DirkDiggler

I didn’t discount your point; I disagreed with it and gave my reasons as to why. My critical thinking point with regards to the media and talking heads was that I believe far too many people in our country consume that stuff and basically let others do their thinking for them without listening to multiple sides and doing research themselves before they come to a conclusion, belief, or point of view. And no one looks at things like this this without some emotion or some pre-conceived bias, it’s part of basic human nature. How and why the media is covering this war would be a separate discussion that I believe is valid. You and I are probably not going to agree on this topic and that’s fine, I appreciate that you provide rational, well thought out posts for your points of view. My disagreement is not discounting, if that were the case I wouldn’t have bothered to engage.

I don’t care what the media or any network talking heads have to say about Ukrainian freedom or democracy (and based on your previous posts I don’t think you do either). Why any adult with critical thinking skills would is largely beyond me. I think most people on this forum would agree that Ukraine is a young democratic state with serious issues regarding corruption and some press/information freedoms; it’s far from a perfect democracy. However imperfect a democracy they are, they are still one. And they’re being invaded/destroyed by a neighbor who is a flat out autocracy ruled by a guy that implicitly rejects the liberal international order, runs his country like a police state, and sees democratic countries on his border as a threat. There are very few (possibly none) democratic countries in the world that haven’t made serious mistakes in their past. The US made serious mistakes as we were developing as a country. My dad grew up on a Native American reservation so I have direct family experience with some of the ones the United States has made. I still made the decision to join the US military and serve our country knowing that we’re imperfect and that we make mistakes. As shitty as some things in America’s history is, we’re still a whole lot better than most places I’ve been in the world. From your posting history I’ve gathered you’ve been in the military a long time. In spite of some of the serious mistakes we as a country have made over the last 20 years, I believe you continue to serve, even though we as a democracy have had some struggles. The Ukrainian government is having to make some extraordinarily difficult decisions as their entire way of life and state is under threat of destruction. Banning political parties that support the destruction of your country may not be completely democratic, but IMO we don’t live in a black and white world. Assuming that Ukraine survives in its current state, history will probably judge whether the steps they took to preserve themselves we’re justifiable or not. I sure as shit am not going to be too critical of anything they’ve done up to this point. Make you a bet, if Zelensky/Ukraine survives, in 5 years (or whatever their election cycle is), if the Ukrainians continue to banish all opposition parties/there’s no or a staged election, and Zelensky basically becomes a dictator, I’ll buy you a bottle of your favorite. If Ukraine continues to work towards being a democracy and a part of the liberal international system, you owe me.

There’s precedent in multiple other democratic states for things like this. For example, the Bund organization/party was outlawed in the US after the start of WWII. There’s multiple open source examples of the Russians kidnapping Ukrainian officials and and installing puppets; the 1st party in the above article is openly sympathetic and colluding with Russia, I’m not sure about the others. There’s only one large autocracy in Europe currently invading its neighbor, slaughtering thousands of civilians with heavy artillery, forcibly deporting thousands of others, and denying the entire thing. If the Ukrainian government has to ban political parties supportive/sympathetic of these actions to ensure they remain free of Russia it may not be in line with some idea of a democratic utopia, but perfectly understandable in a fight for survival.

Ukrainians in Mauripol slugging it out close range with a Russian tank.

Impossible to verify what’s in these trucks but I’ve seen some similar reports on Reddit and on other Twitter feeds. I’ll be curious to see at what point some of the Russian forces/axis are so attrited that they either start to en-mass refuse to move forward or are just completely combat ineffective. As much as Putin is pulling Russia back into a Stalin-like state, the FSB of today isn’t the NKVD or KGB of the 1930s/40s/50s (stamping out dissent or shooting guys in retreat isn’t going to be as easy as it was in WWII) If the Russian military starts to refuse orders en-mass this is gonna get weird real quick.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/18/russia-putin-ukraine-war-three-weeks/ Interesting (if true) intercepted words from a Russian soldier talking about the massive number of casualties the Russians are taking.

Honestly I’d have preferred they kept the corrupt, incompetent guys; it’d make it easier for the Ukrainians to kept killing Russians. Unfortunately the replacements might be better at their jobs.

The purge continues.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10603045/Putin-places-head-FSBs-foreign-intelligence-branch-house-arrest.html Looks like the Russian blame game for the debacle in Ukraine has started.

That is fucking awesome.

The US military needs to find this guy and give him a job.

I was in the 492nd SOW when the AFSOC/CC deep dives and reviews started but was focused on other things (deploying) so didn't actually attend any of them. I'm not a CAA so any opinion I'd give is purely an outsider looking in, prone to incomplete data/opinion but my take below, in no particular order. 1. Slife is trying to push the command towards peer/near peer; I don't believe he saw CAA fitting into that. He also doesn't care for individual unique units. 2. 6th had a serious issue trying to grow the size of the CAA enterprise; the assessment process drove some of this (part of the culture they were trying to grow as you mentioned above). Slife didn't like assessment at all, I believe the 6th changed that process but it wasn't quick enough IMO. 3. Due to the growth problem mentioned above, it was difficult for CAA to show the effects they were generating for the TSOCs outside of 1 AOR (can't go into further detail on this here). Their ability to generate deployed forces besides the one persistent was limited. 4. Some of the pre-deployment training requirements they levied on themselves were kinda over the top (cool, but over the top). I've personally heard CAA guys say that they were the equal of ODA dudes and wanted to be treated as such deployed (culture). I think the focus of non-flying small unit tactics and weapons type stuff didn't help them. It always seemed to me that the flying piece of what they did was secondary to other things. 5. I don't think they had the right advocacy or people in AFSOC/HQ. In my staff life it seemed like the HQ guys advocated big things but weren't able to deliver on a decent amount (can't go into more detail here). I'm actually a believer in the CAA concept and think its shortsighted of AFSOC to divest of the capability so I don't want any of the above to sound like I'm slamming the CAA community or hating on them. Time will tell if they get brought back from the dead like after the end of the Fiel regime.

Another good video showing Ukrainian forces effectively integrating small UAS to direct accurate indirect fire on a Russian armored convoy. The Russians bunching up helped quite a bit.

Check me on this but isn't the 6th going away here in the next 12-18 months? Copy the sarcasm above but OADs aren't gonna be a thing much longer right?

TB2 is selling itself at this point.

Ukrainian National Guard playing Come to Jesus with some buttoned up Russian crewmen. Ukrainian rap dub over was a nice touch.

Also, doesn't look like those homemade chicken coop cages on Russian tanks are proving all that effective.

Good video of Russians cooking and ROI of our Javelin transfers.

Thanks much for posting that, very interesting video, I didn't realize how widespread the use of this was. As I mentioned above, that briefing was one of the most informative and engrossing briefings I've attended in my 19 years in, would love to see a follow up given the rapid changes in the world going on today.

Caveat: This information is 3 & 1/2 years old now so things may have changed. When I was at JPMEII we had a phenomenal guest speaker (PhD type from a DC area college, wish I could remember her name, is a consultant/SME for lots of military and state things) come and brief us on global energy security and politics, one of the best briefings I've ever sat through. Someone in the audience asked this exact question in regards to renewables like solar and wind. Believe it or not, her answer was "water". Due to the current limitations in battery technology (inability to store the type of energy you'd need to power a city or something of that size overnight or when the wind isn't blowing) it's just not possible to use batteries at our current level of technology. She said currently the most efficient way to store large amounts of renewable energy was to use excess power during the day or high wind times to pump large amounts of water into higher level pools or tanks, then use the flow of water back lower to drive turbines generating electricity. This hasn't been implemented anywhere on a large scale that I'm aware of but it's not something I follow closely.

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/cipher-brief-expert-view/the-risks-facing-putin-and-his-inner-circle Interesting interview with a retired CIA officer regarding Putin's mindset and the possible risks he faces from his inner circle.

The bold above is historically incorrect. Unconditional surrender was agreed upon by the Allies at the Casablanca conference for multiple reasons, the most important of which were convincing Stalin that the US/UK wouldn't negotiate a separate peace with Hitler, preventing Germany from a repeat of WWI non-military defeat claims, and the destruction of Germany/Japanese ideologies. There's no consensus or firm historical evidence that the unconditional surrender requirement made either Germany or Japan fight harder; in any case no negotiated settlement would have been possible given the National Socialist genocide in the USSR and the Holocaust, and the Japanese war crimes across China and the Pacific (not to mention Bushido code and the massive Japanese military influence in all Japanese affairs of the time). The last year of the war MAY have been the bloodiest; its impossible to know given incomplete casualty counts in the USSR and China. Certainly it was much worse for the civilian populations across Europe and Japan. 1942-43 may have been bloodier overall but with incomplete data its impossible to say.

https://time.com/6155670/foreign-fighters-ukraine-europe/ Good article on the motivations of some of the foreigners volunteering to fight for Ukraine. Baltic nations have been under the Russian boot before and feel the threat from Russia everyday.