My video today (it should be available for everyone in an hour or so) talks about what this blog and my YT especially are all about from the inception. Sure, visuals, explosions, drones, tanks, aircraft and red and blue arrows on maps (which are as far removed from real military maps as possible, with some exceptions you all know) that the nature of war and REAL combat has been completely drowned in this tactical minutiae by all kinds of fanboys who never served a day in uniform as a grunt, forget about officer rank with real military experience. At some point all this pseudo-military noise gets to you and I used today's lull in "political news" to deliver some doze of war reality as seen from those who plan and execute those plans in REAL war.
So, the primer to those who never heard about Markov Chains or Bayes and Bayesian Networks. This is not difficult on a conceptual level.
Here is a key and also the entrance into Operational ART. Why it is called such.
Bayesian statistics provides a probabilistic framework for reasoning under uncertainty. It is valuable in scenarios with limited data or prior knowledge. At its core is Bayes’ Theorem:
Here:
P(θ∣D) is the posterior probability: The updated probability of the parameter θ after observing the data D
P(D∣θ): is the likelihood: The probability of observing the data D given the parameter θ
P(θ) is the prior probability: The initial belief about the parameter θ before considering the data
P(D) is the marginal likelihood: The overall probability of the observed data D for all possible values of θ
Do you see what is highlighted yellow and underlined? Well I will repeat again what real military professionals are dealing with--RESOLUTION of UNCERTAINTIES. And here comes the main issue--why West loses its wars. Speaking plainly--it has fucked up beliefs both in enemy's capabilities and gross overestimation of own ones. This clusterfuck hasn't been fixed, it is impossible to fix. Not with present crop of NATO planning officer corps which is largely incompetent, arrogant and lacking military culture required for the war of the XXI century. It has been proven empirically time after time since 2022. It is institutional catastrophe. So, here is my little introduction to COGNET and how you POPULATE networks and how handling beliefs (yes, Bayesian Networks are belief networks) and uncertainties separates a true operational artist from some three-star ass-kisser. This is your frame of mind you need to understand what is in my today's video about how operational planning is done.
It was repeated by Russian side, including two days ago in Putin's call to Trump that ALL aims of SMO will be achieved. There will be NO "settlement", there will be capitulation either willingly or through full physical annihilation of 404 as a country.
Meanwhile, POTUS--tell me this is AI?
Per possible resumption of attacks on Iran. My take, after I recovered from Homeric laughter form Larry's description of the matter:
Is that you cannot put anything, including the most stupid and senseless thing, past this POTUS. Including, of course, a resumption of attacks and even "ground operations" with the force so inadequate for achieving any sensible results that it WILL result in heavy casualties for the US military. Well, what can I say--pop-corn time.
... they now know it. UAVs taking POWs are not that rare anymore. Surrendering from VSU to Russians is a hell of a risky business to VSU personnel. Their own will kill them if they learn about it.
I want to immediately state that I am no tank officer, but I am also not as dumb in ground warfare as I come across, if you know what I mean. So, before commenting on The National Interest tanks' rankings, I want to remind you what one of their contributors ... from Israel and ties to IDF wrote this in early 2025:
Here is her CV and you may have already guessed she--she is a militant ignoramus and hack which spreads 404 propaganda. Judge for yourself--a classic degree mill product with no clue about combined arms operations and operational planning. Judging by the "performance" of IDF (mind you--they are allegedly "professionals") which has its ass handed to it in the most humiliating fashion in Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, Israel is not that good, to put it mildly, in anything which doesn't involve atrocity, bombing with impunity and, generally, they are nothing more than a collection of punitive battalions (and brigades) whose main training is in genocide. Real war? Not so much.
So, The National Interest comes up with this recent rating of world's tanks. And puts T-72 at the first place as the best tank in the world. Well, that's fine and here TNI staff makes this assertion:
The immediate question which arises is where the hell did the staff of this magazine, which continues to regurgitate CIA and Pentagon's fairy tales about SMO, get this idea highlighted in yellow? Who told them that? Ukies? Sure, Washington is dumb enough to believe any kind of shit, but how about the fact of basic (forget about serious expanded) attrition modelling of (armor) combat which requires a set of verified serious inputs? That is to say--requires PROFESSIONAL qualifications for assessment of the data sets which ARE critical in 24/7 modelling of the combat, which is in the foundation of the operational work of, say, Main Operational Directorate (GOU) of Russian General Staff?
We, of course, cannot discount a fever pitch coping ongoing across the US media and military-political circles after yet another military humiliation for the US and Israel, but words do not provide anymore the palliative they used to and, obviously, statements about Russian tank losses (not that Russians do not sustain losses, they surely do) and especially about T-90M Proryv, which IS the best MBT in the world now, are nothing more than trying to shape narrative which has nothing in common with the reality. For starters, Russians use primarily (not exclusively) three types of MBTs: T-72B and its iteration T-72B3, T-90M Proryv and a few T-80BVM. Of course, Russians used even T-54 when necessary as self-propelled guns from ZOP (Defended Firing Position) and as a moving mine with devastating results for VSU strong points. And here is a clue from TNI. Highlighted in yellow is data for T-72 (whatever that means) and in green, of course, M1 Abrams.
The question--what T-72 are they talking about, because T-72B3 and T-72B3M, a mainstay of Russian tank forces, have this:
Note: T-72B3 has been produced since 2011 (11 years before SMO) while T-72B3M since 2016 (6 years before SMO). So, how many altogether of this tanks did Russia have--over 1,700. No, not some conservation (reserve) assets--all moving and fighting tanks. But as you can see yourself all of them have a very good and modern sight and fire-control systems. Did Russians use simply T-72Bs? Absolutely, remember the one which blew away Abrams' turret from the first shot? Yep, that's T-72B.
Hm, why do I see thermal sight, but, back to our goats, so to speak, because, obviously, Russians produced thousands upon thousands (9,000 by different estimates) of T-72Bs and how many have been upgraded to B3? A lot. And then comes another 1,500 or so of T-90s and, its latest iteration of T-90M Proryv. This one is a state-of-the-art fully netcentric machine and it has real and positive combat experience ... yes, look at Abrams' "experience" "Iraq/Afghanistan", while for some reason omitting M1 Abrams "experiences" in 404. Those have been very painful "experiences" both against Russian tanks and against loitering munitions, so much so that whatever the advantages M1 might have had (not really) have been completely annulled and ...
Nobody gives a shit how much M1 Abrams costs--neither it, nor vaunted Merkava are tanks designed for modern warfare and, pardon my Russian rah-rah and military background, but for people trying to come up with all kinds of rankings--try for starters internalize what COFM (Correlation Of Forces and Means) is and why one may start from this point.
In reality, however, three best tanks in the world today are 1. T-90M Proryv, 2. T-72B3M and 3. T-72B3. The rest is for consumers of Kool Aid provided by Kiev regime.
This is from yesterday. And yes--one T-90M Proryv took ...47 (Forty Seven!) drone strikes and stopped only when hit the anti-tank mine.
From the get go they bring up same beaten to death argument.
On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about. In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iranhas taken controlof the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position. That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war. Tactical success has not yielded victory.
I have news for NYT--the US doesn't know what REAL war is. Nor can it sustain not to mention increase the effort--a critical operational parameter, because ... yes, again, even the fanatical Russophobe Richard Pipes figured it out:
When even this hack figured it out. Russians, the ones who really matter, not some retired generals in search for publicity and with political aspirations, have never been impressed with the "American Way of War". Nor "technological edge" which Hollywood portrayed and pundits love to talk about was that great to start with, especially with a technological and operational complexity of the war growing exponentially since 1960s.
Today? Well, some obscure Russian author wrote something about this.
Trying to warn that the encounter with a reality will be devastating for the US military in particular and the US as a whole when the REAL balance of power will emerge. Now it emerged and it cannot be hidden anymore behind mountains of corpses of VSU's cannon fodder. All it took was for the US to step out from the behind backs of its proxies and try to fight a real fight.
Now it may not matter at all because, as NYT (to my surprise) noted correctly--now everyone knows it(c). In related news, Israel has been defeated in Southern Lebanon.
