Yes, but not new. Flooding lands to deny access and and diverting waterways to gain access is a pretty ancient tactic.
The Venetians had a simpler tactic - pull up the channel markers in the shallow lagoon, pretty much guaranteeing the invading ships would run aground. Worked great until Napoleon showed up with his newfangled artillery with a three-mile range, that could reach the city from the mainland.
News reports say the Russians have fired a second hypersonic missile, this time at a fuel depot.
Russians have denied this, but the Ukrainians have documents (posted somewhere online, but I couldn’t find them) that say that Russian cadets are being used in the fighting. Looks like a desperation move to me. The hypersonic missiles look like desperation too, for that matter.
The Kyiv Independent says that men with no military background are being forcibly conscripted by the Russians in Donbas, and thrown into the front line with little training.
I wonder how willing Donbas will be to become a part of Russia after the war.
More desperation. Usually it’s the defenders that are that desperate.
Good god.
(Bolding mine)
And casualties among inexperienced defenders are bad enough, but inexperienced attackers are horrific.
There’s a certain risk in handing unwilling people weapons and expecting them to use those against the other side. Or even sending them to do work, unarmed, where they may run across dead soldiers with abandoned weapons.
The other problem is - a few will survive. then what? You expect them not to tell everyone what happened when they get home? I’m sure some people must be thinking “what happens when all this is over?”
Even the Nazis realized it was a good idea to start covering their tracks as the invading forces began approaching their death camps, destroying evidence and marching prisoners away. I wonder how many thought far enough ahead to realize that even 60 or more years later, assorted authorities would be scouring the earth to find and punish the perpetrators?
Could be worse:
that piece of news seems pretty significant:
Russian tabloid posts — then removes — report on Defense Ministry’s count of Russian soldier deaths in Ukraine
From CNN’s Paul P. Murphy, Vasco Cotovio and Nathan Hodge
The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published, then later removed, a report that the Russian Ministry of Defense had recorded 9,861 Russian Armed forces deaths in the war in Ukraine.
The report from the tabloid originally read, “According to the Russian Defense Ministry, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 people killed and 16153 wounded.”
IMHO Basically it is an advertising move. In some cases it is to help sell the weapon overseas, in this case it is just some positive PR. The US did the same thing when they sent the B-2 over Afghanistan just to be able to claim it is a combat proven system. Though the Air Force has a variety of reasons why it is needed.
lots of input on new tactics used in Kiev from the horse’s mouth…
a former US-marine interviewing a US marine fighting now in kiev …
When I mentioned to Jed that I’d fought in Fallujah in 2004, he said that the tactics the Marine Corps used to take that city would never work today in Ukraine.
…
They technically didn’t need to do that; the B-2 had already experienced combat before in 1999 in Kosovo.
Few tactics are really new.
But what about using the enemy’s call phone network:
I don’t think it is a good tactic.
From the link:
[Moderating]
That was a very interesting article you quoted from, but you quoted most of it in your post. In accordance with Fair Use guidelines, we ask users to directly quote only small excerpts and refer to the source for the rest, and if you wish to summarize the rest of the article. I’ve edited your post accordingly.
Well, Russia has sent its super-special prototype tank into action; didn’t work out so well.
Looks like it blowed up real good.
So…
Back to the drawing board?
Huh, you mean that a lone prototype of a new tank isn’t a nigh-unstoppable combat machine capable of sustaining a major push all by itself? All this time, video games have been lying to me!
Not to mention comic books, action films and the guy at the bar down the street that swears he drove an Abrams M1A2C in Granada.