romad1

Found the article about the Crimean War which is remarkably consistent with current Russian mil The Economist on Russian Military Weakness During the Crimean War in 1854 : UkraineWarVideoReport (reddit.com) worth a look

We already have private citizen volunteers in Ukraine and recruiting of ground troopers is as public as the doorway to the Ukrainian permanent mission to the UN (saw this last week when I was in NYC) where you can apply to go fight or donate to the Ukrainian MOD. So, yeah a squadron of western nuclear-capable fighter bombers might be a bit scary for the policy people. I totally get that. But, paint them yellow and blue and just tell Russia that they exist and to suck on that.

Get your eyeballs to this

Germany, has a lot to navigate with all this. Ukraine has been shaming them publicly. I think the German public are really twisted about how to proceed since they clearly want the Russians to fail in their genocide but also, their costs are really tied to cheap Russian gas. Nuclear power would really help right about now.

So this thread is a good read. The "South" has their view of things. Many of the problems of the South are based on their resentments of the Rich North in my view and again in my view would improve remarkably with administration of the rule of law. That said...the legacy of the Soviet and PRC's gamesmanship and current cash diplomacy in those places and has an effect. I recall wondering why when South Africa had the World Cup in whatever year they didn't have any concerns about terrorism. Their story was that terrorism was a Northern problem and a legacy of our imperialist past and South Africa's ANC was once called a terrorist group by the North.

Clint Watts was discussing some improvement of the Ukrainian situation in Mariupol this morning that I guess was just happening.

Nothing too surprising about this these have been stop and reads for me.

There is an Economist or Atlantic article written in the 1850s floating around my office that discusses the problems of the Russian army in the Crimean War and it reads exactly like what is wrong with the current Russian army. One of the other things that resonates with me about the Crimean war is that it may be that portable anti-tank, anti-air systems and long range A2 (anti-access) weapons may well be taking us back to the age of rifles which began in Crimea, was manifest in the US Civil War and reached its extreme in the trench warfare of WWI in which the defense had the advantage over mobile offense. Now alternatively, the systemic advantages the Ukrainian army has (better leaders, better cohesion) may negate the dominance of man-portable defensive systems. Also, we (yes we) have the advantage of our superior information integration systems (i.e., RIVETJOINT, AWACS, drones, satellites and our network of trained operators) in which we are capable of destroying defensive systems faster than they can be deployed. Now to take the lab coat off. I'm definitely rooting for a rollback of Russian gains and to have them bled white so that Putin loses power.

Ezra Klein World Historical Genius. I'm in agreement that Putin needs to lose the war.

He's doing as much as could be expected. Milley and Austin are doing great things. Its not like we have an inexhaustible supply of Soviet era systems. We do need to ramp up production of lines of the good stuff. And then train the Ukrainian armed forces in the M1, the MLRS, Patriot and so forth.

THIS is absolutely correct.

I like this comment

This is my hope

Muy bueno

i had a smarmy " of course they would have given up a hit every time someone hit the ball to the left side of the infield" type response queued up but then I realized that would be lazy. Indeed, we have gotten 2 wins because of Javy.

Vic Reyes needs ABs

Yeah, that was an inspired device for framing the narrative.

I am not sure if this has been posted but this is FIRE I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here's What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies. - The Bulwark

The latter point is relevant. The US has been flying rivet joint and awacs over Romania and Poland and the range of those systems drops after the Kyiv/Crimea line so we won't be providing such good info as we were about the location of ground and air systems. Russian troops are broken though. They plan all sorts of augmentation but their basic foundation is rotten.

if you need context on the above

Lots of folks having fun with this one. Because Vladdie can't have it both ways.

Javy is weird. He's like asleep in innings 3-7. Or at least thats what it appears. I enjoy the results in the other innings. Meadows is worth the freight.

She's right

4.8 billion what?

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