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

Pretty hard core video of entering and clearing trenches (wonder if TRADOC is considering adding that battle drill back to 7-2).

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1675838727141113857

The one dangerous thing they have is mobile ICBMs that can be launched from all across their vast territory. It is a damaging suicide pact that any wqeapon that gets through would be devastating to whatever city it hits. even the EMP could be devastating to a lot of tech if they blew up early in the atmosphere. we would have much less chance of intercepting that before it fried europe, china, and the middle east's electrical grid. Even the US would probably be fucked from that.

Kinda graphic video of a wounded Ukrainian being exfiltrated.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1675884828678397952

Hope he has a full recovery (and as long as he got to a field hospital quickly which it looks like he will) but I did have to laugh at him having a hole in his leg big enough for two rolls of gauze to go in but all he cares about is his balls and dick.

The Hague opens office for Russian war crimes.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/...ussian-invasion-of-ukraine-opens-in-the-hague

Is this the military equivalent of "Hold my beer"? Because that's what it looks like to me.

https://twitter.com/Seveerity/status/1675869542231293957?s=20

https://twitter.com/juliadavisnews/status/1625202727826427910?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Oh, and before you laugh too hard, remember, a bunch of us live in counties where there’s no hospital to have the copper stolen from because it closed years ago.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1676483468073598976?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Russian ammo dump goes splody.

https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1676503590268026883?s=46&t=t4SjKAdDfFIcJ6SvqCRv6A

Jesus Christ Russian equipment are deathtraps. And they don’t even give their tanker crews nomex? Hopefully the one guy that managed to get out but with his uniform melted to him was put out of his misery quickly.

https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1676566943921319941?s=46&t=t4SjKAdDfFIcJ6SvqCRv6A

Shit. Poor guy

Nomex isn't going to do a lot of good when you're sitting or standing over this.



If the hull gets penetrated (or if a drone drops a grenade through an open hatch ) the ammunition stored below the turret floor ignites and either blows off the turret or vents through open hatches.

Well, on the bright side, if you're in the tank when it gets hit, you probably have less chance than Captain Crunch did, to realize you're fucked before you get turned into goo.

https://kyivindependent.com/lukashenko-claims-prigozhin-back-in-russia/

Reporting from the Front

Eric and Eliot dig in to Eliot’s recent travels to Poland and Ukraine. They discuss the future of European security relations with Ukraine, Kyiv’s understandable neuralgia about steps short of NATO membership, the meaning and impact of Prigozhin’s rebellion in Russia and on the battlefield, the prospects for Ukraine’s counter-offensive and Ukraine’s ongoing requirements for long range strike, short-range air defenses and cluster munitions.

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shield-of-the-republic/id1589548143

Worth a listen.

A point I hadn’t considered before is that NOT fast tracking Ukraine into NATO is the destabilizing course of action both in the region and for the world.

To paraphrase:

Do we really want to tell a former nuclear power, with one of the largest civilian nuclear programs in the world, hundreds of nuclear scientists and more fissile material than they know what to do with: “Welp, sorry, we can’t defend you. Guess you’ll just have to figure out some other way to secure your existence.”

Okay so word from multiple sources is that Blinken (State Department was last hold out) is now down with shipping whatever fancy name they are now calling cluster munitions to Ukraine.

This could or could not be a big deal.

Depends on how our allies take it.

In 2008 the majority of the nations of the world signed a treaty banning the use of cluster munitions including pretty much all our NATO allies.

We did not sign because the US Constitution requires a 66 vote supermajority in the Senate (the US Constitution says that treaties signed by the President and ratified by the Senate take precedence over everything except the Constitution which is why ratification requires the same number of votes as a Constitutional Amendment [CAN YOU HEAR ME FOLKS CALLING ASYLUM SEEKERS ILLEGAL?!?!? I CAN RAISE MY VOICE IF NEEDED]).

However we did agree not to export our 3m shell stockpile and not to use unless we could get the ‘dud rate’ (UXO - Unexploded Ordinance - the minibombs that didn’t explode when used but then a kid picks up and blows his arm and half his face off) below 1%.

We have so far only been able to get our dud rate to 2.35%.

But what if the country that wants our munitions wants to use it on their own country?

What if they are saying that they accept the dud rate, they understand the cleanup needed, they will deal with it later and please just give it to them now?

And what if they are fighting an enemy that also didn’t sign the treaty but didn’t stop producing cluster munitions and they actually have a +35% dud rate but their doctrine weights quantity over quantity AND they are dropping this UXO in another country so they are are totally fine with all the UXO, in fact it is a benefit?

In purely numerical terms the best way to reduce UXO in Ukraine is to give the Ukrainians all the tools necessary to remove the Muscovites from Ukraine.

Full stop.

Should we not do so even if it means giving them ordinance with a slightly greater than 1% dud rate?

And I’m gonna be a little preemptive here but just in case some folks were gonna share just how bad UXO is, the decades it takes to clean up, the human toll (Yeah. I know they are painted yellow so kids want to pick them up and that is beyond fucking tragic).

I get it.

You don’t have to convince me.

But WHOSE UXO we are talking about matters. Which kinda shells, used in which situations with which dud rates matter.

Oh, sorry for going three in a row but this is a BFD because we have a metric fuckton that we can’t sell and can’t use so have been completely written out of any war planning so the are just ‘free’ munitions that we haven’t disposed of yet.

Like for real. These aren’t considered US stocks. We might actually be able to ‘make money’ by giving them to Ukraine. Since we wouldn’t have to pay for disposal. And then we could provide more arms to Ukraine.

Only possible use is that some are rocket launched and for those the idea was to take the rocket and attach it to an obsolete air launched missile, throw on some wings and that was the basis of the GLSDB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Launched_Small_Diameter_Bomb

Hopefully that is still in the plans.

But this is just now me babbling….

The overwhelmingly VAST MAJORITY of our cluster munitions are 155mm so we would just be doubling the amount of arty we could give them.

Is UXO the only problem here? I was under the impression cluster bombs were also banned because they have a tendency to wound rather than kill the enemy. Or am I thinking of something else that was banned?

They're still digging up tons of UXO from WWI. Literally. And didja see they found a bunch of British Hurricanes in Ukraine the other day?

Putin could drop dead tonight, the Russians pull out of Ukraine tomorrow, and Ukraine's still fucked. There are no good answers here.

Huh. We just captured a bunch of weapons we said were heading from Iran to Yemen.

https://twitter.com/USAO_DC/status/1677106130613420032?s=20

Wonder what we're going to do with them?

I can’t say for sure that you are wrong but that doesn’t line up with anything I learned while while getting trained on the Laws of Armed Conflict.

It's a long article, so I'm not going to C&P it, but third-party analysis seems to indicate that Russia is really getting their asses handed to them. At the start of the war, Russia had nearly 3,500 tanks, now they're down to less than 2K. Ukraine has doubled the number of tanks it has, since the start of the war.

The article, mentions in passing, that Russia has to keep some of its forces in reserve to prevent parts of the country from breaking away. In times past, we would have upped the ante by prodding those folks in the places that might want to break away into doing something. Are we doing it now?

I would guess not, especially any regions where nuclear weapons are stationed.

Maybe start by explaining why people in Yemen aren't entitled to defend themselves and why you're supporting Saudi aggression there, given all of the moral posturing that's happening about Ukraine.

I ain’t doing any of that. Because I’ve not said one word about the Yemeni people not being allowed to defend themselves. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find me saying anything about that conflict at all.

In that post you used we, so unless you are implying that you personally would be handling the redistribution of these weapons I don't think Rick was calling you out individually

Maybe explain why his “whataboutism” is relevant? Not to mention that since the US is supplying weapons both to the folks aligned with the Yemeni forces and the Saudis, I’m having a tough time figuring out how we’re blocking somebody from defending themselves.

Not to mention, that during Iran-Contra, we came up with elaborate schemes to get weapons into the hands of the Contras. Are you going to tell me that there’s absolutely no way we’re being fed a cover story so that the US can slip more arms to Ukraine? Because, if you look, shady weapons deals are one of the things we’re known for.

https://twitter.com/kyivpost/status/1677293730242412547?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ