[YouTube] Since the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022) a lot of statements about the "end of the tank" came up. Most of these statements are old, very old and they show up every few decades, particularly if a new technology is invented and/or some factions suffers - for whatever reason - a certain amount of tank losses. This video discusses the various factors about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and a lot of the previous arguments that often have not changed for decades and generally still invalid, since people forget combined arms warfare. "Modern times: aircraft carriersA-10 Warthogs, infantry are all obsolete"
#4
And the log tail. Anyone seen any pictures of Russian recovery and repair units? I've seen pics of Ukrainians doing recovery and salvaging but little of the other side. That infantry is needed for security for things like that along with the loggies just behind the front lines for refuel and repair and hauling PLL. It appears to be 'use and throw away' or 'burn it up' institutional mentality.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 7:28 Comments ||
Top||
#6
I would go so far as saying the current "modern warfare" solutions currently deployed will soon be a thing of the past.
Battle Drones and remote control attack weapons cost far less, are easier to produce, require less support personnel to maintain, and can be single or multi-used.
But, Technical Logistics and Rare Earth Raw Materials will be the Achilles Tendon for many nations.
But there will always be a citizenry with firearms scaring the hell out of, or "retiring" a few field officers during any battle.
#7
...Part of the problem here is that the Russians don't have anything resembling a functioning modern air force over Ukraine - they have a poorly supplied, disorganized, and unscheduled airline that drops bombs at the end of its runs.
If there was coordinated, properly employed air power from the Russian side, the Ukranians would be having a much, MUCH tougher time of it, even allowing for the extraordinary bravery they've shown.
Overall, though, the basic point stands - the tank is much like Samuel Clemens; "the rumors of (its) death are greatly exaggerated."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/13/2022 10:25 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I want to see the article discussing airpower on the battlefield since the Russian airpower has been mostly absent (presumably because of anti-aircraft weapons?).
#9
As a retired 12A (Armor/Cavalry) Officer, i find this amusing. The rumors of the end of armor as a combat dominant force are premature as always. Like all things, context is everything when predicting major turning points from afar.
In the case of the Russian armor performance in Ukraine. one wonders about the motives for linear, road-bound convoys, and the apparent absence of significant flanking security out at least to ATGM (Anti-Tank Guided Munitions)ranges? All the more puzzling if terrain mobility problems made keeping to the hardstand critical. Given that possibility you encounter the sniper-countersniper dynamic, and the MANPAD threat to aviation as flank security, but this is all about creeping advance movement with good IPB (Intel Prep of the Battlespace) and drones to neutralize that threat. All this argues as others here have observed that the paucity of infantry and lack of combat power density on the flanks made movement of heavy armor and the log tail prone to easy kills. Even arty prep on flanking dominant terrain seemed lacking. It seemed like it was just a shooting gallery and the conscripts were apt to bail quickly as morale plummeted?
(Just an old guys musings from the safety of my little corner of heaven in the Carson Valley)
#16
Tanks will go away when Mechs come online. Japan is probably way ahead of the rest of us on that.
Oh... they will still be around. RCTs (Regimental Combat Teams) like the ones the Federated Suns ran were 5 regiments of infantry, 3 of armor and 1 BattleMech regiment.
I can see something like that in our world if 'Mechs ever get developed. Just don't get stepped on if you are a tank.
The people of Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and likely soon Beijing are facing extraordinary pressures as hunger and surveillance and fear and censorship take their toll. And the cult of personality that Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked to build over the past decade is squarely in the crosshairs.
#1
I think he's vastly overestimating the effectiveness of western vaccines.
I think this round of lockdown stuff is because they don't know what variant of the ACE-inhibitor-receptor-genes the virus is going to target after the next mutation.
[The Atlantic] This friday, as Passover begins, my thoughts will turn to my late grandmother. Born in Ukraine, she survived the Nazis, the only one in her immediate family to escape the guns of the génocidaires. Each year, at the beginning of the seder, she would stand from her chair, if she could, and recount the story of her flight, never explicitly drawing comparisons to the exodus from Egypt. As she finished her testimony—which, like the seder itself, entailed the ritualistic repetition of details and phrases—she would stare across the table and tell us, "You are my revenge against Hitler."
This year, I began to think about those words long before the holiday season. They returned to me on the night of February 25, the second day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the darkness of Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stepped into the empty streets, trailed by a coterie of advisers. A rumor, nefariously spread, held that Zelensky had fled for his life, a decision that would have arguably made rational sense. After all, sources in U.S. intelligence were telling reporters that his government would likely be toppled in a week’s time. To counteract the sense of doom descending on Ukraine, he recorded a video on a phone. Using the gentlest version of his gravelly voice, he told his people, "We are still here."
Like my grandmother’s admonition, Zelensky’s words were a prayer and a defiant rallying cry. I felt as if they had been uttered, unconsciously, in the spirit of Passover.
Abigail Pogrebin: Why is this year different from all other years?
The Haggadah instructs its readers to tell the story of the exodus as if they were themselves slaves in Egypt. It demands an imaginative leap that places those at the table in a chain of events, asking them to vicariously conjure the terror of fleeing the Egyptians, but also the jubilation of liberation. Like the subtext of my grandmother’s conclusion, the seder not-so-subtly imposes a burden on its participants. Because their ancestors persisted through the worst, the present generation can’t be the ones who give up. In other words, the ritualistic retelling of the story of Jewish survival becomes the basis for Jewish survival.
Zelensky, a performer by trade, has been telling a story about his own people, in the hopes that it can help carry his nation through its own struggle against a pharaoh. Among the hopeful words in his story is we. His daily video messages to his people repeat flourishes like, "We are all Ukrainians. We are all Europeans. We are all free people of the free world." But that description of national sentiment wasn’t always an objective description of political reality. Ever since Ukraine became an independent nation, in 1991, its politics have been divided along linguistic and geographic lines. Political parties representing the Ukrainian-speaking west vied for power against factions representing the Russian-speaking east. Clearly, Vladimir Putin hoped that this divide would bolster his invasion, that denizens of eastern cities would greet the Russian army as liberators.
In Putin’s analysis of the world, a nation’s military strength is an outgrowth of its national character. The mightiest states have traditionalist foundations, a sense of nationhood grounded in religion and patriarchal values, the affection that comes from blood and soil. That’s another weakness he identified in Ukraine: its cosmopolitanism. Ukraine aspires to align with the European Union and its dream of transcending national borders. Its president has espoused tolerance for LGBTQ people; he was an entertainer who once pretended to play the piano with his penis. Ukraine is weak because it is decadence incarnate.
#4
Ukrainians aren't the new Jews fighting Nazis. They're Europe's Palestinians fighting a vastly more powerful and ruthless neighbor. Donbas is like the West Bank. Zelensky is like Arafat, except he can play Chopin with his dick
Palestine's backers think they have the moral high ground and cheer every time those nefarious Israelis get killed by a Pal warrior. But the result will be the same: a frozen conflict and an endless financial drain on the West
Or they’re literally the Cossacks that for centuries guarded Russia’s western frontier in exchange for self-rule. And now 100,000 of their women, children, and elderly are reported exiled to Siberia and points north, according to one of badanov’s translations today. Do you think they’ll be inclined to stay where Russia put them?
#8
And while I've never been a huge fan of Errol Flynn, there're worse entertainers for a two-bit Ukrainian comedian to be compared to. Couldn't stand the guy... but y'all have just about turned me around. Keep up the good work!
[C4ISRnet] "GPS is an enormous bargaining chip for Vladimir Putin" — George Beebe, former Chief Russia Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency
On November 15, 2021 a missile streaked into space from Russia, destroying a retired Russian satellite. The remnant debris endangered other satellites and the International Space Station crew that included Russian cosmonauts.
Russia’s anti-satellite test was meant as a clear message to the U.S.; Russia can destroy American satellites. Two weeks later a Russian news media personality bragged that Russia could bring down all 32 GPS satellites, a move that would affect nearly every facet of American life. The demonstration and subsequent threat would become a prelude to Russia’s next major act.
As Russia shot down a satellite, they were also massing troops at their border with Ukraine. When they invaded in February, the threat to American satellites became a particularly ominous deterrent to U.S. support for Ukraine.
U.S. critical infrastructure relies on precise timing and navigation signals from GPS satellites. A member of the National Security Council acknowledged this at a December public meeting saying "GPS is still a single point of failure" for America.
If GPS signals suddenly disappeared, transportation systems would immediately suffer. Everything would slow down, carry less capacity and be more dangerous. Air travel would be less efficient and safe. Delivery services would be hamstrung. Uber and Lyft would be out of business.
#2
Oh my god there is so much stupid in this article.
First, the satellite that the Russians shot down was in very low earth orbit. Less than 2,000km. Most of the GPS satellites are in mid-earth orbit at 20,000-26,000km. Even the US does not have a system in place to kill satellites at this altitude.
The satellites are orbiting all over the earth's surface so Russia can't get all of them. If they could reach up that high, maybe they could cause some issues over Europe and Asia and that is about it. The US also has 15 GPS satellites as backups and with newer private space companies can get them back up pretty quick.
Lastly, attacking a system like this would be a full act of war and doubtful the US and the rest of the world would just go "Oh well. We give up". It would be WWIII and the western world would start hitting Russian targets so Putie-pie might as well go full nuclear at that point.
#3
I think destroying commercial satellites would also be legally actionable (I know) and open the door to the US dropping any treaties it has in place preventing us from doing likewise in the future.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 12:12 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Now a US spy satellite at low earth orbit that Russia knows is passing on real time information to the Ukraine... that is a different story. I'd knock that sucker out of orbit.
#5
I'm not in favor of the level of help we are providing now, but if we are going to, why not give them stuff that can pick up GLONASS signals and let the Russians figure out how to deal with that.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 12:15 Comments ||
Top||
#6
We could, but it seems the Russians just aren't using that much "smart" munitions. Most is dumb bombs and rockets currently. Doesn't seem worth the cost. I would rather just more MANPADs and Soviet medium-altitude SAMs to deal with air power and drones.
#10
I think GPS is becoming less and less useful. I think smart phones triangulate between cell towers for positioning.
For an Android phone, put it in airplane mode and pull up maps. It still finds you. That is GPS.
And it isn't just phones. Pretty much everything that can be tracked now relies on GPS. If GPS went offline tomorrow, most ships, planes and anything that needs to know where it is on the planet is, in the technical term, fucked.
GPS is more and more becoming something modern society just can't do without. Just like the internet and electricity.
#11
Most people can't even use a shadow and the time of day to get a rough idea of direction.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 15:29 Comments ||
Top||
#12
FBMs used the precursor to “GPS” to keep track of the subs position for obvious reasons. I imagine that misses that change position use something like that also.
Posted by: Papa Cookie ||
04/13/2022 16:23 Comments ||
Top||
#13
ICBMs (ours anyway) use inertial and celestial guidance to accomplish their course. The system is refined enough that it includes adjustments for the variations in the Earth's magnetic field. Of course, an actual ICBM course is all about flying to a point deploying the bus and then the individual warheads from the bus. It's one of those things that is at once very simple and in the sense that it works at all a miracle.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 16:38 Comments ||
Top||
This is interesting input about war and its changes. The competition between offensive technology and defensive technology goes back for millenia. Offenensve technology jumps, like the invention of the tank or war aircraft, then defensive technology reacts with the invention of bazookas, Panzerfaust, etc, and AA guns and AA rockets. Every now and then one side really outstrips the other and then for a while one side has a major advantage. Will tanks become a thing of the past, will aircraft carriers become just huge targets? If so, what happens after that?
#1
Closing paragraphs, though the rest is well worth the time to read:
Napoleon, who fought many battles in this part of the world, observed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” I was thinking of this maxim as Jed and I finished our tea.
In Ukraine—at least in this first chapter of the war—Napoleon’s words have held true, proving in many ways decisive. In my earlier conversation with Zagorodnyuk, as he and I went through the many reforms and technologies that had given the Ukrainian military its edge, he was quick to point out the one variable he believed trumped all others. “Our motivation—it is the most important factor, more important than anything. We’re fighting for the lives of our families, for our people, and for our homes. The Russians don’t have any of that, and there’s nowhere they can go to get it.”
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Oleg Ayrapetov
[REGNUM] At the beginning of 1919, in the Urals, the command of the Red Army tried to regain the lost initiative. Immediately after the defeat of the 3rd Army of the Soviet Eastern Front, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky arrived in Vyatka, where the red units had withdrawn, in order to clarify the situation. Stalin immediately drew the right conclusions from what had happened - the exhaustion of the troops by continuous six-month battles, poor supplies, the lack of reserves behind the extended front line, the headquarters being too far from the battlefield. He informed Moscow that if urgent measures were not taken to restore the combat capability of the 3rd Army, Vyatka might also fall.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 7:07 Comments ||
Top||
#2
All kidding aside, a Russian miniseries about Admiral Kolchak was shown in Russia.
The film is quite good and showed Kolchak as a sympathetic character, which is a very hard thing to do given 70+ years of Soviets characterizing him as evil.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] From today's statements by Putin on the subject of NWO in Ukraine.
1. The operation is progressing according to plan. All goals set at the very beginning will be achieved.
2. The timing of the operation is determined by the intensity of hostilities and the desire to minimize their own losses.
3. Negotiations with Ukraine reached a dead end, as Ukraine violated the agreements concluded in Istanbul.
4. The decision to start the operation was correct and timely, and the conflict itself was inevitable - Russia was left no choice.
5. The sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia failed, but Russia does not plan to close, and it will not be possible to close it.
6. The USSR, being in sanctions isolation, achieved great success in the space program. Russia will also be able to follow this path.
7. The US plans to fight in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Ukraine is a means to an end for the West.
8. The provocation in Bucha is just as fake as the staged chemical attacks in Syria.
9. Russia in previous decades was addicted to Western technology, and now it is facing the consequences.
10. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are a triune people, part of which is now trying to use the West in their own interests.
We are waiting for the start of the 2nd phase of the operation in Ukraine, which was previously announced by Shoigu.
It is reported that the enemy forces that defended Ilyich's plant capitulated.
On the night of 10 to 11, they tried to break through, but after suffering heavy losses, they retreated to the factory or scattered around the district (where some of them were killed or captured.
Since they already felt a critical shortage of ammunition and other supplies, they decided to surrender.
The process has already begun.
Sladkov reports that about 1,000 people surrendered, of which 300 were wounded (of which 90 were severe).
Pegov writes about two capitulated battalions and 200 wounded. (The 501st battalion capitulated earlier)
In general, this looks like the largest surrender since the beginning of the war.
That they are expected in the area of Zachatovka (this is in the 30-kilometer rear of the allied forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the DPR, and Zachatovka itself is 50 km from Mariupol).
But there was no help, they were deceived. The fact that another battalion of Marines surrendered a week ago, they also did not know. If such information had reached them, they would have laid down their arms after their colleagues.
By the way, these interviews show that leaflets are not such an outdated propaganda tool. An oversight that needs to be taken into account for the future.
P.S:
Judging by the interrogations of prisoners, 90% of "Azov" is a "support platoon", staffed exclusively by cooks and drivers, with a rank no higher than a sergeant. And as you dig, all eight years in the ATO, awards and gratitude for the killing of civilians.
[Real Clear Policy] Three of the largest for-profit hospital chains in the U.S. made a combined $120 billion in 2021, while violating federal transparency laws, according to an investigation by Patient Rights Advocate.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2021, the Affordable Care Act required hospitals to be transparent about what they charge patients.
The Hospital Price Transparency Rule requires providers to post prices for their medical services online in a "machine-readable standard charges list for all items and services for all payers and plans" as well as a "standard charges list or price estimator tool for the 300 most common shoppable services," according to the report.
The idea was to promote competition between hospitals, thereby lowering prices.
The Patient Rights Advocate report found that only 14 percent of the 1,000 hospitals reviewed were compliant with these regulations, and only 0.5 percent of hospitals owned by the three largest U.S. hospital systems — HCA Healthcare, CommonSpirit Health, and Ascension — were compliant.
None of the HCA Healthcare system’s 118 hospitals were compliant, the report found, and those three large systems made a combined $120 billion (page 3).
Open The Books studied the largest non-profit health care providers in the country in 2019 and found that their revenues and assets continued to grow as consumer prices skyrocketed, all while receiving tax breaks for their "non-profit" status.
Patient Rights Advocate found that the cost to companies to comply with these transparency regulations would be $12,000 per hospital.
Why are hospitals so reluctant to post their prices? Fear of competition may play a role. If hospitals followed the law, consumers might shop around to find the best deals on their medical procedures.
The U.S. needs to enforce its laws to ensure hospitals are being transparent in their pricing, since they won’t voluntarily obey the law.
[TK News By Mike Taibbi] More and more, we're told outright war isn't just necessary and right, but the thing that will solve America's existential problems.
Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, wrote a piece called "The Price of Hegemony" in Foreign Affairs last week that was fascinating. If I’d written his opening, people would denounce me as a Putin-concubine:
Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.
Just as Pearl Harbor was the consequence of U.S. efforts to blunt Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland, and just as the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to the United States’ dominant presence in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russian decisions have been a response to the expanding post–Cold War hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe.
Kagan went on to make an argument straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Instead of doing what some critics want and focusing on “improving the well-being of Americans,” the U.S. government is instead properly recognizing the responsibility that comes with being a superpower. So, while Russia’s invasion may indeed have been a foreseeable consequence of a decision to expand our hegemonic reach, now that we’re here, there’s only one option left. Total commitment:
It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily small…
About the author: Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Kagan is an American neoconservative scholar, and critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Wikipedia
#2
Was a time when one of the things a judge would sentence a vandal to was to clean off the graffiti they sprayed or pay to repair the vandalism they had done. Wouldn't it be great to see these people convicted of their war-mongering ways and sentenced to spending the rest of their lives cleaning up the messes they have made?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2022 7:03 Comments ||
Top||
#3
He's f**king out of his mind, but it's nice to see Nuland's husband finally admit the obvious -- that his wife and her bosses bear the ultimate blame for this mess
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[YouTube] Since the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022) a lot of statements about the "end of the tank" came up. Most of these statements are old, very old and they show up every few decades, particularly if a new technology is invented and/or some factions suffers - for whatever reason - a certain amount of tank losses. This video discusses the various factors about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and a lot of the previous arguments that often have not changed for decades and generally still invalid, since people forget combined arms warfare.
The people of Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and likely soon Beijing are facing extraordinary pressures as hunger and surveillance and fear and censorship take their toll. And the cult of personality that Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked to build over the past decade is squarely in the crosshairs.
