There You Go!

That's the way to motivate your troops)). 

Ukrainian troops currently being trained in the UK to fight Russia must steel themselves to face death and kill without a second thought, Kiev's ambassador in London, Valery Zaluzny has told the soldiers. The four-star general previously served as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. The speech that Zaluzhny gave at a bootcamp in southern England was shared by The Sun on Tuesday, after the tabloid joined the official’s tour of the military facility. British Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard accompanied the Ukrainian general-turned-diplomat. ”Remember that the war is becoming more cruel with every day. It leaves almost no chance for survival,” Zaluzhny warned the trainees. “Learn not to be afraid of death.”

Yes, the way to teach them "not to be afraid of death" is to use copious amounts of methamphetamine, whose use is now traditional in the midst of 404 cannon fodder. But here comes the second question: what can possibly British military "teach" ukies? Seriously? The army which is much smaller that VSU and who learned only one thing--hide behind the back of NATO proxy. It is akin to asking local plumber to perform open heart surgery. Yet, here we are, especially when looking at UK's blabbering cretin also known as PM. 

I'll talk about this whole issue of nukes and war in my today's video.

A Bit Of Clarification.

I am glad that Moat brought this up. Thank you.

Almost everything is right in this statement by this Retired US Army Major Richard Ojeda except one thing. This one thing is that US Army could never provide "real training" to VSU because US Army "training" and Field Manuals are written for beating the shit out of almost defenseless enemies. He got it exactly upside down--it was the US "training" which VSU discarded as useless for real war. Here is NYT.

Ukrainian Troops Trained by the West Stumble in Battle. Ukraine’s army has for now set aside U.S. fighting methods and reverted to tactics it knows best.

No US servicemen from General to the last grunt ever experienced the real combined arms multi-domain war, period. Some Ukie brigade commander who survived through the last 20 months of SMO can lecture JCS or any professor in US Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth on how to fight a real war. And yes, Afghanistan is not and never was a combined arms war. And yes, NATO built the best proxy it ever had by far. VSU was actually a real army and on the February 24, 2022 it was the best NATO's army, except for the US Army. So, major was a bit sloppy with his parallel to Afghanistan. Other than that, he is correct. 

Oh, Please!

The US Army studied armored warfare based on Patton's "advances" against virtually non-existent Wehrmacht's armor in Lorraine, and from the fairy tales by Manstein and Guderian, who had to confabulate in order to explain how, in the end, they got beaten by Katukov and Rotmistrov tank armies. The turkey shoot in the Gulf added very little, in fact--detracted, from the combined arms, and all attempts by honorable David Glantz and Jonathan House to change the perspective on the Red Army and WW II made a huge splash, but still failed. This was inevitable, when one operated on correlates of war, this ever valuable war statistics, lifted directly from Nazi sources. GIGO--Garbage In, Garbage Out. 

Now, as RT notices, they want to train based on... drum roll--"lessons from Ukraine". 

The US is preparing its troops for future wars by examining the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and fielding its own experiments based on experience gained from that battlefield, Defense One reported on Thursday. The National Training Center (NTC) in California and the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) are training US service members to use drones, electronic surveillance, and satellites and combine them with artillery strikes, according to commanders who spoke with the outlet. At the same time, troops are learning to conceal themselves from enemy drones and surveillance. “The thing we struggle the most with is this business of a transparent battlefield,” Brigadier General Curtis Taylor, the head of the NTC, told the outlet. He explained that his center has been teaching soldiers to hide from UAVs in buildings and minimize the use of communication equipment. Meanwhile, the JRTC has reportedly been pushing units to simplify their command posts to be put up and taken down quickly. 

Ah, poor-poor lads, tactics is important and all--surely one needs to conceal oneself but tactical, let alone operational, manuals--the level at which outcomes of wars are decided--are written very differently than a collection of anecdotal evidence from grunts on the ground, however important those are. In order for one to understand, as the original from Defense One piece describes:

Drones, electronic surveillance, and satellites allow adversaries to easily identify U.S. formations, Taylor said—and combining that data with artillery or missiles means the enemy can strike anywhere, anytime. At JRTC, forces playing the “opposing force,” called OPFOR, have learned to fly drones that use apps to scan for Bluetooth or WiFi signals, Gardner said. 

While EMCON is just a teeny-weeny part of a much larger picture of massive scale combined arms and multi-domain operations one needs what the US never got from her wars starting from Korea, because one cannot interrogate the enemy which is not a loser but quite the opposite--has beaten the US. That means an extremely limited access to viable combat statistics, especially in terms of crucial correlates between combat effectiveness of formations and weapons' arsenal they use. Now, add here a complete caricature 404 provides in terms of combat data to NATO and you will get the idea. No number of the US Army officers on the ground in 404 will change the paradigm, even with 24/7 work of US ISR complex. One still NEEDS those huge arrays of combat information for systematization and generalization in order to develop operational and strategic models for victory on the battlefield. And bar some SIGINT and localized data at the locations of already utterly demolished VSU, US Army and Intel is not getting access to the most important data sets. 

And then, of course, there is the issue of hardware, or, speaking in more learned language--procurement policies. It is as simple as 2 x 4 piece of lumber:

1. If you don't have AD which even remotely is as capable as that of Russia--you are left only to despair (or salivate) at the element of war which you cannot change, because the impact of your air forces and long range fires is diminished dramatically. Suddenly, it becomes the issue of strategy and even politics. 

2. If you don't have hypersonic weapons, let alone integrate them into your TOE, what is that you gonna do? Train for what? Right, just conceal yourself and your HQ which still is NOT going to help since HQs and Comm. Posts by definition are C4 units and will be detected and annihilated. So, how are you going "to train" for that. Surely, the Parameters prescription is dubious at best: 

The Army must focus on developing command-and-control systems and mobile command posts that enable continuous movement, allow distributed collaboration, and synchronize across all warfighting functions to minimize electronic signature.  

You can minimize, you cannot eliminate it.

3. You CANNOT train the US Army for 3,600 casualties a day. Most importantly, you CANNOT train American public to accept such a price, especially being paid fighting who knows where for who knows what objectives, unless one turns the US into Orwellian prison-state, which is in progress as I type this. But even then...

At this stage the VSU lost half-a-million KIAs and at least twice this number of wounded. And this is the lower-end estimates. These numbers are much higher than US Army's all KIAs in WW II and Vietnam combined. 

But in the end, you cannot turn expeditionary colonial army into continental juggernaut--you simply cannot. Sheer economics and weapons enter the set of considerations here, which cannot be properly discussed within one short post. So, they can train whatever they want, but no training, however important on human-professional level, can substitute tools of 21st century war. But then again, I repeat ad nauseam--the West lost the arms race. To demonstrate, here is one such butt-hurt imbecile: 

The dismal performance of Russia’s conventional forces in the early days of the war in Ukraine risks convincing some in NATO that the future Russian threat to the Alliance can be deterred primarily via NATO’s conventional superiority, and that enhancing deterrence of Russian nuclear use in a future conflict is therefore no longer a high priority. This is a dangerous fallacy. 

The guy is full of shit, with "degree" in... international relations and is completely lost in his pseudo-expertise, but he is REPRESENTATIVE  of the "intellectual" level of current US military-political top which is NOT trainable or is capable of learning, and this is a grim reality of the defeat of the combined West. You cannot win when the only thing you know is how to operate in GIGO mode.

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.

Some Fast Thoughts On IL-20.

And so it starts. Russia must attack Israel, no—she must obliterate it, Putin is "soft", the world is coming to an end, Zionists are in control of Kremlin, Russia turns another cheek. And on, and on, and on. The chorus of noble warriors with the evils of Zionism is getting louder with each day. Behind this hysteria surrounding the tragedy of Russian VKS' IL-20 somehow crucial and widely publicized news have been ignored completely. It is no surprise they were ignored by all kinds of "specialists" in strategy, politics, and armchair strategists (I am one myself). The news are pretty simple. Lt. General Alexander Ionov, former Deputy Chief of Main Staff of Russian Air Force from 1991 through 2001, stated to popular Russian media Zvezda that it is guaranteed that Syrian Air Defense forces were not provided with compatible IFF equipment and codes. 

For those who don't know what IFF (Interrogator Friend-Foe) is—it is electronic system which provides both a defense against friendly fire and easy radar identification of friendly forces. On older radar friendly forces would usually be marked with arches (below or above) radar marks of the targets and that is how one knows how not to shoot at them. The IFF technology is extremely sensitive as are the "codes" on which it runs. It wasn't provided, and for a good reason, to Syrian Forces. So, the question, in this case which will be asked by laymen is: but what about "full integration" of Russian and Syrian Air Defenses. It is a legitimate question. Without going into much detail how a key aspect of this integration is provided—in Western parlance it is called CEC (Cooperative Engagement Capability)—there are reasons to assume that in case of older S-200s the targeting data could have been provided by radio-voice commands. But here comes this most important fact—Syrian S-200 and its radar did have a track and, possibly, a lock on the Israeli F-16s. The certainty of this fact, as in old proverb about the proof being in the pudding, is in all advanced aircraft being equipped with Emission Detectors which are a warning system and Israeli aircraft using available "screen" in a form of Russian IL-20 on its approach to Khmeimim Air Base. 

In other words, Israeli aircraft were forced to seek a cover and one can only imagine how warnings were screaming in their cockpits. They saw IL-20 with its huge Radar Cross Section (RCS). For those with a short attention span it is worth reminding them that Syrian Air Defense does have a track record of shooting down or damaging IAF's aircraft.  In fact, apart from actually admitting their losses, IAF is still mum on the fate of "damaged by birds" F-35. In other words, Syrian AD does track and locks on Israeli combat aircraft. S-200 missiles are what is known SARH—Semi-Active Radar Homing, meaning that missile needs the illumination of the target by the air defense complex radar and that is where the professionalism, especially at the significant engagement ranges (tens and even hundreds of kilometers), becomes absolutely crucial. But so does a protocol, or ROE (Rules of Engagement), for people in control of any particular AD complex which is not "inside" the loop of highly sensitive IFF. At this stage, I do have reasons to believe that under a huge pressure of the situation unfolding in what used to be a calm sector of approaches to Khmeimim Air Base, which was agreed between Israel and Russia, and where IAF's aircraft were not supposed to be, the Syrian crew simply went for the target which was clearly visible and shaded smaller RCS Israeli planes. 

Israel violated in this case not just an ethical norm by hiding behind IL-20, it violated much more—it flew it planes into the area which was specifically designated as "out of reach" for IAF. As former Israel's Service Nativ' Yakov Kedmi stated after the events, all this tragedy became a result of Israeli recklessness and unprofessionalism, he called this mistake by Israeli generals a doom-spelling one. Reaction of Israel following the events is telling—she went into the full damage control mode with Netanyahu urgently calling Vladimir Putin. He offered the Commander of Israeli Air Force to be immediately on his way to Moscow, all diplomatic, informational, government channels between Israel and Russia got immediately engaged. This was a very telling sign of a real panic and confusion on the Israeli side which also immediately offered condolences. This is not an act of war, as many would love it to be, some out of often justified hatred of Israel hoping for Russia to dispose of this "evil", others purely out of adrenalin rush in anticipation of TV picture of people killing each other. 

But the issue of interaction between Russia and Syrian forces is real and it is not easily addressed for a number of purely military and cultural reasons. But some conclusions can already be made:

1. There will be no "annihilation" of Israel, nor will there be any shooting war between Russia and Jewish State as many would love and lust it to be;

2. There will, however, be some form of no-fly zone and as Vladimir Putin stated Russia will take “the steps that everyone will notice.” Obviously this important statement by the head of Russian State got drowned in the ocean of rage and speculations, and confusion I may add, but this has become a familiar pattern by now.

3. Issue of ROE and interaction—the most important one. Specialists must review protocols and tactical procedures. Engagement caveats must be strictly enforced. 

4. Training of Syrian personnel and, obvious now, necessity, once advanced S-300s (PMU) are additionally delivered to Syria, to have Russian advisers full time in any Syrian Air Defense crew dealing with much more advanced technology than old S-200s. 

In the end, this tragedy, should serve as a real serious lesson and, in a military sense a warning that one better stick to the agreements or things may spiral out of control very fast. Israel decided that it is allowed to break agreements. Israel should ask Turkey what happens when one does Russia wrong—Turkish Air Force knows it too well after shooting down Russian SU-24. It got grounded. Now Turkey is a situational ally of Iran and Russia in the region. As per larger geopolitical sense—just wait and see. But I made myself explicit on that matter not for once. I might as well repeat myself—dogs bark, but caravan passes on.  

UPDATE(S): Superb updates from actual Russian very real officers (Google, Google Translate, dive, dive) through famous military observer Viktor Barantez (former senior officer) in response to Viktor Alxnis emotional piece in Vzglyad. Response of serving (active) senior officer of  Main Staff of VKS, Colonel Sergei Paramonov in an interview:

         Why We Couldn't Defend IL-20 

A superb professional response to all those trolls and internet "experts" who, as was expected, are already painting new "rich" picture of massive Israeli-French-Russia military-geopolitical conspiracy. We ain't seen nothing yet from them. But Paramonov literally sinks all arguments in favor of all kinds of conspiracy theories. 

Moreover, Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Haustov, Deputy Commander of the Air Defense Regiment fresh from Syria gives explanation on tactics and technical means involved. 

   Why IFF Didn't Prevent The Tragedy of IL-20 In Syria.  

Victor Baranetz and Komsomolka (Komsomolskaya Pravda) deserve only the highest praise for them for releasing these interviews with real professionals and solid reviews (within allowed for open press framework) of the whole situation. I will translate only one phrase from Haustov's interview:

К тому же, не забывайте, что С-200 - оружие старенькое. А подготовка сирийских спецов ПВО, мягко говоря, часто оставляет желать много лучшего...

Translation: Moreover, do not forget that S-200 is an old weapon, while training of Syrian Air Defense specialists leaves a lot to be desired.   

UPDATE: Russian Ministry of Defense today put to rest all those speculations and confirmed what Ionov stated from the get go, hours after IL-20 was shot down. As Konashenkov stated:

There was NO any IFF involved, because Russia DOES NOT supply it to foreign customers (in Russian). 

I can hear already desperate moans and screams of utter suffering from the vast armies of couch warriors and conspiracy theorists, because once IFF issue is removed, the picture becomes very clear. As I stated in first couple of hours of this tragedy:

INTERMITTENT SUMMARY:  So it is clear mow that IAF used the oldest trick in the book by shielding her aircraft by IL-20 which was descending for landing--so very Israeli--and then, of course, lied that it warned Russian side. Yes...one minute prior. I will return to Israel later, for now it is known that Bibi wants to speak with Putin and that Israel is engaged with Russia across a whole spectrum of diplomatic, military, what have you, activity trying to prevent what might be coming.

Let investigation now proceed with normal pace and decision be made on facts, not some fancy technophiles' incompetent theories.