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It is exceedingly strange how the notion persists — among, for example, the Russian geniuses who planned the Ukranian invasion — that bombardment breaks the will of the people bombed, when almost every chapter of human history contradicts it.
For example, during eight years studying and writing about the American Civil War, I found no evidence that any battle was decided by artillery. The largest bombardment ever conducted in the Western Hemisphere — by Confederate gunners on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, just before Pickett’s Charge — inflicted a single casualty, injuring a steward in a rear area.
(There was an interesting argument during the bombardment between the Federal commanding general, Winfield Scott Hancock and his chief of artillery Henry Hunt. Seeing the Confederate bombardment was totally ineffective, Hunt held his fire, conserving ammunition for later. Hancock angrily overruled him, saying that the Union troops would be demoralized unless they heard their guns firing back.)
I know I’m riling a lot of artillery enthusiasts here, and I don’t mean that artillery is insignificant. For example, Union artillery was very effective in repelling Pickett’s charge because it was used to fire grapeshot into the charging soldiers at close range, using the guns like large shotguns. What I am talking about here is bombardment from afar, by guns on the ground, guns on ships, and planes, unaccompanied by infantry.
The massive bombing campaign by the U.S. Eight Air Force in the final days of World War II is widely regarded as having inflicted mortal damage on German resistance to the Allied advance through Europe. But later studies showed that most damage to essential facilities was repaired within a few days, and the enemy’s will to resist was strengthened, not weakened. For all the heroic efforts of the air force, it was the infantry that took the ground.
In the War in the Pacific, U.S. naval guns often pounded a Japanese island stronghold for days, until the entire island looked like a dumpster fire, only to be met on landing the Marines by undiminished, undaunted forces.
Yet the U.S. military still thought it could bomb people to their knees when it carpet-bombed huge chunks of North Vietnam, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in the 1960s. To no apparent effect.
Today, drone strikes are all the rage in places like Yemen and Somalia, as they were until recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being able to inflict damage without risking the life of an aircrew makes the military absolutely dizzy with delight. But it is well established that instead of winning hearts and minds, or disheartening the population, each strike recruits more dedicated warriors for the other side.
And now Ukraine. Putin obviously has not learned the lesson either, because the main feature of his invasion so far has been the indiscriminate, almost random, bombardment of civilian targets. The result has been to galvanize the Ukrainian people against him and his army beyond anyone’s wildest expectations of just weeks ago.
As our former president used to say when he stumbled over an obvious fact: “No one could have predicted that!”
(The atomic bombing of Japan and its subsequent surrender are, I would submit, an exception that supports the rule; total destruction of that scale has seldom been achieved.)
Interesting. Without any study of military history and strategy on my part, I’m willing to take your word for it. However, I will observe that the possibility of killing from a distance — i.e., without risking troops — is an attractive option. So attractive, it would appear, that even when it boomerangs on those who attempt it, it’s still too shiny and sparkly to resist.
Exactly. But it doesn’t win battles, and it doesn’t win wars.
Then there was the bombardment of London. I always found it unfathomable that the British did not surrender. As surely the Germans did as well.
I have read that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the atomic bombing, but we would not accept their surrender.
I am thinking that President Zelenskiyy has read John Steinbeck’s “The Moon is Down.” Which, perhaps, we should all read, or reread. I have, and find it as profoundly moving as ever.
Russian artillery has not been employed, Tom, yet, and they have not “dropped” a single bomb. Nor will they under any circumstance, I predict, but artillery may be employed here shortly, in the caulron battle that is about to unfold in southeast Ukraine.
If the 15 Nazi brigades trapped there refuse to surrender, then yes, everything will be used, except bombs.
This is a new kind of warfare the Russians are waging. They have been working on it since Georgia. Chechnya and Syria is where it was honed, and Ukraine is where there are seeking to to perfect it.
It is the exact opposite of Shock and Awe, Tom. For you not to be allowed to see it the intricacies of it, makes me despair.
I’ll give you this before I go – I’m busy at the moment, studying history as it unfolds around me.
On day two, i phone videos popped on YouTube (gone now, of course), civilians driving past two Ukraine Army regimental suppy columns abandoned along their highways, One just north of Crimea, the other not identified. The first, 15 kilometeres long, the second, 12 kilometers long. In both cases, lead vehicles at various points in the column, shot up, all armour killed, neat holes in their side, any vehicle seeking escape, destroyed, everything else, left untouched. 85% of the column vehicles, left unscratched.
Contrast that with the Highway of Death in Iraq in ’91, where we caught a “column in the open” filled with civilian vehicles and spent the next ten 10 hours slaughtering everything and everybody in it.
The Russians are leaving forensic battlefield evidence behind, for Americans like you, who may still have a modicum of objectivity left, when all this is over.
No free fire zones have been established. Bridges are intact. Lights are still on, Phones still work. Gas has not been cut. Lay down your weapons, you are free to go. Woman and children first, men to searched, but not to be detained (unless, of course).
The decision is ours Tom, the Russians are leaving to it us, do you want to us create your specialty, kill boxes, We can do it tomorrow, but we don’t want to.
The “stalled rolling logistical failure” column that ran out of gas trying to inch it’s way toward Kyiv, reached it on Day 1, is well past it, and growing, by the hour, and its purpose at the moment seem to be the blocking force to West. Road and rail corriders that cut through it, heading toward Poland, still open.
The column is sitting there intentionally for our satellites to watch it grow. Phase two, the clearing of the Donbass pocket, can no longer be negotiated, but Phase three, that’s why they’ve been sitting there for 9 days. .
Stop watching our state run media Tom, it has gone batshit insane, a simple reflection of our government that runs it.
The decision is ours. But we are not goin to make the right call, I fear.
Note: Henry Hill my estimation was always the finest military mind on any battlefied he found himself on, and he found himself on a lot.
The first thing he would note about this operation, after achieving complete air supremecy within two hours, Russian forces quickly tip toed in. The second, they accomplished almost all of their objectives up until Day 10 with their 3rd string and worst equipment. The third thing, this plan has must have been on the board for years.
You really should read Ralph Peters, Tom. You really, really should.
This is happening everywhere. Reinforced brigade, looks like, probably told they had five minutes to pack up and leave. Kindergarten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef7VATrCga4
In my view, rockets and bombs are varieties of artillery.
I’ll give you rockets, those have been in play, air to surface almost exclusively, but rocket systems like say, the Russian Katyushkas of WWII, no, not yet, and those were pea shooters compared to today’s stuff, on all sides.
Bombs, no, I won’t give you that one. Bombs at this point, with cruise missiles criss crissing a battlezone nearly size of Texas, I think must defined as vertically.droped munitions, and all of Russia’s bombers and most of the fighter bomers are still parked on runways in Belarus or Russia.
At the lowest tactical level, the Russians are losing tanks, numbers uncertain, and plenty of lesser armour, and best I can tell, almost all of all it is the result of the “bazookas.” There are dozens of hyper-variaties of them now, many of them “stand-of” weapons, fire and forget from a mile away, but in close, manuevers haven’t changed, meaning some insanely brave Ukraine soldier has to step out, aim, and know if he survives that moment, he might not survive the next. Plenty of video available still.
But the level above the deck, gunship support, Russian helicopters are without a doubt faced murderous fire early. I’ve seen seen 7 kills, all surface to air, all presumably hand held. Two chutes, the other five pilots go down in the proverbial ball of flames.
But, the reason I feel this is the one “weak link” perhaps, in the overall operation plan is not kills, it’s that I haven’t seen one vid of Russian gunships in formation, from five to twenty five, where at least one of them is not dropping flares.
But this was all through Day 4 to 5, and video is becoming scarce, so Russian pilots might be flying less suicidal missions at this point.
At the operational level, the war is over. It’s all about blood now. Speculation, I believe 10,000 Russian killed is a very real possibility, and this is for them, is a “police action,” same as ours in Korea. Except if you lived above ground in the North in ’52-53, you would not live long.
At level above operations, sanctions and banking let’s call it, I’ll leave that to Michael Hudson by way of Yves Smith at NCap.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/03/america-shoots-its-own-dollar-empire-in-economic-attack-on-russia.html
Note: Read Caine at Gettysburg Tom. Hill sees it all the night before, he is only man who is certain if Lee comes, he must come up the middle, based on the dispostions of both armies, and nothing else, there is no room for gut feelings in war, and he will create his own kill box based on size and angle of the attack force when he sees it in the morning, and Meade, the main character in the novel, who has wavered a bit, will get the victory Hill believe he deserves.
Because the man who Peter’s feels is the least appreciated soldier in American history, is George Gordon Meade.
You were right by the way and I was wrong, about almost everything related to this “crisis.” I almost took a mocking tone over the years, and probably did(apologies), for you pointing out all ineptitudes of the US military at the moment. The continuing F-35 debacle being a major one, of course, but I remember brushing aside one of your pieces about how we couldn’t even get the elevators to work on our newest carrier, and so much I’m sure.
I thought all that didn’t matter, for two reasons, one we are outspending the Russian Federation at a ten to one clip, minimum, and if you include Nato, it’s closer to 30 to 1, so no matter how much waste and stupidity, who cares? Russia simply could not make up that gap no matter how efficient their defense spending was. especially considering their spending started out at the zero bound (!) in the late ’90s, and has even been in slight decline in recent years.
Impossible it seemed to me, that we simply couldn’t overwhelm them volume, no matter what kind of non-nuclear warfare was imployed.
Two, I was right about this, thought, the Russians fear our First Strike potential so much, they would risk eveything to avoid allowing ABMs into Ukraine, but I never thought we would push it that far. I really didn’t.
But we did. And now the Russians have made it clear; you can try to bleed us, with your Ukoproxies, the mercenary brigades forming in Poland (its Blackwater time), your sanctions, your attack on our central bank, turn us into the pariahs of the world, but we don’t care, we will bleed, and if this goes nuclear, well as Putin stated,”of what worth is a world to us without Russia in it.”
A link to an honorable American officer. Col. MacGregor, one of last ones left its seems. He was interviewed on Fox, Day 2, given 3 minutes, and he told us, this war is over, the Russians have achieved all their primary objectives. They only thing in question now, is how it will take them to mop up. On Day 5 or 6, he was given 2 minutes, again on Fox, and he told us, this war was over from Day 1, the only surprise is how gently they went in. We would’ve gone in much harder. When asked about the great hero Zelensky, he said, Zelensky is a puppet, the only thing heroic he could do now, is surrender.
MacGregor won’t be seen again I suspect, on televsion. 5 minutes Tom. That all the truth really, that the American people have been exposed to since this started.
I can provide links to both, but my quotes are near verbatim, and outside the point of this particular comment. I was wrong, and you were right.
US Ret. Col. Douglas MacGregor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3QX9YtjxCE
Note: The Russians were crushed by the sanctions of ’14. Cost them Federation trillions. They vowed never again. They lauched invernal investigations, and found their own central bank was repsonsible for 80% of the losses.
They’re are no longer neo-liberals over there. Their central bank has been leashed, autarky is the watchword, and as for their oligarchs, if they don’t play ball now, the least of their worries will having having the West seize their yachts and manshions and other pointless baubles.
As for Putin, if this invasion proves a failure, and this is the first of my speculations, he will be shot and replaced, because there are whole lot Russians in the superstructure that think he’s the reason their nation is in this mess.
A neo-liberal parading around the Kremlin as the First amongst Oligarchs, playing Neville Chamberlain in international affairs for more than decade. Well, he better perform now.
As for us, we must learn, no matter painful it is.
Apologies for the spelling, mistakes and missing words, but my spell check isn’t working, and I think I’m developing late stage dyslexia, or something. It’s from 20 plus years of gorging on internet information, I believe. I speed read on the internet, by skipping words, sentences, paragraphs, even entire pieces at this point, looking for the nuggets.
But your pieces never, and off the internet, nothing changed.
I agree with your general premise. There is, however, one notable exception: Napoleon. As a young artillery officer, he developed what might best be called the ‘surprise cannon attack’. He was a tactical mastermind with a deep knowledge of cartography and mathematics – a true military scientist. Moving his guns with great speed and silence, often at night, he was able to bombard the foe’s camp with what we might today call ‘shock and awe’. In disarray, the surprised enemy troops would typically run for cover, usually into the arms of waiting battalions of French infantry. He won many a battle this way, catapulting him into the higher echelons of the army. Later on, in more conventional campaigns in Spain, Russia and especially Belgium he was somewhat less successful. But his early artillery offences became the stuff of legend.
My point is that if he had simply bombarded the camps, without the close support of the infantry, he would not have won anything. I’m talking about the fondness military strategists have for bombardment, on its own.
There’s no question that coordinated assaults work best. It seems odd, though, that an officer with an artillery background should end up running the whole shebang…OK, so he ultimately lost!
“Why the Hell aren’t these batteries firing McGilvery, You taking a goddamn Mexican siesta? My men are going through Hell, and your scratching your balls …”
“General Hunt has a scheme of fires, sir. The time hasn’t arrived for these guns to open. Your own guns are wasting rounds they’re going to need.”
“Don’t tell me how to run my guns, McGilvery. Just open fire, damn you. That’s an order.”
“McGilver refused to become flustered: “I take my orders from General Hunt, sir.”
Hancock exploded, voice roaring over the racket back on his line. “I outrank every whoreson cocksucker in the artillery. I ORDER you to open fire.”
“I must deline to obey your oder sir.”
From Caine at Gettysburg
Hunt liked Hancock personally, and believed him to be a tremendous officer. But he also knew, Hancock was not seeing the modern battlefield properly, and knew the night before, that Hancock would demand pointless bombardments when the proceedings got underway.
Very few where seeing it, one either side, especially at the top. One Hunt’s great disappointments during the war, was how easily and consistently he dominated the Condfederate’s guns, because so many of those gun’s operators, were his former students.
He believed though, his teaching skills were not in question, he had seen what his students could do, on those rare occassions where they given the freedom to exercise local battlefield command.
Once the Condferate pre-assault bombardment began, Hunt knew he would get two aimed mid-range volleys, three precision rifle shots, and the battle would be over. The close range musket fire, the canister, the bayonet, the clubbing, the biting and the gouging of the eyes, that would surely follow? A pointless waste of human activity.
That Lee still could not see, 2 years into the war, what enflading rifled cannon fire could do to a mass of human bodies, was inconcievable to him.
But he welcomed it.
Henry Hunt was years ahead of his time, and he knew.it, but he also knew, that the artform he had nearly perfected, with the instruments he had been given, due to random chance, fate, or God perhaps, that had turned him into the best killer of men on the battlefields of his era, would always go unappreciated.
Just an opinion. And btw, I agree with you both. :)
Nice, thanks.
Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of modern rockets and bombs. Their purpose is to produce profits for the MIC. The more they are purchased the greater their success.
Japan had been repeatedly fire bombed with destruction equal to that at Hiroshima and Nagasaki without drawing surrender. There is evidence that what moved them to surrender to the US is that the Russians were enroute and they chose instead to be occupied by the US.
Agee.
The Russians shipped an Army of some strength across Siberia to Mongolia after Berlin fell, rolled down into northern China on the 9th of August 1945, envolped the Japanese Kwangtun Army (31 Divisions, 900,000 men) that was defending something (?), shattered it on the first day, by the third it no longer exsited, 600,000 prisoners were rounded up, and the Red Army then proceeded to the Korean coast.
Necessary vessels were being brought in, to facilitate the crossing of the Sea of Japan by the Red Army, but the surrender of Japan to the United States took place on the 16th, officially carried on the 2nd of September, and that was the that, the end of war.
Now did Japanese fear the atomic bombs more than the Red Army? My conclusion has always been no, for the reasons you alluded to above, all of their major cities had seen the rubble pounded twice, and most of the rest fit into the category of completely destroyed.
Now what government gives a shit about bombs and cities, at that point, with the Red Army of ’45 on your doorstep?
I saw another Col. MacGregor interview. That’s three now. Fox. 2 minutes, up to 7 minutes total now, from 4 or 5 days ago. Same thing, war’s over, give Russia a buffer, its serves our interests, spilling more blood is pointless, and the host asked how Poland might feel about this, having Russia on its border, and MacGregor sighed, continued on as if the host wasn’t there, and explained to the greater audience, there is a river in Ukraine called the Dneiper …
Can link, if needed.
Very insightful comments Max. Tom’s point made me recall a stat I read in the 1990’s from a peace promoting, anti war NGO.
In the 20th century the ratio of dead soldiers to dead civilians was/is 10 to 1. For every dead solider you get 10 dead moms, kids, grandpas.
It’s rare to hear any mention of Putin-Russia that is about Putin and/or Russia and not about another American or Canadian’s feelings about Putin-Russia – which you better damn-well-share or we will do everything in our power to get you canceled. Hysterical cyber witch hunts that have exceeded the Russiagate cyber witch hunt. Cancel culture 2.0 These people will happily ruin a man’s life over the mildest of opinions. In their world there is one & only one correct answer. Hell they’ll cancel you for asking a question because your ignorance of orthodoxy IS blasphemy & all blasphemers must be punished/canceled.
I wish I was being 100% sarcastic. I believe there are people in N America who don’t share the hysterics & people who are ignorant & want to ask questions, but they feel intimated, so stay silent, which is the goal of cancel culture & all political bully groups past & present.
Putin is evil & it starts & ends there. Putin is evil IS their explanation.
Yabut what about some historical context & comparison? Don’t need it when they’re evil. In fact, the words Putin & Evil are now interchangeable in the English language.
Google’s slogan now has two versions:
#1, Don’t be Evil
#2, Don’t be Putin
Evil-Putin, Putin-Evil. They’re monozygotic twins. identical at the genetic level.
Good to hear from you again. I hope you are well.
A back to back -26 and -22 r collapse on Day 4 or 5 for linking to MacGregor. The Russian bot, spy, dupe, stuge attacks were expected, but I’d hoped for a stronger defense in the voting, a fight maybe to inch it back toward -15. Maybe a even supportive reply, someone else who isn’t bothered all that much by the 2 minutes of hate. ;)
Anyway, the post was pulled within the hour. Speculation on my part: “the mods” did not want to see a -100 go on the board.
That would draw to much attention.
Saker and the Moon, which thanks to you I’ve come to know quite well, believe this all coming down to the Pentagon. They’re are as mystified as I am about the silence of the generals, but believe they are the only sane thing left in America, and are trying to coordinate some way out this.
Many on the other side, Saker, Moon, and several others, seem to have far more faith in our military than I do. They will step in some way, shoot of a coup, and stop the madness. Let’s hope they are as right about this, as they have been about everything else so far.
I am hope there are no bans on Ovechkin, or anyone else. He deserves his shot to catch The Great One, and I hope Wayne still agrees.
To give you an idea, Tom. I thought you would very much like to see this. This is the reality of the situation, based on mountains of evidence pouring in from every nook and cranny of Ukraine. The map I looked at in the NYT this morning, I don’t know what to say anymore, but … “what are we doing to ourselves?”
http://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Selection_196.jpg
All those red blobs, everything is still on. Gas, powers, water, sewage, phones, etc … Think about how much planning went in to just that, and the precsion of the targeting has been remarkable. “They went in too gently” said MacGregor. That’s what he was talking about. All the damage we’ve seen so far, I mean I kept seeing the same buildings over and over for days on end and one was a Police Cyberwarfare HQ or someshit, is less than a couple of nights of Shock in Awe in Baghad.,
The Column rolled past Kyiv Day 2, the power plant on the lower Dneiper was taken Day 7, the pocket in Donbas is now closed.
What’s happening in the northeast is mystery to me. Seems like a waste of strength. Those provinces are not heavily Russian speaking , so something political perhaps that I don’t know about.
The Column is huge, and where it’s going nobody knows, but the good stuff seems to be in it. Tank guard units for sure, and I could be wrong, but there to be seemed to be miles and miles of S-400s in a line, the surface to air batteries considered the best in the world.
Pure speculation. But it would make sense if aircraft start coming at em from the west.
Are they going to cut the Ukraine in half? Everyone on all sides thought it would end East of the Dneiper, but that column is way to the west of the river now.
All by battalions dude. That’s what seems to be the consensus. 400 to 500 strong but mostly tankless mobile units seeking villages, towns, bridges, road junctures, meeting up, doing it again, like a spiderweb. By pass cities, heavier follow up units surround.and hold.
Keep all local political stuctures intact, unless someone is on the list.
All the while taking brutal losses.
Are they gonna leave Ukraine as a “rump state,” just as Obama called their entire nation a “rump state.” I think so now.
The only time I got pissed at you in here, is over MMT. Russia’s success here, if they achieve it, won’t be due to captured land in Ukraine, it be the result of capturing their central bank, lilerally, in 2014, and making it theirs.
At the second highest level, this is a battle of neo-liberal private banking vs public banking and nation-state self-sufficiency.
At the highest level, as someone posted r collapse, “Do you really believe that the US would go down without firing its nukes first?”
Everyone on the YouTubeLeft is screaming for airbattle/war over the skies of Ukraine, except Jimmy Dore and the Grayzone and a couple of others, and everyone to the right of them is screaming even louder.
Never thought I’d say it, but someone has to step in.
I could of course be completely wrong in my analysis of the Russian operational goals in Ukraine, and the progress, or the lack thereof they’ve made so far in Ukraine.
Breaking Points, part of what might be considered, YouTubeLeft I think it is fair to claim, as I followed them for than 2 years, has a viewpoint on these matters quite counter to my own; that this was a badly planned invasion, the Russian Army didn’t take into considereration that it was heavily reliant on rail, that Rasputitsa, the muddy season, was bound to hinder mobility, as it has so often in the past, mud so deep it “bit the Germans in the ass in the Battle of Stalingrad,” as their tanks and other equipment got stuck, causing, “2 million to freeze to death in a field in Stalingrad,” or that the “logistics” and “tactics” of the Ukraine Army are so far proving superior to the Russians, in spite of the fact that all of their major cities have been surrounded, except for Odessa, and the Russian have apparently turned off the power to 1000 villages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNj9jLvueNA
The cutting of power to the villages is the one that interests me. I think this may be true, in part at least, because the Russian Army clearly would prefer that the caulron battles take place, outside of city limits, for many reasons, first, that any shelling or bombarding,, missiles – air to ground or cruise, rockets, mortors, thermobarics and fighter and helicopter gunship cannon fire will prove more effective in the open spaces, and two, as Col. Douglass MacGregor informed us on Day 1, the Russians, in the exact same fashion as us, will not engage in street fighting when the time comes, which he expected, would come in less than 14 days.
I will continue my efforts Tom, for as long as you allow. I’m trying to communicate in anyway I can, even if to folks like Saagar and Chrystal, who clearly haven’t done their homework, but it could prove helpfull in preventing WWIII.
Breaking Points:
A No Fly Zone anywhere near eastern Ukraine airspace, can only be established after you win a WAR.
Chrystal and Saagar, unless you not clear on this, there is more conventional firepower in eastern Ukraine right now, than at anytime since the Red Army lauched the final attack on Berlin in ’45, and 40,000 artillery pieces started that final battle off.
In Gulf War 1, the US has similar firepower available, but mostly chose to degrade their kill box, the one with nearly 700,000 Iraqi soldiers trapped inside, with B-52s flying over from either Florida, or Diego.
When that process was deemed to have been completed, it turned out there was so little left of the Iraqi Army that when we rolled over it with our tanks and Bradley’s, our two wings were moving so fast, that we smashed into each other, resulting in 90% of our casualties that night being do to friendly fire.
That was 31 years ago, and conventional have gotten a lot better since.
If villages are being cleared in Ukraine; I would suggest, it is for the simple reason that is better to be a temporary refugee on the road, than to be trapped in a kill box – or a cauldron, which is the Russian name for these things.
This does not have to happen. The Russian Federation is making it perfecly clear,* step by step, how far must we go? And at each step, the choice is ours.
*In ther era of satellites, every move the Russians make, even at the “tactical level,” one man with a gun, is being made under the watchful gaze of the Pentagon.
Last one Tom, Promise. You forbearance with my ramblings on this thread has been an inspiration to me. It’s sounds so fucking corny, because to me the concept of nation-states should be an absurdity, we are hunter-gatherers, but it was people like you that made me proud be an American. And still do.
I end with Ret. Col. Douglas MacGregor, for the simple reason that he has been the only one allowed a platform that has told us the truth. That fact that I must give a shout out to Tucker Carlsen, for giving Col. MacGregor the time necessary to this, 4 minutes, is a twist in the matrix that would’ve been beyond my imagining only 15 days ago. But it must done. Honor demands it.
From one American to another; Mr. Carlsen, for your fearless and devoted service to our country in its hour of need, I sincerely and deeply thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJdhqWFW8hc
I break my promise. Easily the best vid yet for understanding which way this could go.
Conventional war in Ukraine, 2022, exacly the same in so many ways as conventional war in Ukraine 1941-44, yet, completely different. For one thing, the drones are everywhere, as is all seeing GPS.
The restraint so far has been remarkable, in my opinion, but as I wrote on Day 2 after witnessing the shot up 15 kilometer long Ukraine column, only 15% of the vehilces killed, this won’t last long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfRcmJTAouM