When One Is A Complete...

 ... imbecile and Bundeswehr general. They do grow them stupid and inhumane in Budndeswehr. 

Insgesamt entsteht der Eindruck, dass der Versuch der Ukraine, durch die Angriffe in der russischen Region Kursk für Entlastung zu sorgen und Russland zum Abzug von Truppen aus der Ostukraine zu zwingen, nicht aufgegangen ist.

Da muss man differenzierter hinsehen. Der Angriff auf Kursk hatte ja mehrere Gründe. Einen Grund haben Sie gerade genannt: Das war die Entlastung im Donbass. Es gab aber auch andere Gründe – etwa den, eine Überraschung zu schaffen und Bewegung in diesen scheinbar festgefahrenen Stellungskrieg zu bekommen. Das ist auf jeden Fall gelungen. Außerdem ist ein positives psychologisches Momentum entstanden - sowohl in Richtung der eigenen Bevölkerung als auch in Richtung der westlichen Unterstützer. Der Angriff ist ferner ein Signal an Russland. So wurden Tausende russische Kriegsgefangene festgesetzt, darunter viele Wehrpflichtige. Damit hat die Ukraine die Putin‘sche Propaganda einer Spezialoperation Lügen gestraft. Sie haben aber Recht damit, dass es nicht in dem Maße gelungen ist, eine militärische Entlastung im Donbass zu erreichen, wie das ursprünglich beabsichtigt war. Es wurden keine signifikanten russischen Kampftruppenverbände aus dem Donbass Richtung Kursk verlegt.

Translation: Overall, the impression is that Ukraine's attempt to relieve the pressure in the Russian region of Kursk through attacks and to force Russia to withdraw troops from eastern Ukraine has not worked. 

You have to look at this in a more differentiated way. There were several reasons for the attack on Kursk. You have just mentioned one reason: that was to relieve the pressure in the Donbass. But there were other reasons too - such as the desire to create a surprise and get this apparently deadlocked positional war moving. That was definitely successful. In addition, a positive psychological momentum was created - both towards the country's own population and towards its western supporters. The attack is also a signal to Russia. Thousands of Russian prisoners of war were detained, including many conscripts. In doing so, Ukraine has refuted Putin's propaganda of a special operation. But you are right that it has not succeeded in achieving the military relief in the Donbass that was originally intended. No significant Russian combat troops were moved from the Donbass towards Kursk.

Here is this cretin Major-General Freuding who wants to replay WW II but has no resources nor intellect to even grasp what is going on. 

I am not joking when stating that on operational-strategic level most of them are amateurs and sore losers. Here is a biography of this... clown. 

Christian Freuding, born on August 20, 1971, in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, is a Major General in the German Army. Since May 2023, he has served as Head of the Planning and Command Staff of the Federal Minister of Defense, and since 2022, he has led the Ukraine Situation Center within the Ministry of Defense. Freuding joined the Bundeswehr in 1990, studied political science, and earned a PhD in 1999. He has held various leadership positions, including Commander of the 9th Armored Demonstration Brigade, and participated in overseas deployments in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Yep, a total cadre officer materiel for the 21st century. Can he grasp COFM and how it factors into operational planning? 

They are amateurs in real war... Still cannot wrap my brains around--political "science" general. I wonder what Russian graduate of Tank Academy, Armour War College and Academy of General Staff, a commander of tank division, would talk about with this dude if they ever meet each-other in peaceful time in the bar? Russian general would get drunk from boredom when listening to this moron. In related news, to date VSU lost in Kursk area 21 350+ KIAs. There were also no "thousands" POWs on Russian side. In general, NATO planners like this dude manged to kill the whole Army Corps in Kursk--creme de la creme with most of it equipped with NATO hardware. Christian, find yourself good military academy to get REAL military education. If he headed Bundswehr's Planning and Command Staff... Good Lord!

When M.K. Bhadrakumar Forgot A Small Detail. Dmitry Orlov on NATO.

He wrote an excellent, insightful post on the issue of Germany and her aspirations. He makes an astute observation:

The hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon axis is pivotal to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is only partly true. Germany is actually Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier, after the United States. Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a new arms package worth 700 million euros, including additional tanks, munitions and Patriot air defence systems at the Nato summit in Vilnius, putting Berlin, as he said, at the very forefront of military support for Ukraine.  German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius stressed, “By doing this, we’re making a significant contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s staying power.” However, the pantomime playing out may have multiple motives. Fundamentally, Germany’s motivation is traceable to the crushing defeat by the Red Army and has little to do with Ukraine as such. The Ukraine crisis has provided the context for accelerating Germany’s militarisation. Meanwhile, revanchist feelings are rearing their head and there is a “bipartisan consensus” between Germany’s leading centrist parties — CDU, SPD and Green Party — in this regard.

Bingo! After that he elaborates on the territorial issue--the ever-present Europe's malaise and precedes it with this guy's statement:

In an interview in the weekend, the CDU’s leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, the Nato should consider to “cut off Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.” Berlin is still smarting under the surrender of the ancient Prussian city of Königsberg in April 1945. ... Evidently, Kiesewetter’s remarks show that nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after 8  decades. Thus, Germany is the Biden Administration’s closest ally in the war against Russia.

And here is this forgotten detail: Russians also have a very good memory, in fact it is better than that of Germany, enough to take a look at May 9 celebrations across Russia, and are keenly aware of Germany's wet dreams to "return" Kaliningrad, and follow Germany's militarization very attentively. Because of that, any Germany's attempts to instigate "cutting off" Kaliningrad will result in Germany ceasing to exist as a nation. Unlike Bundeswehr, which has been reduced to a toy force, Russian Armed Forces have all, and the best, tools at their disposal to finish German militarism once and for all. Which brings us to an excellent piece by Dmitry Orlov about NATO, where he explains WHY Zelensky was treated at NATO summit as an outcast and why Pentagon is very unhappy. 

Dmitry arrives to the same conclusion as I do in terms of NATO weapons' "performance". 

So, what did the Ukrainians do to raise the ire of the Pentagon so suddenly, and as a direct consequence, fall into disfavor with NATO? In short, the Ukrainians demonstrated that NATO's weapons are crap. Evidence of this built up slowly over time. First, it turned out that various bits of US-made shoulder-fired junk — anti-aircraft Stingers, anti-tank Javelins, etc — are rather worse than useless in modern combat. Next, it turned out that the M777 howitzer and the HIMARS rocket complex are rather fragile and aren't field-maintainable. The next wonder-weapon thrown at the Ukrainian problem was the Patriot missile battery. It was deployed near Kiev and the Russians quickly made a joke of it. They attacked it with their super-cheap Geranium 5 "flying moped" drones, causing it to turn on its active radar, thereby unmasking its position, and then fire off its entire load of rockets — a million dollars' worth! — after which point it just sat there, unmasked and defenseless, and was taken out by a single Russian precision rocket strike.This was sure to have seriously pissed off US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, whose major personal cash cow happens to be Raytheon, the maker of the Patriot. Yes, the Patriot proved useless using the First Gulf War, where it failed to protect Israel against ancient Iraqi Scud missiles; and it proved useless later on when it failed to protect Saudi oil installation against ancient Yemeni Scud missiles... but you aren't supposed to advertise that fact. And now this!

 

And to top it all off, the German-donated Leopard 2 tanks and the US-donated Bradley infantry vehicles, not to mention the silly French wheeled non-tanks, performed absolutely miserably during the recent Ukrainian efforts to approach, never mind penetrate, Russia's first line of defense. Rubbing salt into the wounds, Putin remarked off-the-cuff that Western armor burns rather more easily than the old Soviet-made stuff.

Exactly. Just to demonstrate what even latest Leopard-2 tanks are, find (easy to do) the photos of one or two Leopards with their turrets' armor snapping apart just from... the explosion of 152-mm shell nearby. It is downright breathtaking. Ah, this vaunted German quality and engineering. Do you want to ride into the battle in such a dud? Do you think latest Abrams will do better? Or can you imagine the impact of the burning Challengers on the fragile British public's mental state? There you go. Dmitry is absolutely correct: NATO weapons were supposed to be super-pooper, as even some fanboys on this blog's discussion boards try to profess, but poor poor dears--they still cannot grasp this simple truth that I stated a few years back: 

The partial answer to some of these rather dismal failures of American military technology is that those weapons never had to be realistically effective since they were never used in actual defense of the United States. Russian military technology was honed in non-stop fighting against external enemies, including those such as Napoleon or Hitler, who, at the time, occupied leading military technological and operational positions in the world. In the Russian view, the weapon must work since the nation’s survival depends on it and that is what dominates Russian military-technological thought. Effectiveness, cost/effectiveness ratios and reliability were and remain defining characteristics of Russian weapons. Surely, Russians have managed to produce their own share of questionable weapons or pursue questionable technologies, but Russian military history is too violent to allow commercial and profit considerations to eclipse what mattered and matters the most—the weapon must reliably kill. 

And do not even start me on the issue of Field (Combat) Manuals and fighting doctrines. Read Dmitry's excellent piece in full and especially his deciphering of NATO post-summit communique. This is your Weekend primer.

Why Scott's Article Is Importnat...

... in illustrating a delusion NATO planners exercise. As was stated ad nauseam--your software is good only as the information, or data sets, you feed it. If it is Garbage In, Garbage Out is inevitable. As Scott points out about Bundeswehr's KORA:

When one examines the structure of a KORA-based simulation, it becomes clear that the system is completely dependent upon the various inputs which define the simulation as a whole. Every aspect of the simulation is derived from the parameters programmed by those responsible for overseeing the training. While one would hope that the training overseers would conduct the simulation with a modicum of professional integrity, unless both the NATO trainers and their Ukrainian students were infused with Lemming-like suicidal qualities, there had to be significant modification and alteration of critical data points to generate an outcome capable of motivating the Ukrainian forces to agree to the attack. ...The Orekhov axis of advance was designed to exploit a seam between the 291st and 70th Motorized Rifle Regiments of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Division. The “behavior agents” programmed by the NATO trainers appeared to treat the Russians – especially those from the 70th Regiment – as poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped, and poorly motivated troops. In short, NATO trainers compensated for the inability of Ukraine to assemble forces capable of performing even the most basic of suppression tasks by predicting the inevitable collapse of the will on the part of the Russian soldiers to resist.

I am on record--NATO militaries operate based on propaganda, top-bottom. Rare islands of tactical and operational competence are isolated and have no influence on the parade of military illiteracy, shoddy intelligence and a complete lack of understanding modern warfare on part of NATO. Many of those Western "military experts" derive their conclusions often based on computer simulations and war-gaming which often operates in GIGO mode--Garbage In-Garbage Out. Moreover, as was stated not for once, many Russian front-line officers and NCOs speak about recognition of NATO training of VSU units but immediately state that it is subpar. No surprise here--one cannot learn anything of value from Gulf Wars or from losing in Afghanistan and elsewhere insofar as the combined arms operations of scale go. SMO is gigantic in its scale and is beyond NATO experiences. 

This is not the first time, already in early 1990s computer simulation of the war in US Naval War College delivered an astonishing result when "predicted" that Soviet Navy's MAIN strike force of pr. 949A Oscar-II SSGNs will manage only ONE successful launch of its P-700 Granit ASMs at US naval asset, while giving much more credence to Soviet.. torpedo only subs. Evidently the idea that M=2 supersonic, 500 kilometer range salvo of missiles with reliable targeting provided by MKRC Legenda was so alien to US naval strategists that they couldn't recognize the coming of new technological paradigm in naval warfare, until late Captain Wayne Hughes declared, brilliantly, the arrival of it in 2000--40 years after Russians deployed first serious anti-shipping missiles. By that time it was too late for the US Navy which is faced with overwhelming power of missile salvos which it cannot reliably defend against. 

Bad basic education, starting from Western public schools, especially in STEM, shoddy academic level in military educational institutions, a complete myth-based curricula in tactics, operations, weak STEM backgrounds, historical illiteracy and hidden, suppressed complex of inferiority--these are the traits of modern NATO "planners" and military leaders who are utterly unqualified to fight at the modern battlefield. So, no surprise then that they live in a virtual world of primitive Rooskies, badly trained, badly educated, with low morale. We saw it all paraded for the whole world to see in the last two weeks of VSU "counteroffensive" which turned into the slaughter of VSU personnel and NATO equipment. They still cannot wrap their brains around this simple idea that they are in the lower league. 

Speaking of which:

German energy prices have skyrocketed over the past year, leading several companies to consider relocating to cheaper locations. Siegfried Russwurm, the head of the German Industry Federation (BDI), stated that the energy situation is bad enough for companies to seriously consider relocating their operations. Russwurm explained “A lot of family-owned companies... have very operational plans to relocate” due to the plethora of obstacles they are facing in Germany.  While a lot of Germany-headquartered businesses are seeing success on a global scale, many are finding it difficult to operate within Germany. The slow and complex German bureaucracy has further exacerbated the challenges. This week, Economy Minister Robert Habeck discussed the issue of companies looking to relocate. Habeck stated: “In my view, Germany is an attractive location for both new and existing companies… Of course, materials industries are under pressure as a result of higher energy prices, but there are political decisions to be made.” 

This is just the start. It will accelerate dramatically in coming months.  "Germany is an attractive location"? Really? What is he smoking? But then again, for uneducated and uncultured hacks who infest modern Western political and military "elites"--war is peace, black is white and vice-versa, and Rooskies are backward people. In related news, I doubt most Western cadets of military officer schools in NATO countries will survive programs of Russian military academies with their grueling engineering and tactical-operational training. In related news, Germany is not welcome in Russia anymore.

German exports to Russia fell sharply in May 2023 compared to last year figures, data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) showed on Thursday. According to the calculations, exports dropped by 36.7% to €700 million ($760 million). Russia slid to 16th place among Germany’s major export partners outside the EU (third countries). In February 2022, prior to the conflict in Ukraine and the ensuing EU sanctions on Moscow, Russia ranked fifth.

And as it was 82 years ago, German Panzers are burning again in the fields of Russia.