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Originally posted by second:
... according to a Ukrainian lawmaker ...

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This is the only reliable part.




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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by second: ... ISW [Institute for the Study of War, the neocon Nuland-Kagan propaganda machine] continues ...

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Yep, the ISW continues ... to propagandize. As does SECOND.


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
More hypocritical virtue-signalling from the heights of the non-democratic EU bureaucracy!

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What The US Will Learn, and Not Learn, From Its War In Ukraine

The quarterly magazine Parameters by the U.S. Army War College published an interesting paper about U.S. war capabilities:

A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force

Its abstract says:

Fifty years ago, the US Army faced a strategic inflection point after a failed counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. In response to lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command was created to reorient thinking and doctrine around the conventional Soviet threat. Today’s Army must embrace the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as an opportunity to reorient the force into one as forward-thinking and formidable as the Army that won Operation Desert Storm.

This article suggests changes the Army should make to enable success in multidomain large-scale combat operations at today’s strategic inflection point.

It is normal for a military to analyze ongoing or just finished wars and to draw conclusions from them. Such efforts should then lead to changes in the military structure or its procedures.

The above effort though is unlikely to lead to the changes the authors want to see.

The authors correctly point out that command and control of troops via radio is problematic when the enemy has the means to detect all radio traffic:

The Russia-Ukraine War makes it clear that the electromagnetic signature emitted from the command posts of the past 20 years cannot survive against the pace and precision of an adversary who possesses sensor-based technologies, electronic warfare, and unmanned aerial systems or has access to satellite imagery; this includes nearly every state or nonstate actor the United States might find itself fighting in the near future.

The solution lies the extensive use of Mission Command (in the original German: Auftragstaktik) which allows subordinate leaders to do their own planning and operation within the given context:

When Milley served as Chief of Staff of the Army, he explained mission command through a concept of “disciplined disobedience” in which subordinates are empowered to accomplish a mission to achieve the commander’s intended purpose—even if they must disobey a specific order or task to do so. Without perfect communication, a subordinate officer or soldier must be trusted to make the right judgment call during battle, unencumbered by the need to seek approval for small adjustments. to

To do that is a cultural issues. Mission Command must be lived and experienced from the very first day a civilian becomes a soldier. The U.S. officer corp is more used to direct order and control. The culture of Mission Command is not liked because mistakes of subordinate units still gets blamed on the higher command level.

Mission Command uses way less communication than direct order and control and is more robust when the crap hits the fan. But, unlike the German military, the U.S. army has never really lived up to it. I doubt that is going to change.

The next problem are high casualty numbers:

The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties. Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks.

The 25% replacement rate is probably too low. Consider this current headline from Strana (machine translation):

Out of every 100 people, there are 10-20 left. The head of the Poltava TCC told about the losses in his district

The TCC is the Ukrainian administration responsible for drafting conscripts.

Out of every 100 people mobilized in the fall of last year, 10-20 remained, the rest are dead, wounded and disabled.

This was stated by the head of the Poltava regional TCC Vitaliy Berezhnoy, speaking yesterday at the 39th session of the Poltava City Council.

The problem is that the U.S. no longer has the reserves that are needed to sustain a large conflict:

[T]he US Army is facing a dire combination of a recruiting shortfall and a shrinking Individual Ready Reserve. This recruiting shortfall, nearly 50 percent in the combat arms career management fields, is a longitudinal problem. Every infantry and armor soldier we do not recruit today is a strategic mobilization asset we will not have in 2031. The Individual Ready Reserve, which stood at 700,000 in 1973 and 450,000 in 1994, now stands at 76,000. These numbers cannot fill the existing gaps in the active force, let alone any casualty replacement or expansion during a large-scale combat operation.

The authors recommend to re-introduce a partial conscription.

Politically that is unlike to happen. Any president who would do that would face immediate hostility from his voters.

Besides that there is rather large problem that most U.S. young citizens are not even qualified for it:

A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.

"When considering youth disqualified for one reason alone, the most prevalent disqualification rates are overweight (11%), drug and alcohol abuse (8%), and medical/physical health (7%)," the study, which examined Americans between the ages of 17 and 24, read. The study was conducted by the Pentagon's office of personnel and readiness.

Also most young people are not interested in serving in the military:

Only 9% of young people now show a propensity to serve, according to Defense Department polling data shared with ABC News. It's the lowest number seen in 15 years.
...
The second former senior military official said the recruiting problem is a sign of wider societal problems.

"It's a reflection on our country. It is our country, and those recruiters see those problems firsthand every day," the former official said.

Yup.

The next point in the Parameters paper is the wide introduction of drones:

The ubiquitous use of unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles, satellite imagery, sensor-based technologies, smartphones, commercial data links, and open-source intelligence is fundamentally changing the way armies will fight on the land domain in much the same way that unmanned aerial vehicles have changed the way air forces conduct operations in this century. These systems, coupled with emerging artificial intelligence platforms, dramatically accelerate the pace of modern war.

Western military have yet to introduce drones on the necessary scale. The Ukrainian and Russia military have both done well in that. They have recognized that drones are, like ammunition, consumables with Ukraine reportedly losing 10,000 per months. On top of reconnaissance drones the first-person-view (FPV) targeted armed drones have led to a wide use of drones in the role of precision targeted artillery.

Any units that are bunching up on the future battlefield will get immediately recognized and punished. This complicates the preparation for any larger operation.

This will require, the author say, a new level of deception when preparing for battle. It also requires more multi-domain reconnaissance and intelligence at every level. Any group leader should have a tablet and the necessary information available to him.

This point is probably the easiest one to fix. It just needs time until the necessary production facilities are in place to produce the necessary mass amounts of drones and to get some cheap information system down to the last level.

The other problems, Mission Command, personnel reserves and recruitment fitness, are cultural issues that will resist change.

The U.S. military, as many other western ones, is currently unable to fight on the large-scale combat level as the Russian army is currently doing.

That not only relates to the army but also to the navy and air-force. The U.S. ship-building capacity is 200 times lower than China's. U.S. Navy ships are badly conceived boondoggles. The short legged F-35 jets have terrible availability rates.

Despite all that U.S. politicians continue to instigate for wars against high level competitors.

The results of wars against Russia or China with the military forces the U.S. currently has would be embarrassing. It would be much better to not ever try it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Human rights have disappeared in Ukraine and significantly deteriorated in the EU, UK, USA, and Canada. Why no reports about THAT???

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You imagine that if you keep repeating Russia and N Korea in the same sentence, people will eventually link the two nations in their minds. In reality, the only thing it does for me is demonstrate that your propaganda techniques are so crude that they're irritating and counterproductive.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You imagine that if you keep repeating Russia and N Korea in the same sentence, people will eventually link the two nations in their minds. In reality, the only thing it does for me is demonstrate that your propaganda techniques are so crude that they're irritating and counterproductive.\\

SECOND: You imagine denying commonalities

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and shared goals

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Milley & Stoltenberg Agree: 'We Must Prepare Ourselves For A Long War In Ukraine'

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Milley & Stoltenberg Agree: 'We Must Prepare Ourselves For A Long War In Ukraine'

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Oh, they wish!!!

They've scaled back their ambitions from "victory in Ukraine" and "regime change in Russia" to "prepare for a long war".

Guys, it's too fucking late to "prepare" for a long war.


NATO/USA are out of ammo and weapons that can be conveniently spared, weapons manufacturing capability is paltry and vastly exceeded by Russia, troop levels are insufficient to tackle anything other than a third-world military, and many economies are in serious trouble. NATO and the USA will fall further and further behind. And now, they want to tackle China???

I think what they're REALLY doing is preparing the USA/NATO public for putting Ukraine on the back burner and eventually trying to memory-hole the entire clusterfuck. But I don't think Russia will let them. Russia has security issues it needs to resolve, ie. NATO expansion to the east. Creating a neutral Ukraine is just the first step.

If Russia succeeds, I don't know if it will pause, or move on to the next hot issue, which is those missile installations in Poland and Romania.

Just trying to bring some, yanno, reality to the realworld forum.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Zelensky Fires Top Defense Officials In Corruption Purge Ahead Of Washington Trip

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Zelensky Fires Top Defense Officials In Corruption Purge Ahead Of Washington Trip

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BWAHAHAHA!
Corruption has been endemic in Ukraine since whenever. Seems a little LATE, dontcha think, to be addressing this now? Especially at the END of a (failed) counteroffensive? I mean, really, if Kiev really wanted this to succeed they would have tackled this three years ago.

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NYT In Rare About-Face Now Says Ukraine (Not Russia) Behind Mass Casualty Missile Strike On Market

The New York Times has issued a surprise about-face regarding the September 6 deadly missile strike on the center of the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, which is in Donetsk Oblast.

. . .

The fresh Tuesday Times report https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/world/europe/ukraine-missile-kostia
ntynivka-market.html underscores that less than two hours after the market was struck, "President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian 'terrorists' for the attack, and many media outlets followed suit."

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The NY Times was at the time among those major outlets which uncritically went with Zelensky's version of events.


But the missile came from the Ukrainian side, with the NY Times' investigators finding that it was a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile that hit the busy civilian area and killed and wounded scores.

One of the key videos which the NYT analyzed to reach this conclusion was actually provided by Zelensky's office, ironically enough.

According to the New York Times report, "evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system."

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NATO Fractures: In U-Turn, Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine
Wednesday, Sep 20, 2023 - 06:00 PM

The dam is breaking on unified Western support for Ukraine, and the timing couldn't be worse for Zelensky, given tomorrow he's expected to meet with President Biden at the White House. On Wednesday evening there is monumental news out of Poland which could potentially change the entire course of the war.

"Poland will no longer arm Ukraine to focus on its own defense," Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced just hours after Warsaw summoned Ukraine's ambassador related to a fresh war of words and spat over blocked grain, according to the AFP. Warsaw has throughout more than a year-and-a-half of the Ukraine-Russia war been Kiev's staunchest and most outspoken supporter.

Will this massive and hugely significant about-face mark the beginning of the end? Are peace negotiations and ceding of territory in the Donbas inevitable at this point?

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Poland has said it will no longer supply its neighbor Ukraine with weapons, as a rift over agricultural exports deepens.

"We no longer transfer weapons to [Ukraine], because we are now arming Poland," Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland's prime minister, said Wednesday on the X social media platform, previously known as Twitter, according to a Google translation.

"Ukraine is defending itself against the brutal Russian attack and I understand this situation, but as I said, we will protect our country," he added.

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Rebooted Clinton Global Initiative Licks Chops Over Ukraine 'Humanitarian' Aid
Thursday, Sep 21, 2023 - 02:45 AM

The now-revived Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has found a new grift - Ukraine.

But first - a short review. The Clintons, through their foundation, fleeced Haiti to the tune of Billions following the 2010 earthquake which killed an estimated 220,000 people.

* Hillary Clinton's State Department pressured Haiti to suppress minimum wage in sweatshops in order to benefit US clothing manufacturers.

* Clinton Foundation donors were were handed government contracts to clean up in the aftermath of the earthquake.

* Bill Clinton intervened in the jail sentence of Laura Silsby, a convicted child trafficker who attempted to smuggle 33 children out of Haiti.

* A former Haitian government official set to expose the Clinton Foundation's misdeeds in Haiti shot himself in the head a week before he was able to testify.

* The Clinton Foundation even grifted Haiti's lime industry.

* Haiti's former Senate president said Hillary Clinton 'tried to bribe me!'

CGI was shuttered in 2017 after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election and donations mysteriously dried up. It was rebooted in 2022.

And now, Ukraine.

According to the ABC News, CGI will launch the "Ukraine Action Network" with the stated mission of delivering 'humanitarian aid' to Ukrainians, which will "mobilize existing CGI partners, as well as new leaders from around the world, to create and finance new commitments for Ukrainians."

Pope Francis kicked off the new initiative in a videoconference with Bill Clinton on Monday, where he said "No challenge is too great if we meet it starting with personal conversion and the personal contribution that each of us can make to solve it... No challenge can be overcome alone — not alone, only together, sisters and brothers, children of God."

The CGI Ukraine Action Network is the result of a collaboration between Hillary Clinton and Olena Zelenska, first lady of Ukraine, that began last year. The new organization, which will be formally announced Tuesday, is designed to mobilize existing CGI partners, as well as new leaders from around the world, to create and finance new commitments for Ukrainians, according to CGI. Numerous monetary commitments for Ukraine are also set to be announced Tuesday. -ABC News

We're sure this will go well, particularly for the children of war-torn Ukraine, and CGI donors.

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Originally posted by second:
blah, blah, blah...

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Meanwhile, if you have any doubts that the United States is the number one country in the World for military “interventions” just take a look at this report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798 – 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/details?prodcode=R42738 Since 1991, the United States has launched more than 200 military operations in foreign countries. Russia and China combined have been involved in less than 20 such activities. Just think about those numbers the next time you hear some American politician bloviate about the imperial ambitions of Russia and China. To paraphrase comedian Jeff Foxworthy, “If you launch an average of 9 foreign invasions a year you might be an Imperialist.”

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Originally posted by second:
Ukrainian armored vehicles are operating beyond the final line

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of the Russian defensive layer that Ukrainian forces in western Zaporizhia Oblast are currently penetrating, although ISW is not yet prepared to assess that Ukrainian forces have broken fully through this Russian defensive layer. Geolocated footage posted on September 21 indicates that Ukrainian armored vehicles advanced south of the Russian anti-tank ditches and dragon’s teeth obstacles that are part of a tri-layered defense and engaged in limited combat immediately west of Verbove

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

HAHAHAHA!!!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It was such an odd name, I looked up 1442 regiment.
Western search engines can't find it on western internet.

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Russia Confirms Ukrainian Missile Strike On Black Sea Fleet HQ, [one] Personnel Missing

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It was such an odd name, I looked up 1442 regiment.
Western search engines can't find it on western internet.

SECOND; Look up this name: Abbas Gallyamov.

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Originally posted by Second:
blah blah blah blah ...

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It was such an odd name, I looked up 1442 regiment.
Western search engines can't find it on western internet.

SECOND; Look up this name: Abbas Gallyamov.

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What does this have to do with a regiment that may or may not be fictional?
Oh, I get it! You're just changing the topic to avoid being exposed as a liar!

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Originally posted by Second:
blah blah blah blah ...

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Originally posted by second:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/09/fact-russia-is-losing-the-ukraine-
war-badly/

Contrary to those Western analysts who believe the Russo-Ukrainian War has reached a stalemate, pro-regime Russians admit that they are losing—badly.

Two pieces of evidence make a convincing case.

On September 15, Major General Andrei Gurulyev, a combative Duma deputy of markedly illiberal tendencies who in recent months has argued that Russia should “burn” Ukraine, bomb Great Britain, and reintroduce the Stalinist terror, suddenly had a change of heart and described conditions on the front lines as being near-catastrophic. He even had the temerity to call the war a war, eschewing the prescribed official terminology (“special military operation”) and thereby engaging in a criminal offense for which many Russians have been punished.

According to Gurulyev’s Telegram posting, the Ukrainians are resilient, adaptive, and resourceful, and have succeeded in pushing back the Russians, imposing high casualties, evading Russian artillery, neutralizing Russian helicopters, deploying huge numbers of virtually limitless drones, and dealing effectively with the minefields. Indeed, “the enemy has seized some of our defensive positions.” Naturally, concludes Gurulyev, “we will win,” though “only one serious problem keeps us from Victory.” What might that be?

It’s lying.

Gurulyev’s answer is shocking, considering that he’s spent much of his career doing just what he now denounces. “Mendacious reports, unfortunately, lead to incorrect decisions on a variety of levels.” The major general is right, of course, though what he fails to see is that the problem is inherent in the very nature of the overcentralized political (and military) system created by Russia’s illegitimate president, Vladimir Putin. Mendacity, to put it simply, is the best way to survive and thrive in today’s Russia, just as it was in the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.

The lying begins at the lowest levels and then proceeds upwards. By the time it reaches the corridors of power, Russia’s decision-makers, Putin included, have a false, sugarcoated picture of actual events on the ground. Hence his belief that invading Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Fixing the problem requires more than stopping to lie. The only effective solution is to dismantle Putin’s top-heavy fascist regime and replace it with something approaching democratic accountability.

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