comment: >
  
  Children and their grandparents will now be able to serve together.
context: The usual Russian facade. Announce major changes, then either nothing changes or everything goes to shit. You can't do anything in a country that corrupt. >
  
  The biggest change in Russian military wiill be that shoigu gets blue yacht instead of grey >
  
  Not entirely true, there are already several different changes ongoing:
  
  rapid cadre rotation: current forces are being phased out as fertilizer and replaced with unmotivated recruits too stupid or too poor to avoid draft
  military hardware is being replaced at rates not seen in decades: as modern-ish tanks, ifv, apcs and artillery is destroyed and breaks down it is increasingly replaced with mothballed designs from the 60's
  
  Both those things have accelerated development of a new Russian soldier training program:
  
  military history is more prominent part of curriculum. Reviving 50-year old gear and adapting repair and maintenance manuals to modern times and part availability is an interdisciplinary endeavor: a bit of archeology, a little practical engineering and a whole lot of religious levels of copium put together with duck-tape
  trainers have been given a lot of leeway when developing new program: there is nobody to overrule them as the original trainers were sent to Ukrainian front in first waves of reinforcements
  records show that new training program produces fully trained soldiers in quarter and sometimes even tenth of the time it used to get semi-trained draftees before. Reminder: questioning what the records show may cause suicide. >
  
  
  military hardware is being replaced at rates not seen in decades: as modern-ish tanks, ifv, apcs and artillery is destroyed and breaks down it is increasingly replaced with mothballed designs from the 60's     
  
  Are we looking at the same timeline?  By 2026 Russia will completely phase out armored vehicles. >
  
  I suspect they'll transition to modern, lightweight armored vehicles instead. At the fraction of the weight and price they still offer reasonable protection against bb guns and are easily sourced from civilian population at gunpoint ;-) >
  
  Naa, they will go full taliban and use technicals. >
  
  The Taliban has mountains. These fights are in the Windows wallpaper flatlands >
  
  There's a few hilly (and very hilly) areas, but that's mostly in the DPR's Donbas region controlled by Russia atm and the very southern part of Crimea directly east of Sevastapol. The entire area from the Zaporizhia front to Crimea, including Melitool and Mariupol, is very flat although the flat coastal plains become narrower the further east you travel, eventually hugging the coast by Mariupol. Further north the land is still relatively flat but becomes true steppe - gentle rolling hills are very common. >
  
  That’s certainly not correct. Ukraine is making major changes to the Russian armed forces, mainly by killing them. >
  
  To elaborate on this:
  The prewar Russian military was designed as an active defense force, specifically to fend off a NATO invasion, and certainly not designed to invade and occupy a country the size of Ukraine. The Kremlin had spent billions of dollars since the mid-2000s "modernizing" its equipment and, importantly, restructuring its units into theoretically self-sufficient "Battalion Tactical Groups".
  The unit structure here is an important point in the context of the Ukrainian war. As part of Russia's annual conscription cycle, conscripts are sent to local units for training - not to a centralized training location. In other words, conscripts would not go to some "infantry school" with its own training staff that every infantryman in the Russian military also goes to, the same way all infantrymen in the US Army go to Fort Benning. They were trained at their local BTG by the contract soldiers in that unit... the same contract soldiers that invaded Ukraine in February last year.
  Those units, especially the contract soldiers within them, have been eviscerated by high casualty rates. Since the May/June time frame, the entire concept of BTGs fighting as discrete units has largely become insolvent. Not only does this mean that many of those units lack a professional cadre of officers in a combat zone... it also means that there is no one to train new conscripts. There is no relief of command. They put their new recruit training apparatus into the meat grinder. This is what happens when the guys fighting are also the same guys training new recruits.
  Edit: To add a historical footnote, the Luftwaffe ran into this same problem toward the mid-end of the Second World War. Instead of recycling successful pilots into an instructor role to train new fighter pilots, the Nazis continued to send them on combat missions. High casualty rates among pilots  in general resulted in a “hollowing out” of the Luftwaffe’s aggregate pilot experience pool, meaning that each new pilot being sent up was less well trained than the last. It didn’t matter that Germany was producing more aircraft in 1944 than any other time in the war. Aircraft production doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have trained pilots (and in the Germans’ case, fuel) to fly them.
  Edit 2: to add another point, I think these issues plaguing the Russians highlight the necessity of reform in the US military. Clearly, the Russians believed they could seize Ukraine without incurring major losses; given that their training cadre are the same thing as their frontline combat troops, any major losses could (and did) severely hobble Russian force generation efforts... if they believed they would incur casualties as high as they have, they would arguably not have invaded, at least the way they did, and risk the situation they currently find themselves in (no one to train new recruits). 
  As of now, the US military does not have a "single replacement" system for combat losses. We are able to get away with this because since the end of the Cold War, we have not been faced with high-casualty combat or attrition warfare. As such, the US military currently does not have a "single replacement" policy for reinforcing units depleted by casualties. If we are ever in a high-attrition or high-casualty war with someone like, say, China, casualty rates will be significantly higher than anything we faced in the GWOT. In its next major war, the US must implement a system where attritted units are able to be replenished with a pool of trained manpower when necessary... instead of being strung out to dry with \~30% authorized strength in a combat zone, like the Russian units that were routed in September near Kharkiv were. >
  
  The US also has the problem of not having faced enemy artillery or air power in decades. Certainly not effective artillery or air power.
  So you have this massive emphasis on small unit infantry stuff, because that’s what you use in a counterinsurgency fight.
  But in terms of actual warfare and killing the enemy, the rifleman is there to occupy space, not to kill. That’s artillery’s job. >
  
  This is very true, but NATO is learning lessons about modern artillery from the war in Ukraine.  And because we have an infrastructure of training and education that Russia largely lacks, those can be put to good use.  
  To put things a little differently, there is an old saw about "armies always try to fight their next war the way they fought their last one".  The war in Ukraine isn't "ours", but we're supplying weapons and closely observing their performance, so we're going to learn quite a lot. >
  
  Yup, we have a much better chance of actually putting lessons learned into practice.
  I suspect that the direction in which training will flow will reverse quite soon. I’ve definitely seen some memes about Ukrainian tankers with a dozen confirmed kills being taught by American tankers who’ve never fired a shot in anger or worked with a drone. >
  
  The one caveat to lessons learned is that Russia never competently practiced combined arms warfare, because they're fucking stupid.  Lots of amateurs commentators have said things like "tanks are useless in the era of Javelins" , but everyone knew since WWI that tanks have to operate in tandem with infantry.  There must be dozens of other tempting but incorrect conclusions to draw. >
  
  That one is definitely true. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff Ukraine is doing which you couldn’t do against a competent force.
  Most of the small drone grenade stuff for one. Everything from jamming to just building real trenches would shut most of that down. >
  
  Planning the future military they thought they already had. I would cut all projections by 2/3 to account for theft and mismanagement however. >
  
  I'd hate to give free advice to those pricks but seems like they just need basic stuff like enough socks for their troops and standard financial oversights to limit grift.  ...Of course the whole point of an Oligarchy is that you steal the 'strategic sock money' with a paperwork error (ordering singles instead of pairs) and use it to renovate your Yacht with a second helipad ! >
  
  
  I'd hate to give free advice to those pricks but seems like they just need basic stuff like enough socks for their troops and standard financial oversights to limit grift
  
  Their previous minister of defense tried that. He got sacked and replaced by Shoigu for his efforts >
  
  The problem is when the system is this corrupt, everyone is stealing at every level.
  So it’s not like the money Shoigu doesn’t steal makes it on down to the solider at the front. It gets stolen at every level, down to the truck driver selling off food instead of delivering it, or charging the men he’s delivering to. >
  
  Has Shoigu aged like 10 years since the start of the war? >
  
  When you preside over such a clusterfuck. Who wouldn’t. This guy used to run our FEMA, he managed to become the only Yeltsin era politician who stayed relevant and mostly popular. Boasted about investing a trillion dollars into the military. Must’ve been Zimbabwe dollars. Not to mention he’s a construction engineer by education so he’s already in way over his head. >
  
  I remember when CoD and various other games had us convinced that Russia actually had a pretty modern and capable military. Boy were they wrong. >
  
  Yeah, there's basically no way I can believe that they're capable of taking Burger Town anymore. >
  
  Ramirez!! Defend the burger town! >
  
  Lmao Ramirez single handedly stopped the invasion. >
  
  Ya if anything, Price launching that EMP at DC probably hurt the American war effort >
  
  Not to mention killing all the civilians you just fought to protect at the Washington Monument.  Knocked every American fighter and helicopter out of the sky as well. >
  
  I don't think high altitude nuclear explosion that cause EMPs are dangerous to humans. Unless you're talking  about civilians dieing from lack of electricity >
  
  They were evacuated via helicopter and all the helicopters in the area crashed after the helicopters' power cut out due to the EMP. >
  
  Oh lmao, forgot that part haha >
  
  Russian Leaders: Socks for everyone!! 
  Soldiers: a full pair?!?!
  Russian Leaders: what do you think we are, made of socks?? >
  
  That was literally 2013....they didn't have socks til then. >
  
  $5 says most of those socks to be issued from 2013 on were sold on the black market and new conscripts have foot wraps again. >
  
  That's where I get my socks. Russian black market. 40 pair for 200 rubles. Hell of a deal. >
  
  Instead of rusted guns they're getting sticks... >
  
  And somehow those sticks will be rusted too >
  
  Haha dumb westerner called the gun bark “rust” >
  
  Bro team Edward all the way ❤️ >
  
  Fuck yeah >
  
  Fuck Jacob >
  
  Whiny Pedo imo >
  
  Bold of them to assume they will have any armed forces left by then. >
  
  They can always mobilize some 60-years old men. >
  
  Their first wave of their best couldn't do it, but SURELY if they throw enough dudes with 80 year old rifles at them, THIS time it'll work! >
  
  The rifles have no bullets.  The retiree brigade will just have to swing and hope.