Well, it was here where NATO finally solidified its status as a collection of terrorists by committing atrocities against Russian civilians which would make SS proud. And then, they indeed paraded themselves as operations' amateurs not understanding what operational ART is. How "strategy" is taught and by whom--you can listen to Sarah Paine in US Naval War College, she is an Exhibit A for a reason why Pentagon has no clue what strategy is. And if 2023 "counter-offensive" catastrophe could still be assumed to be a "learning process" for NATO (specifically Generals Donahue and Aguto "planned" that disaster), after Kursk it became clear that they learned nothing and remain in the amateur league in operational and strategic senses. The only thing US (and later British) generals had as an advantage is the cannon fodder, which could be wasted without looking back at a traditional US very high sensitivity to own losses.
You cannot learn operational ART based on movie Patton and Gulf War, especially in the military which seriously considers itself "a finest fighting force in history". I can only repeat what I said before--NATO in general and US in particular military education is a joke. It starts from STEM and goes to tactics and operations, especially as related to military history. ROTC is not an answer and never was.
Good luck with on-line courses in STEM trying to "lift" percentages for "better" statistics. One has to start with elementary school to change all that, but do not expect any changes there. Meanwhile, Russia recreates traditional military academies which produced the best officer corps in the world (in Russian). 15 new ones till 2035 and, as you may have guessed it, all 5 years 6 days a week engineering schools. It doesn't mean that Russia will completely reject Military Departments in civilian universities (a remote analogue of ROTC and OCS) but they will take, as it always was, a secondary if not tertiary role in officer cadres. The gap will continue to grow because the US has neither system nor military culture adequate for a large scale conventional conflict.
This is what happens when the only thing you know is how to blow up shitty incompetent militaries. US has been exposed as militarily backward and they have to constantly engage in palliative psychological therapy when facing the reality of the warfare for which no US officer or soldier are qualified. So, they suck on 404 propaganda trying to avoid the reckoning with their new and radically diminished status. After all, these were them who planned this whole disaster in 404. PR and making up numbers, while residing in alternative universe, is no substitute for major combined arms operations. I will remind about The Real Revolution In Military Affairs:
... to 404 and already have been thinking about boasting how they led the offensive which would defeat those backward Russkies. Well, the problem, of course, was that they still thought that US Army Manuals apply for 404 as well as they did in Gulf War. Boy, did they miscalculate. Some interesting points from Marat on Chasov Yar, which only confirm the point I make that no US general can command anything larger than regiment in SMO. They simply have neither knowledge nor experience.
Translation:By the fall of last year, Khortitsa, which at the end of the 2022 was considered the largest military formation among the 4 main formations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (240-260 thousand people), lost 150 thousand in just one year.As a result, all the main units, I emphasize, the best that remain at Khortytsya now, concentrated for the defense of Chasov Yar - one at a time, and the majority have already been completely reorganized twice.That is, they were completely destroyed once or twice.But let's take a closer look at them, as this in itself is very interesting.In first place is the supporting and most combat-ready 93rd brigade “Kholodny Yar”.Almost a division in numbers.In two years it was destroyed twice.It is interesting that the “Kholodnye” were considered the most combat-ready, because they fought mainly with the best captured Russian equipment.These are primarily T-72, T-80 and even a few T-90 tanks.And also the best thing the Ukrops had - the T-64 Bulat.The “Kholodnye” were the favorites of the Americans, and, for example, during the autumn-summer campaign of 22, some units were directly led by American officers.True, when the Artyomovskaya meat grinder began, they quickly fled.In second place is the 46th airmobile (airborne) brigade, trained by the British in England, which, by the way, is the most unshabby - it was only reformed once.Next is the 92nd Air Assault Brigade (twice destroyed).These are generally suicide troops.Like the 110th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Avdeevka.They distinguished themselves by carrying out a massacre of our prisoners together with the Kraken battalion in the village of Novoselovskoye near Svatovo in the fall of the 22nd.Then 16 fighters of the Lugansk militia (now the same 4th brigade) died as martyrs.They put bags over their heads and suffocated them.Oh, what will happen when the Luhansk people reach 92nd.
Oh, we know what's gonna happen and it better be done without any phones around. Sadism towards POWs was "trained" by NATO instructors and this is the only thing they are good at. Recall how US media have been ejaculating in mid 2010s from describing H.R. McMaster who became, for a short while, the National Security Adviser to Trump. What many forgot that at some point there was a description of how McMaster's regiment treated Iraqi Army POWs--inhumanely. Remarkably, the piece was in one of the major US outlets--either New Yorker or NYT, one of those. Now I cannot find it. I tried, maybe you can. But this is the type of the "training", which is based on killing a third rate force which cannot shoot back and is demolished by the way of total air superiority. But McMaster's "story" and PR around his exploits in Iraq are totally inapplicable to the realities of modern war with "peer" or "better than peer", and that is what those American unit commanders learned really fast. Hence, they fled--very little glory in being evaporated by Tornado's salvo or being blown to smithereens by 152-mm shell or 3M14 Kalibr.
Remember a pathetic piece by WSJ in 2017 titled...
So, yes, they compared (Nemesis, LOL) Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces to a guy who commanded a... regiment in Iraq. I reacted already then:
It was a grotesque level of arrogance, ignorance and military illiteracy by the whole US military-propaganda establishment. And then they fled--no glory, I guess. But with such "thinkers" as McMaster, we may see yet another glorious US operational "planning" which will kill even more Ukrainians, who US military views merely as a cannon fodder of untermenschen. Hm, where did I see this before? You gotta love internet, it saves so much...
I never hid my opinion about Mr. Girkin (aka Strelkov) and I stressed not for once that not only he IS NOT a military leader--he never was one, having NO military education and having his failures in Donbass hushed over from military amateurs by his self-promotion and friendly media--but that from the start of SMO his "opinions" and "forecasts" on issues of modern geopolitics, combined arms operations, Russian Armed Forces, NATO et al were nothing more than a delirium of a bitter loser who black-mouthed Russia and "Putin's Regime" at every opportunity. He, certainly, has been able to create a sort of cult among a group of ignoramuses and for the last several years was pursuing his political ambitions, together with some other remnants of Russian Spring from Donbass, such as Pavel Gubarev, who saw a political process of integration of LDNR into Russia as a good opportunity to both enrich themselves and exercise their egos larger than cathedral.
Well, as was pointed out for years by many in Russia: not only Girkin was a guy culpable in surrendering Slavyansk to VSU (only interference from Alexander Borodai saved Girkin from being executed in Donetsk) but his open support for 404 was becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day, including some very strong signs that he might have been the SBU asset from the get go. Well, Girkin's political career, as pathetic as it is, is over now:
For Western audiences subsisting on propaganda and sensationalism it is often next to impossible to have proper perspective on such personalities or events, e.g. Prigozhin and Wagner and their blown out of proportion military "capability" while in reality sustaining catastrophic casualties. So, in the Manichean world of black and white images, the fact that Girkin is an enemy not just of Putin but of the majority of Russians and that his "military accomplishments" are rather minuscule, or that Prigozhin now is under a scrutiny by some serious people in MoD and FSB and he WILL answer for Russian heli and IL-22 pilots shot down by his "troops", is very difficult to process. Understandably so.
But here it is, long anticipated reaction of the nation which is at war to someone who always was an enemy. Mr. Gubarev also was detained today, especially after it was disclosed that very large sums of money have been "appropriated" by this once "hero" of Russian Spring. Nobody is above the law, especially during SMO. It is also a good signal to all those "voenkors" ranging from lowlifes such as Sladkov or Pegov, to "analysts" of Rybar or Podolyaka "caliber" who have been spreading open disinformation for many months now, that times are changing. And that is about time. Needless to say that practically all of them are people who merely used their geographic location close to SMO battle-lines or large audiences primarily for promotion of their personal financial interests and egos, and discrediting by default the work of real military reporters.
I am on record, TG channels on SMO are primarily trash, with exception of official MoD or FM channels and channels of such people like Marat Khairullin--the rest is sheer trash. That is why, as an example, I had to disagree with Scott with regards to Alexander Kotz who left his mark through supporting Maidan and providing a constant stream of BS, despite being identified as Kremlin propagandist. So, today's putting Girkin and Gubarev behind bars where both definitely belong is a good sign of Moscow's intentions to finally clean the cesspool of people who either consciously or due to sheer stupidity have been working for the enemy.
Now, for those who still continue to misread numbers of VSU losses and use a blanket term of "casualties" standing for the sum of all KIAs, MIAs, WIAs, instead of the specific category KIA--Killed in Action. Many people continue to ignore the crucial distinction in Russian MoD reports. Like this:
MoD uses the term "уничтожено" (annihilated), in terms of personnel it means KILLED. Thus the numbers presented are those of KIAs not of "casualties". Realistically MoD can only generally estimate number of wounded, but it has better documentation of KIAs, especially with modern means of objective control. Even Putin today spoke about tens of thousands KILLED (погибших) during VSU "counteroffensive" (in Russian). So, I repeat--MoD gives KIAs of VSU. That is why it is absolutely justifiable to talk now about roughly 350,000 KIAs and around 700,000 to 900,000 wounded in VSU, which amounts to 1,000,000 + casualties. The Ukie counteroffensive, thus, resulted in roughly 41,000 KIAs and about 100,000 wounded from June 4 through today, July 21. In all, roughly 140,000+ casualties. In reality, the number will be much higher and they begin to feel the pinch in Washington.
Do not forget, that once the REAL International War Crimes Tribunal for Ukraine starts there will be many NYT, WaPo, The Telegraph, MSNBC and CNN et al mediawhores who will be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as propaganda enablers for deaths and destruction and no amount of maneuvering and manipulation will help them, as it didn't help Girkin and Gubarev.
No, I don't use this term as a description of work-out but as the the description of literary primer, the opening of some topic by means of using the matter from which to "push it away". Usually, as you all noticed, it is a piece of shitty incompetent "journalism" and those word-smiths primarily, but not exclusively, from the Western media. Here is an example--David Axe, who passes in the US for "military expert", makes recently this admission in his butt-hurt, a euphemism for lament, piece about the USAF leaving Taiwan.
Obviously, David Axe is no military "expert" and he wouldn't be able to calculate even basic required force for bombing the mime school or accordion factory in Iraqi desert, but he gets around and rubs shoulders with all kinds of people who have a clue and highlighted in yellow is this proverbial push-away.
For years, the USAF boasted that it was the bestest, the largest, the super-duperiest Air Force in the world and for anyone stuck in the data from even four years ago, like me, it was a discovery to see a collapse in the making. I knew it was, but this:
This is called a collapse in the making. We, certainly, all knew that there have been huge issues with combat readiness in USAF, but the dynamics of dwindling numbers is rather socking. Axe's lament served as a good stimulus for me to get into the actual numbers--a classic push-away. And the reason for me to push-away from Axe's piece which now provides us with numbers of USAF is this delirium from neocon infested Newsweek:
As we all know, Newsweek is a propaganda outlet and most of those who write anything here on geopolitical and military matters are, even if they are, sometimes, cadre NATO officers, are propagandists and not serious military professionals. And here is the catch in this piece:
Russia's Air Force may have performed poorly at the start of the war in Ukraine, but intelligence leaks last month showed United States nerves about the prospect of Vladimir Putin returning to the sky to change what's happening on the ground. The Pentagon
document dated February 28 said that missiles for Soviet-era S-300 and
Buk air defense mid to long-range systems, which Ukraine relied on early
on to target aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, could be
fully depleted by this month. Ukrainian air defense has been
weakened by Moscow's constant attacks on infrastructure with cruise
missiles launched from within Russian territory and barrages of
Iranian-made kamikaze drones.
Obviously, it is written by some uneducated ignoramus Brendan Kole, who continues o repeat a debunked BS about "Iranian-made drones", aka loitering munitions, but since when did the RuAF become "colossal"? For decades Pentagon and Western media loved to talk about dwindling numbers of RuAF and its backwardness. And suddenly--bang--it is "colossal" now and US military dude is saying this:
The Russians "have an almost overwhelming level of air superiority they
have not introduced into the war yet," Dale Buckner, CEO of
international security firm Global Guardian, told Newsweek. "Russia has in reserve a very large fleet 10 times" that of Ukraine. He said that the Mikoyan Mig-35, the Sukhoi SU-35 and the Sukhoi
SU-57 are part of a modern kit "that could decimate that
counteroffensive" if it included large columns of Ukrainian tanks and
armored personnel vehicles without adequate air coverage. "So
there's a real tactical risk on the ground for the Ukrainians if they
don't have proper air defense and if they don't have multiple layers of
air defense," Buckner added, referring to how different types of weapons
intercept aircraft and missiles flying at different altitudes.
What happened? Let me explain. In February 2023 issue of Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought) magazine of Russian Academy of Military Sciences, the article by three senior active and retired officers of RuAF titled
Применение ударной авиации Воздушно-космических сил в военных конфликтах будущего.
Translation. The Use of the STRIKE aviation of VKS in the Military Conflicts of the Future.
In it, authors, indeed, point out difficulty of using STRIKE aviation of VKS to the "operational depth". And here comes this clarifier--RuAF actually performed very well in SMO, when one considers a real AD and, initially, Ukie AF being something USAF never encountered in its history since WW II. Not only he US is NOT a competitor to Russia on the ground, but in terms of operational tempo, not to mention the use of high-precision stand-off weapons, especially cruise missiles--the US is not even in the same league. It is not even a contest, which many US pilots begin to admit openly.
Let me repeat: it is NOT just about the hardware. F-15, F-16, F-35, F-22--makes NO difference whatsoever for Russian VKS. It is the fact that Russian SEAD and rational use of the strike aviation in a highly dense AD and EW environments is something that NO USAF pilot ever encountered even in Vietnam, despite losing there 10,000 aircraft, 7,500 helis and 2,500 fixed wings, with 800 of them being shot down by Soviet air defense complexes. But, in the end, it is not just the "new kit" which Russians fly--it is an operational tempo which RuAF was able to sustain for 14 months now.
And do not forget Syria still. F-35 and F-22 being "hangar queens" wouldn't be able to sustain this tempo. But in the end, RuAF is not "colossal"--it is still smaller than USAF, at least on paper. What bothers Pentagon and all kinds of fanboys from Western MSM is the fact which they cannot hide--VERY LIGHT losses of Russian combat aircraft in AD and EW environment packed with NATO and still relevant Soviet/Russian technology on the VSU's side. This, they cannot cope with. As well as with the fact that RuAF airfields are covered with immensely effective air-defenses, while it is a well known fact that any NATO airfield will be penetrated by the salvos of Russian stand-off weapons and NATO has nearly nothing to counter that. Quoting, again, RAND's big Air Force honcho David Ochmanek in 2019:
Butif this statement was based on suppositions and war-gaming, today we can see it all applied in practice which makes whole US doctrine of airwar simply obsolete. And this, they cannot take without feeling an excruciating pain from both losing and evaporation of the US military mythology. As for me, I will go on a limb here and say that RuAF's sortie count by now, probably, reached above 200,000 and it will grow now faster since Ukie AD was indeed degraded dramatically as a result of RuAF SEAD operations.
Not too shabby for the country with the size of economy that of Italy, wink, wink. In the end--it is quality and ability to achieve operational and strategic objectives which counts. Tactics? Leave it to the graduates of the Top Gun: Maverick school of the advanced air power studies. I would say, this was good push-away, right?
Politico, through the writing of its amateur shysters "educated" in US degree mills in "international studies" or other "communications" type skills and some of who actually finally got their pubes growing (read their C.V.s--it is LOL) wonders:
OK, let me translate it into normal human language: no matter what the congressional hustle, a euphemism for pretending to "legislate", is, the United States of 2023 and the United States of 1941 are two different countries and the United States of 2023, allowed for adjustments, is an economic dwarf compared to its own self circa 1942-43. But that fact, meaning inability to fight REAL large scale combined arms war, aside the whole idea seeing American weapons, around which the mythology of American military was built in the last 30 years, is a terrifying idea for many in Washington. And those weapons will burn in industrial quantities because they are simply not designed for real large war.
I repeat ad nauseam for many years, that American politics, built primarily around PR and show off for the consumption of increasingly docile "electorate", cannot permit PR disasters of a scale which will completely and finally disclose America's military-economic impotence. The question here is NOT just about US' inability to produce or ramp up production of the key war materiel. No, the issue is scarier--it is operational-strategic and the whole boondoggle with 404 suicide "planning" in NATO exposed utter military military incompetence across the board. As I spoke yesterday in my video--most US fighting "doctrines" such as SEAD, combined arms, a proverbial Airland Battle, which "transitioned" into Multi-Domain Operations are nothing more than white-board theories based on beating Iraq or appropriating the "experience" of Israeli Army--hardly a good yardstick for real war. Yet, here it is.
In the end, apart from incompatibility of the US arsenal for the needs of such operations as SMO, one can now openly and confidently state that the U.S. Army wouldn't fare much better than VSU and even with the best it has got for the battlefield a wholesale annihilation of high-value assets such as shooting down AWACS and combat planes, destroying battalion worth of personnel and its hardware daily, not to speak of the suppression of ISR, one can only speculate on the way the US Army would react to such realities. And, of course, the stream of KIAs and wounded back to the US would have a dramatic effect politically. It is one thing to lose 56,000 KIAs in Vietnam over 10 years, totally another is losing 150,000-170,000 KIAs in 12 months. When all those facts are considered, the answer to the title of the Politico BS Why Biden hasn’t loaned weapons to Ukraine is easily found. But Politico as well as most US establishment media wouldn't even dare to go there. Plus, most of people who work there as "contributors" are ignorant morons anyway and do as told by their party or intel services curators.
I am not being too harsh, in the exhibit A of how to commit suicide on the national level, Spiegel reports:
Translation:According to Habeck, the nuclear phase-out is irreversibleIt's over on Saturday: the last three German nuclear power plants will be shut down.And finally, says the Economics Minister.Not everyone sees it that way in the traffic light – and in the population.
I will repeat again, as I did for many years now, the nation which consistently makes "green" party and its affiliates a serious political force has some severe psychological, if not psychiatric, issues. The economic demolition of the Western Civilization continues. In related news, however:
... and it will, despite Clare Daly saying that it cannot.
She needs to understand that all NATO top brass, all those three-four star generals, do not know what real war is. Yes, they are that incompetent. Secondly, most of them are compromised and are not so much military men as politicos protecting their careers, including by toeing "a party line" formulated by even more incompetent and even more corrupt and cowardly West's political top. As I am on record--the only thing they can do is PR. Now, some of them begin to feel that they fucked up royally and some may face down the road some serious legal, forget about moral, they long ago lost morals, issues.
Here Larry explains a bit the issue.
Those creeps never knew what they were getting themselves into. As I am on record--Petraeus, Keane or Kellog wouldn't be allowed to command a fucking regiment, forget about division, let alone army, in Russian Armed Forces--this is how delusional they are operationally and strategically. And whilst it is good that some voices of reason are present in European Parliament, it has to be clearly understood that those are lone ones.
I have a good acquaintance, who also reads this blog, and he was a member of the board in one of the major, in fact legendary, European economic institution. When we spoke to each-other on many occasions last year, this acquaintance stated that Europe will have any chance of reforming itself only when it experiences a catastrophic social and economic collapse. Yes, those very average Europeans. This collapse is coming. But to demonstrate an appalling state of Western Civilization, here is the news:
I want to reiterate my position here: ANY, I underscore, ANY Western MSM ranging from BBC and Financial Times to WSJ, NYT and MSNBC is a propaganda outlet tasked with disseminating lies and fake "facts". Most people who work there, they are either psychopaths, or down right evil. Few ones who still retain some redeeming human qualities, work there after making the deal with own consciousness out of pure material (mortgage, car payments, life style) or even fear (family, own well-being etc.), or lack of any useful professional skills reasons. They are also slaves of the circumstances and only very few of them have enough integrity to challenge the lies, including by means of declaring that "I am not going to do this shit anymore".
So, Bernhard counters this BS with a purely professional approach (I would have done the same):
When I was in officer school the number estimated for a big war in
Europe was 75% of casualties due to artillery and aerial bombing.
According to data from the European Commission to which EL
PAÍS has had access, Russia fires between 40,000 and 50,000 artillery
shells per day, compared to 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian forces expend. The
Estonian government, which has been one of largest contributors to
Kyiv’s war effort, puts the average use of artillery at between 20,000
and 60,000 Russian shells per day, and 2,000 to 7,000 Ukrainian rounds,
according to a document sent to EU Member States by Tallinn, to which
this newspaper has had access.
The Russian forces fire ten times the number of shells the Ukrainians
can fire. In a modern war artillery fire causes 65+% of all casualties.
It is thus impossible that Ukraine is losing less soldiers than the
Russians.
The total ratio may well be 7 to 1 but it will certainly be to the advantage of the Russian forces side.
But minimizing the losses Ukraine has in Bakhmut seems to be a current propaganda scheme. A recent Newsweek piece quotes similar nonsense.
But this is the whole issue, honest reporting and knowledge of all relevant facts is not just not in the plans, it is physically impossible even if to assume that some people in MSM would want to report thing right and try to fight own biases the way real journalists are supposed to do. Simplest example? Sy Hersh, he repeats the same utterly incompetent BS about Holodomor, which is a mathematical and demographic impossibility, same goes even for highly respected by me Douglas Macgregor who speaks about "a million Red Army soldiers" executed by "Stalin's hedge detachments (zagradotryads)", when in reality their main task was anything BUT executing anyone, unless we are talking about open panic-mongers and saboteurs. That is why the number of "executed" is two orders of magnitude smaller than Macgregor's "million".
But in the world where such grotesque lies continue to perpetuate, anything is possible. And Russia, for all her immense size and military power still remains the great unknown in the Western World, because it is the ONLY country which time after time beat the shit out of the best West ever could master and intellectual class in the West lives with it, whether it is aware of it, or not. That is why any iota of common sense and actual news reporting in the West becomes the event of a huge significance, because it is so rare. West views Russia same way Marshall Zhukov warned about: "We liberated them, and they will hate us for that".(c) In Russian-American case, it goes even further since Russia wasn't supposed to steal American thunder of the 19th and 20th century but she did, from battlefields to space, to education and that, especially today, underscored America's status as a newcomer. American elites cannot take it, for all truly amazing and admirable America's achievements. And "they hate us for that"(c). I am on record: America's "elite-making" machine is broken and cannot be fixed any time soon. And I am not even talking about British desperation of a pip-squeak.
Translation:Reports that the Ukrainian military allegedly accumulated a 60,000-strong group of troops for an attack on Kherson are not true, said Acting Governor of the Kherson region Volodymyr Saldo. “Over the past four days, the operational situation in the theater of military operations in the Kherson region has remained unchanged, the parties are building up forces, but the words of the Ukrainian side about the accumulation of 60 thousand troops for an offensive on Kherson are a deliberate false stuffing,” wrote Saldo in his Telegram channel. He explained that the Russian military is preparing to fight back, and more and more mobilized people are arriving on the spot, more people are joining volunteer armed groups in Kherson, these are “all people deeply motivated and strong in spirit.” “People are looking in vain for answers about the fate of Kherson in media information and bloggers’ opinions, it’s all the same well-known information in different interpretations,” the acting head of the region concluded.
The progressive diminishing of the size and combat efficiency of the VSU forces who non-stop try to probe, with disastrous for them losses, Russian defenses along the whole front-line is just one of the indicators of a dramatic decline of the force as a whole. Having said all that--it doesn't mean that there will be no major fighting around Kherson. VSU and its handlers from Pentagon and NATO understand a huge importance of the Russian bridgehead on the right bank of Dnieper, so they MUST attack before Russian reserves in the area are fully accumulated for the drive towards Nikolaev and Odessa. That explains all this hustle with "dirty bomb" and military "genius" Petraeus proposing the "multinational force" in Ukraine. All of it is because of that:
Meanwhile, Russia held the exercises of her strategic forces and they went nicely:
Just to remind some people that it is better to be reasonable when it comes to real war. So, that gives some impression of what is coming for (former) Ukraine.
Larry posted yesterday a very good description of CIA in relation to modern Russia and what load of malarkey all those "reputable" spooks provide on Putin and Russians:
Read Larry's excellent piece which frames extremely well other news which many military "analysts" types got excited over. But, in my opinion, this is a good news in a bizarre sense which confirm the assertion of many, yours truly included, from the start of the SMO that most of Russian ground forces are held in reserve precisely for this kind of contingencies:
It is a classic Western militaries' huffing and puffing and performing a Haka, against the backdrop of a dismal record of war for NATO and the US, who managed to lose everything in every single war they fought in the last 30 years against small nations. So, there are a few points of note:
1. NATO will NOT come under attack if it stays where it belongs--within NATO countries. "Escalation in the fighting" is a deliberately opaque term, because even the level of fighting happening right now in former Ukraine is beyond tactical, operational and strategic experiences of the US Army. The operational "acumen" of Pentagon's and British planners and commanders will be studied for decades in serious military academies on how not to fight a real war. But then again--a shining example of Zap Brannigan and his approach to overwhelming enemies by wave after wave of cannon fodder seems to be the guiding light in training NATO's military leaders.
2. The deployment of 4,700 US paratroopers to Romania is risible even against the realities of a single operational direction of SMO theater, which sees currently about the same weekly number of casualties (KIAs, MIAs and wounded) of VSU and no American officer or soldier ever faced such combat realities in their life. Nor did US Army ever face the level of attrition VSU faces today. It is simply outside of America's military experience. What will be the duration of combat stability--that is the ability to perform combat tasks while sustaining attrition--of the 101st under present fire impact conditions one can only speculate, but I would say at best--two-three weeks.
3. But then, of course, comes this other issue which Brigadier General John Lubas misunderstands--the only way 101st can "enter" Ukraine is under the condition of an all out war of NATO against Russia, which will require even in conventional (non-nuclear, that is) framework something between 500,000 to 700,000 NATO ground troops for the first "wave"--an impossible task for NATO and the US, unless NATO goes into full draft and I am sure American public will meet this news with enthusiasm and resolve. This, BTW, is the thinking of Mr. Petraeus, who never won shit in his life, yet somehow became a general. He thinks about "multinational" force now--I am sure his stellar experiences in Afghanistan will also be studied (already are) around the world on how not to fight COIN, forget real combined arms operations of scale of which he has only vague understanding.
4. Lastly, but not "leastly"--I reiterate this my point for years, ad nauseam--no US service, including USAF ever fought anything like this in the life of several generations of American servicemen, top-bottom, from a regular grunt to CJCS. Period. And, of course, nobody in NATO (primarily US) armed forces has any concept of seeing their homeland devastated and losing their loved ones to attacks, famine, cold, illnesses and other things which real war brings on a massive scale. The US NEVER in its history, including in WW II, fought the enemy which could easily strike at strategic and operational depths with ease, and can deny NATO most of its ISR assets. So, as long as the US military only huffs and puffs--it is OK, but it has to be stated, Ukraine and VSU demonstrated perfectly a real worth (very low) of the NATO "standard", with NATO excelling only in PR and shelling civilians and this is without main Russian forces even engaging, so far.
My speculation would be that Austin called Shoigu to inform him that arrival of 101st's Brigade Combat Team to Romania was only for training and not the part of the assembling forces for some nefarious purposes. This, plus some other "business" re: 404. No matter how one may detest Austin or Milley, it is good that both Russian and US militaries talk. Meanwhile, the head of parliament of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, suggested to four 404 regions: Nikolaev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov to get ready for referendums (in Russian). This is the first "batch", the second one, as Konstantinov asserted, are Sumy, Poltava and Chernigov oblasts. Indeed, who knows what is this all about, right? I am also waiting for appearance of the excellent discussion between Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely about American paleoconservative so called "realism" and why these people and their views are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I know many of those, not just Pat Buchanan, but as I said--history is not strong forte of US politics.
Now, that the hysteria with "losing" Balakleya and Izyum (quotation marks are deliberate) due to this famous VSU "offensive" has subsided, and once the issue of the Kherson catastrophe for VSU is considered, we may confidently state that the whole thing was very deliberate on Russian side. Fast backward to the start of SMO--this is for those who already forgot--and recall what was the main issue then? Right, if you recall--it was the question of how Russian Army will be "taking" urban centers, such as Kiev or Kharkov. This was also the issue of both Pentagon planners and Western propaganda which was build prior to SMO on the assumptions (wrong ones) that Russians will go for jugular and start taking down regime by means of taking its main cities. Naive (and incompetent) people, what can one say. They thought that prodding Russia to get into the cities where they prepared (for Pentagon and British General Staff it means hiding behind civilians) "defenses" Russians would bleed and provide a copious amount of propaganda fodder.
There was one issue with that--Neither US nor UK ever fought real defensive battles on a strategic level, Russians wrote a book on them. They didn't read this book in D.C. and in London. Apart from inevitable peeling off VSU "defenses" in Donbass, with all those towns and hamlets turned into one huge fortified area (укрепрайон) where VSU could and did hide behind the backs of civilians, Russian Army never went INTO any large urban center as Western planners hoped for using a primitive cliche thinking that if Russians took Grozny, Russians and SAA took Aleppo, Russians took Crimea, then they surely would take Kharkov, Kiev etc. So, for Pentagon "thinkers" who do think in cliches, the fact that every Soviet and Russian officer was and is taught to apply historic military lessons CREATIVELY (творчески применять уроки военной истории к современной войне) to the modern war, was and is unknown. After all, the image of Russian automatons with arithmometers who cannot think beyond the framework of instructions...
...is what has been imprinted in the American military mind for ages by, ironically, right... Germans. Namely former Wehrmacht and SS military leaders who were forced by the US military to write their memoirs on how they won... pardon... lost to Russians in WW II. And don't you dare to think that Red Army defeated the best of Europe in 1941-45. Ah yes, those studies. They did warn, though:
But who heeds those warnings? The idol of the US armored force, General George S. Patton was considered by Germans themselves to be the most "German" American general, not to speak, of course, about Patton's attitude towards Russians as untermensch. So, no matter how one plays it, the US Army was mightily influenced by Germans not only in a shape of the US Army helmets which look very much as good ol' Stahl Helmets of Wehrmacht but, most importantly, what was UNDER those helmets and those are brains. Obviously the truism of learning from the best does not apply to modern US ground forces and, as the result, the whole plan for Ukraine went belly up first when Russian allied forces managed to wipe out the initial army of several hundred thousands of VSU and their Nazi formations, and are now in the phase of annihilating the second iteration of VSU, which, finally, was lured out into the open first at around Kherson starting from August 27, and now with this "famed" VSU "offensive" drowned in blood and largely extinguished around Kharkov--all in the OPEN terrain, mind you. They were lured out of their safe havens behind civilians in urban centers.
Now, elaborations start on if those suicidal offensives were done for the internal PR purposes in the US, for the benefit of the DNC, or was it a perfectly timed bait by Russians? Here is something to consider. Larry notes today:
After that he proceeds to demolish the whole "establishment" narrative (a euphemism for BS) and he starts with a phrase because of which I had to wipe my monitors after me spewing my coffee.
Turns out that General Dave experienced premature military orgasm.
LOL. But apart from obvious slavery to narrative, can we state that most of those retired and serving US generals who "consulted", a euphemism for Command and Control, VSU on those offensives got caught or, rather, bought the strategic "picture" constructed by Russians hook, line and sinker? I say, all signs in favor of this conclusion are there. I reiterate: the US doesn't have real operational experience with strategic, theater wide, defensive operations at all. Mind you, the length of the front in Ukraine is around 1,200 kilometers. After that, ask yourself a question why Russians are content with physical annihilation of the different iterations of VSU and scores of foreign "mercenaries", many of who are merely cadre NATO personnel with a shallow undercover "legend" of a volunteer.
They are learning about real war with the peer on the job, those who survive. But, as I already stated, the US simply has NO experience since 1950 of developing a national strategy which is fully integrated with political, economic and military aims of the state (nation) globally. And here is the reason: not only we can observe a dramatic decline in competence and expertise of the America's top brass, but US political system prevents this in the most radical way by both sacrificing everything at the altar of partizan politics and sheer incompetence and corruption of America's political "elites" who are in the pockets of different interest groups. Moreover, no American military leader ever fought a peer, who, incidentally, if someone decides to do the unthinkable, can psychically annihilate a combination of enemies by wiping their countries off the map. Nor, as empirical evidence shows, did the United States produce a serious geopolitical and military thinker in ages, resorting to promoting sophomoric geopolitical and military BS as some serious scholarly achievement in "strategy". Laughable, who are those "strategists"? Fukuyama? Brzezinski? Kissinger? Petraeus? Ben Hodges? Seriously? What, did they ever win anything?
As the events of the last three + weeks demonstrated so well, US military exists primarily for laundering huge budgets and in the state of a perpetual self-praise against the background of its best ever peer which is not only ran by NATO but now also is manned with NATO personnel, being obliterated on the scale which NO NATO military can take without disintegrating. It is the issue of REAL operations and of REAL strategy as executed militarily for the benefit of a national strategy as defined by political top which is working for the benefit of the nation, the notion which is unknown for the United States in the last 60 years, because in the end the United States failed to coalesce into the real nation and I wrote three books on that. Everything starts from there. But then again, what do I know?
I am telling you, there are still a few competent and realist people in the US and if one would expect the place where they are, that surely has to be the US Navy and nobody questions its pedigree, for all its problems. So, this is your primer for late Monday. My root canal went really easy, especially comparing to one a few months ago.
