DirkDiggler

The purge continues.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10603045/Putin-places-head-FSBs-foreign-intelligence-branch-house-arrest.html Looks like the Russian blame game for the debacle in Ukraine has started.

That is fucking awesome.

The US military needs to find this guy and give him a job.

I was in the 492nd SOW when the AFSOC/CC deep dives and reviews started but was focused on other things (deploying) so didn't actually attend any of them. I'm not a CAA so any opinion I'd give is purely an outsider looking in, prone to incomplete data/opinion but my take below, in no particular order. 1. Slife is trying to push the command towards peer/near peer; I don't believe he saw CAA fitting into that. He also doesn't care for individual unique units. 2. 6th had a serious issue trying to grow the size of the CAA enterprise; the assessment process drove some of this (part of the culture they were trying to grow as you mentioned above). Slife didn't like assessment at all, I believe the 6th changed that process but it wasn't quick enough IMO. 3. Due to the growth problem mentioned above, it was difficult for CAA to show the effects they were generating for the TSOCs outside of 1 AOR (can't go into further detail on this here). Their ability to generate deployed forces besides the one persistent was limited. 4. Some of the pre-deployment training requirements they levied on themselves were kinda over the top (cool, but over the top). I've personally heard CAA guys say that they were the equal of ODA dudes and wanted to be treated as such deployed (culture). I think the focus of non-flying small unit tactics and weapons type stuff didn't help them. It always seemed to me that the flying piece of what they did was secondary to other things. 5. I don't think they had the right advocacy or people in AFSOC/HQ. In my staff life it seemed like the HQ guys advocated big things but weren't able to deliver on a decent amount (can't go into more detail here). I'm actually a believer in the CAA concept and think its shortsighted of AFSOC to divest of the capability so I don't want any of the above to sound like I'm slamming the CAA community or hating on them. Time will tell if they get brought back from the dead like after the end of the Fiel regime.

Another good video showing Ukrainian forces effectively integrating small UAS to direct accurate indirect fire on a Russian armored convoy. The Russians bunching up helped quite a bit.

Check me on this but isn't the 6th going away here in the next 12-18 months? Copy the sarcasm above but OADs aren't gonna be a thing much longer right?

TB2 is selling itself at this point.

Ukrainian National Guard playing Come to Jesus with some buttoned up Russian crewmen. Ukrainian rap dub over was a nice touch.

Also, doesn't look like those homemade chicken coop cages on Russian tanks are proving all that effective.

Good video of Russians cooking and ROI of our Javelin transfers.

Thanks much for posting that, very interesting video, I didn't realize how widespread the use of this was. As I mentioned above, that briefing was one of the most informative and engrossing briefings I've attended in my 19 years in, would love to see a follow up given the rapid changes in the world going on today.

Caveat: This information is 3 & 1/2 years old now so things may have changed. When I was at JPMEII we had a phenomenal guest speaker (PhD type from a DC area college, wish I could remember her name, is a consultant/SME for lots of military and state things) come and brief us on global energy security and politics, one of the best briefings I've ever sat through. Someone in the audience asked this exact question in regards to renewables like solar and wind. Believe it or not, her answer was "water". Due to the current limitations in battery technology (inability to store the type of energy you'd need to power a city or something of that size overnight or when the wind isn't blowing) it's just not possible to use batteries at our current level of technology. She said currently the most efficient way to store large amounts of renewable energy was to use excess power during the day or high wind times to pump large amounts of water into higher level pools or tanks, then use the flow of water back lower to drive turbines generating electricity. This hasn't been implemented anywhere on a large scale that I'm aware of but it's not something I follow closely.

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/cipher-brief-expert-view/the-risks-facing-putin-and-his-inner-circle Interesting interview with a retired CIA officer regarding Putin's mindset and the possible risks he faces from his inner circle.

The bold above is historically incorrect. Unconditional surrender was agreed upon by the Allies at the Casablanca conference for multiple reasons, the most important of which were convincing Stalin that the US/UK wouldn't negotiate a separate peace with Hitler, preventing Germany from a repeat of WWI non-military defeat claims, and the destruction of Germany/Japanese ideologies. There's no consensus or firm historical evidence that the unconditional surrender requirement made either Germany or Japan fight harder; in any case no negotiated settlement would have been possible given the National Socialist genocide in the USSR and the Holocaust, and the Japanese war crimes across China and the Pacific (not to mention Bushido code and the massive Japanese military influence in all Japanese affairs of the time). The last year of the war MAY have been the bloodiest; its impossible to know given incomplete casualty counts in the USSR and China. Certainly it was much worse for the civilian populations across Europe and Japan. 1942-43 may have been bloodier overall but with incomplete data its impossible to say.

https://time.com/6155670/foreign-fighters-ukraine-europe/ Good article on the motivations of some of the foreigners volunteering to fight for Ukraine. Baltic nations have been under the Russian boot before and feel the threat from Russia everyday.

US and UK ban Russian petroleum products. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60657155

At a minimum. I went to ACSC with two Ukrainian officers, I think about them and their families every day. No idea if they're dead or alive.

Ukrainian SA-8 shooting down something

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-03-04/what-if-russia-loses Good analysis of what Putin's failure in Ukraine could mean for NATO, the US, and Europe going forward.

Good video of a destroyed Russian fuel convoy.

Unconfirmed reports coming out on Twitter night now saying a Ukrainian Marine unit conducted a raid on Kherson airfield and destroyed around 30 forward deployed Russian helicopters. Here’s to hoping it’s true.

Looked like a bigger SAM than a MANPAD to me (SA-8 or 11 maybe?). Either way, agreed on the Stingers, they’re stacking up some Russian pigs and hardware over there.