17 Comments
Mar 4Liked by Sarcastosaurus

Any clues about targets in Crimea? I read something about an oil pipeline hit in Feodosiya, though I'm not sure how valuable this could be.

Expand full comment

Unfortunately, I don't have the details or I would have included them. Awareness is a big part of being able to track an issue down and for all the reading and viewing I did last week I didn't come across those reports.

Expand full comment
Mar 4·edited Mar 4

What's your take on the daily destruction of Russian artillery pieces reported by the Ukraine, the total has now passed ten thousand? https://en.defence-ua.com/news/740_days_of_russia_ukraine_war_russian_casualties_in_ukraine-9722.html

Most days, despite the shell drought, the toll is 20-30, often much higher. Since artillery is clearly the most important weapon in Russia's way of fighting, do you think that this high attrition rate could be their weak point? Or are these numbers just informed guesswork from Ukraine?

Expand full comment

I touched on this later on in the Weekly. Artillery is also extremely important for Ukraine, as well.

Russia has a few weak points and artillery is one of them. Accurately reporting their losses have a certain level of difficulty for Ukraine's military and it's even harder for OSINT. A lot of equipment can be hit and remain undamaged, or are hit and can be repaired. Differentiating between that and a catestrophic kill isn't always easy.

The method of tracking shrinking levels of stockpiles isn't foolproof, but it is another data point that can roughly indicate levels of attrition, as is shown in another part of the post.

Expand full comment

Thanks, very useful.

Expand full comment
Mar 5·edited Mar 5

Also, I've read some time ago that ZSU counts ATMGs (e.g. Kornet) as "artillery" in their statistics, too.

Expand full comment

Ah, hadn't heard that. It's not how I'd categorize the Kornet.

Expand full comment
Mar 4Liked by Sarcastosaurus

In the 1980's we started switching to blue light filters to deal with red contour lines not showing up on maps under red light.

Expand full comment

What organization was this? Because I was in the US army in the 80s and by then we had maps that were created and marked as red light readable. I've never heard of the blue light filters so I'm curious.

Expand full comment

Canadian Army, we were always short of funds and Canadian topo maps then and even today are generally 20 years out of date. In my civy job I tried to push for us to improve them to no avail. US mapping products are much better than ours. Up here most of the good mapping is under private copyright.

Expand full comment

How did the blue light impact the water features on the map?

It helps to have a large budget. I'm surprised there isn't a relationship with Canada and the US that allows you to just buy maps from the US.

Expand full comment
Mar 4Liked by Sarcastosaurus

Of course Western weapon deliveries are useless, wasnt that what Vladimir Putin himself told Tucker Carlson? Or maybe it was the other way, that if we stopped sending weapons the war would son be over. It was the last one wasnt it?

Expand full comment

Putin's desire for peace knows no bounds.

Expand full comment

Western weapons are in fact useless. Look at all those puny excuses for an ATGM the West is churning out - none of them will survive a head-on collision with even a lighter Russian combat vehicle.

Expand full comment

At this moment Ukraine is asking for more weapons. And ammunition. But still. Putin is asking us to stop. And you, whose expertise in weapons are completly unkown to me say they are useless? You know, for once, just once I will trust Putin to know what he is talking about. I know I am out on a limb here, but still.

Expand full comment

Part 4 read thanks for the good information Don now its on to #4

Expand full comment

Спс

Expand full comment