of us go ahead and digest those rules and obey them and don't even think about it because the punishment for being a social retard is so severe.
Well, same thing with these journalist whores. I know all sorts of people in many fields who have these same views. I never felt that even one of them knew that what they believed was a lie but were just lying consciously anyway. I'm not even sure how many people consciously lie about politics.
The thing is that just as people figure out that the social rules are necessary, the political rules for supporting US foreign policy are necessary in the same sense. You don't obey the social rules and you will be "fired" socially. You don't obey the political line and you will be canned for real, and now you can't pay rent!
You work at a big paper with the ideology that I have, and you won't last two days. You cannot turn in a truthful foreign policy article. Your editor will read it, scowl, and throw it back at you angrily. You turn in articles like that a few times and you're fired. All the other journalists will know that you got fired for not following the narrative and make s note of that.
I'm convinced that when it comes to politics and US foreign policy, people believe all sorts of BS that is objectively false, that is, they believe LIES. But they do not think they are lies! They have convinced themselves that the lies they are saying are actually true! This holds for all forms of politics.
So any journalist working today fully believes in the lying narrative. They don't know it's BS and say it anyway. They aren't THAT evil.
To be THAT evil you have to be a psychopath who works in Washington DC for the executive or legislative branch. Now, those people often know full well that a lot of the crap they say is full blown lies, but they don't care. They are indeed lying consciously but it doesn’t bother them.
In geopolitics, non-sociopaths need not apply. Psychopathy is one of the job requirements.
There are no good guys in geopolitics! There are bad guys and worse guys and that's it!
Manipulation is the art of the few, to be manipulated the passion of the masses. It happens in stages. For the protection of salary, morals are broken. Then its cognitive dissonance which must also be overcome lest it devolve into madness. Eventually, repetition changes belief so that what was wrong is now right. People can' t handle being alone because they're mammals, and mammals herd. The might of right is in numbers.
@ACroneintheWoods - the list is endless. The first piece of shit is hard to swallow but eventually you don' t have to hold your nose and eat it everyday. War has become America's fast food too. Gullibility is human nature. Those who abuse it, and those of us who fight it, are aberrations.
@AlexBrown Women are my equal. Men and women are brainwashed, but women more so regarding jewellery and men with takkies. I was engaged only once and my lady was deep into the society's 'requirements'. I thought it absurd but had to give her diamonds (on credit) because there was no other way I was going to be legit. My younger self was, momentarily, part of the system. But my point wasn't about men and women, only that diamonds have value through marketing, and the diamond wedding ring is a De Beers (i.e. Oppenheimer) establishment.
@RobertHunter If we taught kids not to take debt, we would do more to change the world than through any other topic.
Architect of Soviet Victory in World War II: The Life and Theories of G.S. Isserson, by Richard W. Harrison combines a biography of Isserson with detailed discussion of his work on Deep Operations.
Isserson's rehabilitation in 1955 allowed him to return to Moscow but his difficult personality prevented him from returning to the General Staff Academy. The rise of Brezhnev made Isserson's life difficult as he was Jewish. The book describes movingly how Marshal Vasilievsky sent Isserson an autographed copy of his memoirs but alluding why he could not acknowledge Isserson in the text itself.
"There was official antisemitism in the USSR under Brezhnev? Not buying it, man"
Buy it: look at the Soviet Jews that struggled to emigrate, like Joseph Brodsky (Nobel Literature), Ilya Pyatetski-Shapiro and Marina Ratner (mathematics) and similar experiences of many others.
Or talk to Russian Jews that lived during Brezhnev's rule. Here's a link to antisemitism at Moscow State University at that time, including references,
"In 1970, the university imposed a 2% quota on Jewish students.[5] A 2014 article entitled "Math as a tool of anti-semitism" in The Mathematics Enthusiast discussed antisemitism in the Moscow State University's Department of Mathematics during the 1970s and 1980s.[6][7][8]"
You got that from Judeopedia, I mean Wikipedia. All of the Jewish articles got taken over by the meanest, worst Jews on Earth, all Super-Jews, real quick and they ran out everyone who disagreed with them as "Nazis" on flimsy or made-up charges. They were as punchable as a human gets. So all of those articles are wildly biased. Also Wikipedia should be called CIApedia because all of their articles about recent world history are "the world according to the CIA."
They say they're on the Left, but that's BS. They hate socialism and communism and anything with even a whiff of that. They love radical freemarket economics and all of the articles on those subjects are badly biased. The founder was Libertarian Gentile who was a strong Zionist.
The only way these scumbags are "left" is on the society-wrecking program of the Cultural Left Freakshow with every sexual and gender minority elevated to sainthood with a strong anti straight cis White male bias.
In other words, the Fake Left! Woketards + rightwing economics + the world according to the CIA. That's the modern Western Left in a nutshell.
"Wouldn't let the boor babies immigrate." Oh boo hoo! Poor Jews! Wa wa. Cry me a river, Jews! Nobody got to emigrate in the USSR, nobody but nobody but nobody. That was the rule. Of course, Jews are special people so there are rules for them and rules for everyone else. Dual morality.
Also, they all wanted to go to Israel!
The USSR was hostile to Israel. At first they were neutral but Israel very quickly went to the West, and a lot of liberal Jews started spying for the West against the USSR. That was part of the reason Stalin went anti-Jewish towards the end. He thought they were traitors.
Also this was a useful Cold War club to beat the Soviets over the head with, and many liberal Western Jews got in on this bullshit.
At first Jews were overrepresented by 6X at Soviet universities. After the USSR went "antisemitic," they were only overrepresented by 3X. Oh poor babies! "We're not overrepresented enough!" Boo hoo!
I'm sorry it went down to 2% later on. That wasn't right. Yes, there was a problem in the math departments in the USSR which went antisemitic at the end. However, this was very controversial in the USSR, and even rightwing Soviet-hating antisemitic Russian academics now say that this was wrong.
I recall a quote from a Jewish professor at a university during this "antisemitic" period. He said that in his department, there were 300 people and maybe three or four of them were not Jewish. He said no one ever asked about whether someone was Jewish or not, and the matter never even really came up. In the USSR you didn't discuss such things. Everyone's ethnicity was "working class" and everyone's religion was the state.
It is obvious when those with real interest in truth write. This is far more insightful then the combined efforts of the ISW, Bellingcat, Carnegie Mellon Institute fart huffers.
They can't even put together a coherent argument for anything, just make things up then repeat em till it's believed.
Great write up and good find re: the west point analysis
You can see various militaries around the world trying to find a "solution" to the problem being outlined. The Western militaries operate on a doctrine of 1) air superiority 2) stealth superiority 3) precision, long range strike and 4) fully networked forces under an ISR umbrella
But, take away any 1 or 2 of these presumptions, and the whole thing falls apart. Also, I am ever more curious now on Chinese "drone swarm" launchers; suggesting to me that Sino thinking is already thinking ahead of how to deal with this. I can envision a near-future of a battlefield saturated with radar-invisible, AI-controlled, long duration loitering munitions fired hundreds at a time from highly mobile truck units.
I wonder actually if, last April, when HIMARS was introduced, it was a "OH, OK" moment for the Russian military, where theory met reality in an instant. In a sense, the US handed it to the Russians on a platter, because they gave them the chance to encounter the system in a way which would be painful, but far from decisive. Were it introduced in far larger quantities and in tandem with Storm Shadow, ATACMS, 4th gen aircraft, MBT's, helicopters (?) - more or less a proper NATO army - the impact would have been more devastating. Now, the Russians know what to do.
One thing I'll say is that, the SMO has revealed that stealth weapons likely can be dangerous simply because we've seen that modern radars (whether it's NATO systems like Patriot or Russian systems) are more limited than many people thought in regards to tracking small objects, low-observable objects, etc. So on one hand, this would *seemingly* give a big advantage to U.S./NATO against Russia seeing as how that could suggest that America's stealth fleet would be a massive problem for Russia's integrated air defense.
BUT: the big issue here most pro-NATO people ignore, is: how does the U.S. identity the targets for that big scary stealth fleet to hit? Answer: space ISR. You know, E/O and SARs satellites, etc.
But in a potential war against Russia, A-235s will take out U.S. satellites in the first minutes of engagement. And recall, many ignorant people laugh and say "but U.S. has thousands of [insert satellite here] like Starlink." Yes it has thousands of starlinks but they are useless in this regard, they have no E/O or camera capabilities. How many actual photographic spy satellites does U.S. have? About 5 last time I checked, the famed Keyhole line of systems. After Russia destroys these, U.S. would be completely blind. How is it going to find and pick targets for those scary stealth jets? It won't. AWACs signals can't reach thousands of kilometers from Germany/Poland into Russia, etc. That means NATO would be nullified without their satellites, at least to a large degree.
Aren't the targeting systems of the US stealth fighters susceptible to GPS jamming? At least that's what Tom Cruise just said on "Top Gun: Maverick", which is playing in the background as I type this. :-). Actually, I've read it elsewhere too. If true, seems like the stealth fighters/bombers would be effectively neutered when flying within range of Russia's electronic warfare systems.
Thank you for this. I was wondering how stealth would factor into this.
You said that Russia would take out the USA E/O satellites in the first minutes of a war. But I'm curious about the threshold for that escalation. The USA and China can also take out satellites and at some point it will lead to a Kessler Syndrome that kills all satellites in a low Earth orbit, which is a fairly substantial escalation against every country that has satellites, militaryor otherwise.
I know that the US military is far more dependent on satellite intel and communications than the Russian military is, but that is still a pretty high impact event. Do you have any thoughts about where the Russian pain threshold is? Or, conversely, how itchy that trigger finger is? Because the debris storm lasts for years and cannot be undone with any craft we hold so it is the nuclear option in the satellite realm.
You've pointed out yourself, that Storm Shadows only strike "backwater areas" because Russians have fairly high chance of downing them in protected areas (while not as easy as a non-stealthy targets, but happens regularly).
And the Storm Shadow has smaller RCS than a DJI drone (in fact, much smaller from most aspects).
The issue is not detecting small targets, but slow ones which blend into the clutter too (low flying drones). And, even these big quadcopter drones have too small rotors to present a discernible two-colored radar return that distinguishes a typical helicopter.
Without disagreeing with you generally, I note the modern Pantsir AD vehicles, a full battery of which is organic to Russian BTGs (the combined arms "battalion tactical groups" that are the primary maneuver elements in this war), can detect line-of-sight drones and shoot them down in about a second flat. Upon detection, the computer auto-selects and fires the dual 30mm autocannons instead of wasting a missile. I've seen demo videos - of course I don't know how well it works in the field! :)
I tend to equate kinetic ASAT action with the use of battlefield nukes, and my rationale is that once you start blowing things up in space you 1) the other guy immediately kills your stuff too and 2) the cascade of space debris is started and we go back to the 1950's really very quickly.
On the other hand, laser / jamming of satellites is fair game. I wonder how technically feasible it is to zap the optics on keyhole satellites..
A-235 can shoot down hypersonic ICBMS, satellites, and can be outfitted with nuclear warheads, which would presumably sterilize fields in earth-orbit, and likely destroy electronc communications.
Russia also have "Peresvet" laser system. Most information about this system is classified, but what is known is this system can blind optical reconnaissance satellites.
Re: Loss of Keyhole - The fall back would be taking in live feed from as many of the commercial satellite ground observation networks as possible. Still a notable degradation, but as a work around would still be useful. ( And I would bet US SIGINT stations are ALREADY tapped in to those networks anyway)
Re: Stealth. As the Serb demonstrated (with old Buk's) against the F117, it ain't much of a thing if you know where/when to look. All stealth aircraft/missiles are shaped to DIRECT reflected radar energy in some direction OTHER than back to the emitter, with the RAM coating minimising that energy. If you can tie together several radar arrays, widely spaced, chances are good of spotting that redirected energy.
You can be sure Russia, with 30 years (or more, stealth is 70's tech) to work at it, have a solution to "stealth".
This is why Storm Shadow is having spotty success, having to "thread the needle' of radar coverage.
One wonders how much priority Russian has given to ramping EW platform production over other items....
AWAKS won't last through the first day. Same for Aircraft carriers if the US tries to take on China. I still believe that this could easily go end of the world nuclear war. The ruling classes in the western world are that perfidious mendacious and burdened with hubris and arrogance. 500 years of ripping off the world is coming to an end and our ruling classes won't give up easily. Just look at what they've done to their own working classes.
Problem is you take out one carrier and you could have up to 25,000 casualties in some form or another, if only men who need to be rescued. Our nuclear doctrine is insane.
Most countries including Russia have a nuclear doctrine that says we will only use these if the state itself is at risk of falling. That's a high barrier. The US keeps lowering the barrier. Last I heard was if a carrier got hit and we lost 25,000 men, the US would have a right to use nuclear weapons.
I have the hunch that "drone swarm" would operate a lot like the way the Chinese Army operated in the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. Despite the stereotype, the Chinese didn't rely on numbers, but skillful infiltration by lightly equipped troops on foot, through mountains and forests, relying on surprise and psychological advantage in attack. Description of the way the current revolution in military affairs is unfolding strikes me as a high tech version of this type of warfare (John Poole had a book called "The Phantom Soldier" making a similar point, but nobody says it needs to be just infantrymen who need to learn how to disperse, sneak, and infiltrate while evading detection).
" I can envision a near-future of a battlefield saturated with radar-invisible, AI-controlled, long duration loitering munitions fired hundreds at a time from highly mobile truck units. "
"The Gulf War was a practical demonstration of the truth that technological superiority in weapons could cancel the enemy's numerical advantage in weapons long come of age. It was the first time in the history of wars that formidable ground forces half a million strong did not put up a fight in an effort to win. They were only fully deployed in the last days of the war when the Iraqi army was as good as finished by air and missile strikes that went on for weeks."
And then there’s this issue, not mentioned in the MWI sections cited, that the Iraqi army didn’t show up to fight. I found the following in the article linked below recently on some obscure site and experienced a major “ah ha:”
The War That Wasn’t
"The most obvious thousand-ton elephant in the room must first be swiftly gotten out of the way:
There was no actual ‘war’.
You’ve read that right. The active conflict invasion stage of the ‘war’, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom, was in fact a giant canard, a holographic Military-Industrial-Media-Complex projection—an abject Hollywood illusory fraud. In the parlance of the soldiers themselves who took part in it, it was called a ‘thunder run to Baghdad’—and for good reason.
What was once oft-discussed in those days, but is now conveniently buried in the memory-holes of American alt-history is the fact that almost every Iraqi general was paid off by the CIA and various US intelligence services to lay down their arms, along with the men under their command, and surrender.
At the time of the invasion in March 2003, many newspapers were rife with reports about this. Here’s an excerpt from UK’s ‘Independent’:
Senior Iraqi officers who commanded troops crucial to the defence of key Iraqi cities were bribed not to fight by American special forces, the US general in charge of the war has confirmed.
Well before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was deemed important to a swift, low-casualty victory.
Even the US Army Supreme Commander for the war effort, General Tommy Franks attested to the fact:
General Tommy Franks, the US army commander for the war, said these Iraqi officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters. As a result, many officers chose not to defend their positions as American and British forces pushed north from Kuwait.
"I had letters from Iraqi generals saying: 'I now work for you'," General Franks said.
And here they admit that the bribing part of the operation was even more important than the purely kinetic aspect of the ‘war’:
"This part of the operation was as important as the shooting part; maybe more important. We knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty and patriotism, and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he added."
Yes readers, this analysis was provided by your host, S:
The Iraq War Was A Sham
We mark the 20 year anniversary of the fraudulent Operation Iraqi Freedom by reframing it with a new, revealing historiography.
Do you suppose the MWI writers know this? And BTW, the MWI analysis of Iraq is undoubtedly what the US was intending even if it didn't actually come into play in fact.
Claiming that the war didn't happen at all is a bit of a stretch.
Yes, a lot of officers and units simply ended up not fighting which resulted in chaos everywhere else, however plenty of units did end up being destroyed without even knowing what was going on because they lost any ability to attack or even see the enemy attacking them.
Take Serbia as a different example of a similar thing.
That was certainly a facet of it and it does raise the question of how the war would have gone if all of the Iraqi army fought fully. Mostly because the American memory of the war and the actuality of it are quite different. Franks almost got fired in the middle of it, things were bad enough that all the embedded reporters were dragged out and locked into hotels. Equipment breaking because nobody planned for sand, trying to repair Abrams in the field. Outrunning supply lines. The British unable to take Basra. Nobody bothering to think about feeding civilians in the "liberated" areas (the US ended up seizing oil for food ships). The Kurds not being as reliable allies as advertised in the north. Etc. Etc.
The veracity of the GRU Iraq War files is impossible to confirm, but it makes for very interesting reading.
Great article, as per usual. Your mention of electronic warfare leaves me hoping for a future article outlining the role it plays in todays modem battlefield.
Given the immense cost of fielding a proper modern army, is (actually) planning for a large scale war still feasible? Not suggesting that it won't happen (heck, there is one now) but it seems that, in event of one, a lot of things will need to be improvised--and a lot of societies would not be able to adapt, as the requirements extend far beyond the military. If large scale wars become more frequent, the "military revolution" won't be limited to military only, but will shape the way societies, economies, and governments are organized--not unlike another context in which the term "military revolution" was coined in 1950s (it was in reference to the parallel developments in 16-18th centuries.)
It seems to me that planning for a large scale war is even more important than before.
Consider the ramifications of many small, highly dispersed combat groups and their logistics. It is one thing to supply a division moving around as a cohesive formation - it is an entirely different thing to supply the equivalent in battalions moving far apart. Fuel, bullets, shells, missiles, food, medical supplies and treatment - all of these are immensely more complex. Ditto repairs.
It is a modern warfare equivalent of "move like a butterfly, sting like a bee" - only with the complexity of organization very possible greater than that of a carrier battle group.
Oh, I think it's important. I just don't think many countries and societies can afford to adapt. A "major" war organized in this fashion will make immense demands, not just in "money"(I suspect "money" is actually not that important here, but the important parts would be the competence of the personnel (and the numbers required), availabilty of the necessary technology, the ability of the country to develop, produce, and implement them domestically, and so forth. I suspect that most countries will "try" to do something, if only because it IS important, but few, if any, will be able to pull together something that works on large enough scale.
I think countries will be forced to adapt - not necessarily to the extent of the "Great Powers", but certainly to the maximum extent they can.
The Mongol model was never successfully copied en masse by anyone else, but the Mongol expansion was eventually stopped in the Middle East and Europe.
Japan's attempt to dominate Asia via industrialization and resulting industrial military capacity was successful for a decade or two but eventually failed in the face of far larger, even if poorer, continental nations.
And then there's terrain. I don't think Switzerland needs its militias to become the equal of Russia's military on the plains of Ukraine and Russia - they have a very specific mission of self defense in the Swiss Alps.
Excellent and interesting as always
Slow news day? ;D
Yep, basically. Took the opportunity to get in something different. Not going to devote a whole SitRep to Robocop Budanov
Yes something very strange about the robocop footage.
He has no ears. And Kiev used a Zaluzhny double in that other fake.
Yes... I saw the video and he was... strange... I bet a coffee on deep fake, and a bad one indeed.
Borgish?
Robocop Budanov, now that made me LOL at work.
I personally like the slow news days, as it means less people got themselves killed.
What most people never think about is after a big war how long it takes for one people to forgive the other. As a Brit with a German Missus I found the contemporary Germans friendly enough, even the parents generation, but poor Opa Villi (grandad) liked me as a person but hated that I was English... (His contemporaries at one of those huge long meals that they do so well, were quite obvious about it too. I turned to my O/H in all innocence, and asked "krauter is vegetables, right? and quietly from the end of the table I heard a deep old voice say: "they call us Krauts..."
Now you Russians seem to strongly dislike us English, and I'm told I should hate you, but I don't. I hate the "elites" who are prolonging this war and exporting DU to the breadbasket of Europe. I'm also not very keen on the people who infest the comment sections on both sides cheering on the conflict, and those who are blithely talking about the use of nuclear weapons.
I have come to hate the war itself, and see anyone who gets "enthusiastic" about it as misguided at best, properly Evil at the worst.
It's not even a moral stance, it's personal annoyance. I wanted to go to Russia and meet some specific Russian people who interest me greatly, now I can't and am very unlikely to ever in the future.
Hi Steve. Thank you for your attitude.
I am Serb. I hate English.
But not 90% of hardworking, honest peple o England, people like you.
Most Brits are Russia-haters. Read the polls. This goes all the way back to the Crimean War. The Brits are getting to be as bad as the Baltic terriers. They're more extreme about Russia than the US is. There's little support for Russia in the UK, I'm afraid.
Still - a losing attitude to hate any country. There are good and bad people, nothing else.
You forgot evil people. They do exist and often bubble up to the top and into huge power. We have to stop those, just don’t know how.
Should AH been killed as a baby for instance?
Don't spout ignoramus idiocies. Are there evil oak trees also?
At least in my experience, most Russians don't hate the English, or even Americans.
I have lived in Russia for 30 years, have a Russian wife and am the father of three Russian children. Nobody here in Russia has ever slagged me off for being English. I'm from the North of England, am Anglo-Norse, really, not Anglo-Saxon. The North of England was largely populated by Scandinavians in the 9th century. You can see and hear evidence of this in Northern English place names, family names, accents and dialects. The Northern capital of England, that part of England known as "The Danelaw", was Jorvik, now called York. When I speak Russian, Russians don't think I am English because I do not speak Russian with a Southern English "standard", "BBC", "Oxford" English accent.
It seems Russia is one of the few places left on earth where you can use the ethnic category of Russian and have it actually mean something. What does English, French, Norwegian, Swedish or American mean when their defining cultures are diluted and canceled.?
Yes and no. My understanding is that "Russia" incorporates many different ethnicities, so it is a accurate to say that a German is one of germanic ethnicity as a Russian is their own. What you get right is the idea of a Russian culture, a common identity notwithstanding the mix of Russians, Chechens, Ossetians, et al. That common cultural identity is quickly disappearing by design all over the west.
I'm reminded of two great Russian generals of Napoleon's era: Peter Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly. ;)
There are in the Russian language two words that are both translated into English as "Russian":
русский [russkiy] meaning an ethnic East Slav Russian (man) — a русская [russkaya] is an ethnic East Slav Russian woman;
a россиянин [rossiyanin] meaning a (male) citizen of Russia —a россиянка [rossiyanka] is a female citizen of Russia.
Hence, a Tatar citizen of the Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan is a rossiyanin but not a russkiy, he is a Tatar, a татарин [tatarin], whereas an ethnic Russian citizen of Russia is both a russkiy and a rossiyanin.
As an American with Teutonic roots (four generations back), I'm still a "kraut" to my in-laws in Lancashire.
The English royal family are also "Krauts".
:-)
With a bit of Greek mixed in.
Danish, as a matter of fact, of the House of Oldenburg. One of them, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II's consort, was invited to be king of Greece. The whole gang is German-Danish.
We learn something everyday. I was referring to the thoroughly evil Phillip, son of Prince Andrew of Greece. he was always referred to as Phill the Greek in out family so I took it for granted he was ethnically Greek.
The good news is that he is now neither, he is dead.
Ukraine war has been in the works ever since Deep State DC decided that the cold war had to continue even though it was over in 1989. Just too many on the military industrial intelligence payroll to let it go. Thus, the soviet union hating morphed into russia hating and Hillary, Bolton, McCain, Lindsey joined up with BlackRock, Soros and the Blinken to embark on turning Eastern Europe into California. Holy crap. How do we stop these maniacs?
Years ago John Mearsheimer made the point that the people responsible for Vietnam were punished by being pushed out of government. Whereas the people responsible for Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc are still there.
In my own terms, far from being punished, they've been rewarded for failure. So they have no accountability and no skin in the game. They're pushing their sunk cost fallacies to save their personal reputations and worthless "careers" at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives in current conflicts and millions since they started. They think the price is worth it.
I'm not sure that's what slow news day means - Ukraine lost eight hundred soldiers on the front, an entire battalion.
Quote from Shadowbanned .
,"if there is one country in NATO that the US is most likely to die over, it is the UK. Everyone else is mere vassals, but the financial oligarchy that runs it all has its bases in both London and NYC. But that again underlines the importance of full annihilation of the UK -- it needs to be blanketed with multi-Mt ground bursts so that nothing survives and there is nobody to instigate retaliatory strikes."
that the england is in the business (literally) of arming proxy wars without getting it own hands (boots) dirty. It pretends it is not at war because it thinks no one will call it out and take it on because it has big brother and would cause much havoc for any challenger (true).
But how can it be stopped playing this game?
Will/could Russia do it?
Will/could China do it?
Will/could China AND Russia do it together?
It really needs to be put in its place, militarily, Now
UK openly says that British are bringing war to Putin's doorstep and Russia has been sitting letting England run the war and propaganda against Russia with no danger of counterattack to English pirates
Shame on Lazy Russians and on Putin.
"it needs to be blanketed with multi-Mt ground bursts so that nothing survives and there is nobody to instigate retaliatory strikes."
Apart from the intrinsic florid psychopathy, the statement neglects to consider our submarine based Nuclear force...
And wiping out an entire race of people has been tried before. Do you really want to sink to below that level? (I say below because you not only want to kill me and my long suffering O/H, and my child, but you also want to do in my poor cats, all my friends, the guy who just fixed my shock absorber... Even my EX doesn't really deserve to be annihilated. I can't help but feel that you are being a tad unreasonable.
Even for my unmentionable ex, a good talking to would maybe suffice...
You sound a tad delusional: “a good talking would maybe suffice…”
Maybe the proposed method is not very nice to your ex, but there are some valid points in the comment imho. How are you good people in the UK going to prevent that these evil people in power dictate foreign policy and bring the world to the brink of extinction?
Well, the penny seems to have dropped with our prime minister at last...
"Delusional" isn't really in my wheelhouse, (sadly, I note that delusional people seem to be a lot happier and better adjusted to this world than I seem to be) and I do note that "A bad talking to" was all it took to steer Zelensky away from the negotiating table, and towards the bumping off another half a million of his countrymen. Surely, it could work the other way?
I do admit to have been sold many illusions when I was a kid, and note recently how easy it was to persuade most people to to take a nefarious experimental treatment simply by redefining the concept of a "vaccine", and providing the illusion/lie that the vax would work the same as a vaccine...
As someone who's lived next to a US strategic bomber base in England, I resemble your remark. ;)
That said, I'm not persuaded the UK nuclear deterrent is independent. As early as Trident One, even I could have designed into the vehicles themselves (to which we have no access, even maintenance is done in the USA) a "dead man's off-switch" to enforce the treaty requirement to consult the USA before firing. So the USA, with an actual policy to back up the treaty provisions, surely would have thought of that. Every opportunity to renegotiate, including Thatcher's two opportunities with Reagan, have resulted in even harsher restrictions on our "independence" than MacMillan initially secured.
If the UK fired on Russia, Russia therefore would know it's a proxy attack blessed by the USA. So for that reason alone it seems unlikely the USA would ever let any UK warheads targeted at Russia to land anywhere closer to Russia than the North Pole. ;)
Anyone can spit out "news" to get attention. If I don't understand overall strategic doctrine & related tactics, the "news" becomes little more than endless repetition of questionable " facts". I follow Simpl precisely because of these "Slow news day..." analyses.
Good to know!
What's interesting to me is while both sides/strategies have advanced and evolved. It seems like both sides were kind of caught with their pants down in 2 areas entering this conflict. The huge impact short range drones and mines would have. With troops forced to spread out and maneuver in smaller numbers drones become more than an annoyance and a mine field can really slow down your movement.
I would argue it isn't so much "pants down" as opposed to "distilled by combat".
All the theory in the world cannot compare to practice under actual fire.
Fair enough. You also understand my point. That it's interesting that after you theorycraft these huge changes in war and technology something so small as mines and hand launched drones cause so many problems. I just find it fascinating.
Perhaps you are underestimating what you are seeing.
Karber's 2019 presentation to West Point specifically said that Russian infantry fighting vehicles; every platoon (?) had a built-in drone. This is very different than Ukraine/AFU buying DJIs en masse to compensate for their lack thereof. The US Army or NATO forces today would almost universally be in a very similar situation.
Similarly with mines: think of a mine as a more complex artillery shell. Now consider how many mines you need to cover 1000 km front at a depth of at least 500 feet, more like thousands of feet of depth.
Sure, the mine as an absolute technology is old - but the modern mines are not the same as those used even in the Vietnam war. Vietnam war era anti-armor mines were gigantic affairs; IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan are often literally artillery shells with cell phone fuses yet clearly the Russians are sowing anti-armor mines by air both via dedicated systems and via ad hoc.
In other words: the "small" thing with mines and drones involves technology, military industrial complex capacity as well as defensive/offensive theory both in execution and in planning.
As much as everyone was caught "pants down" by the effectiveness of machineguns, barbed wire and artillery back in 1914. Even though they existed for decades and were all used in combat, effectively, nobody in the higher echelons of command adapted their stratiegies before the war.
Same happened in 1939 - Guderian wrote his book about tank warfare and blitzkrieg tactics many years prior, yet nobody anticipated how effective it would be, apart from the Soviets, who still failed to prepare in time.
And there's many such examples, big and small, all over wars. Like an idiotic thinking of the U.S. military that tanks should not fight tanks. Sure, it worked out in the end because the Germans were already weak and U.S. industrial capacity was so huge they were able to strap tank destroyer turrets on Shermans fast enough, but still - pure idiocy.
We might see another one soon, when U.S. carriers, which they desperately cling to, will be destroyed by Chinese hypersonic weapons. It's clear to everyone that nothing can protect a carrier, yet they continue to lay down new hulls.
Clearly, the continuing US reliance on carriers is more of a "they worked really well for us for nearly a century" holdover than a "what is best for future conflicts" assessment. Ossified military thinking coupled with a "the primary purpose of defense spending is for the benefit of the political class" attitude are the primary reasons for the current state of the US military - add to that the philosophy that "wokeness is more important than effectiveness" and one ends up with a hugely expensive military not fit for purpose.
But how, then do you project power around the seas? The fact is an aircraft carrier never goes to sea alone. Rather is surrounded with a battery of ships that protect and supply it. It then gets to be a question whether said protection "destroyers" can track/ destory said hypersonic missiles. What do you think they pay raytheon for?
They pay Raytheon (and other defense contractors) PRIMARILY to benefit the political classes, i.e., contributions and votes "for bringing the bacon home" to their districts. The secondary reason is to assure well-paying post-retirement positions for senior military personnel. The delivery of good, cost-effective weapons systems for the defense of the nation is, at best, only of tertiary importance.
They ordinarily can't intercept/destroy hypersonics (speed), but it doesn't matter because unless lucky hypersonics won't be able to hit ships manouvreing at sea (plasma from speed means communication is difficult). if that is right, then hypersonics are a general naval threat only to ships in port.
But how, then do you project power around the seas? The fact is an aircraft carrier never goes to sea alone. Rather is surrounded with a battery of ships that protect and supply it. It then gets to be a question whether said protection "destroyers" can track/ destory said hypersonic missiles. What do you think they pay raytheon for?
See my reply to your duplicate comment
Blitzkrieg and Deep Battle both started in the same place at the same time: Russia, 1928. Blitzkrieg became usable in 1940; Deep Battle in 1944. So there's a huge lead time.
As for hypersonic: they're perfect for wiping out anything in port (which is why Bahrein may suddenly become unpopular with the USN, now that Iran has demonstrated its hypersonics). ;) But for anything manoeuvring at sea it's much harder, because their very speed (the same reason they can't be intercepted) means it's very difficult to communicate with them (plasma) even in the absence of EW.
If I may be flippant about it, this represents the Uberization of warfare. Individual commanders (drivers) are now making local judgments based on conditions observed on the ground, marshaling their individual resources (vehicles) in pursuit of an overall objective (transport). An entire centralized logistics trail, body of doctrine, and command infrastructure (the Uber app, servers, and company) are now deployed to enable, rather than to control, the commander-driver. The main reason for this, as mentioned, is that larger concentrations will simply be blown to bits. The requirements for commander-drivers will increase, and more will be needed. The greater and greater importance of a ready reserve well-trained operators and commanders could see the return of mandatory military service.
Even war is not immune to techbros.
This new form of warfare turns warriors into scurrying rats. No uniform, driving civilian cars, hiding in apartment complexes... I am pretty sure the civilian population is the jungle to hide in. We are all meat shields now.
That we are. You're never sure which of the cars on the road is an Uber driver, after all.
Or which of the Uber drivers are FPV drones... :):):)
Uberization of warfare is not a bad description of Western militaries: more expensive, less reliable, inherently not viable.
You also confuse what Uber as a business is really about: monopoly control over payments, brand and customer meaning every Uber driver is just a sucker working at the whims of the company.
Being a commander-driver in the new world isn't easy either. You're squeezed hard either way.
I do agree, though, the hypothetical commander has a lot longer leash than an Uber driver. Probably makes more too, though a lot of that is hazard pay.
If the 200K rubles/month figure is accurate - the regular soldiers are getting paid a lot more than Uber drivers as well.
And if true, it would mean the very unusual situation where people literally risking their lives are getting paid commensurately for it.
Which we would all be glad for. I know I would, as long as I'm not on the other side from that guy!
Labor shortages. Funny how that works. If they REALLY want the work done, they'll pay a wage high enough to entice.
In a free market there can never be a shortage of labor, only of money. So whenever you have a labor shortage, by definition you don't have a free market. ;)
Yep, suckers for sure. Talked to one recently while filling up with fuel. He was livid; worked 7 hours for a grand total of $6 an hour. After expenses he would have been lucky to keep $2 per hour of that.
But at least when he's meeting chicks he can brag that he owns his own business LOL
When ride sharing first came out - Uber wasn't even the first. Uber started exclusively as a parasite scamming black car company owners; Uber's app let a limo driver working for a limo company to earn extra pay while using the black car company's car, illegally picking up passengers, burning black car company paid gas and covered by black car company insurance.
The first non-scam ride sharing was a company called Sidecar. Sidecar was specifically created to increase car sharing; it was designed to enable people getting off work, for example, to designate pickup and dropoff zones so they could take someone else with them when they drove home. Drivers were not penalized for declining ride requests; drivers could see where pickups and dropoffs and estimated ride revenue was.
But of course, Gresham's law applies to "tech" companies; Uber's flood of investment washed away Sidecar as literally the first casualty of the taxi wars.
Uber (and Lyft too, to be fair) today is nothing more than a fancy version of the medieval "putting out" system. Back in the dawn of the industrial age, wooden looms increased weaving productivity enormously but the looms were extremely expensive.
Some smart and evil dude figured out that if you loaned the loom to a weaver but forced them to buy thread from you and sell output cloth to you for a price you dictated - you would effectively ensure they could never pay off the loom loan - thus capturing the entire productivity benefit of the loom for yourself.
Ride sharing does the exact same thing: the drivers take on all the risk including insurance, not having riders, gasoline and maintenance prices, depreciation of the vehicle, riders throwing up in their car etc etc. But Uber/Lyft set the prices, own the customer interface and information plus control who gets the rides.
Yep, agreed. Never used an Uber and never will.
I do use Uber - but I clearly recognize that Uber (or any other ride sharing) should actually be more expensive than taxis. And, these days, there are more and more frequent cases where that is actually true. Studies across multiple cities and states show that ride share drivers spend more time driving to pick up people, unpaid, vs. taxis. This is "better service" but represents a cost borne by the driver since their meter doesn't start until pickup. Taxis get around this by hanging out where people are hence taxis averaging 2.5x more rides in peak weekend periods than ride share.
If Anal Schwab and his WEF gets his way all transport will be redundant as we'll be locked in our 15 minute cities. Bastards.
Thank you for the info and historical analogy!
During WWII, both Soviet and German doctrine called for smaller units to take the initiative and adapt to what was around them instead of blindly following orders. This was a newer idea for the Red Army than it was for the Wermacht. But by the end of the war, the Red Army had gone a great distance toward adopting and practicing this doctrine. Under Hitler's tutelage, the Wermacht went a considerable distance in the other direction.
I would say it differently. Any army at war comes to expand the initiative of junior commanders. Any non-belligerent army punishes initiative and moves to a rigid hierarchy.
I wonder if communication security is a factor in deploying smaller self-contained "A-Teams" with the ability to coordinate over wire coms or visual signals. The techbros may be replaced by the signalman.
The wireless communications and air defense radars seemed to be giant "kick me" signs with the Russians putting a 500lb boot in AFU/ NATO butts.
This is true. We could see a return to modernized version of primitive communication. Bring back signal flags and unit musicians.
Doof Warrior from Mad Max: Fury Road communicating orders by shredding on his flame-spitting electric guitar is the pinnacle of modern warfare.
Perhaps the old-school field telephone wires will come back to fashion. Unless the enemy cuts the wire or taps on it physically, the EW signature is close to 0, the problem is of laying such wires in highly mobile battlefield.
Reminds me of my grandfather, who started his weird military career in 1918 as an army mounted(!) signalman laying wire (before serving in an air force and two navies as a naval aviator). ;)
Finally, a place it pays to be Chad.
Second-hand Toyota Hiluxes come with the territory.
Great Commentary, thorough and professional. Congrats for your work!
thanks! insightful!
Anyone unbiased who wanted to know what is happening in this war would gain a lot from reading this article. Further confirmation for us who read a lot because we care. I expect that one reason why Western Media has been so easily manipulated by the fake narrative is because they're a actor-led culture. Hollywood is not a war expert giving lessons on how to save lives. Bravery is not running to certain death. Foolishness is judging a war like its a movie with an expendable sidekick the hero has to avenge.
The Western Media gets paid to lie, they aren't manipulated, only by money, and the power they receive to be liars. The citizens are the ones manipulated because they don't care and are stupid, tell-e-vision. That is all they know. Jimmy Dore, "do your own research, it is called reading". I will try to find the clip, it made me laugh out loud.
Jimmy Dore has made me laugh too but I dropped him and a helluva lot of other bookmarks because following over 100 people was exhausting.
Sure, its about salaries as bribes. But I'd like to add a caveat for the salary worker, and forgive me cause I'm sure you've heard stuff like this before.
People used to be poor and survive. Dad worked, mom stayed at home pushing out babies that got a decent education. This is not about misogyny, just the existing-as-okay aspect.
Then the wealth transfer began, people manipulated into thinking they needed things they didn't so that a few could profit. Marriage suddenly required a diamond ring to be legit (you can blame my country for that - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHIGGdxZe64). Freedom became an SUV that sucks as much petrol and spurts as much carbon as possible (blame the USA for that). I'm not going to dig into housing ' cause you're getting my point.
So Mom had to get a job, and kids grew up with out moral guidance, giving their teachers hell, and consequently giving them only enough education to become a mass shooter or an ignorant salary worker.
The irony is that believing in the fake world we were sold made it reality. If you don't work, you become homeless.
My point is that in this world of masters and dogs, and dog-eat-dog world wherein the salary workers are the dogs, they do whatever they can to hang onto that deposit at the end of the month. It's what they've been taught.
But this caveat is an sympathy explanation and not an excuse for publishing lies that gets lots of people, who are also just trying to survive, killed. Fake news is a weapon of mass destruction.
I hear ya, it does get exhausting, but I do need my humor fix.
Along w/mom having to get a job came the perfect opportunity to create fast food, microwave meals, frozen dinners, and all the other dietary toxins to poison us, because you know, it made life easier.
Amen, "fake news is a weapon of mass destruction". That is a FACT.
"Marriage suddenly required a diamond ring to be legit (you can blame my country for that "
Women were not brainwashed, this is natural female hypergamy,
I would like to add, that high status wealthy women have always needed to be bribed with wealth and trinkets, most men were too poor to do this in the past.
Marriage in of itself is a bribe, marriage is the divorce contract, men promise to pay out when the woman decides to cash out of the relationship. This is how women want it, and men are willing to pay the price.
If it floats, flies, or fucks it's expensive.
Well said. I would add that when the family couldn't earn enough because of the wealth transfer upwards they went into debt for everything including the unnecessary higher education where you need the useless degree to get in the door so several years of your life wasted and you start working pre indebted. Meanwhile media of all ilks combined with academia have destroyed society and the working classes families. I don't see any changes until millions are in the streets prepared to do violence on the ruling classes. I'm not hopeful.
You talk about bribes and whatnot, but I have a degree in Journalism, I've worked in the field, and I've been dealing with these stenographer whores my whole life.
You know how there's this vast set of social rules you have to follow if you want to succeed in life? A lot of them are idiotic, ridiculous and even non-adaptive, adding a bunch of stupid extra steps to things that could be done much more efficiently?
Well, most of us go ahead and digest those rules and obey them and don't even think about it because the punishment for being a social retard is so severe.
Well, same thing with these journalist whores. I know all sorts of people in many fields who have these same views. I never felt that even one of them knew that what they believed was a lie but were just lying consciously anyway. I'm not even sure how many people consciously lie about politics.
The thing is that just as people figure out that the social rules are necessary, the political rules for supporting US foreign policy are necessary in the same sense. You don't obey the social rules and you will be "fired" socially. You don't obey the political line and you will be canned for real, and now you can't pay rent!
You work at a big paper with the ideology that I have, and you won't last two days. You cannot turn in a truthful foreign policy article. Your editor will read it, scowl, and throw it back at you angrily. You turn in articles like that a few times and you're fired. All the other journalists will know that you got fired for not following the narrative and make s note of that.
I'm convinced that when it comes to politics and US foreign policy, people believe all sorts of BS that is objectively false, that is, they believe LIES. But they do not think they are lies! They have convinced themselves that the lies they are saying are actually true! This holds for all forms of politics.
So any journalist working today fully believes in the lying narrative. They don't know it's BS and say it anyway. They aren't THAT evil.
To be THAT evil you have to be a psychopath who works in Washington DC for the executive or legislative branch. Now, those people often know full well that a lot of the crap they say is full blown lies, but they don't care. They are indeed lying consciously but it doesn’t bother them.
In geopolitics, non-sociopaths need not apply. Psychopathy is one of the job requirements.
There are no good guys in geopolitics! There are bad guys and worse guys and that's it!
Thanks, Robert. Well said.
Manipulation is the art of the few, to be manipulated the passion of the masses. It happens in stages. For the protection of salary, morals are broken. Then its cognitive dissonance which must also be overcome lest it devolve into madness. Eventually, repetition changes belief so that what was wrong is now right. People can' t handle being alone because they're mammals, and mammals herd. The might of right is in numbers.
Concur. Cf the most famous 21-second clip from the Marr-Chomsky interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2EPgix5_5w
full transcript: http://scratchindog.blogspot.com/2015/07/transcript-of-interview-between-noam.html )
I doubt that the MSM got paid in the crude sense of the word. Rather, access is the currency that Washington runs on.
Breaking: Russia surrenders immediately after New Zealand threatens to send the Bob Semple Tank to Ukraine
@ACroneintheWoods - the list is endless. The first piece of shit is hard to swallow but eventually you don' t have to hold your nose and eat it everyday. War has become America's fast food too. Gullibility is human nature. Those who abuse it, and those of us who fight it, are aberrations.
@AlexBrown Women are my equal. Men and women are brainwashed, but women more so regarding jewellery and men with takkies. I was engaged only once and my lady was deep into the society's 'requirements'. I thought it absurd but had to give her diamonds (on credit) because there was no other way I was going to be legit. My younger self was, momentarily, part of the system. But my point wasn't about men and women, only that diamonds have value through marketing, and the diamond wedding ring is a De Beers (i.e. Oppenheimer) establishment.
@RobertHunter If we taught kids not to take debt, we would do more to change the world than through any other topic.
@FeralFinster MSM?
@IDontLikeSand Hilarious!
And meanwhile, the American economy and culture nosedivebombs into the void.
I sure hope Russia can win, and sooner than later. Of course , Russia will not lose....
JoeBiden stole my car this morning, that dog
oh no, what happened?
Interesting article!
Architect of Soviet Victory in World War II: The Life and Theories of G.S. Isserson, by Richard W. Harrison combines a biography of Isserson with detailed discussion of his work on Deep Operations.
Isserson's rehabilitation in 1955 allowed him to return to Moscow but his difficult personality prevented him from returning to the General Staff Academy. The rise of Brezhnev made Isserson's life difficult as he was Jewish. The book describes movingly how Marshal Vasilievsky sent Isserson an autographed copy of his memoirs but alluding why he could not acknowledge Isserson in the text itself.
Wait a minute. There was official antisemitism in the USSR under Brezhnev? Not buying it, man. The USSR was not an antisemitic country.
"There was official antisemitism in the USSR under Brezhnev? Not buying it, man"
Buy it: look at the Soviet Jews that struggled to emigrate, like Joseph Brodsky (Nobel Literature), Ilya Pyatetski-Shapiro and Marina Ratner (mathematics) and similar experiences of many others.
Or talk to Russian Jews that lived during Brezhnev's rule. Here's a link to antisemitism at Moscow State University at that time, including references,
"In 1970, the university imposed a 2% quota on Jewish students.[5] A 2014 article entitled "Math as a tool of anti-semitism" in The Mathematics Enthusiast discussed antisemitism in the Moscow State University's Department of Mathematics during the 1970s and 1980s.[6][7][8]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_State_University
Brezhnev's antisemitism paid a price:
https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/russias-chips-failure-coming-home-to-roost/
I never believed ignorance led to antisemitism, until I read your comment.
You got that from Judeopedia, I mean Wikipedia. All of the Jewish articles got taken over by the meanest, worst Jews on Earth, all Super-Jews, real quick and they ran out everyone who disagreed with them as "Nazis" on flimsy or made-up charges. They were as punchable as a human gets. So all of those articles are wildly biased. Also Wikipedia should be called CIApedia because all of their articles about recent world history are "the world according to the CIA."
They say they're on the Left, but that's BS. They hate socialism and communism and anything with even a whiff of that. They love radical freemarket economics and all of the articles on those subjects are badly biased. The founder was Libertarian Gentile who was a strong Zionist.
The only way these scumbags are "left" is on the society-wrecking program of the Cultural Left Freakshow with every sexual and gender minority elevated to sainthood with a strong anti straight cis White male bias.
In other words, the Fake Left! Woketards + rightwing economics + the world according to the CIA. That's the modern Western Left in a nutshell.
"Wouldn't let the boor babies immigrate." Oh boo hoo! Poor Jews! Wa wa. Cry me a river, Jews! Nobody got to emigrate in the USSR, nobody but nobody but nobody. That was the rule. Of course, Jews are special people so there are rules for them and rules for everyone else. Dual morality.
Also, they all wanted to go to Israel!
The USSR was hostile to Israel. At first they were neutral but Israel very quickly went to the West, and a lot of liberal Jews started spying for the West against the USSR. That was part of the reason Stalin went anti-Jewish towards the end. He thought they were traitors.
Also this was a useful Cold War club to beat the Soviets over the head with, and many liberal Western Jews got in on this bullshit.
At first Jews were overrepresented by 6X at Soviet universities. After the USSR went "antisemitic," they were only overrepresented by 3X. Oh poor babies! "We're not overrepresented enough!" Boo hoo!
I'm sorry it went down to 2% later on. That wasn't right. Yes, there was a problem in the math departments in the USSR which went antisemitic at the end. However, this was very controversial in the USSR, and even rightwing Soviet-hating antisemitic Russian academics now say that this was wrong.
I recall a quote from a Jewish professor at a university during this "antisemitic" period. He said that in his department, there were 300 people and maybe three or four of them were not Jewish. He said no one ever asked about whether someone was Jewish or not, and the matter never even really came up. In the USSR you didn't discuss such things. Everyone's ethnicity was "working class" and everyone's religion was the state.
And you're blocked, asshole
You're Jewish. I get it.
You're using asiatimes and wiki as sources? For real?
It is obvious when those with real interest in truth write. This is far more insightful then the combined efforts of the ISW, Bellingcat, Carnegie Mellon Institute fart huffers.
They can't even put together a coherent argument for anything, just make things up then repeat em till it's believed.
Great write up and good find re: the west point analysis
You can see various militaries around the world trying to find a "solution" to the problem being outlined. The Western militaries operate on a doctrine of 1) air superiority 2) stealth superiority 3) precision, long range strike and 4) fully networked forces under an ISR umbrella
But, take away any 1 or 2 of these presumptions, and the whole thing falls apart. Also, I am ever more curious now on Chinese "drone swarm" launchers; suggesting to me that Sino thinking is already thinking ahead of how to deal with this. I can envision a near-future of a battlefield saturated with radar-invisible, AI-controlled, long duration loitering munitions fired hundreds at a time from highly mobile truck units.
I wonder actually if, last April, when HIMARS was introduced, it was a "OH, OK" moment for the Russian military, where theory met reality in an instant. In a sense, the US handed it to the Russians on a platter, because they gave them the chance to encounter the system in a way which would be painful, but far from decisive. Were it introduced in far larger quantities and in tandem with Storm Shadow, ATACMS, 4th gen aircraft, MBT's, helicopters (?) - more or less a proper NATO army - the impact would have been more devastating. Now, the Russians know what to do.
One thing I'll say is that, the SMO has revealed that stealth weapons likely can be dangerous simply because we've seen that modern radars (whether it's NATO systems like Patriot or Russian systems) are more limited than many people thought in regards to tracking small objects, low-observable objects, etc. So on one hand, this would *seemingly* give a big advantage to U.S./NATO against Russia seeing as how that could suggest that America's stealth fleet would be a massive problem for Russia's integrated air defense.
BUT: the big issue here most pro-NATO people ignore, is: how does the U.S. identity the targets for that big scary stealth fleet to hit? Answer: space ISR. You know, E/O and SARs satellites, etc.
But in a potential war against Russia, A-235s will take out U.S. satellites in the first minutes of engagement. And recall, many ignorant people laugh and say "but U.S. has thousands of [insert satellite here] like Starlink." Yes it has thousands of starlinks but they are useless in this regard, they have no E/O or camera capabilities. How many actual photographic spy satellites does U.S. have? About 5 last time I checked, the famed Keyhole line of systems. After Russia destroys these, U.S. would be completely blind. How is it going to find and pick targets for those scary stealth jets? It won't. AWACs signals can't reach thousands of kilometers from Germany/Poland into Russia, etc. That means NATO would be nullified without their satellites, at least to a large degree.
Aren't the targeting systems of the US stealth fighters susceptible to GPS jamming? At least that's what Tom Cruise just said on "Top Gun: Maverick", which is playing in the background as I type this. :-). Actually, I've read it elsewhere too. If true, seems like the stealth fighters/bombers would be effectively neutered when flying within range of Russia's electronic warfare systems.
Thank you for this. I was wondering how stealth would factor into this.
You said that Russia would take out the USA E/O satellites in the first minutes of a war. But I'm curious about the threshold for that escalation. The USA and China can also take out satellites and at some point it will lead to a Kessler Syndrome that kills all satellites in a low Earth orbit, which is a fairly substantial escalation against every country that has satellites, militaryor otherwise.
I know that the US military is far more dependent on satellite intel and communications than the Russian military is, but that is still a pretty high impact event. Do you have any thoughts about where the Russian pain threshold is? Or, conversely, how itchy that trigger finger is? Because the debris storm lasts for years and cannot be undone with any craft we hold so it is the nuclear option in the satellite realm.
But is it true?
You've pointed out yourself, that Storm Shadows only strike "backwater areas" because Russians have fairly high chance of downing them in protected areas (while not as easy as a non-stealthy targets, but happens regularly).
And the Storm Shadow has smaller RCS than a DJI drone (in fact, much smaller from most aspects).
The issue is not detecting small targets, but slow ones which blend into the clutter too (low flying drones). And, even these big quadcopter drones have too small rotors to present a discernible two-colored radar return that distinguishes a typical helicopter.
Without disagreeing with you generally, I note the modern Pantsir AD vehicles, a full battery of which is organic to Russian BTGs (the combined arms "battalion tactical groups" that are the primary maneuver elements in this war), can detect line-of-sight drones and shoot them down in about a second flat. Upon detection, the computer auto-selects and fires the dual 30mm autocannons instead of wasting a missile. I've seen demo videos - of course I don't know how well it works in the field! :)
I tend to equate kinetic ASAT action with the use of battlefield nukes, and my rationale is that once you start blowing things up in space you 1) the other guy immediately kills your stuff too and 2) the cascade of space debris is started and we go back to the 1950's really very quickly.
On the other hand, laser / jamming of satellites is fair game. I wonder how technically feasible it is to zap the optics on keyhole satellites..
A-235 can shoot down hypersonic ICBMS, satellites, and can be outfitted with nuclear warheads, which would presumably sterilize fields in earth-orbit, and likely destroy electronc communications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-235_anti-ballistic_missile_system
Russia also have "Peresvet" laser system. Most information about this system is classified, but what is known is this system can blind optical reconnaissance satellites.
Re: Loss of Keyhole - The fall back would be taking in live feed from as many of the commercial satellite ground observation networks as possible. Still a notable degradation, but as a work around would still be useful. ( And I would bet US SIGINT stations are ALREADY tapped in to those networks anyway)
Re: Stealth. As the Serb demonstrated (with old Buk's) against the F117, it ain't much of a thing if you know where/when to look. All stealth aircraft/missiles are shaped to DIRECT reflected radar energy in some direction OTHER than back to the emitter, with the RAM coating minimising that energy. If you can tie together several radar arrays, widely spaced, chances are good of spotting that redirected energy.
You can be sure Russia, with 30 years (or more, stealth is 70's tech) to work at it, have a solution to "stealth".
This is why Storm Shadow is having spotty success, having to "thread the needle' of radar coverage.
One wonders how much priority Russian has given to ramping EW platform production over other items....
IS US 'stealth' (on large objects such as bombers) as effective as they brag? Serbia managed to see them with systems from the 70ies.
AWAKS won't last through the first day. Same for Aircraft carriers if the US tries to take on China. I still believe that this could easily go end of the world nuclear war. The ruling classes in the western world are that perfidious mendacious and burdened with hubris and arrogance. 500 years of ripping off the world is coming to an end and our ruling classes won't give up easily. Just look at what they've done to their own working classes.
Problem is you take out one carrier and you could have up to 25,000 casualties in some form or another, if only men who need to be rescued. Our nuclear doctrine is insane.
Most countries including Russia have a nuclear doctrine that says we will only use these if the state itself is at risk of falling. That's a high barrier. The US keeps lowering the barrier. Last I heard was if a carrier got hit and we lost 25,000 men, the US would have a right to use nuclear weapons.
The US government just gets more and more insane.
I have the hunch that "drone swarm" would operate a lot like the way the Chinese Army operated in the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. Despite the stereotype, the Chinese didn't rely on numbers, but skillful infiltration by lightly equipped troops on foot, through mountains and forests, relying on surprise and psychological advantage in attack. Description of the way the current revolution in military affairs is unfolding strikes me as a high tech version of this type of warfare (John Poole had a book called "The Phantom Soldier" making a similar point, but nobody says it needs to be just infantrymen who need to learn how to disperse, sneak, and infiltrate while evading detection).
Great point. 5th Gen Warfare is all about infiltration through evading detection by using operatives that are not "infantry"
There's an interesting video of a Chinese drone swarm navigating through a forest; impressive.
" I can envision a near-future of a battlefield saturated with radar-invisible, AI-controlled, long duration loitering munitions fired hundreds at a time from highly mobile truck units. "
Skynet is coming.....
❤️Wage Peace,
🌟Keep the Faith,
#DeNazthePlanet!
The Modern War Institute:
"The Gulf War was a practical demonstration of the truth that technological superiority in weapons could cancel the enemy's numerical advantage in weapons long come of age. It was the first time in the history of wars that formidable ground forces half a million strong did not put up a fight in an effort to win. They were only fully deployed in the last days of the war when the Iraqi army was as good as finished by air and missile strikes that went on for weeks."
And then there’s this issue, not mentioned in the MWI sections cited, that the Iraqi army didn’t show up to fight. I found the following in the article linked below recently on some obscure site and experienced a major “ah ha:”
The War That Wasn’t
"The most obvious thousand-ton elephant in the room must first be swiftly gotten out of the way:
There was no actual ‘war’.
You’ve read that right. The active conflict invasion stage of the ‘war’, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom, was in fact a giant canard, a holographic Military-Industrial-Media-Complex projection—an abject Hollywood illusory fraud. In the parlance of the soldiers themselves who took part in it, it was called a ‘thunder run to Baghdad’—and for good reason.
What was once oft-discussed in those days, but is now conveniently buried in the memory-holes of American alt-history is the fact that almost every Iraqi general was paid off by the CIA and various US intelligence services to lay down their arms, along with the men under their command, and surrender.
At the time of the invasion in March 2003, many newspapers were rife with reports about this. Here’s an excerpt from UK’s ‘Independent’:
Senior Iraqi officers who commanded troops crucial to the defence of key Iraqi cities were bribed not to fight by American special forces, the US general in charge of the war has confirmed.
Well before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was deemed important to a swift, low-casualty victory.
Even the US Army Supreme Commander for the war effort, General Tommy Franks attested to the fact:
General Tommy Franks, the US army commander for the war, said these Iraqi officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters. As a result, many officers chose not to defend their positions as American and British forces pushed north from Kuwait.
"I had letters from Iraqi generals saying: 'I now work for you'," General Franks said.
And here they admit that the bribing part of the operation was even more important than the purely kinetic aspect of the ‘war’:
"This part of the operation was as important as the shooting part; maybe more important. We knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty and patriotism, and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he added."
Yes readers, this analysis was provided by your host, S:
The Iraq War Was A Sham
We mark the 20 year anniversary of the fraudulent Operation Iraqi Freedom by reframing it with a new, revealing historiography.
3-13-23
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-iraq-war-was-a-sham?
Do you suppose the MWI writers know this? And BTW, the MWI analysis of Iraq is undoubtedly what the US was intending even if it didn't actually come into play in fact.
Claiming that the war didn't happen at all is a bit of a stretch.
Yes, a lot of officers and units simply ended up not fighting which resulted in chaos everywhere else, however plenty of units did end up being destroyed without even knowing what was going on because they lost any ability to attack or even see the enemy attacking them.
Take Serbia as a different example of a similar thing.
That was certainly a facet of it and it does raise the question of how the war would have gone if all of the Iraqi army fought fully. Mostly because the American memory of the war and the actuality of it are quite different. Franks almost got fired in the middle of it, things were bad enough that all the embedded reporters were dragged out and locked into hotels. Equipment breaking because nobody planned for sand, trying to repair Abrams in the field. Outrunning supply lines. The British unable to take Basra. Nobody bothering to think about feeding civilians in the "liberated" areas (the US ended up seizing oil for food ships). The Kurds not being as reliable allies as advertised in the north. Etc. Etc.
The veracity of the GRU Iraq War files is impossible to confirm, but it makes for very interesting reading.
https://stolzuntermenschen.substack.com/p/2003-iraq-war-the-gru-intelligence
Great article, as per usual. Your mention of electronic warfare leaves me hoping for a future article outlining the role it plays in todays modem battlefield.
pun intended?
Given the immense cost of fielding a proper modern army, is (actually) planning for a large scale war still feasible? Not suggesting that it won't happen (heck, there is one now) but it seems that, in event of one, a lot of things will need to be improvised--and a lot of societies would not be able to adapt, as the requirements extend far beyond the military. If large scale wars become more frequent, the "military revolution" won't be limited to military only, but will shape the way societies, economies, and governments are organized--not unlike another context in which the term "military revolution" was coined in 1950s (it was in reference to the parallel developments in 16-18th centuries.)
It seems to me that planning for a large scale war is even more important than before.
Consider the ramifications of many small, highly dispersed combat groups and their logistics. It is one thing to supply a division moving around as a cohesive formation - it is an entirely different thing to supply the equivalent in battalions moving far apart. Fuel, bullets, shells, missiles, food, medical supplies and treatment - all of these are immensely more complex. Ditto repairs.
It is a modern warfare equivalent of "move like a butterfly, sting like a bee" - only with the complexity of organization very possible greater than that of a carrier battle group.
Oh, I think it's important. I just don't think many countries and societies can afford to adapt. A "major" war organized in this fashion will make immense demands, not just in "money"(I suspect "money" is actually not that important here, but the important parts would be the competence of the personnel (and the numbers required), availabilty of the necessary technology, the ability of the country to develop, produce, and implement them domestically, and so forth. I suspect that most countries will "try" to do something, if only because it IS important, but few, if any, will be able to pull together something that works on large enough scale.
I think countries will be forced to adapt - not necessarily to the extent of the "Great Powers", but certainly to the maximum extent they can.
The Mongol model was never successfully copied en masse by anyone else, but the Mongol expansion was eventually stopped in the Middle East and Europe.
Japan's attempt to dominate Asia via industrialization and resulting industrial military capacity was successful for a decade or two but eventually failed in the face of far larger, even if poorer, continental nations.
And then there's terrain. I don't think Switzerland needs its militias to become the equal of Russia's military on the plains of Ukraine and Russia - they have a very specific mission of self defense in the Swiss Alps.
Thank you, again, for your hard and uncompromising work. I feel empowered by the knowledge I gain. I thank God for having you around.