So basically what I said, in the future
. I am talking about a specific UK problem now in that we have virtually the same population as France on a land mass just less a third of the size. Now if we take Scotland out of the equation (possible independence) that’s 5.5mill or so less people but a third of the landmass.
So unlike countries like USA, Australia even Russia we don’t have masses of unpopulated real estate to site grid capable battery storage facilities nor huge solar parks either really
.
Anyway back on to topic I saw a news article that the Polish Migs to US has been turned down by Biden (no surprise there tbf)
Defence experts suggested that by offering the planes to the US, rather than directly to Ukraine, Poland was seeking to avoid being drawn into direct conflict with Russia
inews.co.uk
And Russia fails to take air control
Liz Truss has unveiled new powers to detain any Russian aircraft that fly or land in the UK
inews.co.uk
There was a YouTube video I saw a few years back by a British Physics professor (I think at Oxford) who ran the math and came to the conclusion that for a country like the UK, it was going to be impossible to completely leave fossil fuels behind, even with massive cutbacks in usage without adopting more nuclear power.
He did say that some countries with a lot of sun and open land might be able to convert entirely to solar and wind, but for the UK it was impossible. Even putting windmills everywhere possible. Windmills can't be on top of one another or they take power from the windmill close by.
The Russian armed forces tend to use junior commissioned officers to fill the roles that Western armed forces use senior non-commissioned officers for. This is especially the case in the more technical areas. It has always been this way, at least since WW2.
How would the Russians be getting their marines off of those vessels in the Black Sea down south, and up to the north ready to assualt Kiev, along with their equipment ? The Russians simply do not have the logistics ability to do that. Those marines will either make a landing on the Black Sea coast, deship where they started back in Crimea and flow in by land to the southern or eastern front, or land near Maripol in Sea of Azov. Or (best) stay out at sea.
They can offload them at one of their ports, put them on a train and they would be around the north side of Ukraine in less than a day. Then feed them into the front by putting them into a convoy to the front.
Though the Marines may have already been committed. Their vehicles use a 'V' symbol and a lot of knocked out vehicles with those symbols were seen in the north last week.
It is a lot more sophisticated than this. I run some social media networks. For many years we have been observing trollfarms 'curating' suites of 'safe' profiles. So (say) opening a FB account, joining a sewing club, then a yachting club, then a (etc). Then finally - after in some cases years of profile development - starting to make active use of those profiles one they have become insiduously inserted into their target networks as trusted agents. It appears that the Russian (and Chinese) trollmasters subcontract the development/curation task out to sub-contractors who are typically either located in, or managed by: India, Pakistan, Israel, Arab-states, Vietnam which is probabally a reflection of the economics of the failure rate of developing a profile to maturity. I have to say that the Facebook/Meta empire is deeply and cynically complicit in enabling this judging by the platform development decisions I have observed.
Not nipping this in the bud at an early stage has real costs - witness Trump, Brexit, Duharte, Orban, Le Pen, etc.
Yes, I've heard about the curated fake accounts. That's what I was talking about with the human managed accounts. If they are farming out that work to other countries, it might be possible to break some of those troll farms with the help of those county's governments. Now that Russia has shown itself to be as dangerous as it is, many countries are probably more willing to help now than 2 weeks ago.
To change the subject a bit, a quote from retired general Hertling:
"Amateur armies study tactics, pros study logistics."
I've been trying to find information on the Russian support apparatus. I found this article:
Feeding the Bear: A Closer Look at Russian Army Logistics and the Fait Accompli - War on the Rocks
Most of it is more focused on a hypothetical war with NATO, which I think is a Putin fantasy at this point, but the author goes into detail about how their supply network functions.
Their core supply unit is the material-technical support brigade. Each one is made up of 2X battalions of 150 cargo trucks with 50 trailers each and 260 special purpose trucks. That means a full strength brigade has 560 vehicles.
The Russians have a variety of trucks, but a common one is the Ural 4320 which is just shy of 25 feet long. If the convoy was single file and
each vehicle was spaces one truck length distance, the 40 mile convoy could contain 4224 Ural trucks. We know the convoy is three vehicles wide in places, but there are also some gaps longer than 25 feet and some vehicles longer than 25 feet, but just entertaining this math, that's over 7 support brigades.
The entire Russian army has 10 of these brigades spread across all the military districts. That convoy could contain 70% of all the support vehicles in the Russian army.
Also this assumes all the brigades were at full strength before the war began, which considering how poor the Russians have been performing, it's possible they didn't have enough trucks to fill out all 10 brigades with their full complement.
The article also points out that with the heavy use of rocket artillery by the Russians, that puts a heavy burden on their trucks to deliver enough rockets to keep them firing. One salvo from an MRLS requires an entire truck load of rockets. Fire three salvos a day requires three truck loads a day, per launcher.
The Russian army is built around defense of Russia where their units will usually have constant access to the rail network to stay supplied. Once they get beyond their rail network, their units are in supply trouble very quickly.
The Ukrainians knew this and destroyed the rail network at the border as the Russians rolled in. The Russians may be trying to fix the rail network, but the Ukrainians aren't going to make it easy for them.
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