If you have a hack that exposes data the other side is using to target you, your first goal is to use the data to your advantage. You don’t go public with it to get ‘credit’, any more than American code breakers would have leaked that they had cracked Enigma just to prevent someone else from getting credit for it.
Knowing that the enemy has located some of your equipment is much more useful if they don’t know you know. The minute they discover the hack they will use a different communication method and you lose the ability to know when they have found your weapons.
If anything NATO should make that information publicly available w/ delay (I am sure the Russians high command would also be happy to learn where their stuff is currently )
… maybe we could implement a subscription service for the russian side:
daily information with 1 hr. delay $10.000.000,- p/day (way cheaper than losing a SAM)
daily information with 30min. delay $20.000.000,- p/d
daily information with 1min. delay $50.000.000,- p/d
(only russian war assets shown)
… weekly and monthly discounts available, just ask at NATOs front-desk. Direct bank transfer to the “NATO eastern-expansion-fund” only. Cancel anytime (e.g. no more SAMs left, or the war ended)
The US helped in its usual way: Industrialization. In late 1942 there were 30 Bombes in Bletchley park. Traffic was starting to back up so the USN let out a contract to NCR. Some tweaks were made to make manufacturing easier and to speed up the rotors and six months later 20 US-made Bombes were delivered. Then 2 a week until 121 had been built and delivered.
I haven’t quite unlocked “power level:Russian” in my binge drinking achievements, but if I were about to be sent to a meaningless war where I would quite likely die, I too would want to engage in one last bender in a relatively safe place before I needed to stay frosty with danger literally in all directions.
I worry that the “inductions” as it were are really just pre-textual. Like an extrajudicial execution with extra steps. I don’t mean “step 1 induct into service, step 2 send to war zone, step 3 wait for them to get killed.” I mean “step 1 induct into service, step 2 send towards war zone, step 3 tell everyone to get off the bus, step 4 distribute shovels, step 5 tell everyone to start digging a ditch in the forest (or defensive trench, whatever), step 6 shoot every last one of them.” Burial optional, blaming the Ukrainians optional, calling them deserters—whereabouts unknown—probably cheapest.
I hope I’m wrong, but I fear what new atrocities will be uncovered even as the war is (eventually) over.
I suspect this might be real with Chechen and Wagner, units. But not so sure if they would do it to Russian regular force members. Maybe only their own. They are very zealous, hardcore. It may also be true of Ukraine Kraken unit. Also very hardcore.
There may be some political, friendly country aspect to it as well. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are being pretty nice with Russia to a point. So going along with their prisoner exchange scheme will give them a boost in world opinion in all this. Russia lets them score some points on the world stage, with little real negative effect.
There is some negative effect for sure with some Russians. But will likely be an overall plus in several aspects.
I am curious. Given both sides great impetus to BS massively on casualty rates. Where are folks getting any numbers that they feel are real? I may believe some details of events on the battle field after some time of the BS being filtered. But casualty figures, I have little faith in from either side. Also. Russia can play the figures a lot, by only including Russian regular forces, not all the Donbas militia forces casualties.
U.S. / NATO and Ukraine have been closely allied for quite some time. Ukraine forces have been trained to NATO standards for quite some time. Of course they are getting U.S. and other NATO / Western intel at high levels. Maybe fudged just a bit to not reveal the total capabilities. A supposed " hack " may have all sorts of reasons. But anyone who didn’t think it was happening before day 1 is foolish.
The Oryx listings provide something of a lower bound for Russian equipment losses. It’s an OSINT (open source intelligence) project documenting equipment losses based on available photographic/video evidence. There’s a similar listing for Ukrainian losses. Now, despite their efforts, there’s probably a bit of overcounting where specific vehicles get counted more than once due to appearing very different in pictures taken at different times etc. However, it’s unlikely to be a very large overcount. On the other hand, it’s guaranteed to be an undercount of actual losses unless you think every single destroyed tank, IFV, etc, has had its moment of glory on social media channels.
You can then compare Oryx’s running totals to the Ukrainian MoD claimed Russian equipment destroyed/captured. Now, their categories don’t line up - Oryx splits non-tank armoured vehicles into a bunch of categories compared to the MoD. But if you just add up everything you get 6.3k from Oryx and 14.1k from the MoD. MoD (assuming they aren’t just completely making shit up for morale purposes) is basing their numbers based on BDA and after-action reports. We know that these frequently overestimate enemy losses - consider for example WWII Allied claimed aerial kills vs actual German losses - but a reasonable assessment is that Russian losses are somewhere between those two numbers, and probably a fair chunk higher than the Oryx count. Likely at least somewhere in the 60-80% of MoD claimed losses at a minimum. This means that the Ukrainian MoD claims are not completely detached from reality, which is not something that can be said of Russian MoD statements.
Oryx doesn’t count soldiers, but assuming the Ukrainian MoD methodology for claimed KIA has a similar error rate (which of course isn’t certain) we can apply that same ratio. I believe the current claimed running KIA total is about 55k, so a plausible number is ~40k.
ETA: The Oryx count of Ukrainian losses is much, much lower, and I suspect that it’s undercounting to a much greater degree than the Russian loss tally. Ukrainians are less likely to post videos of their own losses, and Russians are less likely to be posting videos at all and hence less likely to be posting videos of their captures, Kadyrovites and Wagners notwithstanding.
Thank you very much. I will track the sources you noted.
I have so far not given much credence to human military loss numbers. More so to material losses such as vehicles, tanks, artillery, etc…
Even my favored sources note the numbers for either side being sketchy.
Also. I look at the Ukraine MoD site. But just the video updates. Is there a more concise report from them? It is lengthy and hard to filter the video contained facts.
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(in case it wasn’t obvious)