"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

You want to have your mind blown? Poke around on this site. It allows you to look up the details on Western military forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The highest-ranking US officer to die because of the Iraq War* a colonel. The highest-ranking US officer to die because of the war with Afghanistan? Some 1st lieutenants. Russia invaded Ukraine less than a month ago, and they've already had three generals killed. During the US Civil War, 78 Confederate generals were killed, while only 46 Union generals died.

I don't know how many Ukrainian generals might have died since this shitshow started, but I gotta believe that the Russians are probably in worse shape, even if they lost fewer generals. After all, they're the ones advancing into opposition territory, while the Ukrainians are fighting on their home soil.

I thought Russia was up to four or maybe five dead generals.

*sigh*

Replace ‘federal tv’ with Fox News and word for word this essay applies to the US.

Bild (Picture) is the most read paper in Germany but is a tabloid (British, not American style) so take it for what it is worth.

Against my better judgement, I'd giggle my ass off if NATO dusted off Reforger and we sent about 50 or 100 thousand troops to Germany for perfectly innocent, nothing to see here training exercises.

Yeah, I know. Dayton agrees.

But still...

China has a shit government but even they probably realized the almighty Dollar (or Yuan) will win the day. Too many countries are turning their backs on Russia. Someone did the math in Beijing and figured it was better to go with international sentiment if they wanted to keep the money rolling in.

Why the skies over Ukraine have proven so deadly for Russian pilots

"The VKS is simply never meant to fight the way Western air forces do.”

I don't believe there's enough pre-positioned equipment there to support that many.

Back when REFORGER was a thing, there were six divisions' worth of gear in storage there.

I'd wager that their thought processes were to keep a low-profile until a clear winner started to appear, and then start to back that one, while not alienating the other side until it became obvious that they weren't going to win.

Too bad Tom Clancy's dead. He could have made a ripping good yarn out of this Russian FUBAR operation. Putin had every damn thing in the world going for him. The German's interest in NATO was fading. Europe was getting hooked on Russian petro supplies the way a junkie gets dependent on his pusher and China was moving closer and closer. He co-opted a significant part of the American political process and our media. Now he's on the verge of fucking up the whole deal.

It was good, but I liked his post-1/6th statement better. I think that if he really hammered home (in this clip) just how broken the men who fought for Germany in WWII were so utterly broken after the war, that it's almost certain that the Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan back in the 80s were the same way, and that it would be good for folks to listen to the Russian veterans of the Afghanistan invasion talk about how it fucked them up (and it did), he might have really been able to sell it to both the Russians now fighting in Ukraine as well as the folks in Russia. Mind you, if he manages to get just one Russian soldier to lay down their weapon and surrender to Ukrainian forces, then good on him.

Somebody did a really shitty deepfake of Zelenskyy to try to convince Ukrainians to surrender. I doubt if anyone bought it, but sooner or later, someone will try again with a better version.

I’ve wondered if the US shouldn’t do some joint NATO and APAC exercises nearby just to make sure Putin can’t strip everyone to backfill loses in Ukraine.

Seems like a way we could use our military to tie up some of their forces without actual conflict.

There would be serious risk of escalation but isn’t there already?

Great piece, thanks! Yeah, the Russians have always been focused on CAS. They were much better at it than we were in WWII - but then, we had operational capabilities they could only dream of.

SAMs and Manpads have changed the game significantly, and there aren't IL-2 Sturmovikhs that can shrug off almost anything that can be thrown at them.

This one is going to be updating the doctrine books for decades.

This is why I'm rolling my eyes at people saying a couple of A-10s could have strafed that 40-mile column into smoldering wreckage, and keep harping on getting A-10s into the action. Nope. Not with MANPADS on the ground. A-10s need a missile-free environment.

Right.

Should the soundtrack be from Benny Hill or the Three Stooges? Yeah, it ain't funny but if you can't laugh the alternative is

Disrupting sleep patterns has got to mess with morale.

Putin's crowd was largely state workers who had been ordered to attend.

That's communism for you.

In America, it would be your boss giving the order.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28728229/trump-shell-factory-workers-visit/