Russia! Russia!! Russia!!!

[kybkh]

How deep is Russia's lineup? Could they stand to lose the tip of the spear and still perform as our peer?

If I was the West, my plan would be to outlast, absorb their initial blow like a recoiling snake then after the blade has been blunted and over extended, unleash hell.

[ssu]

This ain't the Mr. Ivan who fought the Muj in Afghanistan, clearly, he's modelling his shit on the Pentagon naow.

Interesting video.

The turning point was the Russo-Georgian war. They won it, but just barely. If the Georgian would have been more professional, it could have been a huge fiasco for the Russians. And after that near-term then they finally got their shit together, finally made a reforms that went through.

The basic problem from the Soviet Union and still until the Russo-Georgian war was that all mobilization plans relied on this massive all-out WW3 three scenario were every resource could be focused on the military and a massive reservist force would somehow emerge to fully man all the skeleton-units. It's an easy way to pretend in peacetime that every problem can be solved...with 20 million reservist somehow. How utterly delusional this was could be seen from the lowpoint of the first Chechen war. Which of course made the West assume that the Russian army couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag and never ever could get it's act together. That was in the 1990's. Russo-Georgian war was in 2008.

The transformation, which has been just a continuous little by little modernization year in year out can only now be seen. Of course on paper NATO looks huge compared to Russia, but now it's the one that is in denial (at least in some countries). Just what the Russian warfighting capabilities were still in 2008, that's nine years ago, is telling from the Russian documentary below.

Notice the Soviet era camo suits, helmets and other equipment. The news crew follows basically two battalion force that is lead by... a lieutenant general Khrulev who commands the whole 58th Army (starting from 12:00 in the video). And btw, he has alongside him the President of South Ossetia with all his men of 200. And the lieutenant general has a map and a radio and an UAZ, some few officers and commands the whole process from a road filled with vehicles close together and men in the open. Notice how fire support is deployed: it basically comes along in the column and is deployed in a very tight formation next to the road where the main column is. To avoid friendly fire, "white" armbands are issued. The lack of basically everything is evident from this. If you have nothing, then perhaps this is the way that a lietenant general commanding an Army will fight. Leading one column and is in front giving orders to a recce platoon. And then gets hit in driving into the city.

I think I've once given this, but I tell, a telling documentary of the Russian way of war in it's bare naked form with bare minimum of propaganda.

(with English subtitles)

Khrulev later btw. become the commander of the little army of Abkhazia in 2015.

[Smitty-48]

How deep is Russia's lineup? Could they stand to lose the tip of the spear and still perform as our peer?

Our tip o' the spear ain't what it used to be, nowhere near as deep, not as sharp neither, and sort of brittle, due to it's over reliance on digitization, so no guarantee our tip of the spear wouldn't snap if we just drove at them hey diddle diddle straight up the middle.

More cogent question would be; why would Mr. Ivan go head to head, spear tip to spear tip? He can chose the time and place to strike, and why strike where we are strongest? Why strike where we want him to strike? Why charge into our kill zone? Is that what we would do?

That's not how we would fight ourselves, if Britain and Isreal went to war with France and Turkey, would they really go at it hammer and tong at the coal face, World War Two all over again? I think not.

In the contemporary paradigm, there's no requirement to stand and deliver at forty paces, you can be much more elusive than that now, the spectrum of operations is much broader, don't have to just drive your tank formations into the other guys, hey diddle diddle straight up the middle to see who runs out of tanks first, we're post industrial warfare now, there is a far wider menu of options to effect decision, without ramming your speartip straight into the other guys shield.

Less Samurai v. Samurai, more Ninja v. Ninja.

[apeman]

Our tip o' the spear ain't what it used to be, nowhere near as deep . . .

slow down smitty, I'm at work

[Smitty-48]

Our tip o' the spear ain't what it used to be, nowhere near as deep . . .

slow down smitty, I'm at work

Steady in the ranks there, Mountain Troop, Mr. Ivan ain't ten feet tall, just sayun', he ain't as dumb and clumsy as he used to be neither, he's wised up, he's much more clever now, he's coming at us with our own doctrine, so we need to adjust for the new paradigm.

[apeman]

I really do worry about the long game, our pols can only focus on the next election, and our adversaries can play the long game.

[Smitty-48]

See, we're bigger than he is now, as he was once bigger than us, but our doctrine was perfectly designed to defeat a larger opponent by using his size against him, so last thing we want to do, is become the new Orange Force, dogmatic and unwieldy, in the face of a Blue Ivan, using our own sneaky tricks against us, which, he's actually becoming quite adept at, while we've been dicking around with counterinsurgency for the last twenty years.

[Smitty-48]

I really do worry about the long game, our pols can only focus on the next election, and our adversaries can play the long game.

Well, assuming the long game is for your pols to have Red Scared themselves back into a Cold War, be advised, Ivan is employing economy of force to deflect you away from where he is vulnerable, onto a series of offramps, and basically your pols are taking Ivan's bait and chasing their tales, running around trying to put out fires, which Ivan is lighting, using only a tiny fraction of his resources, which, scale that up to a full on confrontation, and you're gonna be stretched pretty thin pretty quick, Ivan using your size against you, by forcing you to cover all the bases, while he manuevers on the interior lines, and bear in mind, he hasn't even mined the approaches yet, he's still playing relatively nice.

To wit, he's not the Soviets, but if he employs his relatively much more limited resources, using your doctrine, he's exponentially more formidable than they were, particularly if/when he fights dirty, which, as the Hegemon, is not really something you can do.

The Soviets had their own hegenomy, they had to cover all their bases, they were run off their feet trying to put out fires which America was lighting, so they were vulnerable to this game as well, but Russia now, is not weighed down by this baggage, only you are, so he doesn't have to be that big anymore, to run you right off your feet.

[Smitty-48]

This ain't the Mr. Ivan who fought the Muj in Afghanistan, clearly, he's modelling his shit on the Pentagon naow.

Interesting video.

The turning point was the Russo-Georgian war. They won it, but just barely. If the Georgian would have been more professional, it could have been a huge fiasco for the Russians. And after that near-term then they finally got their shit together, finally made a reforms that went through.

The basic problem from the Soviet Union and still until the Russo-Georgian war was that all mobilization plans relied on this massive all-out WW3 three scenario were every resource could be focused on the military and a massive reservist force would somehow emerge to fully man all the skeleton-units. It's an easy way to pretend in peacetime that every problem can be solved...with 20 million reservist somehow. How utterly delusional this was could be seen from the lowpoint of the first Chechen war. Which of course made the West assume that the Russian army couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag and never ever could get it's act together. That was in the 1990's. Russo-Georgian war was in 2008.

The transformation, which has been just a continuous little by little modernization year in year out can only now be seen. Of course on paper NATO looks huge compared to Russia, but now it's the one that is in denial (at least in some countries). Just what the Russian warfighting capabilities were still in 2008, that's nine years ago, is telling from the Russian documentary below.

It's impressive how far they've come in less than a decade, when you consider that it takes NATO ten years just to finish writing the report on what changes should be implemented never mind actually implementing anything, apeman says "they play the long game", but in actual fact, in institutional terms, the Russians have turned on a dime.

They used 70,000 troops to take Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but to take Donetz and Luhansk, just 4000, so they've gone from being absurdly bloated, to punching well above their weight class, practically overnight in military reform terms. All that shit they're causing in eastern Ukraine, that's just one brigade, and they are outnumbered 8 to 1, and still the Ukrainians can't budge them. The Ukrainians have now resorted to trying to starve the local population into submission, because the entire Ukrainian army is being bested by one understrength Russian brigade.

[Xenophon]

This ain't the Mr. Ivan who fought the Muj in Afghanistan, clearly, he's modelling his shit on the Pentagon naow.

Interesting video.

The turning point was the Russo-Georgian war. They won it, but just barely. If the Georgian would have been more professional, it could have been a huge fiasco for the Russians. And after that near-term then they finally got their shit together, finally made a reforms that went through.

The basic problem from the Soviet Union and still until the Russo-Georgian war was that all mobilization plans relied on this massive all-out WW3 three scenario were every resource could be focused on the military and a massive reservist force would somehow emerge to fully man all the skeleton-units. It's an easy way to pretend in peacetime that every problem can be solved...with 20 million reservist somehow. How utterly delusional this was could be seen from the lowpoint of the first Chechen war. Which of course made the West assume that the Russian army couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag and never ever could get it's act together. That was in the 1990's. Russo-Georgian war was in 2008.

The transformation, which has been just a continuous little by little modernization year in year out can only now be seen. Of course on paper NATO looks huge compared to Russia, but now it's the one that is in denial (at least in some countries). Just what the Russian warfighting capabilities were still in 2008, that's nine years ago, is telling from the Russian documentary below.

It's impressive how far they've come in less than a decade, when you consider that it takes NATO ten years just to finish writing the report on what changes should be implemented never mind actually implementing anything, apeman says "they play the long game", but in actual fact, in institutional terms, the Russians have turned on a dime.

They used 70,000 troops to take Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but to take Donetz and Luhansk, just 4000, so they've gone from being absurdly bloated, to punching well above their weight class, practically overnight in military reform terms. All that shit they're causing in eastern Ukraine, that's just one brigade, and they are outnumbered 8 to 1, and still the Ukrainians can't budge them. The Ukrainians have now resorted to trying to starve the local population into submission, because the entire Ukrainian army is being bested by one understrength Russian brigade.

Is there a good resource for information on the War in the Donbass? The MSM doesn't really cover it any more, and I've had no luck finding any on my own.