Response thread.
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1509972410002464769?t=u3Vl2EeHFDmKMsWKXmL2mg&s=19
Cat version
https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1509850943596208128?s=20&t=ppXRKokhdJrgI2IGp49_aQ
4 Likes
Or really bad navigation system in those Russian helicopters.
i haven’t read the responses yet. pentagon evaluates military risk according to how they would conduct a special operation, which is obviously very different to how russian generals ended up conducting it. a much different problem is the fact russian troops are actually relatively poorly trained and equipped, although a lot of that is covered up by propaganda etc. if both sets of generals paid attention to personal anecdotes and grievances from army servicemen which were seeping through the russian social media, they would have a better idea about army readiness.
I haven’t checked but I doubt you can just pick these up on eBay.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1509983448647229443?s=20&t=ppXRKokhdJrgI2IGp49_aQ
BBC reporting indicates Ukraine are trying for three wasn’t me angles. First that it was just an accident (vids of helicopters seem to disprove that), second that it was a false flag (seems unlikely given much more emotional targets were available), or third that this was some sort of sabotage operation by disaffected members of the Russian military (also seems unlikely).
It’s from their live feed so not sure these links will work:
Plus another dozen tanks since then! Nuts.
Sketchy answer, but heard one didn’t take Germany up on offer to rebase transport planes and one let them into Kherson. However, there’s probably tons of Intel and counter Intel operations between Russia and Ukraine, info sharing with NATO, and there’s probably plenty going on. Hell, Ukraine probably has plenty of people in at least middle positions who took Russian bribes (and may or may not have delivered).
Washington had Arnold. Lincoln went through a few generals. Putin house arrested some dudes. Seems like a common problem.
ukraine clearly had some collaborators in their ranks. GRU had a whole unfruitful recruiting campaign for years, and it would be awful to assume none of the military branch were at least approached by russia. anyways i don’t know what they did, i haven’t seen any accusations nor details, but i sincerely hope the investigations and charges are independent from government forces.
it’s only a month in, but seeing zelensky in fatigues the entire time is bringing back images of castro. hope he doesn’t go on to cling to power.
some of this is obviously correctly voiced, and it’s understandable that the US military doctrine is extremely conservative in its adversary assessments.
and the repeated claim that multiple NATO-russia wargames have resulted in russia performing much better than expected, probably deserves more study, just to make sure that it’s really just an instance of russian videogame bias meme.
Apparently, as in many places in our capitalist common law system, action in the US army is devolved to the lowest possible level, which is informed of the purpose of missions, because they can often assess how to achieve assigned goals in light of context. Now, take a top-down operating structure, even with good “doctrine”, in the context of an autocratic regime where information flow is poor and there isn’t even a single overall commander (other than Putin), add in undertrained troops with low morale, and whatever that looks like on paper is a fraction of what you have in reality. It’s always good to be conservative when facing an enemy, but I just suspect that there are fundamental weaknesses of autocratic regimens facing near equivalent enemies.
My husband and I were just discussing this last night. He is also a veteran, and we came to the same conclusion: Russia’s highly centralized control combined with the environment of kleptocracy that seems to exist in all ranks just adds up to the failures we’re seeing now.
Add that to the fundamental difference in doctrine between Russia and the west when it comes to air vs. ground superiority. Meaning: Russia bases their doctrine on blitzkreig-like ground domination…roll those tanks in fast and gobble up territory. We, on the other hand, base our doctrine on controlling the air first before any other troops are committed.
I suppose we’ve never seen Russia tested like this before, so no one thought to question how these differences would truly affect the outcome of a modern war.
3 Likes
I read Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order recently (great book) and have started Political Order and Political Decay. One of his favorite lines is that “War made the state, and the state made war.” Funny thing is, as shown by 1989 (and 1905, and 1921, 1933-1938 and 1941), Russia is a failed state. It lost. But it didn’t truly fail because it was artificially propped up by nukes, so Putin slapped together a petro autocracy with spit and duct tape, and nukes have allowed him to avoid pressure and punch above his weight. However, no one’s ever tried to fight a complex modern war with an autocracy. It’s hard if the enemy has any ability to punch back.
Putin keeps making demands, and since 2002 or whatever the West has ignored and coddled him, because it’s like, “he knows that they lost in 1989 right?” Mofo lost on a TKO and still wants to get up and battle like it’s 1904. Well, they tried that once before.
2 Likes
my friend who’s a former marine seems shocked at how there seems to be no NCOs that make sure shit like vehicles are maintained. Says that shit would never fly where he was deployed.
There is a lot of material in NATO countries that is not up to scratch either but I think the difference is that people high up damn well know about it and don’t go into a war assuming those tanks that are behind in maintenance can be deployed tomorrow.
1 Like
yes, ineffectiveness of putin’s vertical of power is apparent, which i like to formulate as “corruption eats everything from the inside”. the mistake is looking at a regime like that, and only considering that only some parts of it are absolute dogshit potemkin villages. in reality, every institution and supposed strength is completely hollowed out.
eg if you expected one thing in FSB to work well, it would be things like assassinations, or threats and extortion for political gain. but in fact they have botched many poisonings even when noone suspected their activities are in progress.
2 Likes