Posted on 05/18/2022 7:02:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It must be good times for U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Mark Milley.
Just as Jimmy Carter breathes a sigh of relief that he's no longer America's worst president, Milley, who commanded the disastrous U.S. Afghanistan pullout, is no longer the world's worst general.
That 'honor' now goes to Vlad Putin, who, according to The Guardian, citing U.S. intelligence sources, is the "general" who directly, specifically, brought Russia its biggest military failure in its "special operation" against Ukraine. He was out there playing "colonel," the report said.
It was ugly.
According to the New York Times:
On May 11, the Russian command reportedly sent about 550 troops of the 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 41st Combined Arms Army to cross the Donets River at Bilohorivka, in the eastern Luhansk region, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces near Rubizhne.
Satellite images reveal that Ukrainian artillery destroyed several Russian pontoon bridges and laid waste to a tight concentration of Russian troops and equipment around the river.
The Institute for the Study of War, citing analyses based on the publicly available imagery, indicated that there could have been as many as 485 Russian soldiers killed or wounded and more than 80 pieces of equipment destroyed.
The Times points out that the military error, which cost Russia hundreds of lives and a 73-piece loss of equipment at one pop, was very obvious to Russia's military bloggers, who are a pro-Russia bunch.
They are now having misgivings about the "generals" at the top who engineered the catastrophe:
“I’ve been keeping quiet for a long time,” Yuri Podolyaka, a war blogger with 2.1 million followers on Telegram, said in a video posted on Friday, saying that he had avoided criticizing the Russian military until now.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Our civil war was a brutal bloodbath
” If history is a guide many young soldiers will die before the generals in all the world’s armies come to understand and change tactics.”
Russia is still fighting the last war.
“Our civil war was a brutal bloodbath.”
That’s a fact.
Too soon to write-off the Russians. They said the same about Stalin in the early days of the German invasion; but he learned from his mistakes, and the Soviet army quickly recovered. Victory will go to the side with the most staying power, as we just learned in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is closer to dangerous psychopaths than the three stooges. But they are also smart enough to know that the Ruskies can make better use of modern weaponry than them.
> They said the same about Stalin in the early days of the German invasion; but he learned from his mistakes, and the Soviet army quickly recovered. <
Yep. After the initial shock wore off, Stalin settled down and behaved much like FDR did. He set the grand strategy, but left the details to the generals.
Will Putin wise up, and do the same? Or will he continue to micromanage like LBJ did?
If I had to bet, I’d bet that Putin is an LBJ kind of guy.
I noticed one photo of the failed crossing showed several MBTs which were on the far side of the river. They appeared to have backed into the river interestingly enough. IMO the driver reversed into the river to flood the cabin to reduce the likely hood of munitions and fuel detonating in the event of attack and also prevent the enemy from easily recovering it. It would preserve the tank however at cost of repairing flood damage. If left on the far bank the tank could have been captured or destroyed. So they scuttled them.
I think this river crossing was just a diversion.
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More complicated. There were efforts to cross the river by both sides. Judging by the fighting reports on the Uke side of the river and towns lost by Ukes there (some today — Ukes are in retreat), at least one Russian effort succeeded. There is no information about any successful Uke crossing, and now this does not matter. It is likely that not all of Russian attempts to cross the river were successful — again, this does not matter, only once success was needed. Whether all the attempts were real and some were diversions is not possible to know.
As for this particular crossing — examining the footage shows that many of the destroyed vehicles are BMP-1 — these are old Soviet productions used by Ukes but not by the Russian Army, for a number of years.
The Russians took a risk to move a battalion in behind the enemy. That’s a risk you take in war, to get tactical advantage. The problem isn’t that this is a bad tactic, the problem is that drones and satellites can see everything. Old tactics don’t work in the new battlefield, and old equipment doesn’t project power like it did 50 years ago.
There is tons to learn from the Ukraine conflict, we should be prepared to learn from it. I question the intelligence of a modern military commander who doesn’t see that, more than the person who tried a bold tactical move that failed.
Not defending Milley or the debacle in Afghanistan but let’s be a little accurate here. A significant chunk of the military equipment left in Afghanistan was old broken junk. 90% of that material was stuff we had given to the Afghan government and was no longer what our forces use. Even the better equipment had little if any spare parts and none of it had top of the line cryptographic, radar or radio equipment. We did not give that sensitive stuff to the Afghans.
Current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was a disaster of a General in Iraq - it was under Austin that soldiers had to get permission from HQ to return fire at the enemy. Even if our Troops were being attacked.
The Three Stooges are the Russians.
Are you Russian?
George Custer-—reincarnated?
Claiming otherwise is as delusional as being a Christian and claiming the neo-Nazis fighting for Ukraine are the good guys.
It's all a sickening delusional.
Notice how those backing this debacle are unifying between known enemies of conservatives and MAGA — the Biden regime and Miley.
On the night of 20 Jan, 1944, 2 regiments of the 36th (Texas) Infantry Division launched an assault to secure a crossing over the Rapido River south of Monte Cassino, Italy in an attempt to breach the German Winter Line and to divert pressure on other Allied units attacking the key heights of Monte Cassino in the Liri Valley.
The attack was hastily and poorly planned, and the men received almost no training in the use of the rickety assault boats that were provided. Units approaching the Line of departure became disorganized as the lanes of approach that the combat engineers had marked out with white tape for the night move had often been dislodged. Even though 2 rifle companies of the 143rd Inf. regiment succeeded in establishing a foothold across the river, they were quickly cut off and the reinforcing elements of the 141st Inf. regiment were shot to pieces by withering pre-registered artillery, mortar and MG fire from entrenched Germans of the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division on the far bank after finding themselves stuck in minefields.
The result was pure hell on earth for the men of the 36th Texas National Guard Division in one of the worst defeats of the US Army in WW II. The final result was almost every single man that crossed the river was killed or captured. 1,330 men were killed or wounded, 770 captured, and the 36th rendered combat ineffective for months. the Germans lost 64 killed and 179 wounded.
I have read many accounts of this battle. The men who fought it were embittered against the man who ordered it, 5th Army commander Gen Mark Clark for the rest of their lives. A Congressional inquiry was launched into the battle after the war which ultimately exonerated Clark.
At the time, I bet those Texans thought that the US would lose the war. Sure, the Russians are inept and corrupt. But if you are willing to throw enough men at an objective, while learning and applying some lessons learned in defeat, you just might prevail in the end.
Having said that, I hope that the Ukrainians can defend themselves against this unjustified onslaught, but the US should stay out of it.
Considering the lack of mechanical expertise and just plain laziness of the Mid-East culture I’d doubt that much of the sophisticated equipment left is even working any more.
Pretty sure they are fighting a pre-1911 war.
Something before machine guns and quality artillery.
“Pretty sure they are fighting a pre-1911 war.”
Well, let’s at least give them to the 1914-1917 war (because Russia threw in the towel in 1917). :)
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