Scott Ritter and Andrei Martyanov join Garland Nixon for an interesting summary of recent events:
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Main points:
* Zelensky was sidelined and discarded at the NATO summit. Nixon thinks he was intentionally put in his place, and publicly so.
* Ritter thinks NATO double-crossed Ukraine regarding military support and NATO membership. Ritter was somewhat sympathetic and apologetic towards the Ukrainians, saying NATO is the main problem and Ukraine has been an 'obedient puppet'. Such a perspective doesn't seem to take into account the Nazi culture among the UAF, domestic repression by the Ukrainian government or 'meat grinder' disposal of untrained and unwilling 'soldier'-civilians.
* Martyanov thinks Vilnius was a "closing ceremony" of western support for Ukraine, and notes that mainstream media talking heads in the US are starting to shift the narrative towards preparing the masses to accept a Ukrainian defeat. Notes ambiguous language around F-16 arrangement.
* Second bombing of the Crimean bridge and massive Russian missile strikes on Odessa and Nikolaev.
* Biden unwitting revealed the US sent cluster munitions because they had no other types of ammo. Ritter explains technical details about cluster munitions and their unsuitability for the type of terrain in the Ukraine conflict. Essentially they are the last of the US' old stockpiles.
* US used 60K artillery rounds in Iraq, Russia is sometimes using that much in one day, showing that the Russian military-industrial production is years in advance of western capability. Ritter thinks the war is essentially over, NATO has lost, it just hasn't quite sunk in to certain parties yet.
* Russian Lancet drone mass production is taking place with a new, upgraded generation of Lancets that have swarm capabilities that can overwhelm portable western air defences such as Stingers. Ukrainian troops have essentially no air support even with NATO equipment, and it's going to get much worse.
* Martyanov describes NATO as "a dead man walking".
* Martyanov says that the naval capability upgrade by Russia and China at the moment would read better than any Tom Clancy novel. Russia have refurbished some of the old Soviet super-shipyards and are now producing a new generation of navy that carry Zircon hypersonic missiles and fully automated antimissile defences that have been SMO-tested.
* These new generation ships are integrated with satellite capabilities that make it possible to strike enemy battle groups from outside any area of visual observability.
* Ritter thinks the 3,000 man US troop assignment in Europe is an attempt to prepare a structure for a larger NATO force based in Poland as Russian troops may eventually be located along the Polish border.
* Martyanov describes a Russian strategy of "exhaustion": ongoing smaller battles that eventually prepare the ground for the "big arrow" offensives that mark sudden and significant changes in territory.
* Russia considers the US, Russia and China as the only consequential military powers in the world at the moment, from a strategic perspective.
* Nixon thinks the paradigm for modern warfare has shifted over the last 1.5 years to greatly favour electronic warfare, which can be seen with new drone and counter-drone technologies.
* Ritter thinks the US is also significantly behind Russia in terms of electronic warfare capabilities. Russia has trained a lot of their mobilised forces on these capabilities, even double-trained them on a new threat model developed from information gathered from the SMO.
* Western-supplied HIMARS, JDAMs have been neutralised by Russian EW capabilities.
* Martyanov emphasises that communications has become pivotal for modern command and control systems in military theory. "Data fusion" from multiple sources to create real-time maps of tactical and strategic probabilities. Rumours of "holographic maps" in use by the Russian military. In general, warfare drives massive technological progress.
* Ritter thinks Kharkov is likely the target of the imminent major Russian offensive, to use as a bargaining chip to force a cease fire on Russia's terms, which may include allowing Odessa to remain part of Ukraine. Personally, I think that is unlikely. Given the historical connection of Russia to Odessa, it's more likely that Odessa will be reunified with Russia at this point.
* Blinken trip to China was part of de-escalation strategy because US wargaming is showing that the US loses in every possible way. Kuomintang in Taiwan getting nervous about US possible double cross against chipmaking/industrial capacity a la Nord Stream 2 bombing, so are moving to a more neutral position.
* China is nowhere near the US or Russia is terms of submarine capability, but their surface naval capabilities are impressive and rapidly increasing. US capabilities to scale up production are limited.
* Significant meetings between high-level members of Russian and Chinese military industrial complex at political summits with Putin and Xi.
* China is also becoming closely integrated with Russia in terms of technology transfer, military cooperation, and even in terms of command and control. China may soon obtain hypersonic technology capabilities from Russia.
