Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)

[Captain X]

I have no idea if this is true or not, and I don't care because it's funny.

 

[Chiron]

Guess Assad finally ran out of tanks, and now Abu has no targets, so he's got TOW blue-balls, and Ukraine would give him plenty of Ruskie equipment to shoot at.

Assad has more AFVs than he started the Civil War with and the majority of his vehicles actually survived the war, many taking multiple ATGMs hits and mine hits and changing hands multiple times as well. He even sold back to US a couple of Humvees and M1s he took off of ISIS in an under the table deal. Hell he got T-90s that were taken straight from Guards Units in Russia.

Suhail Muhammad Hamoud's claims like many are exaggerated and he lost.

Except he doesn't have the troops to do that.

Hell, he didn't have the troops to do that before Russia lost 10% of it's military in Ukraine.

Yes he does and can conscript more, and there is no evidence Russia lost 10% of its military of 1.4 million men back by millions in reserve or 10% of his deployed forces either. What we do have evidence is the Russians are advancing and pocketing large numbers of UkA forces and systematically clearing their LOCs.

However, because the UkA told them so, we know 10% of the UkA has become causalities from the US DOD.

If Russia had the troops and was competent there would only be an insurgency no more conventional fightinf

Persistent Insurgencies are a sign of incompetence and failure to break the spirit of resistance. Russia thus will first bag the UkA Army west of the Dnieper. Take them as POWs, humiliate them down Red Square and clean the streets behind them. All other troublemakers will be rounded up and taken to camps. The rest get the message and take Putin's silver rather than eat his lead. Then the Comrade Fathers of the Orthodox Church will fix the rest by having Russian Soldiers marrying Ukrainian Cousins and making sure they show up for Church every Sunday. If they're Muslim, then the Comrade Imams will take care of it, and make sure the newlyweds show up to the Masjid every Friday.

A lot more to be fair. The US is orders of magnitude better in every respect than Russia when it comes to air power, battlefield intelligence gathering, coordinating units, logistics, and well basically everything else involved in this kind of war.

We would have spent weeks flattening the area after telegraphing the obvious intent to invade months in advance allowing the UkA to mobilize fully, then sent in the Army and they would be getting hit with far more competent ambushes and counter-attacks than Iraq could organize and be ejected militarily as we can't sustain the high losses of industrialized warfare due to not having a draft that can quickly feed in replacements. Also our far heavier vehicles are even more road bound and fuel thirsty than Soviet Based Gear so the Ukrainians would have an even better time hunting them.

Say what you will about the start of the Invasion, the Russians gained Operational Surprise, penetrated the excellent defensive terrain of the Pripyat Marshes to threaten Kyiv from the West, a maneuver the US military does not have the specialized vehicles to do so and pocketed large portions of the UkA in the North East swiftly and put the Eastern approaches of Kyiv under threat while Kharkiv and Donbas Fronts were pinned for the Southern Thrust to eviscerate the Ukrainian South.

The War in Ukraine

That being said, looks like UkA is trying to extract the Chernihiv-Nizhyn Pockets with a Local-Counter Attack via Brovary.

Mariupol is now firmly under siege and the rail line to Donetsk from Crimea is secured but still in UkA artillery range, the other route goes through Mariupol which has to be cleared first. Not known if Russian Rail Troops are building new lines and likely won't know till later due to OPSEC.



First Hero of Russia awarded for the campaign.

We need a Gab Media Function.

Russian military ZALA UAV captures destruction of the base of the self proclaimed Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Mariupol, the National Guard of Ukraine, along with personal vehicles and military equipment. As you can see, contrary to what the mainstream media tells you -- the Ukrainian Armed Forces are hiding among civilian infrastructure. You can observe secondary explosions which prove the presence of ammunition/weapons storage hidden in civilian neighborhoods; in addition to the countless photos and videos of Ukrainian military fortifications in apartment buildings, schools, kindergartens, etc. -- footage Via WarGonzo

Oh, everyone remember the Soviet Banners a few posts back? I thought it was familiar. It stated: 150th Rifle, Order of Kutuzov 2nd class, Idritsa Division, 79th Rifle Corps, 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front.

I won't explain further.

 

[TheRomanSlayer]

Back before Covid we export rice to UAE, Bangladesh, Qatar and other countries but we import about 79% of our rice from Vietnam.

Really? I would have thought that we'd have similar laws to Japan regarding the exports of rice, given that we have almost the same number of people as Japan.

 

[Chiron]

Their ancestors had better logistics.

But, then, their ancestors had American trucks, so I guess it checks out.

You do realize the US Army in Iraq 2003 was constantly outrunning its supplies and had even worse traffic jams than we see in this conflict? And it was fighting a third world militia that largely deserted the field under carpet bombardment and grid fire artillery.

The amount of copium and hubris is just stunning here.

Oh and the US had poor logistics as well in WW2, the Red Ball Express consumed more fuel than it delivered and multiple divisions had to have their trucks stripped to even form the Red Ball Express.

 

[bintananth]

Really? I would have thought that we'd have similar laws to Japan regarding the exports of rice, given that we have almost the same number of people as Japan.

Philippine rice exports amount to about 300 metric tons per year. That's not much.

If I had to guess, most of it goes to Filipinos living overseas and foreigners who want a specific rice variety that's not grown locally.

 

[JagerIV]

A lot more to be fair. The US is orders of magnitude better in every respect than Russia when it comes to air power, battlefield intelligence gathering, coordinating units, logistics, and well basically everything else involved in this kind of war.

The thing is, any military comparison (at scale) to the US by ANY other nation or group of nations in the world falls flat and is disingenuous. When it comes to large scale military operations, the US isn't just the varsity or first among equals; it is at least three generations ahead of ANYONE else.

As an American we take for granted things like real time satellite surveillance and a real time, encrypted, communications backbone that is able to handle the volume of traffic a battle space generates. We don't really think about what kind of game changer our Air Force is compared to everyone else. We don't really think about what putting encrypted radios in the hands of EVERY soldier along with night vision really means. We don't think about what having every soldier be a professional with a million dollars plus worth of training really means.

The US military is the best trained, best equipped, best lead, highest morale, most battle hardened, best supported, military that humanity has EVER seen.

Even comparing NATO nations (besides the US) to Russia is iffy because those NATO nations get access to US backend support. They use US communications networks, US surveillance assets, US tankers, US logistics support, US cross training, etc. We saw what happened in Libya when Europe tried to do war without US assistance.

I would actually argue that the American Army would most likely have not advanced a step at this stage of the war. Instead, we would be in month one of, maybe three months of SEAD operations? On the optimistic end, the Air Force achieves sufficient crushing of the enemy in the same time frame as the Gulf War, about 42 days. Thus, by that tempo major ground campaigns would start first week of April. In comparison Operation Rolling Thunder lasted 245 days and the bombing of Yugoslavia lasted 78 days.

My assumption is the Ukrainians closer to match Serbian ability to preserve AA assets than the Iraqis. Thus, major ground operations starting sometime in April.

The general American way of war for the last 50 years generally seems to be to win the air war first, and then use the ground troops, partially just to bring in and direct more air power. America is rich, so planes are relatively cheap and soldiers lives expensive. The US can afford the horrendous expense of a multi month air campaign more than troop losses, generally.

Russia meanwhile does not seem like it can really afford to trade aircraft for AA assets, so instead the aircraft seem to be being kept back somewhat while the Ukrainian AA is still functional and using troops, more likely than not, to clear of the AA to make things more safe for the planes. Because Russia can probably better afford to replace conscripts than fighters.

But, America left to its preferred devices, would probably have this still be primarily an Air War until much of Ukraine's military and economy was smashed.

And in that theoretical situation, that's probably a War the US would lose: the US trying to destroy the Ukrainian military from the air, if the Ukrainians did somewhat competent AA operations, and support was in the ballpark of what Ukraine currently enjoys, seems somewhat a recipe for a repeat of rolling thunder: the enemy is competent enough to run effective air defense so the air operations are costly while not being decisive, while atritioning those AA assets isn't really achievable because the limiting factor is not how many SAMs and other AA systems are in Ukraine, but how many and how long the rest of the EU are willing to feed them into the combat area.

That does potentially suggest a world where the Ukrainians would have more SAMs 3 months into SEAD operation than they started out with. Depending on relative competencies and just how willing the Europeans (or Russia as the American stand in) would be to really open their wallets and feed expensive equipment into the meat grinder. Javelins and AT missiles in general aren't cheap, but AA systems do generally seem to be a category up in expense.

Edit:

Let me see if this posts correctly: Ukraine scale compared to Iraq.

Compare Countries With This Simple Tool

Drag and drop countries around the map to compare their relative size. Is Greenland really as big as all of Africa? You may be surprised at what you find! A great tool for educators.

thetruesize.com

So, Ukraine is about the size of Iraq and Syria combined. The demand Russia has to conquer a nation nearly twice as large as Iraq, with something like 1/3-1/5 the forces size of the US, in half the time, otherwise they are a failure is a bit unreasonable. Its still possible the Russians lose this, or at least don't end up doing well, but taking longer to conquer a large country than a couple of weeks does not a failure make.

Hell, the First battle of Fallujah by itself took 27 days! The second battle of Fallujah took 46 days! Each against brigade scale forces...

The Germans took 7 weeks more or less to take Paris in a very rapid and overwhelming campaign. If the Russians take Kiev before, April ends, this was still a very rapid campaign by almost any reasonable historical comparison.

 

[Bacle]

Kinda surprised Bennett made that recommendation, particularly also saying Ukraine should not accept more military aid in order to ease negotiations.

Something tells me Netenyahu would not have said that, and would not be so eager to tell another country to refuse arms in the middle of an invasion.

 

[Chiron]

So true.

 

[Tiamat]

If USA had brains and was competent, Osama Bin Laden wouldn't be the world's hide and seek champion. (2001-2011)

And Iraq wouldn't have been invaded.

Neither would Syria.

Nor Libya.

However, I understand that it's part of your job to shill for the US Military. But please, at least do it intelligently. Not all of us are kool-aid drinkers or RINOs here.

Agree or disagree with Zachowon, at least as a U.S. Army serviceman in military Intel, he practices what he preaches.

On the other hand, I recall you talking tough about how you were going to violently resist the Canadian police if they were to arrest you when Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act. And then the next day you were talking about fleeing the country and/or defecting to the Russian embassy. And now you're talking about leaving Canada to go to Kazakhstan? Says everything there, I would say.

So basically, the forces used against Iraq in 2003? I am also assuming that Ukraine is pro-Russia ITTL.

Kiev, Kharhiv and other major cities would be bombed flat, first of all.

US warships would be colliding with each other in the Black Sea. A US sub would have scraped an underwater mountain.

Whole country would be looted and messed up.

UPA style insurgency would rise up against the Americans.

By today, US forces would be fighting it out with Ukrainian forces being supplied by the Russians. Situation would be much worse due to heavier resistance.

20 years later, a US backed puppet government will be overthrown even before the last US troops leave the country, in a hasty and panicked retreat ordered by a retarded Commiecrat of a President.

That would make a great farcical comedy, maybe. Just substitute Russia or the Soviet Union in place of US, instead. No military machine is "perfect" per se, but you might want to brush up on your knowledge of how the U.S. military generally operates.

The Russian are actually doing quite well, all things considered.

But it's the DPR and LPR forces that really impressed me.

Those guys (and gals?) are hardcore, many of them experienced vets from the 2014 conflict.


Where is Russia's good stuff though . . .

Stuff like the T-14, more advanced T-90s, Arena APS, MiG 31Ks, etc.

That's the question.

The situation on the ground is chaotic, however there are reports of their newer stuff being deployed. It's just that they apparently don't have a lot of it to spare. Lack of monetary investment, among other issues.

Ukrop-fascists who have been murdering civilians in the Donbass since 2014.

May the Ukrop-fascists get their rightful due of lead. Or just TOS a few at them. RPO-A "Shmel" rockets are also handy.

Lovely. So, the Ukrop-fascists, as you call them, are you referring to solely the Azov Brigade, or Ukrainians resisting the Russians in general?

Going by your previous posts, you do seem to get quite excited and giddy about Ukrainians getting blown to bits, burned, maimed, crushed, etc.

Veterans, on the other hand, myself included and those I know, and also those who work in or with the medical field, again like myself....we're a bit more too familiar with that carnage, and tend to find the subject of people getting slaughtered outright rather nauseating and a turn-off. Maybe not all of us, but most.

Anyway, these are just my observations. Feel free to talk trash, sling insults, etc. as you wish.

 

[Arch Dornan]

Source?

Video?

Because if this is true, then Zelensky's mercs are going to be running home real quick.

NATO soyboys can't fight without overwhelming air superiority, infinite ammo, and top tier gear.

How about this? He was fighting insurgents before. He's not prepared for a conventional fight.

I’m one of the first Brits to join Ukraine – they fight like lions

ONE of the first British fighters in Ukraine told yesterday of his ferocious battle with Russian troops at the Battle of Antonov. Ex-Army medic Jason Haigh, 34, exchanged gunfire with the Red Army …

www.thesun.co.uk

 

[strunkenwhite]

So true.

Aged like milk, honestly.

 

[Chiron]

Not really, SAA suffered massive material losses, both from combat and from poor maintenance, while Russia did replace some of it, their armored inventory is now of more ''managable'' size. T-55s are now almost gone from the inventory, mostly replaced by T-62s sent by Russia, T-72 inventory is greatly reduced and they have some T-90s as well.

A list is right here, accurate to 2021

Bulk of it survived and remained in their hands and shipments from Russia plus re-captures leave them better equipped than before.

I'd also like to see your analysis or your source for Russia being unable to sustain their war for more than 1-2 months, which is frankly the most ridiculous thing I've heard about this war thus far. Well, that and stupid Twitter twats thinking that any war that goes on longer than a week is somehow a colossal failure.

This The US spent 4 and a half years bombing ISIS into submission in Syria and Iraq and left both nations in rubble to do so. This was a foe that had no means to bring down US bombers, and it still took longer than the time span of WW1 to bring them down to disparate cells with no taxable territory in either of those countries.



Russia continues to strike depots



Another Airfield hit.



Ukraine confirms Israel told them to throw in the towel.



Russian Media Release showing them targeting and destroying UkA Ammo Dumps and Troop Concentrations.



More footage showing UkA Vehicles being destroyed

Its clear Russia's strategy is to let Zelensky hang himself on Twitter while they tease us till they hoist the victory banner over Kyiv.

After which they will amuse themselves as American Pundits keep talking about their 'incompetent campaign,' the same way they did of their Georgian Campaign. Ignoring the fact that Russia won and inflict worse losses than they received.

 

[Captain X]

Yeah, I'm real sure they're wasting blood and gold right now so some of them can cackle about how wrong American pundits were during all of this.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Bulk of it survived and remained in their hands and shipments from Russia plus re-captures leave them better equipped than before.

That list is rather unrealistic, much of stuff there is rusting away in dump depots, there is no way they are still using 200+ BTR-152, their BTR-60 were written off before the war and were mostly used as towed metal piboxes, there is no way 650 are in use, T-55s are also mostly written off, there is no way 1600 of them are in use. To put it simply, their maintenance capabilities are limited, so with Russians replacing their lost material with better stuff, their armored forces are better equipped and more experienced, but also smaller than they were before war.

 

[ReggieLedoux]

Yeah, I'm real sure they're wasting blood and gold right now so some of them can cackle about how wrong American pundits were during all of this.

I think it was Sun Tzu who said "All warfare is based on deception. The need to keep CNN in the dark should be placed above all other concerns. Appear weak to CNN when strong, appear strong to CNN while weak. A leader with poor understanding of tactics will lose a battle, especially in the eyes of CNN. A leader with a poor understanding of strategy will lose the war against CNN."

 

[Agent23]

Regarding those Munich doctors, it's a private clinic and not part of the standard public healthcare and emergency system, as far as I can tell. So, as a private entity, they are well within their rights to choose their "customers", even if it's a total crap move.

Dunno about Krautland, but around here private hospitals get a shit ton of money from the national health insurance system.
Imagine if the situation is the same in Germany and they get stripped of their ability to provide all such services and only get to do 100% privately financed medical interventions.

 

[Zachowon]

No, not really. You do realize it took the US longer to capture Baghdad, much less conquer all of Iraq, than Russia has yet spent in Ukraine?

The same US that had massive superiority to the Russian military in every category, was attacking a nation that had been sanctioned to hell and gone for more than a decade, and that wasn't facing an enemy that was receiving top of the line military equipment from third parties for the entire time.

The only way the war in Ukraine would have been over in a few days was if the Ukrainians just decided not to fight.

As for the broader question of competency, the Russian forces in Ukraine are overwhelmingly the least well trained, least well equipped, most disposable, part of the Russian military. Virtually all of the Russian first line military equipment and truly professional military units have been steadfastly kept out of Ukraine. Oh, and lets not forget that those Russian forces in Ukraine are still operating without substantial air or artillery support.

And despite all of that, Russia is still winning at the moment.

You also need to account for the tiny issue of information sourcing and propaganda. Virtually everything calling Russian competency into question is provided courtesy of the Ukrainian government, who have a vested interest in making Russia look worse and themselves look better. A government that has provable and flagrantly lied about both their own and Russian actions in Ukraine since this was started.

The actual facts on the ground of the war are something that are not public information, regardless of what everyone in the media seems to think.

The propaganda makes anything but the broadest of generalities kinda pointless as anything more specific is inevitably based on information sources that are 1) unreliable and 2) impossible to determine the veracity of.

I do know this yes.
We also had no where NEAR the casualties the Ruskies have had in 2 weeks then what the US had in the totality of the Iraq invasion. Which lasted 24 days roughly.

And the Ruskies have had T90s, T72B3s, and plenty of non conscript militaryas well

If this was an American operation with 100-200k troops, and military operations started on the 24th, how much progress would the US army have made by this point?

A lot further because we would have had complete air control by the end of the forst two weeks.

 

[King Arts]

Erdogan pursued Turkish Interests first. Like he should, and you are confusing money with currency, like Russia, the average Turk sees no difference in their lives and its luxury products the elites buy that are inflating. That and they saw their standards of living substantially increase under Erdogan.

Turkey never aided ISIS, it backed the FSA while simultaneously dealing with an Islamist Parallel State that nearly seized the country in a military coup plus dealt with the PKK who broke the ceasefire agreements. They also have been systematically assassinating the Nusra leadership, getting others to do the dirty work and making sure they take the brunt of Syrian/Iranian/Russian Assaults while also trying to lure non-radicals out of their ranks into the FSA.
Also Assad started the Civil War and used indiscriminate tactics on people who wanted reform and basic rights after 4 boys were tortured over a joke.

But hey we live is a post fact world.



DPR on the advance again.



Hate to be the Radar Operators on duty when this occurred. Or the Officers in charge that night.



Looks like a Spetnaz Team or a DPR/LPR team.



If so, the the picture of the Air Space is changing.



Ukraine is falling. The math is against them, and their 'victories,' are getting closer to areas they can't lose.

That’s pretty disingenuous. No the “youths” were not joking they were subversive and painting graffiti against the state there is a difference between political actions like that and jokes or bitching at the bar. Assad is the better side in the civil war he is the side of minority rights for Christians. The other options are Isis or moderate Islamic fundamentals.

 

[King Arts]

Regarding those Munich doctors, it's a private clinic and not part of the standard public healthcare and emergency system, as far as I can tell. So, as a private entity, they are well within their rights to choose their "customers", even if it's a total crap move.

No they are not, honestly fuck capitalism and its lack of honor the practice of medicine is not a business doctors need to respect the Hippocrates oath.

 

[BlackDragon98]

"4. Why isn't there any blood?
"7. Why is there a bucket of fake blood?"

...Yeah, OK bud.

So you're telling me they went among the ruins after the explosion to clean up the blood?

Because to me, the bucket of fake blood was literally splashed around to make it look like people died or were injured.