Russia-Ukraine SITREP for 07 APR 2023 23:59* - Just Hit Enter Edition

Those are all really good points. I agree the Abrams is a logistical nightmare. I remember in the gulf War seeing fuel tanker after fuel tanker stretching out as far as the eye could see just to keep the abrams running. I thought how on earth is Ukraine going to be able to do that? I know the tanks we are supposed to send don't have the old gun but my complaint was that we are bringing out old mothballed versions and rebuilding them without the best armor,etc. Honestly, it is perfectly ridiculous to think Russia doesn't know EXACTLY what our armor is constructed of. A 21 year old goofy low level national guardsmen was able to get hold of ultra sensitive documents and place them on the internet for months before anyone even noticed. This guy wasn't a high level NSA or CIA. He was an airmen first class national guard in the middle of nowhere!!! Airman fist class could access these documents!!My complaint is that we are not giving ukraine our best under the delusion that Russia doesn't know about them. Here is another crazy theory of mine-russia was all in a rush to produce a stealth aircraft. They even made a prototype. Now they seem to have been losing interest. Why? A Russian engineer was the one who created the concept of stealth which we used to make all of our aircraft. Russian engineers are some if the best in the world. I think the reason they are losing interest is that Russia has already thwarted stealth technology. We spend billions on stealth when I suspect Russia likely has already made stealth technology useless. The reason that our government gives for not giving ukraine our best is that we don't want Russia to know our "secrets" when they know perfectly well, as our national guard goof showed, that our intelligence security is woefully, comically, criminally, laughably inadequate and the Russians likely know everything as we likely know everything about the russians. Given that, I wonder what the real reason is that Ukraine doesn't get our best.

Tanks are coming - just will take more time

Thank you. I agree. I think these are indeed difficult times and the pandemic accelerated the accelerationists of all stripes. My fear is what they feel entitled to trample over in their quest to impose their views. The minute people begin to think there is nothing worth preserving unless their tribe is on top, whether inside the country or vis a vis another country, all the architecture begins to crumble. And you do not appreciate those beams and that roof until it is beyond repair. In a way this war, aside from being a war of liberation for Ukraine, is a metaphor for that. Just look at the ruins of Marinka....

AnaR737

I’m really confused about the leaked docs regarding Ukraine, us not sending tanks?, what is the impact on war? You are probably working on it and I appreciate you distilling this. Thanks.

I made my personal opinion known on Twitter. Given the second leak (there was a third drop today) is marked as not for foreign consumption, it means the phone call is coming from inside the house. That means only people in the Pentagon and those in the legislative and executive branches with proper clearance had access. My personal view this leak is from Congress - which is not to say it was specifically a Senator or Congresscritter. It could be a staffer, and I will not pass judgment on political parties. Even if these were leaked by a foreign nation, the chain of custody broke, in my opinion, in Congress, not within the Pentagon. The first drop seemed more like an attempt to hurt US-Ukraine relationships and fuel the OMG, World War III, narrative. The second drop, only based on second-hand information from other journalists, feels more like the act of an accelerationist who wants to significantly harm the U.S. military and its allies. I may think my country (remember, 52% of our audience is outside of the United States) is a hot mess, to put it mildly. This is why, as the head writer, I will provide context to the crappy things Russia does, like in Africa, that European nations and the United States did equally crappy things. I don't believe for one-second teaching accurate history is "woke," and Russia is people's exhibit A of what happens when you ignore all of the bad sides of your history. Forget repeating it. You become what you hate. We don't discuss what is happening in the Russian education system and the videos showing it because it's a line too far from me. I deal with enough trauma - I can't bear to review and authenticate the poison being fed into Russia's Generation Alpha brains. This is real Hitler Youth, Third Reich stuff - terrifying and heartbreaking and exceeds Stalinism. The point is - I remain deeply patriotic. Nationalism is global and taught from a young age. Nations don't go, "Hey boys and girls and theys, here is why you should hate your own country!" For me, love of your country includes admitting your country's problems and mistakes. All of them - not "their mistakes" because we don't ever make mistakes, only "they" make mistakes. Deeply personal post. I was once supportive of the death penalty, but once I became convinced that mistakes have been made in a punishment where the only acceptable error rate is 0.000000000000000000000000%, I became against it. There are no "whoops" with capital punishment. Later I learned how it is disproportionately applied and what a hot mess our legal system is in general (over 85% of US criminal cases end in plea deals because if we attempted to prosecute every case in court with a jury of our peers, the US legal system would collapse on itself). This? Personally - my view - if these leaks were about accelerationism and as bad as reported, I could be convinced to make an exception. Screaming we're going to be at war with China within five years (I don't buy that, by the way) and then leaking U.S. contingency plans and ongoing intelligence gathering operations, troop deployments, force strength, and projections was a horrifically hateful act that will likely get people killed in the here and now. The biggest problem accelerations don't understand is twofold. One. They think they'll be immune when it all goes down. We'll wipe out enemy X like cockroaches because they are weak and fearful, yet capable of destroying us hence why we must destroy them (classic fascism talking point). Ask the accelerationists within Ukraine how things are going nine years later in the Donbas. Sure, Pushilin will go, "Great - for me." But what about his hardcore supporters living in Russian Mir accelerationism now? And how great is it for Pushilin if the guy can't walk outside out of fear of a Ukrainian VOG being dropped on his head by Magyar and his unit? Or how he probably has an intern start his car after the FSB searches it over. Or how we can't stay in one place for too long. Ya, sounds like a utopia to me. Two. What comes after? People who gain power don't suddenly give it up. People that rule through fear and hate don't stop once enemy X has been destroyed. They move on to the next enemy. Then the next. People supporting, "Yes, to create our new utopia, we must burn it all down. Only then can we have exactly what we want." forget that the police, court, and enforcement structures they created will never give up that power. They will find new ways not just to hold it but expand it. It always ends the same way. In ashes. Cambodia Afghanistan Russia circa 1917 Germany circa 1928ish Those are the easy ones. The call is coming from inside the house, and I'll close that while not a 1:1 parallel to the Weimar Republic, the existing institutions of the representative republic are being used against itself. That parallel is spot on.

So a couple of things. As early as a year ago Ukraine explicitly said - we don't want Abrams. The biggest reason cited was they're too chonky for Ukrainian infrastructure. The M1A1s that are being sent are not "obsolete" or first-generation units with the 105 mm main gun. As I understand it, they're long gone. The problem is the armor on the M1A2 uses DU and is considered a secret. The M1A1 still has better sites, night vision, sensors, and stabilization, can still fire on the fly, and has already proven vastly superior to the T-72 (and, by proxy, the T-80). The T-90M has not proven to be the promised super weapon, and there are maybe 50 left. We've kept quiet on the Russian quotes on the M1A1 pointing to the original version because - those are gone. Let them think they're coming with the 105 MM gun and the earlier defects that were figured out. When Ukraine figured out that no matter what, their existing supply of tanks would run out because of parts availability, the Abrams were added to their wish list. The arguments against the Abrams went away, with Ukraine receiving the Challenger 2. It's chonky - the Challenger 2 is chonkier. It's thirsty - the Challenger 2 is just as thirsty. It's complex - the Challenger 2 is complex. It's going to be too difficult from a parts and sustainment standpoint - the Challenger is going to be challenging. It's got a turbine engine. Going to take Ukraine a long time to figure that out. Ukrainian engineers literally designed and built Russia's turbine-powered T-80 tanks. The problem with providing the more modern M1A2 was the requirement to strip the secret armor off and essentially rebuild the hulls. That will take more than a year. Now Leopard 1 tanks - those are obsolete - and will be more on par with a T-72 with the German engineering tax, both good and bad. But just as with the T-62 tanks Russia pulled into service, a tank is a tank and is better than forcing an infantry fighting vehicle into main battle tank service. Unless the IFV is a Ukrainian BTR-4 because - damn - but that's a different story.

I Hope the pentagon is looking at Trumpkins as the source of the leaks. Anything to make Biden look bad is their motto

Awhile back (September or so, IIRC), Ukraine themselves said that they didn't want the M1 Abrams, due to its substantial and different maintenance needs; they were more interested in Leopard 1s. Well, the US committed some M1s to Ukraine to get Germany unstuck, and now they're supplying Leopard 2s. It's all messy and a bit undignified, but, they're finally getting the Leopards, and that matters more than the Abrams. That said, I concur with your frustration for slowness for other systems - why aren't we starting training on F-16s? - but, half of the time, these things end up having a pretty good reason emerge after a few months.

Very disappointed that not only has the USA not sent the 31 Abram tanks we promised but we haven't even started training the Ukrainians on them!! Now it sounds like the tanks we will be sending, if we ever do, will be stripped down obsolete first generation models. Those 31 tanks are less than 1% of the tanks we have. We can deploy tanks anywhere in the world within 72 hours. If we wanted a division of tanks at the north pole theywould be there Tuesday. Honestly I don't think Ukraine will ever get them as we don't want Russia to copy the technology. Which is the same reason we dont send our best drones, planes, missiles, etc. We just said we would send them so Germany would send their Leopards. It seems like USA is not really fully committed to Ukraine winning this war. It's as if we have some other unannounced agenda. We want Russia weakened but not too weak. We want putin back in his box but not toppled. Meanwhile Ukrainians die while we play politics. Sorry, just frustrated and had to vent.