re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

I added a few pictures from it in my post.

The army created a new restoration workshop at Benning and has been moving everything out of the old ww2 era workshop that I got to tour. That old building was cool.

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The only way I can explain it to civilians is imagine if they closed down the campus in Tuscaloosa and consolidated the school with Auburn.

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Call in a tactical nuclear strike on Auburn then and we’ve got real progress.

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added a few pictures from it in my post.

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Looks awesome. I’ve gotta go. Nice work on the 88. I’ve got this Tamiya 1/48 scale kit in my stash that I’ll probably get to sometime soon.

Another long Twitter thread from Michael Koffman.
Who's this guy? From his Twitter bio

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Director, Russia Studies at CNA. Senior Adjunct Fellow, CNAS. I follow Russian military capabilities, operations & strategy. Opinions are mine alone, hopefully.

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https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1572573086490464256

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A few incomplete thoughts on the question of mobilization. It won't solve many of the RU military's challenges in this war, but it could alter the dynamic. Fair to say that these are uncharted waters, and so we should take care with deterministic or definitive claims. 1/

I wouldn't suggest that this can turn around Russia's fortunes in the war. However, I would take care being overly dismissive, especially looking out towards the medium term of this winter and 2023. Force availability and manpower matters, hence the implications can vary. 2/

The Russian military has had structural manpower deficits throughout the war leading to problems with recruitment, retention, and rotation. Units can't be rotated, leading to exhaustion. Number of refuseniks grew. Hiring short term volunteers exacerbated retention issues. 3/

Piecemeal solutions have led the Russian military to steadily cannibalize the force, using up officers, equipment, and enlisted professionals for reserve and volunteer units. Hence force quality degraded over time, as did morale, retention & exhaustion problems grew worse. 4/

Mobilizing LDNR personnel, and using them to absorb losses led to a variegated force that lacked cohesion, interoperability, and suffered from weak morale. This approach seems to have largely exhausted itself in July, few men left to forcibly mobilize in LDNR. 5/

The first and more important implication is not mobilization but enactment of stop-loss policies. Service contracts extended indefinitely, right to refuse deployment suspended, new criminal measures enacted to enforce what is a de facto introduction of wartime measures. 6/

Caveat, this is an initial interpretation of the order. But it implies that you can no longer tear up your contract in the Russian military or leave service. Volunteers who signed up for short tours (4-6 months) are now extended for the duration of the mobilization period. 7/

All mobilized personnel will be treated as contract servicemen, subject to these conditions. The situation with conscripts appears unchanged, but if Russia annexes these 4 UA regions, then it can technically deploy conscripts in those territories as well... 8/

The optimal time for Russia to conduct mobilization was in April, before significant parts of the force and mobilization base were ineffectually consumed. So, what can this 'partial' mobilization achieve for Russia at this stage? The disappointing answer is it depends. 9/

The first limit on mobilization is likely to be throughput - the system has to call-up, house, train, feed, equip, etc. Hence Shoigu's 300k number is likely to be notional, while actual mobilization proceed as a much more limited and phased process. 10/

That said, I'm skeptical that mobilization infrastructure has sat entirely dormant. Russian voenkomats have been calling people up to update their info since April. Assembling reserve and volunteer battalions likely exercised some of this system already. 11/

Since units typically train their personnel, its unclear what the capacity is in the system to absorb mobilized officers/soldiers, train them, and equip them. These are all uncertainties. Russian training of 3rd corps at Mulino might be an example of the approach (or not). 12/

Hence mobilization is unlikely to generate new units for several months, and even then the output will be a lot less than what Moscow might expect. Mobilization is a coercive process in practice & economically disruptive. It also depends on how Russians choose to react. 13/

However, RU mil could use mobilized personnel first to raise manning levels in currently deployed BTGs, many of which seem at 40-50%. Morale of mobilized personnel might be low, but individual replacements can start filling these units out faster than establishing new units. 14/

Another approach might also be to deploy lower quality infantry regiments, akin to those currently seen among mobilized LDNR units, in order to hold large stretches of the line, i.e. the opposite of the 3rd corps effort to stand up a new volunteer formation with better kit. 15/

The second main limitation stems from constraints on force employment. No matter how many personnel are mobilized, RU mil can only sustain and command a finite number of troops on the battlefield. Scaling has been one of the Russian military's chief problems in this war. 16/

Russian capacity to implement partial mobilization is uncertain, as is the time it would take to produce results & how Russians will react to it. However, I'm also not sanguine on the proposition that it will make no difference. There's room for caution here. 17/

Morale will continue to be an issue. Stop-loss policies may yield fewer refuseniks, but more deserters. Most UA advantages will remain. What partial mobilization may do in the coming months, depending on what actually comes of it, is help RU mil stabilize their lines. 18/

This is in part why these coming months remain an important window of opportunity for UA to retake territory. Over the winter the contest will likely be one more defined by attrition and reconstitution. The extent to which mobilization can help RU reconstitute is unclear. 19/

Mobilization comes with significant political risks and downsides for Moscow, but it could extend Russia's ability to sustain this war more so than alter the outcome. As always, these are just initial impressions and a very imperfect reading at best. 20/

Perhaps a useful addition - mobilization & stop-loss might help Moscow stem the deteriorating quantity of the force, but not the deteriorating quality of the force & its morale. Having used up its best equipment, officers, & personnel, I don't see how this can be recovered.

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But I must admit, as an old tanker, it still doesn’t sit right with me that both the armor museum and Armor School we’re moved from Fort Knox to Fort Benning. 

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It hurt me right in the feels, bro. I went 19K schools, Master Gunner and BNCOC there. I had to go to Benning for ANCOC and 1SG course. It was definitely not the tanker paradise Ft Knox was.

There was a shithole bar by the BNCOC barracks called the PLL (Proud Legion's Lounge). They didn't even have cups. You ordered a pitcher and drank straight from it. We called it the Phat Ladies Lounge.

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Ukraine’s military isn’t 3rd rate for starts,


That is not what you were saying back in February back when you were saying that Ukraine was part of Russia and they would be conquered in less than 2 weeks. How is that prediction turning out for you?

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"Backwater shithole" is what he & the rest of the Putin wing called it then.

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Its a great question and I agree logistics will be what ultimately determines Ukraines success or failure.

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They can't form a Maginot line hope to keep the Russians out if they decide to cross the border again, but they have enough forces in the area to stop them if they decide to try it. Ukraine have a head start on the task of planning for and preparing a static defense, and they should have the man power advantage even after Russia mobilizes its 300,000 reserves. So I would say yes they can form a defensive position.

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We are seeing the failure of Russian logistics and the result of it in real-time.

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Yes and the Russians have not learned anything from the lessons of their spring offensive failures. They still think they can just line up hundreds of thousands of troops and hammer their way into Ukraine along paths which are dictated by the rail lines.

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Wee Wee has made multiple posts discussing the horrendous state of Ukrainian roads and the challenges of supplying an army via them. Russia's reliance on rail is clearly hurting them as you only have to take out the railroads to cripple the Russian offensive.

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Here is a map of the major rail lines in Ukraine before the invasion.



and here is the front around Lyman.


If Ukraine cuts the rail lines in Starobilsk either by capturing Starobilsk or destroying the railroad bridge over the Aider River just north of Starobilsk then Russia is down to just 3 rail lines connecting the front to Russia. All of those 3 lines have major bridges that could not be quickly repaired if hit by Hrim2s or ATCMs (which I expect the USA to quickly supply to Russia after the referendums are held). The bridges over the SD River on the border of Russian and the Luhansk oblast will be within HIMARs range (90 km) if Ukraine reaches Starobilsk or Lysychans'k (kinda makes you wonder how this war would have turned out if we would have gotten the HIMARs to Ukraine faster). Knock out those 2 bridges and Russia is down to just one rail line to supply the entire Donbas.

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SO WTF...Russia can just declare a territory part of the motherland and suddenly it feels it has the ability to be able to use NUkes?

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Basically that is what Putin is doing.

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look i hate the amount we are spending but att his point, that mother fricker has to go down. If he uses Nukes, we shuld enter. I am the most anti war person on here for the most part but frick this dude.

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Poland and some of the other Eastern European NATO nations have already said that they plan on invoking Article 5 if Russia uses nukes because the fallout will affect their population and territories. If that happens then we won’t have a choice but to go in. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that because Ole Vlad will try and lob a few nukes our way then.

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I wouldnt base your opinion off some commercial you saw.

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I think there was some serious sarcasm in his post. Sometimes detecting it requires memorizing all the posters and their general opinions which is nigh on impossible.