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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yanno, the USA was defeated in Afghanistan, and fought to a standstill in Iraq, Syria. Militarily defied by Iran and Russia.
And yet you persist in the delusion that the USA has this big unstoppable military.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yanno, the USA was defeated in Afghanistan, and fought to a standstill in Iraq, Syria. Militarily defied by Iran and Russia.
And yet you persist in the delusion that the USA has this big unstoppable military.

Will you admit your mistake when NATO gets its ass handed to it in Ukraine? Or will you continue to deny reality?

One way I see the war in Ukraine ending is that Zelenskiy flees Ukraine and sets up a "government in exile". That way NATO/USA doesn't have to surrender or acknowledge defeat, and they can do a gentle PR glide to memory-holing the Ukraine clusterfuck.

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Apr 10, 2023
Author’s Note: I had been intending to publish an article on Soviet operational art this week, but the emergence of the leaks diverted my attention and led to this article instead. We’ll return to military history shortly.

Another winter has ended, and spring has again arisen on the war in Ukraine. Amid the thaw and attendant mud, Russian forces - including the indominable Wagner Group - have pushed the Ukrainian grouping in Bakhmut to the brink, with the AFU now clinging its last defensive toehold in the city. Bakhmut has become the largest battle of the 21st century, and is now entering its climactic phase.

Nevertheless, battlefield developments have been upstaged to some extent by the apparent leak of classified US military intelligence documents which provide a sweeping view into the inner workings of the Pentagon’s war.


... The general impression is that an American folded the briefing documents up, put them in his/her/their/xer/xem/plur pocket (the American military is a Diverse and Inclusive institution, and the leaker could have any, all, or no gender), took the pages home and photographed them. It was almost certainly not a Russian asset - if the documents had been acquired by Russian intelligence, they would have kept it internal.

... The most significant implication of the documents is simple: Ukraine’s combat power is significantly degraded, and in particular their mechanized units and artillery forces are in very rough shape.

The relevant material here in particular is a page entitled “US Allied & Partner UAF Combat Power Build”... The plan calls for a force of twelve nominal brigades, nine of which will be equipped by NATO and three internally generated by the Ukrainians. The leak does not offer insight into the three Ukrainian brigades, but the intended complement of the nine NATO brigades is meticulously listed).

All told, the combat power build calls for these brigades to field a total of 253 tanks, 381 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, 480 Armored Personnel Carriers, and 147 artillery pieces. This implies that these will be brigades in name only, and will in fact be far understrength. Parceling these systems out across nine brigades will give an average strength of a mere 28 tanks per brigade, along with some 95 IFVs/APCs and 16 artillery tubes. Compare this to a US Army Armored Brigade Combat Team, which would have almost 90 tanks and almost 200 IFVs/APCs. An American Stryker Brigade (a lighter, rapidly deployable formation) would have about 300 Strykers - the Ukrainian 82nd Brigade is listed to receive only 90.

In combat power terms, therefore, these new brigades are going to be far understrength. Their tank strength, far from being full brigade level, amounts to less than an American armored battalion.

Another key aspect of the force build document is the training schedules. This document dates from the beginning of March, at which point five of the nine brigades were listed at “Training 0% Complete”. Only one of the brigades was more than halfway trained, rated at 60% complete. Despite this, six out of nine were scheduled to be ready by the end of March and the remainders by the end of April. This can only be achieved with significantly truncated training times, and these are detailed in the document. Leopard tank training, for example, is listed at only six weeks. Just for context, American tankers can pencil in 22 weeks of training for the Abrams.

The overall picture, therefore, is rather foreboding for Ukraine. The leaked documents do not give us insight into the three brigades that Ukraine is expected to generate with their indigenous assets, but the nine NATO trained and equipped brigades are slated to be significantly understrength and manned by personnel who are receiving a hugely accelerated training course. These brigades will almost certainly need to be deployed in groupings to be capable of the requisite combat tasks.

An ancillary but important note at this point is the fact that, as best we can tell from these documents, Ukraine’s prewar tank park is almost completely gone. Ukraine went to war with about 800 of its workhorse T-64, but the NATO combat power build notes only 43 now on hand. There are others, of course, that are currently being operated by Ukrainian frontline units, but the build plan indicates that Ukraine has virtually none in reserve to equip this vital attack package, on which all their hopes will depend.

Meanwhile, a separate element of the leak paints a similarly dismal picture of Ukraine’s ranged fires. Buried on a page marked “NOFORN” - which means No Foreign Nationals, even allies, are supposed to see it, is a logistics table showing 155mm shell deliveries and expenditures. This bit is rather shocking.

We have known for quite some time that Ukraine is facing a critical shell shortage, but the leaked documents reveal just how acute this issue is. Ukraine’s usage rate is very low right now - the report claims only 1,104 shells had been expended in the previous 24 hours - compare this to the 20,000 or so shells that the Russian army is firing on a daily basis. Even more alarming for Ukraine is the note that they have only 9,788 shells on hand.

Even with a low burn rate that leaves the AFU massively outgunned, they have enough on hand to sustain combat for a little over a week, and they rely on a trickle of deliveries from the USA to keep these stocks stable. The report noted a shipment of 1,840 shells departing in the next 24 hours. Batches of this size are obviously insufficient for Ukraine to build up its stocks, and can only serve to backstop and replenish daily expenditure. There is no possibility of America quickly ramping up the size of these deliveries, because a mere 14,000 shells are produced per month. US officials hope to get this number up to 20,000 this year, but this is still below Ukraine’s current burn rate.

The implication is pretty straightforward. Ukraine is on a shell ration that leaves it unable to offer more than token fire, and it will likely have to live with this shell ration for the duration of the war.

The overall picture of Ukrainian combat power is atrocious. Their overall combat effectiveness faces a hard ceiling due to systemic shell shortages, and the mechanized package slated for the spring offensive is going to be far less potent than advertised. Those nine NATO-created brigades will have the striking power equivalent of (if we are being generous) perhaps four genuine full strength brigades, augmented by three internally generated Ukrainian brigades of dubious quality. Ukraine’s hopes for a glorious assault on the Russian land bridge to Crimea will rest on, at most, 400 tanks and perhaps 30,000 men.

Should this force dash itself to pieces against the well prepared Russian forces in the south, an important question would present itself. If this was the best force that NATO could generate for Ukraine, what will the second team look like? Will there even be another force? This understrength and undertrained mechanized package may be Ukraine’s last serious roll of the iron dice.
The American Analytic Framework

While the leaked documents certainly do not paint an encouraging picture of Ukraine’s force generation, they also offer a similarly shocking glimpse into the state of American military intelligence.

One of the things that immediately jumps out when one looks at the operational reports (the pages showing detailed situation maps) is that the Pentagon apparently has far more information on Russian dispositions than on Ukrainians units. Russian units are strongly accounted for - their locations are precisely marked, unit designations are identified, there are assessments as to which Russian units are combat capable or not, and there are very specific estimates of Russian frontline strength (IE, 23,250 men on the Zaporizhzhia axis and 15,650 men on the Kherson axis).

In contrast, Ukrainian units are not given combat capability designations, their locations are more generally indicated, and there are huge ranges on the assessed manpower (10,000 to 20,000 men on the Donetsk axis - an enormous margin of error!) This, incidentally, is another reason why I think the documents are genuine. If the intent was to put forth disinformation to confuse or deceive the Russians, one would expect actionable (but fake) intelligence about Ukrainian deployments - yet there is no such thing here. Ukrainian strengths and dispositions are presented vaguely and inconclusively, so the only thing the Russian army might extrapolate from this report is that the Americans don’t really know what’s going on with Ukrainian forces.

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Indeed, this is the inescapable conclusion. The Pentagon does not seem to have a strong sense of Ukrainian unit strength, location, or activities. They also list their assessed Ukrainian KIA at a mere 16k-17.5k. This is an absurdly low number - where could they have gotten it? In fact, it is a direct copy-paste of the casualty numbers reported publicly by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.


... One can only conclude that the tail is wagging the dog. The Ukrainians are able to extract material, training, and cash from the west, but there is little accountability or honest information flow in return.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Big Serge has a detailed summary of those leaked documents

Here it is, edited for brevity . . .

More at Big Sege substack



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

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Big Serge has a detailed summary of those leaked documents
Here it is, edited for brevity . . .
More at Big Serge substack.

SECOND: Signym, your editing can’t be trusted because your Henry Kissinger quote got "edited" until it meant the opposite of what he said.

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Originally posted by second:
The Most Shocking Thing About This American Reporter’s Arrest in Russia

“Journalism is not a crime,” a State Department spokesman said of the young reporter’s arrest.

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Originally posted by second:
The Most Shocking Thing About This American Reporter’s Arrest in Russia

“Journalism is not a crime,” a State Department spokesman said of the young reporter’s arrest.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by second:
The Most Shocking Thing About This American Reporter’s Arrest in Russia

“Journalism is not a crime,” a State Department spokesman said of the young reporter’s arrest.

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Unless you're Julian Assange. And then you will be held in a foreign jail (UK) on bogus charges (Sweden), and once THOSE charges are dropped you'll STILL be held, in maximum security, awaiting extradition to yet another country (USA).

Do these people even HEAR themselves?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by second:
The Most Shocking Thing About This American Reporter’s Arrest in Russia

“Journalism is not a crime,” a State Department spokesman said of the young reporter’s arrest.

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Unless you're Julian Assange. And then you will be held in a foreign jail (UK) on bogus charges (Sweden), and once THOSE charges are dropped you'll STILL be held, in maximum security, awaiting extradition to yet another country (USA).

Do these people even HEAR themselves?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yep, SECOND, WHAT ABOUT OUR COUNTRY?

I mean, why do you clutch your pearls and shriek about RUSSIA!RUSSIA! but manage to ignore trampled freedoms in OUR country? Yanno, our nation that "promotes democracy and freedom"?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yep, SECOND, WHAT ABOUT OUR COUNTRY?
I mean, why do you clutch your pearls and shriek about RUSSIA!RUSSIA! but manage to ignore trampled freedoms in OUR country? Yanno, our nation that "promotes democracy and freedom"?

SECOND: I am very familiar with citizens who voted for Trump or continue to defend him. They were shouting lunatics before Trump got into politics. They struggle in life because they were always highly defective individuals attracted to defective politicians.

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SECOND: They've got ... blah blah blah....
... as living examples of Matthew 7:3-5
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

But, yanno, it doesn't matter. Your own deranged posts and thoughts won't change reality. The USA will either get its shit together and start paying attention to its common interests (and not nutjobs and indentitarians like you) or it won't. And if it doesn't, we'll go down in flames.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But, yanno, it doesn't matter. Your own deranged posts and thoughts won't change reality. The USA will either get its shit together and start paying attention to its common interests (and not nutjobs and indentitarians like you) or it won't. And if it doesn't, we'll go down in flames.

SECOND: Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But, yanno, it doesn't matter. Your own deranged posts and thoughts won't change reality. The USA will either get its shit together and start paying attention to its common interests (and not nutjobs and indentitarians like you) or it won't. And if it doesn't, we'll go down in flames.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, yeah. But other ppl besides SECOND read this forum. I hate to see the nonsense that he posts plagiarizes stand unopposed.

Hard to believe they're from mainstream publications. Just goes to show the psyops that we're buried in every day.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, yeah. But other ppl besides SECOND read this forum. I hate to see the nonsense that he posts plagiarizes stand unopposed.

Hard to believe they're from mainstream publications. Just goes to show the psyops that we're buried in every day.

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

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

BTW... Have you seen the muzzle for the dog? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

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... and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”
Corrupt politicians in Kiev have been literally “competing … to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks”, Hersh wrote. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” a US expert on international trade told Hersh.

CIA Director William Burns had confronted Zelensky in a meeting in January in Kiev, saying the Ukrainian brass was angry because Zelensky “was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

Burns presented Zelensky with a list of 35 corrupt Ukraine generals and top brass, Hersh writes, forcing Zelensky to fire ten Generals and do “little else.”

“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” Hersh reports. Zelenksy’s lackluster response allegedly contributed to a “total breakdown” of trust between the corrupt Biden Regime and honest elements of the intel community.

Another sticking point for honest members of the intel community is “the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan”, Hersh notes.

White House Resident Biden and his two main foreign policy shills Blinken and Sullivan “have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” according to Hersh’s sources. “They live in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and intelligence officers.

“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official told Hersh. The rift dates back to the fall, when Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, as Hersh reported.

“Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told Hersh. “And there is no strategy for ending the war. The US spent two years planning for the Normandy invasion in World War II. What are we going to do if China decides to invade Taiwan?”

CIA director William Burns “is not the problem,” according to Hersh’s sources. “The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dbl

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Russia cannot accept any agreement, only a fair fight. And if we come out of this battle battered, there is nothing to worry about. The fortified regions of Russia make it impossible to penetrate into its depths. And the Russian people have never broken down and will never break down. Therefore - Only Fair Fight! And the sooner it starts, the better.

I summarize. The Ukrainians are ready to attack. We are ready to repel the blow. The best scenario for healing Russia so that it rallies together and becomes the Strongest State is the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which no handouts and negotiations will be possible.

And either the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be defeated in a fair fight, or Russia will lick its wounds, build up muscles and tear its rivals again in a fair fight. Therefore, I believe that the option of agreements is impossible for the future of Russia.

See you at Bakhmut.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Joe Biden* is a criminal.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

As usual SECOND you got your head stuck up some know-nothing's ass. It's been widely acknowledged for months now that Russia is fighting war of attention. That means destroying the opposing military while taking far lower losses, not taking territory. I've heard (not sure how reliably) that there have been internal discussions in the Russian MoD on whether to completely close the pincer around Bakhmut, but since Kiev insists on pouring more men and machines along the "Road of death", in those terms Bakhmut is "the gift that keeps on giving".

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
As usual SECOND you got your head stuck up some know-nothing's ass. It's been widely acknowledged for months now that Russia is fighting war of attrition. That means destroying the opposing military while taking far lower losses, not taking territory. I've heard (not sure how reliably) that there have been internal discussions in the Russian MoD on whether to completely close the pincer around Bakhmut, but since Kiev insists on pouring more men and machines along the "Road of death", in those terms Bakhmut is "the gift that keeps on giving".

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a) The USA and its NATO "allies" are getting their ass handed to them in Ukraine, and since the USA came to dominate the world by giving the impression of military invincibility, once the spell is broken resentment and blowback emerge. . .

IMHO anyway.

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Russia is losing.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No. They're not.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No. They're not.

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Belief in Russian superiority follows from believing in Trump.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

It has nothing to do with superiority.

Simple facts.

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