Trump seems to have concluded a ceasefire with the Houthis, negotiated in Oman, that will see the Bab al-Mandeb reopened to American ships and leave Israel and Yemen to continue their long-range war.

If this was his intention all along, the bombing campaign suddenly makes sense. Rather than waging an open-ended air campaign in effective support of Netanyahu's poorly-defined schemes in the region, Trump may have simply wanted to get the strait reopened to American traffic so business as usual could resume... or at least that was an acceptable step down.

Breaking the "Drone Wall"

The latest talking point out of the Ukrainian side is that they don't really need NATO's support any more because they have tons of kill drones and they're so incredibly lethal that's enough to hold off the Russians indefinitely.

Let's examine this.⬇️

First of all, let's examine the kill drone as a weapon system. Generally known as FPV drones, or as I prefer to call them, antitank drones, these are small, simple quadcopter drones equipped with a camera, a radio or wire communications system, and an explosive warhead.

This makes for a new type of weapon system that, rather than being extremely powerful at face value, gains its effectiveness through a combination of smart guidance and ubiquity. They do three things that prewar "legacy" antitank systems do not:

1. They have extremely precise guidance and can be maneuvered to attack weak points on an armored target or pursue dismounted troops into cover;

2. They have onboard sensors and sustained flight capability, and are capable of not just attacking targets outside of the operator's line of sight but actively conducting reconnaissance; and

3. They are relatively light and cheap, with two or three kill drones fitting into the size and weight factor of a single old-style antitank missile, and thousands of drones stamped out in Chinese factories daily on no-questions-asked contracts to be jury-rigged to ubiquitous Soviet-era antitank warheads.

These weapons do, however, have drawbacks compared to conventional antitank systems.

1. Radio-controlled models are vulnerable to electronic countermeasures;

2. They have limited lift capability and as such their warheads are generally relatively weak, often simply repurposed single-stage RPG-7 shells or purpose-built charges that are little better;

3. They fly relatively slowly and can be, and frequently are, defeated successfully by defensive fire from determined dismounted troops; and

4. They "fire" extremely slowly, as each drone must be manually prepped, linked to a command system, checked out, flown out to a target that could be several kilometers away, and then carefully maneuvered into the target for maximum effect. The rate of fire for a single drone team is thus measured in minutes per round rather than rounds per minute. Engagements where you see multiple drones hit in quick succession are the result of multiple teams attacking a single target or group of targets.

The Russians and to a lesser extent the Ukrainians have implemented countermeasures to lessen their forces' vulnerability to these weapons, generally consisting of ECM systems, defensive fire (skeet shooting has become a matter of great tactical relevance lately), and elaborate "cope caging" that would have drawn extreme mockery a few years ago and which still does in the circles of people who aren't going to survive the first battle of the next war. As such, the probability of kill (PK) of a given antitank drone launch at the moment is, optimistically, about 10% against an appropriately prepared armored vehicle.

And now, my readers, we see the inherent weakness of a military doctrine centered around these weapons. Recall what I previously said about the slow rate of fire of drone teams and compare it to the low PK to be expected of any system which an adaptive enemy has had a chance to respond to. Assuming a PK of about 8% and a five-minute engagement cycle, any given Russian armored vehicle can expect to have about one "drone-hour" of combat lifetime under attack by these systems. Thus a single vehicle being engaged by six teams, for instance, can expect to last ten minutes before being knocked out.

This combat model is borne out by numerous engagements in which Russian units have pushed through drone attack with few to modest losses despite clearly being under attack by multiple teams for extended periods of time. The "drone wall" tactic does, however, create a sufficiently dense swarm of drones at the point of contact to render advances at the platoon level largely a matter of luck and deliberate company-scale attacks a bloody proposition for the chance of little ground gained.

What about larger-scale attacks, though?

Let's run a little wargame. In this scenario, a Ukrainian division (let's say one of their new "tactical corps" that's effectively a divisional unit) is defending against a Russian divisional attack. The Ukrainian unit has deployed into a formation designed to maximize the intensity of antitank drone fire to be directed against an attack at any point on the front - very similar to AFU deployments on the ground right now - with two defensive lines of dismounted infantry in closely-spaced strongpoints and a final "line" of mechanized reserves to bottle up any breakthroughs. A mechanized Russian division has been tasked to smash its way through.

The exact geometry is also noted on the graphic below, but I'll state it here for completeness' sake - the AFU division is occupying a 27km front with three brigades each occupying nine kilometers. The two infantry defensive lines are each composed of platoon strongpoints located one kilometer apart, with the second line positioned three kilometers to the rear of the first line and able to support it with drone fire under intense combat conditions.

A few notes on the rules here.

1. Every Ukrainian strongpoint is assumed to contain one drone team with an engagement range under "assault" conditions of five kilometers. Each team will fire once every five minutes. Firing strongpoints will be marked with a red box in the graphics.

2. As I pointed out above, Russian vehicles have a combat lifespan of one "drone-hour." As such it will take twelve "shots" from a single drone team to kill a vehicle, or one shot from twelve drone teams.

3. I am assuming that a Russian unit will take 30 minutes to move 3-5 kilometers tactically, accounting for en-route mine clearance, etc. Moving through cleared areas will of course be quite fast.

4. Ukrainian strongpoints attacked from the front must be deliberately assaulted, which will take 30 minutes at 3:1 odds. Strongpoints that have been flanked can be hastily assaulted in the same turn as movement.

5. Ukrainian strongpoints in close combat with superior Russian units are suppressed and cannot fly off drones. This will be marked with a black box in the graphics.

6. Ukrainian artillery has largely been silenced and the Russians have stiff fire superiority and their own drones searching the battlefield. Once a Ukrainian drone team opens fire it will be spotted and destroyed by Russian indirect fire within two hours. Strongpoints with dead drone teams will be crossed out and will not fire, but must still be assaulted and cleared of their infantry for the Russians to progress.

7. The Ukrainian reserves cannot simply blitz to the breakthrough sector - they must be alerted and then move out, under attack by Russian interdiction fires and clearing scatter-mine obstacles on the way. Thus they are going to move relatively slowly.

8. The Russians have achieved operational surprise and there is no large AFU reserve force waiting for the assault. This isn't particularly unusual, a similar situation occurred at the start of the Battle of Avdeevka and the Kharkov incursion last year. The Russians seem to be able to pretty reliably mass large forces for operations if need be, without Ukraine or NATO intelligence noticing.

Simple enough? Maybe I should put in an application at Milton-Bradley!

Let's begin - I'll now transition to thread format.⬇️ Here we see the initial battlefield set. Of note, I'm depicting the Russians tactically by company but will be keeping a more precise tally of assault vehicles destroyed. Russian company icons will be removed as appropriate.

The little ovals are Ukrainian battle positions.

The closest historical analogy to the Ukrainian War I can think of is the American Civil War - ironically a conflict that Europeans have always shied away from carefully studying.

A thread.⬇️ The underlying causes of the American Civil War festered for decades, finally erupting into open conflict after a series of political calculations and miscalculations brought down a national compromise that increasingly resembled a house of cards.

Let's bust some propaganda.

Top 10 pro-Ukrainian talking points - and why they're nonsense.⬇️ 10. Ukraine is a democracy!

False. The last free and fair election in Ukraine - not held under an ultranationalist jackboot after the 2014 coup - was in 2010.

All elections in Ukraine have been suspended since 2022, and Zelensky's five-year term from 2019 expired months ago.

How many plans has NATO gone through to try to beat Russia in Ukraine?

Let's count 'em! Plan A: The FGM-148 Javelin

It seems absurd now, but in late 2021 NATO's leadership thought Javelin was a tank-deleting magic wand that would deter Putin from challenging Zelensky's scheme to conquer the LDPR.

Javelin failed in service and is a rare sight on the battlefield.

Anatomy of a Fiasco: The Bridge at Glushkovo

Late last week the Ukrainian command, seeing their offensive in Sudzha-Koronevo bog down, tried to expand the flanks of their salient into Russian territory in Kursk. Part of this was an attack on the Glushkovo district to the west. The Glushkovo District is somewhat isolated from the Russian interior by the Seim River.

Having learned the wrong lessons from their 2022 counteroffensive in Kherson, the AFU command decided to try to induce a wholesale Russian withdrawal by attacking the bridges over the Seim.

Today was probably the worst day for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since February 2022.

Let's walk through it.

The Russians started the day off by destroying two HIMARS launchers at their hide site in Sumy. This has likely ended GMLRS support for the Kursk operation temporarily.

Next to emerge was a video of a MiG-29* struck at an airfield near Dnipropetrovsk, just as it was being armed and the pilot had climbed in for preflight.

Once again the Russians coldly waited to cause maximum casualties among key AFU personnel.

* initially reported as an Su-24

Putin HATES THEM!

Or does he?

Top 10 Failed Wonderweapons of the Ukrainian War⬇️ My criteria are simple - these are weapons (defined loosely) that were heavily hyped by Western pundits that actually failed in service.

So, for example, the Leopard 2 isn't on here because it's actually a perfectly functional tank that has performed in line with other tanks.

Apparently four missiles were shot down at sea, with one hit far enough into its final dive that falling submunitions still killed several civilians.

As this occurred on a Sunday afternoon and the nearest military target is three miles away, this was likely a terror attack.⬇️

First of all, I'd like to note the speed with which Ukrainian propagandists, while still celebrating the deaths of Russian vacationers, have come around to a remarkably pro-Russian position while commenting on this event: (1) that Russian air defenses shoot down pretty much everything fired at Crimea; (2) that the Russian Ministry of Defense generally puts out accurate information to the public; and (3) that civilian casualties from downed enemy missiles and malfunctioning interceptors are the responsibility of the defender rather than the attacker. I'm sure they won't immediately do another 180-degree turn as soon as they are presented with a less convenient fact pattern.

Secondly, the range at which this attack was delivered (>160km from any point of UKR-held territory) indicates that the Ukrainians have received a number of M39A1 extended-range ATACMS missiles with cluster warheads. There were only a small number of these manufactured around the turn of the century and apparently most were subsequently converted to unitary models, suggesting that the US is already scraping the munitions barrel to keep Ukraine supplied with missiles (and explaining our reluctance to hand any over previously). ATACMS activity has certainly fallen off dramatically in the last two weeks.

Thirdly, as I pointed out upthread, the nearest obvious military target is an airfield located three miles north of this particular beach. There's also an area of farmland about a mile and a half to the east that may serve as a SAM positioning area. Ballistic missiles that get clipped late in their flight don't fall three miles away from their intended targets, and if the Ukrainians had been interested in a military target they would have done what they always do and attacked in the middle of the night. They struck instead on the afternoon of Orthodox Pentecost Sunday, when the streets and beaches would be crowded with civilians. As such - and in light of a pattern of Ukrainian attacks targeting civilians in Russia gathered for holidays - it is likely this attack was intended to terrorize civilian residents and vacationers in a wealthy Sevasopol suburb and the work of Russian air defenses prevented an enormous number of deaths and injuries. Addendum: Just to provide some visual context on exactly how far this beach is from the airfield in question - it's farther from it than from the harbor!

D+10 update for the Russian Spring 2024 offensive. I mentioned last time (D+8) they'd begun to turn the pressure back on in the Donbass after easing off to let the Ukrainians pull troops to Kharkov.

They've marked up gains in 14 locations across the front in the last 48 hours⬇️ 1 / Starting from the north, Volchansk, Russian troops have secured the north of town and pushed troops across the Volcha River to begin evicting the AFU from the south side.

By popular demand, I'm writing a listicle - my top ten US military acquisition disasters of the 21st century.

It's a little distressing that I have so much material to work with.⬇️ This list is largely informed by two factors - taxpayer money wasted and capabilities not delivered. So despite my catchy F-32 frontispiece above, the F-35 didn't actually make the list because despite being very expensive the program delivered working hardware.

The Russians have lost around a thousand tanks in Ukraine during the war thus far.

Oh, you want an explanation? Okay. Thread. ⬇️ There has been a problem in estimating Russian vehicle losses since the first hours of the war - Ukrainian propagandists have flooded the internet with dodgy pictures of destroyed Soviet-era vehicles, claimed as Russian. I got started debunking them.

See:

https://x.com/ArmchairW/status/1510054419299065859?s=20

D+2 update thread on the 2023 Israeli Crisis.

Palestinian forces - belonging to Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza enclave - stormed the perimeter defenses yesterday morning local time, catching the IDF entirely off-guard. The front line has yet to stabilize. Israeli troops have begun to converge on the area and counterattack, so I do not expect the zone of Palestinian control to expand significantly, and absent external intervention they will likely be driven back into Gaza proper soon. However, that isn't the whole story.

"Dozens" of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering north of Klescheevka, apparently around 48.552153, 37.960711. Probably the remnants of a whole company.

Very much calls into question their recent claims of success in the area and the motivation of their troops. Location on the map. This is quite close to the location of an earlier, unsuccessful Russian attack so it seems the Russians regrouped and gave it another shot.

If Mediazona's count of Russian casualties in Ukraine is accurate - and it probably is - Russian losses tapered off over the month of August to the point they're now hardly worse than American ones at the height of the Iraq War.

This suggests the AFU is beginning to collapse. ⬇️ First of all the bottom line - Mediazona has confirmed a mere 133 Russian military deaths in the first three weeks of August (their data only goes to August 23rd right now). This is on top of a long-term downward trend in Russian casualties since the winter.

Update and a little analysis on the attack on Pskov Airfield. ⬇️

First of all this was not a gimmicky operation with cheap drones. Loitering munitions of some kind were used - I personally suspect Switchblade 600s - fired in a large swarm with sophisticated EW support.

Switchblade 600 has a number of features that make it a good choice for this kind of operation - easy and fast setup, adequate range and speed, relatively small size with limited RCS, thermal, optical and audio signatures, and onboard optics allowing precision targeting and BDA.

For the last several months, commentators have endlessly talked about these tactically significant "heights" being fought over in Ukraine. Ukraine's pretty flat, so what are these exactly?

Let's talk about intervisibility lines, with a practical discussion about Rabotino. ⬇️ Militarily significant terrain features can be so subtle that you don't even notice them in daily life.

An intervisibility line is the line where you can see over the terrain feature you're standing on and into low ground beyond - essentially the top of any rise in the ground.

Rumor is that with the Ukrainian Army increasingly degraded in the wake of their disastrous Spring-Summer 2023 offensive, and no Western intervention forthcoming, Zelensky is going to order total mobilization. He's said as much.

This will not save Ukraine. ⬇️ Ukraine has relied on mass conscription since Day 1 of this war, and in fact did a large-scale reserve callup beforehand, in an attempt to offset Russian firepower with sheer numbers.

This has led to astronomical casualties, with reasonable estimates over 300,000 KIA by now.

Given the recent breakdown of the Grain Deal(tm) and Ukrainian attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea, the Russians might want to reinforce the Black Sea Fleet.

But AW - they can't do they! The Bosporus is the only way in and out!

It actually isn't. ⬇️ Russia has a back door into the Black Sea via their internal network of rivers and canals, which they not only use routinely to move cargo around the country but also have done some planning to use to shift warships around between the Black, Baltic, Caspian and Northern Fleets.

Interesting video that came out on July 31st showing the Russians pushing back a Ukrainian mechanized platoon trying to counterattack, as far as I can tell, south of Novojehorovka.

If my geo is correct this debunks Ukrainian counterattack claims.

Source: https://t.co/NQWyDJcBMQt.me/veles_v_okope/…
There's only one scrubby forest with an angled treeline like that in front of it near Karmazanovka. The low altitue and extreme zoom of the drone make the perspective pretty wild.

Green is the approximate route of the Ukrainian vehicles as they retreat.

Somebody at the State Department probably thought they'd come up with a banger when they put out this talking point: "If Russia stops fighting and withdraws, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends."

Too bad it's nonsense. ⬇️

(comments by Jens Stoltenberg of NATO) Ukraine could end the war tomorrow ("stop fighting") by agreeing to Russia's four demands, which have been constant since the start of the "Special Military Operation." They are:
1. Demilitarization
2. Denazification
3. Neutralization
4. Recognition of Russian annexations