supersquirrel

The Russian air force recently dropped 250 glide bombs on a single treeline near Andriivka in Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, potentially making that roughly 3-km-long copse the most bombed place on Earth at the time.

It didn’t help. The Russian regiments and brigades the air force was supporting with its intensive—some might say “insane”—aerial bombardment have been defeated and forced to withdraw from the area.

The Russian KAB glide bombs, which range 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings and satellite guidance, rained down as a trio of Russian units—the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade—were “really struggling near Kindrativka,” just outside Andriivka three miles south of the border with Russia, according to analyst Moklasen.

...

Shortly after drone-harried Ukrainian forces retreated from western Russia’s Kursk Oblast in mid-March, bringing to an abrupt end a controversial seven-month Ukrainian incursion, Russian units including the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade counterattacked—and crossed into Sumy.

But they counterattacked on foot, bringing with them virtually zero combat vehicles. While far from unusual as the Russians hold back their surviving armor, the Sumy operation underscored the risks that accompany infantry-first tactics.

...

Shrugging off the bombardment, mechanized Ukrainian troops flanked the de-mechanized Russians near Kindrativka last week. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted Ukrainian counterattacks in Sumy that could “complicate the enemy’s advance and threaten the encirclement of Russian troops operating in Andriivka.”

This in a nutshell is why Russia has such a big problem having exhausted all of its armor and even unarmored vehicles at a logistical scale. The media always wants to understand warfare as two action figures fighting from two different teams in a battle where they get mashed together and the stronger one wins. It is the marvel/superhero narrative, it is the narrative military arms companies want to sell about weapon systems like the F35 that are incomprehensibly expensive in TV commercials to the public.

Warfare is spatial however, it includes context, in general the media can only see warfare as "Tank vs AI Drone = Tank Lose" and that is where the analysis stops, but understand that no matter how the calculus of that equation changes the actual process of war is about maneuver, about placing your forces in places that existentially threaten the enemy forces and then going to battle when the enemy tries to deny your maneuver.

Without armor, you cannot maneuver. This doesn't just place your forces at existential risk when they are on the offensive, it places your forces at risk no matter WHAT they are doing because they can easily be flanked and encircled by mechanized forces of a much smaller number as this quoted example illustrates.

Despite the leadership of Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ), the largest defense conglomerate in Poland, expressing doubt that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) use 4,000 to 9,000 rounds per day, this does not change the fact that Poland is indeed expanding ammunition production. Moreover, they are doing so based on strategic approaches.

In particular, in an interview with the Polish publication Money, where the doubt was expressed, PGZ Vice President Arkadiusz Bąk explained how PGZ plans to implement a rather ambitious plan to increase the production of 155mm ammunition ninefold — from the current 20,000 large-caliber shells per year to 150,000–180,000 units annually.

From a previous article

https://en.defence-ua.com/news/polish_defense_ministry_and_top_arms_maker_dont_believe_ukraine_spends_40009000_artillery_shells_a_day-15154.html

Bąk stated that PGZ plans to produce between 150,000 and 180,000 units of 155mm ammunition annually — roughly 12,500 to 15,000 shells per month. These will be modern, base-bleed extended-range shells capable of reaching targets at 40 kilometers.

However, when asked whether such figures are sufficient — given that Ukraine is reported to be using between 4,000 and 6,000 155mm shells per day, and up to 9,000 during intensified combat — Bąk dismissed these numbers as "significantly inflated."

"If one were to calculate how many howitzers each [side] has and their so-called service life, meaning the number of shots they can fire, it would turn out that all of them would need to be repaired every week. These numbers are significantly inflated, as are all wartime data. The data we receive from our military, which is verifiable through access to the source, is difficult to correlate with Ukrainian military information, or even journalistic information," Bąk said.

This is bitterly funny, I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine inflated it's numbers somewhat (then again I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't) but I don't think they are off an order of magnitude here or anything, I think Ukraine has more artillery than it is letting on and it is firing as absolutely many shells as it can. I think Polish military personnel might be rudely surprised if they hung out around a Ukrainian artillery battery for awhile, or rode in a self propelled artillery vehicle for a couple of days observing firing missions...

According to Defense Express, based on verified data publicly shared during the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi's report on August 20, 2024, Ukraine had been using on average 14,600 artillery shells, and Russia used 44,500 shells daily as of the summer of 2024.

Even considering that a significant portion of these were indeed Soviet-made shells (not just 152mm but also 122mm), it is clear that Ukraine's defense forces had been using at least thousands of 155mm shells daily, even a year ago.

https://global.espreso.tv/russia-ukraine-war-poland-questions-ukraines-4000-9000-artillery-shells-per-day?amp

https://www.empiresmod.com/

https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/empires-official-discord.20577/

(ughh yes most of the community is on discord what can you do but make fediverse posts....)

I want to recommend an oddball game here for a potential LAN steamdeck game or just a fun free multiplayer steam deck game in general (it has bots too).

I have mixed feelings about the Source engine, I mean obviously love it and all the games that came out on it, but it never did vehicles well partially from a handling perspective and also source engine level design always seemed to end up blocky and awkward for vehicles to manuever on.

Lots of games of course integrated vehicles successfully into their core gameplay, but the most successful mechanically and by far the most interesting in my opinion is the Empires Mod.

The really cool thing about this game is that the original release date was 2008, and yet it is still in development with a very small but loving fan base. The gunplay plays like a faster counter strike, very arcade-y and at the heart of it relatively simple but it works, it is fun and there is lots of skill to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCgoylOR1s0

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhQWZsIl_o

Here is some relatively recent gameplay showing how much depth and team strategy there is to Empires Mod. This game is like Natural Selection 2 or other games where each team has an RTS like commander and structures must be built to produce an engine that can take over the map from the enemy.

Check it out, the game looks janky in the way all lovable Source Engine games are but I think if you give it a chance you might find it really fun.

Also... there are a lot of mechanics to the game and they have really put a lottttt of effort into little tooltips that explain functions of the game everywhere to you. It is actually pretty slick even if the presentation is usually amateur, who cares the underlying game is cool as heck.

I found the default Steam Deck bindings worked great, I just recommend using gyroscope to help aim. I think source accepts gamepad input too, but I have just stuck with the default Steam Deck WASD & Mouse profile and it works already really well off the bat no tweaking for Empires Mod!

Needless to say, this game runs NO PROBLEM on the Steam Deck lol. I am not convinced the Source engine is obsolete, primarily because handhelds like the Steam Deck pose the question ok you can have better graphics but what are you trading it for? I think games like Empires Mod on the source engine deserve to be remembered and rediscovered on a new medium of devices!

Most people think canoeing is an old thrown away tired hobby, so does this River Cowboy.

(I am kidding about bashing canoes, my Wenonahs are the most meaningful works of art to me I own!)

Another video talking about the Aero Shark Electronics Warfare and Surveillance aircraft.

The development of this kind of platform extends far past war, from an abstracted perspective of a mechanized military as a series of different sized sensor platforms in differing number and vulnerability, there is a gap in sensor platforms precisely the size of an Aero Shark ultralight aircraft.

https://theaviationist.com/2024/05/09/ultra-surveillance-dro

I sure hope we have been sharing these with Ukraine and we just didn't hear about it because it was part of a classified program

That gap is even larger for search and rescue, large high resolution surveys with high fidelity scientific instruments, wildfire monitoring and disaster response in general.

The military industrial complex of the west NEEDS the future to be F35s and incredibly expensive missile systems requiring parades full of defense contractors to even construct a single one, but it is precisely for that reason that this vision of peace and the future will never be for you or me.

The Aero Shark? Yeah I can totally see a future manned/unmanned version of these finding a person overboard from a ship simply because it was able to loiter for so long while being able to cover large distances safely at relatively low altitude. I can totally see these becoming the aircraft you see above natural disasters zones all over the world as a symbol to people in desperate situations that people can see the state they are in and are coming to help.

I can see a future where Ukraine leads the world in innovating at the leading edge of disaster response and lifesaving technology, where "Ukraine" becomes synonymous with "Advanced Emergency Response" like "German" is with "Precision Engineering".

Does this say "Don't worry you are going to be ok!" to you?

To simply say "No" is an understatement of tragic size, but even an unmanned military grey version of the Shark does. It look like something designed with joy being repurposed to save lives and bring peace, which means it is part of the most fearsome category of weapons.

The U.S. military tried to temporarily? privatize their ISR with a measly 6 business jets aircraft for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) that were supposed to replace a huge fleet of turboprop aicraft they already got rid of and honestly I can't think of a more fitting metaphor for how my country has lost its way....

https://www.twz.com/air/army-to-retire-all-of-its-turboprop-surveillance-planes-by-the-end-of-the-year

I hope some of those "obsolete" dual turboprop ISR aircraft made it to Ukraine through some clandestine network of defense aid packages... I am guessing the US military primarily gave them to police departments and ICE type agencies however.

Video covering recent Ukraine war news. Of particular note for my artillery rant is the artillery crew saying they were firing 50 shells per day per cannon in support of friendly Ukrainian counter attacking troops... that is a LOT of firepower!

(10:25 timestamp)

I love that they got footage with the reporter there with the artillery firing in a downpour, it really does show in such a visceral direct way that the power of cannon artillery cannot be denied even in this day and age... perhaps more so in this day and age with the capacity to get such good intelligence and reconnaissance with UAVs and other modern technologies that can provide a high volume weapons system like a 105mm, 155mm or similar howitzer (msta-b in video) an endless list of targets.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/152_mm_howitzer_2A65_Msta-B

Understand that at the most intense flashpoints of battle, especially in a counter attack, casualties are a given to some degree. What this kind of artillery and sufficient artillery ammunition allows Ukraine to do is use an overwhelming volume of artillery fire to suppress, disorganize and demoralize the enemy, then smoke shells can be fired to cover the advancing friendly forces. The impact of artillery doing this on saving the lives of Ukrainian infantry and armor crews who are actually given the responsibility to break the enemy at their most vital point that they will defend most brutally... it isn't really something you can put into words.

Every time one of those guns fires it is potentially saving many Ukrainian lives by making it so Ukrainian infantry can decisively take territory without encountering fresh, organized, entrenched resistance that will punish every mistake and blindspot in the Ukrainian counter attack.

A similar point can also can be said for delaying actions, in order to hold back a massive offensive like Russia is conducting, Ukraine has to accept a moderate temporary loss of territory as a given, and build a strategy around what is called "delaying actions" where you punish the enemy maximally in time and in manpower lost for every meter they gain.

In order to do this in a way that best keeps the defending troops alive however, Ukraine really needs overwhelming artillery support so that a barrage of artillery laid down along the periphery of a defensive position can create the operational space to stage a retreat of troops from said defensive position without being fatally exposed or overrun before they can act.

I hope my country continues to supply artillery ammunition, but I am glad Ukraine now has multiple international partners to ensure they can't have this capability cut off from them.

https://playstorypress.org/books/the-psychgeist-of-pop-culture-warhammer/

Warhammer may be seen as a niche hobby, yet it captivates millions of fans globally. What makes it so emotionally powerful? The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Warhammer journeys through the vast and epic Warhammer universe to reveal why there’s more to it than meets the eye. Blending insights from psychology, sociology and game studies, this book delves into tabletop gaming, miniature collecting, rich lore, and vibrant communities. Written for curious newcomers and seasoned veterans alike, gamers, painters, and lore-buffs can savour the chapters that most appeal to them… or feast on them all!

"Over 40 years Warhammer has grown from a niche product to a global multimedia franchise. As Warhammer has evolved from mere hobby into a complete lifestyle, so too must our understanding evolve. Gathering leading thinkers on gaming and philosophy, The Psychgeist of Pop Culture - Warhammer offers essential insights into how this cultural phenomenon fits into the lives, communities, and storage spaces of modern fans. From Age of Sigmar’s ludonarrative dissonance to pile of shame guilt to tabletop representation; these erudite essays thoughtfully examine the inner workings of a gaming universe, corporate empire, and way of life composed of endless conflicts." - Jordan Sorcery, Warhammer Historian & YouTuber

Rachel Kowert is really cool and has fascinating insightful perspectives as a scientific researcher on video games, she is also a big fan of video games in general and as such she talks about them in a nuanced way which I think is sorely needed.

Check out her new book on Warhammer!

https://works.hcommons.org/records/xp47f-39951

Military experts detail that this kind of technology will be used in future wars but clearly it has not yet been developed and thus this represents a clear cut and dry case of Germany and by extension Ukraine violating the Temporal Prime Directive on top of a threatening act of military-industrial espionage of Nod IP related weapons systems shrugs I don't see why other people can't see this?

I reached out to Rheinmetall for comment and I received the response "What?... Are you a robocaller? Have a nice day bye." which at post time for this shitpost does not illuminate any details on this shadowy timetravel military espionage scandal unfolding as we speak.

I will update this article with further details if I can get past the captcha screen and re-establish communication with the Rheinmetall Public Relations team.

I mean I am glad for Ukraine but those Germans could have tried a little harder to disguise the Nod tech they stole with their time machine...

does a doubletake...

FYI Rheinmetall, I would be careful about EA suing you for copyright infringement...

The actually cool version of EA would capitalize on this and send a fake press release from Nod requesting that Germany stop using clearly stolen tech or at least pay foreign export royalties...