Bombers can be quite vulnerable and need to be directly overhead. The UA air defenses are likely the reason they prefer stand-off weapons. Clearly the Russians don't control the sky and have been unable to destroy the defenses. If they could unleash several tons on some cities, I suspect they would. But the use of that Dagger missile had to be a test or perhaps they are running out of stock in the cheaper cruise missiles.
I see the Russians as remarkable inept. Don't know if they really are or they put the second sting in. Their poor showing ought to embolden NATO about whether the Russians are capable of war short of a nuclear one. I don't think they would get that desperate. The exposure of how badly the Russians are managed says a lot.
Absolutely. Please get that message to Paul Craig Roberts, David Stockman and the others who still think there is some justification for what the Russians are up to. They are true to their lineage - as a savage, remorseless hoard.
All that said, Stockman's proposal for a negotiated peace seems reasonable to me. Give Putin a face-saving way out of this. End the war and, having ruined Russia, he will fall of his own weight. Let the statelets vote on which country they want, and people choose what language they want to speak.
Aimee, I have my eyes open. My project is to raise normal children in these weird times. My thesis is that if they are honest, educated purebloods they will be well positioned whatever comes.
I didn't know that. They killed 100,000 civilians to crush the Chechens? I've been a bit enamoured of Putin because he talks so much better - incredibly much better - than our 'leaders' and our mob are such proven liars and we've done so much bad.
But perhaps I'm totally wrong. Perhaps Putin is every bit as bad as them. Would you comment on all that, Chechen thing, Putin and all. I'd be interested to hear ?
I gave it a shot a couple of days ago with this post below. I think the most valuable thing I contribute is my sources. For that one I would go to "Putin's Wars," for which I include a link to my Amazon review. The best short reference on how Russians think was provided by the Marquis de Custine almost 200 years ago in "Letters from Russia," a fairly short read you can download from the Internet. They haven't changed.
Excellent references. It seems that there might be genetic reasons related to how people fight. I recall you or somebody touching on that. The Russian seem to rely heavily on blunt force which the US seems more about finesse, less force. The Germans seemed to use a mix of speed and force. I'm nowhere near well enough versed in the Art of War to fully appreciate the larger scale. I have helped stage and organize Operations Exercises (OPX) to collect data and watch the pros do their thing. They may run a lot of trials using various techniques to arrive at some optimum. War is where those plans get changed but the kind of planning I've seen tries to anticipate issues. The US is now running OPX where the technology gets removed at random. I just know of those, not been involved in them. The scenarios often are nearly global in scale with real players involved. The Russians OTOH seem like they used old playbooks that when reality arrived even the alternates weren't gamed.
The way the Ukrainians win is to run this thing out and destroy Russian equipment and troops. Enough 18-21 year olds not coming back home, and that does a number on Putin's domestic support, and even dictators need domestic support. It's pretty obvious that he screwed up and knows it - the massive censorship and the house arrests show it. He was told - and he apparently believed - that he could wind the thing up in less than a week. It's been nearly a month, and they're only a bit closer to Kiev than they were a week or two weeks ago - and the routes going south are still open. It looks like the Russians have the road west to Zhitomyr in their control, same case for the road east - but nothing south. And with drones and stingers and so forth, and the utter lack of Russian air superiority at any sort of reasonable altitude, if this stalemate goes on for two more weeks, Russia is going to begin to run out of money and materiel to keep things going. And that's a win for Ukraine. Most people in the West were thinking of a massive blitzkrieg, a full court press, with Russians on the Poland border in a week. No blitzkrieg, and if the Russians aren't stalled out, they're digging in or moving slowly - and in both cases. it's a question of supply - logistics - and interdicting supply routes... https://liveuamap.com/ is a useful map.
An aside - if the great majority of UA troops haven't had the clot shot - and Russia's *have*, that might be an interesting study in degradation of troop readiness and combat worthiness.
When they used an expensive missile to do the job of a bomb, they are in trouble. Elsewhere I noted that a General somewhere is looking at the stock of cruise missiles, the ability to build more and the need to keep a bunch just in case of NATO. That General is in big trouble because they can't get the effects they need.
For Russia the real issue is that Ukraine is proving how weak they might be. This has to be awful for troop morale as time goes on.
The Russians fight in the style of Curtis LeMay - the Air Force general who was the inspiration for General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. LeMay said "When you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." He was behind the Dresden Raid, the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, and both atomic bombings in Japan that year... They also are using Patton's tactics in bypassing cities, leaving those logistical problems for Zelenskyy to figure out, and cutting support roads and rail lines.
It should be noted that the Russians control nearly the entirety of the south coast, and when/if they take Odessa and its oblast, then the control of the sout coast will be complete. Since the Zhitomyr-Kiev road is cut, then all that's needed is and advance from the south to cut the roads into Kiev, and then it's effectively game over. No logistics can come into Kiev, and then it's a matter of time. The Russian strategy appears to be one of encirclement - cut roads, stop logistics - rather than control huge swathes of territory outright.
Bombers can be quite vulnerable and need to be directly overhead. The UA air defenses are likely the reason they prefer stand-off weapons. Clearly the Russians don't control the sky and have been unable to destroy the defenses. If they could unleash several tons on some cities, I suspect they would. But the use of that Dagger missile had to be a test or perhaps they are running out of stock in the cheaper cruise missiles.
I see the Russians as remarkable inept. Don't know if they really are or they put the second sting in. Their poor showing ought to embolden NATO about whether the Russians are capable of war short of a nuclear one. I don't think they would get that desperate. The exposure of how badly the Russians are managed says a lot.
Absolutely. Please get that message to Paul Craig Roberts, David Stockman and the others who still think there is some justification for what the Russians are up to. They are true to their lineage - as a savage, remorseless hoard.
All that said, Stockman's proposal for a negotiated peace seems reasonable to me. Give Putin a face-saving way out of this. End the war and, having ruined Russia, he will fall of his own weight. Let the statelets vote on which country they want, and people choose what language they want to speak.
There are no “good guys” here really, but what to make of this? It makes sense on many levels.
Putin: ‘New World Order’ Are Deliberately Crashing the Economy as Part of the ‘Great Reset’
https://newspunch.com/putin-new-world-order-are-deliberately-crashing-the-economy-as-part-of-the-great-reset/
Aimee, I have my eyes open. My project is to raise normal children in these weird times. My thesis is that if they are honest, educated purebloods they will be well positioned whatever comes.
Amen to that! We all need to stay focused on what really matters. These distractions are all meant to destroy us.
I didn't know that. They killed 100,000 civilians to crush the Chechens? I've been a bit enamoured of Putin because he talks so much better - incredibly much better - than our 'leaders' and our mob are such proven liars and we've done so much bad.
But perhaps I'm totally wrong. Perhaps Putin is every bit as bad as them. Would you comment on all that, Chechen thing, Putin and all. I'd be interested to hear ?
I gave it a shot a couple of days ago with this post below. I think the most valuable thing I contribute is my sources. For that one I would go to "Putin's Wars," for which I include a link to my Amazon review. The best short reference on how Russians think was provided by the Marquis de Custine almost 200 years ago in "Letters from Russia," a fairly short read you can download from the Internet. They haven't changed.
https://grahamseibert.substack.com/p/russians-dont-think-like-us-why-should
Excellent references. It seems that there might be genetic reasons related to how people fight. I recall you or somebody touching on that. The Russian seem to rely heavily on blunt force which the US seems more about finesse, less force. The Germans seemed to use a mix of speed and force. I'm nowhere near well enough versed in the Art of War to fully appreciate the larger scale. I have helped stage and organize Operations Exercises (OPX) to collect data and watch the pros do their thing. They may run a lot of trials using various techniques to arrive at some optimum. War is where those plans get changed but the kind of planning I've seen tries to anticipate issues. The US is now running OPX where the technology gets removed at random. I just know of those, not been involved in them. The scenarios often are nearly global in scale with real players involved. The Russians OTOH seem like they used old playbooks that when reality arrived even the alternates weren't gamed.
The way the Ukrainians win is to run this thing out and destroy Russian equipment and troops. Enough 18-21 year olds not coming back home, and that does a number on Putin's domestic support, and even dictators need domestic support. It's pretty obvious that he screwed up and knows it - the massive censorship and the house arrests show it. He was told - and he apparently believed - that he could wind the thing up in less than a week. It's been nearly a month, and they're only a bit closer to Kiev than they were a week or two weeks ago - and the routes going south are still open. It looks like the Russians have the road west to Zhitomyr in their control, same case for the road east - but nothing south. And with drones and stingers and so forth, and the utter lack of Russian air superiority at any sort of reasonable altitude, if this stalemate goes on for two more weeks, Russia is going to begin to run out of money and materiel to keep things going. And that's a win for Ukraine. Most people in the West were thinking of a massive blitzkrieg, a full court press, with Russians on the Poland border in a week. No blitzkrieg, and if the Russians aren't stalled out, they're digging in or moving slowly - and in both cases. it's a question of supply - logistics - and interdicting supply routes... https://liveuamap.com/ is a useful map.
An aside - if the great majority of UA troops haven't had the clot shot - and Russia's *have*, that might be an interesting study in degradation of troop readiness and combat worthiness.
When they used an expensive missile to do the job of a bomb, they are in trouble. Elsewhere I noted that a General somewhere is looking at the stock of cruise missiles, the ability to build more and the need to keep a bunch just in case of NATO. That General is in big trouble because they can't get the effects they need.
For Russia the real issue is that Ukraine is proving how weak they might be. This has to be awful for troop morale as time goes on.
The Russians fight in the style of Curtis LeMay - the Air Force general who was the inspiration for General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. LeMay said "When you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." He was behind the Dresden Raid, the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, and both atomic bombings in Japan that year... They also are using Patton's tactics in bypassing cities, leaving those logistical problems for Zelenskyy to figure out, and cutting support roads and rail lines.
It should be noted that the Russians control nearly the entirety of the south coast, and when/if they take Odessa and its oblast, then the control of the sout coast will be complete. Since the Zhitomyr-Kiev road is cut, then all that's needed is and advance from the south to cut the roads into Kiev, and then it's effectively game over. No logistics can come into Kiev, and then it's a matter of time. The Russian strategy appears to be one of encirclement - cut roads, stop logistics - rather than control huge swathes of territory outright.