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Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel of the United States Army and a political analyst, told Tucker Carlson in an interview on his program on the social media network X, formerly known as Twitter, that Ukraine has already lost 400,000 soldiers in its war with Russia. His revelation comes as the New York Times reported that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is struggling because some of Kiev’s best troops are “in the wrong places.”“I think all of the lies that have been told for more than a year and a half about “the Ukrainians are winning”, “Ukrainian causes just”, “the Russians are evil”, “the...

While the scale of Ukrainian battlefield losses of Western-built tanks claimed by invading Russia will obviously be taken with a pinch of salt, Kyiv is nevertheless asking Germany to send more armour east. Leopard 2 tanks are worth “its weight in gold for the decisive offensive” and Germany should ship more of them to the front lines, so says former ambassador to Germany now working to drum up deliveries of equipment from abroad Andrij Melnyk. He said, per Germany’s Tagespiegel: “The Ukrainian army most urgently needs many more Western battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other armoured vehicles”. Counteroffensive: Western...

"Ready, fire, boys!" Lots of whooping while rockets fire.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine and its western allies of trying to destroy his country late Monday night, demanding Kyiv accept Moscow’s prescription for ending the war or be “eliminated” on the battlefield. Reuters reports Lavrov’s comments came against a backdrop of continued heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine and followed Russian President Vladimir Putin hinting he was open to negotiations, but only on Moscow’s terms. Putin said on Sunday the Kremlin was “ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions” while blaming Kyiv for the lack of diplomatic progress so far.

SEIZING THE STRATEGIC INITIATIVE’: Russia is taking Ukraine's threat to retake the southern province of Kherson seriously, shifting forces from its eastern front to prepare for an expected Ukrainian assault to reclaim lost territory in the south. “Ukraine is likely seizing the strategic initiative and forcing Russia to reallocate forces and reprioritize efforts,” says the latest assessment from the Institute for the Study of War. “Russian forces are increasingly transferring personnel and equipment to Kherson and western Zaporizhia Oblasts at the expense of their efforts to seize Slovyansk and Siversk, which they appear to have abandoned.” “Russian forces are also...

The internet is in uproar (again). Developer DICE’s decision to include a woman on the cover art for this year’s Battlefield offering has, for some reason, antagonised the most vocal parts of the gaming internet. Within minutes of DICE revealing its new game, detractors on reddit, Twitter and various online gaming forums were spouting their vitriol, furious that DICE had sacrificed authenticity in favour of ‘political correctness’. Here’s the thing, though: it hasn’t. Women have always played a vital role in the World’s wars, and to ignore that is to be willfully ignorant. From soldiers enlisted in active duty to...

And the generals made the call without requiring Trump's approval That makes sense, of course. You don’t want any president, but especially one with no military background, micromanaging the tactical decisions on the battlefield. If we’e got ISIS where we want them and we have a weapon at the ready that can take out not only a bunch of them, but a bunch of their infrastructure as well, why not? Drop it. And that’s exactly what prompted the military command to do so, without having to first check with the White House:

Rules of Engagement (ROE) is defined as a directive issued by a military authority specifying the circumstances and limitations under which forces will engage in combat with the enemy. In the history of warfare we have seen an incredible metamorphosis of the rules of engagement. Long ago, armies presented themselves upon the battlefield in open areas away from civilian populations. The fact that weapons were limited to that which was carried, sword and spear, meant that fighting the enemy meant close-quarter engagement. The rules then were quite simple: engage the enemy, defeat them, and pursue to bring about their ultimate...

We will not be successful on the 21st Century battlefield unless we have a 21st Century plan, a mandate. And I believe it must be "peace through strength." The enemy we are facing, global Islamic jihadism, understands only strength. We will not have peace without it.

As the sun went down after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were glowing a faint blue. Many men waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days that April, until medics could treat them. Once they were taken to field hospitals, the troops with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries — and to get better faster. Thus the mysterious blue light was dubbed “Angel’s Glow.” In 2001, 17-year-old Civil War buff Bill Martin visited the Shiloh battlefield with his family and heard the legend of Angel’s...

The US Army Still Trains For Trench Warfare Even in an era of combat aircraft, tanks, and an endless array of technological advances, the US Army still trains troops in the tactics of trench warfare. And sometimes they go to Poland to do it. It may sound archaic, but the truth is that while trench warfare – and the horrors that go along with it – are more closely identified with World War I, the practice has continued throughout the last century. During WWII, Russia was well known for its use of trench warfare as a defensive measure. The outcome...

Former governor Mike Huckabee (R., Ark.) implicitly made the case against Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Rand Paul (R., Ky.), or Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) serving as president during a meeting with reporters about the prospect of his own candidacy. In a roundtable meeting this morning with journalists in Washington, D.C., Huckabee said that he would decide next year whether or not he will run for president, but he already knows he’s unlikely to support any of those freshman senators. “If not me, I would be supportive of someone who has had executive experience and who has been a governor...

First World War bomb kills two construction site workers 100 years after it was fired at Belgian battlefield • Armament was disturbed and exploded evacuation works at the site • Killed two and injured two, all construction workers working in the area • This area of Belgium is rife with unexploded bombs from the Great War • It is the former Flanders battleground where many shells were fired A First World War bomb killed two construction site workers when it exploded 100 years after being fired at a Belgian battlefield. The bomb had laid dormant for a century at an...

The semi-annual report on "Re-engagement of Detainees Formerly Held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" was released on Wednesday by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Out of a total of 614 former prisoners (up from 603 six months ago), intelligence has confirmed that 104 (up from 100) have re-engaged in terrorism/insurgent activities while another 74 are suspected of doing so. The latest report nudged the recidivism rate up to an even 29 percent from 28.9 percent last September. The report provides a chart breaking down the statistics into a number of categories:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted fellow GOP Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday, saying the two “think the whole world is a battlefield.” Paul criticized the hawkish senators for thinking the laws of war should take precedence over the Bill of Rights. The two had criticized Paul’s statements about drone policy during the Kentucky Republican’s 13-hour filibuster on Thursday. “They think the whole world is a battlefield including America and that the laws of war should apply,” Paul said in an interview on Fox News about McCain and Graham, who had described Paul’s comments about drones...

Gif of the Day: Tank Skeet Shooting

First World War ammunition frozen in time for nearly a century has been found as glacier melts WWI ammunition frozen in time for nearly a century has been discovered in northern Italy. More than 200 pieces of the ammunition were revealed at an altitude of 3,200 metres by a melting glacier on the Ago de Nardis peak in Trentino. The 85-100mm caliber explosives weighed between seven and 10 kilos and explosives experts have been to the site to safely dispose of the weaponry. The once-perennial glacier began partially melted during a recent heat wave, allowing the Finance Police Alpine rescue...

Eric Shields, an engineer with the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Carderock Division, never thought he would have to monitor the use of a microwave oven in Afghanistan. But that is exactly what he and his colleagues have been doing to gauge how much power Marines are using in theater. “If the microwaves and coffee pots are turned on at the same time, it could trip your generator,” Shields told a recent Institute for Defense and Government Advancement symposium. Sometimes a generator is left on too long, and the temperature inside the tent drops so much that Marines are forced to...

Modern warfare relies increasingly on robotics for intelligence gathering and increasingly for strike capabilities, but the decision-making capacity still rests solely in the hands of human commanders. But British defense company BAE systems is testing a way to turn over battlefield decisions over to robot troops as well. ALADDIN (Autonomous Learning Agents for Decentralised Data and Information Networks) is BAE’s response to the overload of sensors and data now confronting battlefield commanders who now have UAV observations, soldier-based sensors, satellite data, and reams of other intelligence washing over them in such volumes that, as Air Force Lt. Gen. David A....

Imagine a future when a Soldier's helmet is an integrated communications center with a heads-up computer display, night vision, thermal sensors and enhanced hearing. That future is nearer than many think. During the 2010 Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting Oct. 25-27 at the Washington Convention Center, civilian researchers from the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center displayed futurist equipment design concepts to senior Army leaders, congressional staffers and Soldiers attending the show. "What we're trying to do is tell the story of how we're setting the force for the future," said Jean-Louis "Dutch" DeGay, Strategic Outreach,...