Soldiers of Misfortune. Larry on Rats.

I repeat it ad nauseam--high intensity policing operations, that what COIN effectively is, in Afghanistan and Iraq, at which the US still managed to fail spectacularly, are not the real wars between state actors. Many people in the US military still don't get it. It is one thing when some US general cannot wrap his brains around it, but what would you expect from lower ranks? Larry gives some insights:    

Meet Ryan O’Leary. He currently is in the Bakhmut area of operations fighting under the command of Ukrainian officers. Mr. O’Leary is not happy. He is a 34 year old alumni of Carroll High School in Iowa and a National Guard veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He reports that his unit is undermanned and lacking in heavy weapons because “they’ve gone missing.” In other words, the weapons are being sold on the black market. O’Leary blames the logistics problems on the corrupt, criminal behavior of his Ukrainian chain of command — from the Major General to his Captain. He specifically calls out a Captain Baroda, noting that Baroda traffics in a host of illegal narcotics. Read the following series of tweets. They are self-explanatory... I fear that young Mr. O’Leary has signed his death warrant. 

He did. As did this guy, form UK. 

Safari in Donbass is not exactly described by the US Field Manuals, because the whole idea, as an example, that the HQs of the US armor decision or airfields are easy targets for stand off weapons is not the thing which is taught in US military academies. Let alone to lower ranks whose primary "education" is based on a disaster of Western public schools' "education" and then some NCO schools, which, if to follow US military mythology, are the best in the world. But then again, nobody seems to be fazed by the fact that "the finest fighting force in history" is absolutely not ready to fight anything like SMO (it is still NOT the war, it is Operation) and manages to lose all of its much less intensity wars. 

So, now these guys, who still lost to backward goat herders with AK-47s and RPGs, go to hunt nasty Rooskies and suddenly recognize that they know very little about real war. They get killed in industrial quantities, or begin to appeal to whatever they try to appeal to, because they also knew nothing about "enterprise" they got themselves into. Being on the receiving end sucks. When you are on the receiving end of 152-mm highly mobile artillery, or NURS and ATGMs from Mi-28 or Ka-52, let alone from 3M14 or Iskander, the perspective changes dramatically. For some it changes too late, for others--good luck trying to escape 404 now, Zagrad-Otryad units, SBU and Nazi "supervisors" will make sure nobody escapes. That is why they are mixed with regular units and others stay behind. Plus, constant executions of VSU grunts who begin to suspect something is routine and is well documented, including by Russian drones. So, good luck to this "veteran" in his attempts to return to Iowa. If Russian artillery shell, tank or infantry will not get him, his Ukie "friends" will, in the back, most likely. Democracy, cough-cough, I mean Wall Street, needs sacrifice. For everything else there is a Top Gun: Maverick warfare community.