dorlomin

Poland has asked to join the NATO nuclear sharing deal 2 weeks ago. This is likely a response for Belarussian internal politics, strong man gotta look strong for the Babushkas. But he did not get warheads for his Iskanders so if we are to read meaning into it, he and Putin do not even want the west to notice. The one weapon system that could penetrate Polish air defences that can carry nuclear warheads does not have them. I guess it gives Putin the option to move Russian nuclear tipped Iskanders into Belarus, but they already have them in Kaliningrad, something they announce deploying every couple of months.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/15/europe/russia-ukraine-rape-sexual-violence-military-intl-hnk/index.html There is also the mass deportation of children. There are some truly fucking grim accounts of what is happening in occupied Ukraine.

Gerasimov and Shoigu still have their jobs. Kadyrov was arse clenchingly nice about Putin about a week ago. So who ever he and Progihozin were running their mouths off for seems to have lost an internal battle in the Siloviki. Their chief propagandists are now looking at arrest. Russian politics has been a by word for opacity for over a century. But it seems who ever it was that pushed for mobilisation and escalation may have lost place in the pecking order and now cannot protect their capo's. Then again it may be a totally different story. Also Possibly a false quote but attributed to Churchill.

2 years to the next series. No one will remember this exists in 3 months let alone 2 years.

I believe the current Russian plan may be two hopes. 1) European winter turns its people against the war. (Its long game plan for a while now). 2) The West hits stocking levels in their equipment where they feel they can no longer keep Ukraine supplied at the current rate with artillery and advanced ammunition systems, the war turns to being a more infantry dominated one. Wars are very dynamic where fortunes can change quickly. Sometimes the crazy hopes can come off. They are currently in deep and hoping for a miracle. I do think the mobilisation has been an unexpected disaster. I think they really did not realise how depleted their stocks of things like uniforms and rifles was. Watching Shoigu walk round a training ground where the soldiers did not have magazines in their rifles was really an eye opener. Russia's hopes for their best chance is to outlast the Wests will to support them. The two sides have a ticking clock on artillery supplies. Though on the Ukraine side its largely imposed by western general staffs minimal levels they set. I and many think this really is not reflective of the reality that Russia is the only real country we needed those stocks for (the other major threat, China is an air and sea battle. ) And winter is coming. It going to be about who has the better winter equipment. Note Ukraine's winters are not that crazy, it gets cold but its not Siberia.

Second Lunar tourism mission announced. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/spacex-announces-a-second-private-flight-to-the-moon-aboard-starship/ This is a cis lunar flyby not a landing. It will follow the Yusaku Maezawa's "dearMoon" flight, also round the Moon not landing. I assume these will be after the early Artemis NASA flights. And will not be the Starship HLS, the landing version.

Trench warfare like that is man power intensive, but I do not think these are meant to be infantry trenches. Russia has been focussing on artillery dominant warfare were infantry act as OPs, that is small forward observation posts to call in the heavy stuff. But these are likely simply anti tank\MRAP type impediments and not meant to be manned trenches. Just vehicle obsitcles. The lack of crenulations and bunkers hints strongly these are not really for infantry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traverse_(trench_warfare)#/media/File:Schwaben_Redoubt_aerial_photograph_10-05-1916_IWM_HU_91107.jpg You build trenches with zig zags of some kind or another so it breaks up the artillery hits. So one hit does not take out a whole company. This is how the engineers get you over and through obstacles like this Engineering tank dumps some fascines into the trenches and they can either blow through the ramps with Bangalores or go over them with bridging kit. Its not easy mind, this is the kind of thing that really takes a lot of training.

The Russian ruling clique are largely based round ex KGB people who worked with the mafia to gain power in the mid to late 90s. They were able to usurp the Yeltsin era oligarchy who were not permitted to be active in politics beyond supporting the Siloviki but kept their wealth to manage the country. The military were deliberately compromised and run down. Putin can be disempowered by others within the clique having more of their people in key positions, removed and replaced by another from within the clique especially the likes of Bortnikov, Sechin or another core Silovik. For the military or an outside group to gain power they would have to over throw the entire current establishment, that includes the Rosgyvardia (SOBR, OMON, Internal Troops etc) that was built to be the security for the inner core. The loyalties of things like the GRU (that run the Spetsnaz that you may have heard of) would very likely be with the other Siloviks and their job is among other things to keep an eye on the army. Its a country that has been run by spooks for 22 years, they built it to be coup proof. Does not mean it cannot happen, but its going to take more than a couple of angry colonels and a tank company to pull it off. Its a security services dictatorship running an advanced surveillance state.

Turkey is in NATO, has one of the largest modern tank fleets in Europe, has a fleet of over 200 F-16s and its 18-30 population is not that much smaller than Russia's. Belarus's tanks have been photographed being transported to the Donbas region via rail. Its more likely that Putin is raiding their stores to keep his war going that they actually deploy. Though they may drag their troops in as well.

BBC live blog. The new head of theatre command Sergei Surovikin seems to be leaving his trademark of making the war a war against civilians.

A cruise missile used to hit a pedestrian walkway between two parks. It just screams of impotent rage.

https://archive.ph/45QOF#selection-263.159-295.82 ... ... ... ... ... This is an artillery war. Its about counter battery fire directed by radars, the speed you can shoot and move and the accuracy you can fire with. With the GPS guided GMRLS rockets the Ukrainians can turn their HIMARS and M-270s into precision guided weapons, like mini aircraft. With the Excalibur GPS guided 155mm round they can do the same with their western artillery. This seems to have allowed them to first halt the Russian summer advance and now start rolling them back. The war started with Russia having a 10-1 advantage in heavy guns. Now it seems the effectiveness of the two artillery forces is at least even perhaps even with a Ukrainian advantage. The burning issue for both sides will be stocks of ammunition. Amidst the hype about mobilisation Russia seems to be trying to start war production levels for artillery ammunition. Winter is coming. Hypothermia and trenchfoot will start wrecking havoc among those without proper winter clothing. It does not need to be below freezing, just below something like 10C on cold wet nights. People without good water proof boots and proper winter coats will lose heat and circulation quickly.

Adjacent to the invasion

Does not mean they are headed to Ukraine, just that there is now a pretty wide desire to send modernish tanks there in the European Parliament. It will still all hang on the Bundeskanzelor and his appetite for the risks.

Some people think the gold teeth thing might have been stolen from a dentists office. Grim but a lot less grisly than t he original assumption.

Anytime any rumours about nuclear weapons hit the press its best to check Dr Jeffrey Lewis and what he has to say on it. An in general any time someone starts talking any of these three: space weapons (especially ASAT), hypersonic weapons or nuclear weapons, factor in a high degree of bullshit unless it is from a recognised expert.

Shoigu is a political appointee. Bit like how our minster of defence does not need much defence experience. But his main job is structuring the civilian defence sector, planning the equipment it will need in 10 or 20 years. Kadyrov and Prozoghin are little more mafioso warlords with militias. Russia is going badly wrong in the staff planning and logistics departments (and one hundred times over lack of training at every level), but you cannot will a competent general staff into existence, its is decades of education, learning and passing knowledge on. Appointing a Tik Tok mafioso will not resolve those issues, just direct Su-57 funding to Kaydrov's bank account. Russias problem is that fundamentally the entire state structure has been eaten out hollow by a cancerous infestation of corrupt spies and mafioso. Whether the lack of proper staff officer structure is due to deliberate decades of de-education by Putin or nepotism and corruption within is at this point, moot. The effects are the same.

A whole lot of Russian milbloggers seem to be unusually incensed at this. Many were talking about the relief arriving hours before it was obvious the town had fallen. Kadyrov rages at Lapin the Central Military District commander (with the oh so ironic accusation of nepotism) while Rybar is saying he would be a scapegoat. Russian speakers are saying the who space is full of acrimony. Grozev hints he does not think this came from Kaydrov. Google translate (not by me)

Story doing the rounds is the mobiks are not even getting dog tags. Dont know how widespread that is but it means if they fall in combat, their corpse will be unidentified unless its recovered on the spot. If they do not have proper footwear and proper training they will be hit hard by trenchfoot once they start working in the mud. Some might know trench foot as the wrinkled skin you get when you soak your feet or hands in a bath for a while. But if it keeps wet over days in the cold then the skin starts dying and you get infections, ulcers, blisters and without treatment gangrene can set in. The NCOs are supposed to be pretty strict on making sure soldiers keep changing socks, keep their feet dry and perform daily inspections, some might have seen this in Full Metal Jacket. Thing is the staggering state of the Russian army and this may not happen with the reservists. Being stuck in cold wet trenches will make them vulnerable to hypothermia. Good military grade clothing should prevent this, unless you become soaked and are unable to dry. As temperatures drop below zero, the water freezes up so the wet is no longer a problem but then extremities like noses, eye lids, finger tips etc become vulnerable to frostbite. These should not be problems for a modern army. But the mobik volksstrum look more a rabble than an army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya This is what he is banging on about. Catherine the Great took some of these lands from the Ottomans in the late 18th century.

Tom Nichols an expert on Russia and nuclear policies has 10 minutes covering those topics. https://youtu.be/OVvapGIrym8?t=2089 Short take away. The silly election results were a demonstration of power not legitimacy. The nuclear option is unlikely but needs to be discussed seriously. He cites a possible use case that is known as "escalate to deescalate". Simply raising the stakes so much people have to deal with him. The strongest argument against it is his few friends in the world would drop him like a hot rock. He also talks about a possible reason for the mobilisation as to put so much Russian blood into the Ukrainian soil that Russians feel compelled to honour that sacrifice.

Russian milbloggers now saying Lyman is cut off. (Wargonzo and Rybar).

NASA has a press conference today and there is some speculation around Hubble. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invites-media-to-discuss-new-science-commercial-study-today

Putin was giving it "the good Czar betrayed by the corrupt and incompetent Boyars" on TV today over the mobilisation and its failingshe was promising that those too old or in the wrong jobs would be withdrawn and blaming it on bad local officials. But anyway, I expect two outcomes from tomorrows announcement of the annexations. One the conscripts will be deployed to the war zone, I would expect them to be sent to beef up existing formations but any plan that involves logic, reason and common sense is likely asking too much from Russia. The second response will be in the US and will be to push to release the old M1A1s and M1A2s in storage to Ukraine. The big constraint will be training maintenance crews as 65 tonnes of metal does take a lot of specialised maintenance. But we have been feeding them niche weapons systems not our main armour killers (Apache, Abrams A-10). Fed fiscal year starts on 1st October, but I do not think that will be significant.