OrangeKhrush

We are in the predicament that Lewis Hall has to play now, with Lascelles out it will see Burn needing to go back to CB. We may have Trippier return. Gordon is going to be a loss but i think Barnes and Murphy should cause problems.

Been playing a lot of cyberpunk, i heard a lot of negative stuff about it but it seems like a good game so far. I bought the main + phantom liberty on special, im level 30 in my corpo play through. Im doing most side missions trying to learn the basics of character building.

Liverpool must start to feel good about this season, would be a hell of a send off for Klopp

I blame Todd for this

The obsession with Trump is just part of the the technocrat panic at losing an election https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/25/mdvr-m25.html Taken from the World Socialist Web Site, you often find gems when alliances splinter and people tell the truth. Growing opposition to Democrats’ “all-out war” to block third parties from ballot We are seeing what is in plain sight, the attempt to control the ballot yet they criticise Russia. Joe Biden losing the election will be a clear sign of Democracy winning.

Four months ago you were unstoppable, now you cant buy a win. Fear not we have about 40 players missing for tuesday.

Phillips should have first time hoofed that ball out, by trying to control it he allowed Gordon to steal in a then if you kick a players leg out in the box you are always in trouble. Gordon won both penalties and another assist to add to a solid season.

The fight back was courageous but against he injury crisis continues and at this point the only fingers can point to the training and style of play being the issue. Isak, Gordon were good today, Barnes has been something of a super sub lately, just wish he could stay fit. and Lewis Hall in the midfield is a very different player.

Harvey Barnes has turned the game around

If he bet against us, it will be hard for him to come back, many of the fanbase have already written him off, some of us are prepared to give him a second chance, but it is on Shakey ground.

Got to give him kudos for the loyalty

I saw The Beekeeper on Wednesday, a typical Jason Statham movie, it won't win any awards but it is a watchable movie. 6/10 Today I saw Wonka, very good movie, Timothee Chalamet pulls off a young Willy Wonka masterclass, definitely worth watching. 8.5/10

Putin wants a war as it is all that gives him relevance, what is never shown is how Russians hate him. The only propaganda we get from Russia is how westerners salivate over Russia, that said the same is done over China when both are absolutely terrible places if you happen to be in the poor spectrum.

He settled in well, he knew exactly where the bookies were. As far as first impressions go, this is scorched earth.

The negotiations have stalled already, Hamas want the IDF to pull back, they want all Hamas militants released and apparently they want the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital and in exchange Israel gets nothing. For me the only permanent ceasefire would be, our prisoners and Hamas leaving, and the palastinian get palastine with support rebuilding it, full oversight by the UN and US. Then we are making some progress.

While all this goes on Northern Syria is under attack by the All Assad, Russians and Iranians and it gets absolutely no interest. Why is nothing done about the Syrian and Sudanese catastrophe? It's not profitable is probably the only legitimate answer Meanwhile in Gaza tik toks of Gazans feeding 100's of stray cats surplus stocks or bags upon bags of MREs found in dumpsters are circulating. I am with Gonzo here, why is 700 000 dead in Syria, 500 000 in Yemen and 400 000 in Sudan not even worth a UNSC sit together.

Nice steady start for team Aston Martin

Typical UN, convinced of war crimes and yet do nothing. They have not condemned Hamas once or held them responsible for certain war crimes. The UN is the biggest puppet of them all, the fact that China, Russia and others are allowed into the UN is itself satire, 66% of the UN is comprised by states with little to no human rights

Putin still thinks Ukraine did it even though ISIS have said they did it, I'm not really sure what Putin is playing at here. The war is going terribly for Russia.

First off Jerusalem under the 67 accords was deemed international and not belonging to Israel or Palastine. If land was their aim they would have accepted 1947, therefore it is not a land dispute it is what Al Husseini said it was all along, a holy war. Hitler wanted to send all the Jews to the holy land but it was Al Husseini who said it was going to be problematic and suggested burning them all. The issue is Jewish presence is a front to Islamism. It is also in the Hamas,Islamic jihad of palastine and Fatahs mandate for the erradication of Israel. I don't like the settler expansions and the Hassidics handling of this, I am more that happy to revise Israels position in the west back with some compromise. At the closest point to Tel Aviv the west bank high ground is 9 miles making it a grave threat, some of the west bank territory should be headed to Israel for depth of defence and in return southern west bank territory is given to Palastine. Israel was built with freedom, Palastine hasn't built not because of Israelis but because they are not free amongst themselves which is why I'm unsatisfied with the fact that Hamas is allowed to survive.

This obviously blew up on the internet and every anti Israel source ran on it without context with the "everyone is a civilian" narrative. I read that the IDF responded to the UN with extend footage which is withheld from the story making machine which shows them coming from an active war zone as participants. Context is key to everything. Al Jazeera had two journalists killed because they did not identify as press nor make themselves or their presence known, they then launched a drone in a active war zone in which they were traced and struck. Hamas operate drones and given the destructive nature of drone warfare the IDF actively seeks operators. Given Al Jazeera's lack of neutrality they may have been trying to tip off IDF positions ergo not acting like press do. First off press are not allowed in a active war zone they are kept in safe areas under escort. Al Jazeera did not comment other than run the same tropes.

Then you get these religious nutjobs, across the board batshit crazy

Trust me, the world should be focused more on the Kurdish situation rather than the Israel/Palastine dispute. That is the real ignoring of genocide because it isn't a fashionable story. It's tragic that Americans used the Kurds then abandoned them, they did the same to Afghanis. The world turns a blind eye to real attrocities in Africa, the Middle east and China so they can obsess about their post modernist anti zionistic rhetoric.

I'm not sure how telling you that latest Palastinian polls show them choosing a convicted terrorist as the person of choice to run their country. Surely with freedom and liberty they could choose a more moderate candidate, rather than a devout Islamist who has said he wants the return of the Islamic caliphate. How does such a scenario end in peace? What is needed is leaders that can accept that there is equal blame and the past is the past, the only way to move on is accepting that repeating the past will only end up in war. You are the one that completely fails to consider the dual complexity of this situation without any consideration of the magnitude that such a decision can have. While they don't know any better giving them power to make a choice that is fundamentally bad only results in the cycle repeating itself. This was a conversation had in 2003 and the Western world with their all knowing benevolence failed to calculate and by 2003 Hamas were murdering palastinians, executing homosexuals and killing political opponents and their supporters. Why do you have so much belief that things will be any different?

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine The most effective model is a mixture of the two, in which a state maintains a medium-sized professional army, together with a mass of draftees available for mobilisation. This leads directly to a high/low mixture. Professional pre-war forces form the high end of this army, becoming fire brigades – moving from sector to sector in battle to stabilise the situation and conduct decisive attacks. Low-end formations hold the line and gain experience slowly, increasing their quality until they gain the capability to conduct offensive operations. Victory is attained by creating the highest quality low-end formations possible. Forging new units into combat-capable soldiers instead of civilian mobs is done through training and combat experience. A new formation should train for at least six months, and only if manned by reservists with previous individual training. Conscripts take longer. These units should also have professional soldiers and NCOs brought in from the pre-war army to add professionalism. Once initial training is complete, they should only be fed into the battle in secondary sectors. No formation should be allowed to fall below 70% strength. Withdrawing formations early allows experience to proliferate among the new replacements as veterans pass on their skills. Otherwise, valuable experience is lost, causing the process to start all over. Another implication is that resources should prioritise replacements over new formations, preserving combat edge in both the pre-war army (high) and newly raised (low) formations. It’s advisable to disband several pre-war (high-end) formations to spread professional soldiers among newly created low-end formations in order to raise initial quality. The Military Dimension Military operations in an attritional conflict are very distinct from those in a war of manoeuvre. Instead of a decisive battle achieved through rapid manoeuvre, attritional war focuses on destroying enemy forces and their ability to regenerate combat power, while preserving one’s own. In this context, a successful strategy accepts that the war will last at least two years and be broken into two distinct phases. The first phase ranges from initiation of hostilities to the point where sufficient combat power has been mobilised to allow decisive action. It will see little positional shifting on the ground, focusing on favourable exchange of losses and building up combat power in the rear. The dominant form of combat is fires rather than manoeuvre, complemented by extensive fortifications and camouflage. The peacetime army starts the war and conducts holding actions, providing time to mobilise resources and train the new army. The second phase can commence after one side has met the following conditions. Newly mobilised forces have completed their training and gained sufficient experience to make them combat-effective formations, capable of rapidly integrating all their assets in a cohesive manner. The enemy’s strategic reserve is exhausted, leaving it unable to reinforce the threatened sector. Fires and reconnaissance superiority are achieved, allowing the attacker to effectively mass fires on a key sector while denying the enemy the same. The enemy’s industrial sector is degraded to the point where it is unable to replace battlefield losses. In the case of fighting against a coalition of countries, their industrial resources must also be exhausted or at least accounted for. Only after meeting these criteria should offensive operations commence. They should be launched across a broad front, seeking to overwhelm the enemy at multiple points with shallow attacks. The intent is to remain inside a layered bubble of friendly protective systems, while stretching depleted enemy reserves until the front collapses. Only then should the offensive extend towards objectives deeper in the enemy rear. Concentration of forces on one main effort should be avoided as this gives an indication of the offensive’s location and an opportunity for the enemy to concentrate their reserves against this key point. The Brusilov Offensive of 1916, which resulted in the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian army, is a good example of a successful attritional offensive at the tactical and operational level. By attacking along a broad front, the Russian army prevented the Austro-Hungarians from concentrating their reserves, resulting in a collapse all along the front. At the strategic level, however, the Brusilov Offensive is an example of failure. Russian forces failed to set conditions against the whole enemy coalition, focusing only on the Austro-Hungarian Empire and neglecting German capacity. The Russians expended crucial resources which they could not replace, without defeating the strongest coalition member. To reemphasise the key point, an offensive will only succeed once key criteria are met. Attempting to launch an offensive earlier will result in losses without any strategic gains, playing directly into enemy hands. Modern War The modern battlefield is an integrated system of systems which includes various types of electronic warfare (EW), three basic types of air defences, four different types of artillery, countless aircraft types, strike and reconnaissance drones, construction and sapper engineers, traditional infantry, armour formations and, above all, logistics. Artillery has become more dangerous thanks to increased ranges and advanced targeting, stretching the depth of the battlefield. In practice, this means it is easier to mass fires than forces. Deep manoeuvre, which requires the massing of combat power, is no longer possible because any massed force will be destroyed by indirect fires before it can achieve success in depth. Instead, a ground offensive requires a tight protective bubble to ward off enemy strike systems. This bubble is generated through layering friendly counter-fire, air defence and EW assets. Moving numerous interdependent systems is highly complicated and unlikely to be successful. Shallow attacks along the forward line of troops are most likely to be successful at an acceptable cost ratio; attempts at deep penetration will be exposed to massed fires the moment they exit the protection of the defensive bubble. Integration of these overlapping assets requires centralised planning and exceptionally well-trained staff officers, capable of integrating multiple capabilities on the fly. It takes years to train such officers, and even combat experience does not generate such skills in a short time. Checklists and mandatory procedures can alleviate these deficiencies, but only on a less-complicated, static front. Dynamic offensive operations require fast reaction times, which semi-trained officers are incapable of performing. An example of this complexity is an attack by a platoon of 30 soldiers. This would require EW systems to jam enemy drones; another EW system to jam enemy communications preventing adjustment of enemy fires; and a third EW system to jam space navigation systems denying use of precision guided munitions. In addition, fires require counterbattery radars to defeat enemy artillery. Further complicating planning is the fact that enemy EW will locate and destroy any friendly radar or EW emitter that is emitting for too long. Engineers will have to clear paths through minefields, while friendly drones provide time-sensitive ISR and fire support if needed. (This task requires a great deal of training with the supporting units to avoid dropping munitions on friendly attacking troops.) Finally, artillery needs to provide support both on the objective and enemy rear, targeting reserves and suppressing artillery. All these systems need to work as an integrated team just to support 30 men in several vehicles attacking another 30 men or less. A lack of coordination between these assets will result in failed attacks and horrific losses without ever seeing the enemy. As the size of formation conducting operations increases, so do the number and complexity of assets that need to be integrated. Implications for Combat Operations Deep fires – further than 100–150 km (the average range of tactical rockets) behind the front line – target an enemy’s ability to generate combat power. This includes production facilities, munitions dumps, repair depots, and energy and transportation infrastructure. Of particular importance are targets that require significant production capabilities and that are difficult to replace/repair, as their destruction will inflict long term damage. As with all aspects of attritional war, such strikes will take significant time to have an effect, with timelines running into years. The low global production volumes of long-range precision-guided munitions, effective deception and concealment actions, large stockpiles of anti-aircraft missiles and the sheer repair capacities of strong, determined states all combine to prolong conflicts. Effective layering of air defences must include high-end systems at all altitudes coupled with cheaper systems to counter the enemy’s massed low-end attack platforms. Combined with mass-scale manufacturing and effective EW, this is the only way to defeat enemy deep fires. Successful attritional war focuses on the preservation of one’s own combat power. This usually translates into a relatively static front interrupted by limited local attacks to improve positions, using artillery for most of the fighting. Fortification and concealment of all forces including logistics is the key to minimising losses. The long time required to construct fortifications prevents significant ground movement. An attacking force which cannot rapidly entrench will suffer significant losses from enemy artillery fires. Defensive operations buy time to develop low-end combat formations, allowing newly mobilised troops to gain combat experience without suffering heavy losses in large-scale attacks. Building up experienced low-tier combat formations generates the capability for future offensive operations. The early stages of attritional war range from initiation of hostilities to the point where mobilised resources are available in large numbers and are ready for combat operations. In the case of a surprise attack, a rapid offensive by one side may be possible until the defender can form a solid front. After that, combat solidifies. This period lasts at least a year-and-a-half to two years. During this period, major offensive operations should be avoided. Even if large attacks are successful, they will result in significant casualties, often for meaningless territorial gains. An army should never accept a battle on unfavourable terms. In attritional war, any terrain that does not have a vital industrial centre is irrelevant. It is always better to retreat and preserve forces, regardless of the political consequences. Fighting on disadvantageous terrain burns up units, losing experienced soldiers who are key to victory. The German obsession with Stalingrad in 1942 is a prime example of fighting on unfavourable terrain for political reasons. Germany burned up vital units that it could not afford to lose, simply to capture a city bearing Stalin’s name. It is also wise to push the enemy into fighting on disadvantageous terrain through information operations, exploiting politically sensitive enemy objectives. The goal is to force the enemy to expend vital material and strategic reserves on strategically meaningless operations. A key pitfall to avoid is being dragged into the very same trap that has been set for the enemy. In the First World War, Germans did just that at Verdun, where it planned to use surprise to capture key, politically sensitive terrain, provoking costly French counterattacks. Unfortunately for the Germans, they fell into their own trap. They failed to gain key, defendable terrain early on, and the battle devolved instead into a series of costly infantry assaults by both sides, with artillery fires devastating attacking infantry. When the second phase begins, the offensive should be launched across a broad front, seeking to overwhelm the enemy at multiple points using shallow attacks. The intent is to remain inside the layered bubble of friendly protective systems, while stretching depleted enemy reserves until the front collapses. There is a cascading effect in which a crisis in one sector forces the defenders to shift reserves from a second sector, only to generate a crisis there in turn. As forces start falling back and leaving prepared fortifications, morale plummets, with the obvious question: ‘If we can’t hold the mega-fortress, how can we hold these new trenches?’ Retreat then turns into rout. Only then should the offensive extend towards objectives deeper in the enemy rear. The Allies’ Offensive in 1918 is an example. The Allies attacked along a broad front, while the Germans lacked sufficient resources to defend the entire line. Once the German Army began to retreat it proved impossible to stop. The attritional strategy, centred on defence, is counterintuitive to most Western military officers. Western military thought views the offensive as the only means of achieving the decisive strategic goal of forcing the enemy to come to the negotiating table on unfavourable terms. The strategic patience required to set the conditions for an offensive runs against their combat experience acquired in overseas counterinsurgency operations. Conclusion The conduct of attritional wars is vastly different from wars of manoeuvre. They last longer and end up testing a country’s industrial capacity. Victory is assured by careful planning, industrial base development and development of mobilisation infrastructure in times of peace, and even more careful management of resources in wartime. Victory is attainable by carefully analysing one’s own and the enemy’s political objectives. The key is recognising the strengths and weaknesses of competing economic models and identifying the economic strategies that are most likely to generate maximum resources. These resources can then be utilised to build a massive army using the high/low force and weapons mixture. The military conduct of war is driven by overall political strategic objectives, military realities and economic limitations. Combat operations are shallow and focus on destroying enemy resources, not on gaining terrain. Propaganda is used to support military operations, not the other way around. With patience and careful planning, a war can be won. Unfortunately, many in the West have a very cavalier attitude that future conflicts will be short and decisive. This is not true for the very reasons outlined above. Even middling global powers have both the geography and the population and industrial resources needed to conduct an attritional war. The thought that any major power would back down in the case of an initial military defeat is wishful thinking at its best. Any conflict between great powers would be viewed by adversary elites as existential and pursued with the full resources available to the state. The resulting war will become attritional and will favour the state which has the economy, doctrine and military structure that is better suited towards this form of conflict. If the West is serious about a possible great power conflict, it needs to take a hard look at its industrial capacity, mobilisation doctrine and means of waging a protracted war, rather than conducting wargames covering a single month of conflict and hoping that the war will end afterwards. As the Iraq War taught us, hope is not a method. The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution. Have an idea for a Commentary you’d like to write for us? Send a short pitch to commentaries@rusi.org and we’ll get back to you if it fits into our research interests. Full guidelines for contributors can be found here.