But Michael Bohnert at Defense News makes an interesting point: There mere presence of F-16s will force Russian planes to fly more missions. And the old Soviet planes that make up the bulk of Russia’s air forces have much shorter operational lifetimes than Western aircraft.
With F-16 fighter jets expected to be provided to Ukraine over the coming months, opinions of their usefulness spans from a gamechanger in the war with Russia to a total waste of resources. But there is one way that these aircraft will harm Russia even if they never shoot down a missile, fighter jet or helicopter: They will cost the Russian Aerospace Forces precious aircraft life.
The Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS, possessed roughly 900 tactical aircraft before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. These included fighter, attack and fighter-bomber aircraft. Since the invasion, it has lost between 84 and 130 of those to air defenses, fighter aircraft and crashes. That’s only a portion of total losses, however. Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on.
In a conflict’s early stages, what matters is total combat power from all active platforms; that represents the maximum firepower that can be directed at the opposition from the onset. In a protracted war, where one force tries to exhaust the other, it’s the total longevity of the military force that matters. And that’s where the VKS finds itself now.
By my calculations, the extra hours that it’s pressed its aircraft into service since February 2022 have effectively cost it an additional 27 to 57 aircraft in imputed losses.
Aircraft have a life span. They are designed with a total number of expected flight hours, which are used roughly evenly over the life of the aircraft and segmented with periodic maintenance and inspection. For example, if an aircraft is designed for 3,000 flight hours with an expected use of 30 years, the aircraft will fly roughly 100 hours per year. If, during an inspection, wear on the plane is found to be more or less than expected, the projected remaining hours are adjusted accordingly. These numbers dictate all sorts of planning, from fuel procurement to ground maintenance to pilot training.
Imputed losses mean that the Russians have burned through more of the expected life span of their aircraft more quickly than anticipated. To make up for it, they’ll have to procure more aircraft, increase maintenance, reduce operations, or accept a smaller force — or some combination of those.
The VKS is still in the process of transitioning from Soviet-era aircraft to more modern platforms, and an estimated 18 to 36 of these newer tactical aircraft join the force every year. Almost half of the VKS force is still upgraded Soviet-era airframes.
While newer Russian aircraft are designed for between 3,500 and 4,500 flight hours, with some as high as 6,000, those Soviet-era aircraft were designed to be in the air only 2,000 to 3,500 hours. Although several platforms, such as the MiG-31, have been upgraded to extend their service life, many of these older planes (Su-24, Su-25, Su-27, MiG-29) are nearing the end of their service lives. These have, at best, 500 to 1,000 hours remaining.
In the first few months of the war in Ukraine, the VKS was flying as many as 150 to 300 sorties per day — compared with the peacetime rate of roughly 60 per day. Even dropping to 100 sorties a day since, the VKS has basically flown double its normal annual hours since the beginning of the war.
This extra use is, by commonly used measures, equivalent to losing roughly 34 aircraft since the start of the invasion. However, this only captures the losses relative to the life span of newer airframes. Because the older airframes have so few remaining hours, it’s actually equivalent to losing about 57 VKS airframes.
Add to that the Russian reputation for corruption and lousy maintenance, and you can see how F-16s (and other western planes) could overstress Russia’s air force even without racking up air-to-air kills.
Still more Biden corruption comes to light, Yellow goes belly-up, things get worse in China, and a truly horrifying food discovery. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Biden family and its business associates received millions of dollars from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine while Joe Biden was vice president, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee.
With the new payments included, the committee says it has now identified more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates. Those foreign sources include not only the three aforementioned countries, but also China and Romania as well.
Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer previously testified that then-Vice President Biden joined roughly 20 phone calls on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates and attended dinners with foreign oligarchs who paid large sums of money to Hunter Biden.
The foreign funds were sent to accounts tied to Devon Archer that used the Rosemont Seneca name and were then doled out in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, the records show, in what the committee suggests was an attempt to hide the source and size of the payments.
Those payments included $3.5 million sent from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina to the shell company Rosemont Seneca Thornton in February 2014. Roughly $1 million was transferred to Devon Archer, while the rest was used to fund a new account Rosemont Seneca Bohai, which was used by both Archer and Hunter Biden to receive other foreign wires.
After Baturina sent the massive sum to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinner with Baturina, Archer, Hunter Biden, and others at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden attended dinners with Hunter Biden; Archer; Baturina; Burisma executives; and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch, in the spring of 2014 and 2015 at Cafe Milano.
In February 2014, Hunter Biden met with Rakishev at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. In emails to Archer discussing the D.C. meeting, Rakishev, who was a director at Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company KazMunayGas, asked that then-Secretary of State John Kerry visit Kazakhstan. Archer said, “if we have some business started as planned I will ensure its planned soonest.”
So members of the extended Biden business family were asking the Secretary of State of the United States of America to visit a foreign country so the Biden clan could do business. Are all American institutions now corrupted for the sole purpose of enriching Democratic Party insiders?
In April 2014, Rakishev wired $142,300 to the Rosemont Seneca Bohai account. The figure amounted to the exact price of Hunter Biden’s sports car that the account purchased one day later.
After receiving the payment, Archer and Biden arranged for executives at Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma to visit Kazakhstan in June 2014 to discuss a deal between Burisma, a Chinese state-owned company, and the government of Kazakhstan. Rakishev had a working relationship with Karim Massimov, who became prime minister in April 2014. Earlier this year, Massimov was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason, abuse of power, and attempting a coup.
Also in spring 2014, Archer and Biden joined the Burisma board of directors at a salary of $1 million per year each. President Biden visited Ukraine soon after Archer and the younger Biden received their first payments — payments that were sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai and later sent in incremental amounts to Hunter Biden’s different bank accounts.
The committee confirmed IRS whistleblower testimony that Archer and Hunter Biden received $6.5 million in funds from Burisma, which is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch who bribed officials $6 million over the investigation into the natural gas company.
Archer told the committee last week that Hunter Biden’s value on Burisma’s board was “the brand.” Archer said then-vice president Biden was “the brand.”
“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” Archer said, according to the committee.
We can’t let corrupt foreign companies that keep Hunter in cocaine go tits-up, can we?
Text messages that have recently been given to the FBI show that a Chinese energy company sought to utilize its connections to Hunter Biden in order to purchase domestic energy assets within the United States.
According to Just The News, the text exchange in question took place between two of Hunter’s business partners, James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski, on Christmas Eve of 2015. This exchange was shortly after Hunter had first been told about the conglomerate, CFEC China Energy, led by wealthy businessman Ye Jianming.
“I think this will then be a great addition to their portfolios as it will give them a profile base in NYC, then LA, etc,” said Gilliar in the text message. “For me it’s a no brainer but culturally they are different, but smart so let’s see. … Any entry ticket is small for them. Easier and better demographic than Arabs who are little anti US after trump.”
This evidence further supports the bombshell claims made by another former business partner of Hunter, Devon Archer, in closed-door testimony before Congress earlier this week. Archer testified that Joe and Hunter Biden both actively sought to promote their “influence” to potential foreign partners, and that the two of them were considered a package deal in efforts to sell the “brand” of their family name and political power while Joe was Vice President.
According to calendar schedules from his abandoned laptop, Hunter eventually did have a meeting with CEFC Executive Director Jianjun Zang in December of 2015. By March of 2016, two of Hunter’s business partners, Gilliar and Rob Walker, drafted a memo for Hunter to sign and send to CEFC, to which Hunter agreed.
The text messages, exchanged between 2015 and 2017, eventually reveal that CEFC simply hoped to gain “influence” through its partnership with the Bidens, in order to eventually enter the American energy market with the purchase of energy assets in America and elsewhere in the West.
“Still closing the perimeters of ops with the Chinese, will know Thursday if we are driving U.S. investments,” Gilliar wrote to Bobulinski in May of 2016, adding that things might be “still a little premature.”
Want to know who funded that dirty Chinese bioloab in California? Would you believe Gavin Newsom?
Yellow files for bankruptcy, citing union contracts. Look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do…
Judge slams Southwest Airlines for ignoring ruling over firing an employee for daring to have wrongthink on abortion. “The judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Teacher who made racist statements and bragged about how she couldn’t be fired fired. (More.)
The US, and Ukraine are discussing sending 41 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F/A-18A/B Hornet fighter jets to Ukraine, rather than scrapping them as planned.
Since the US recently granted permission for other Western allies to supply Kyiv with advanced fighter jets, Washington is open to the idea of gifting Ukraine retired RAAF F/A-18 fighter jets, Euromaidan Press reports.
Seventy-five F/A-18A/Bs were acquired by the RAAF from 1985 to replace the ageing Mirage III fighter which had been in service since 1963. The first two aircraft were produced in the US, with the remainder assembled in Australia at Government Aircraft Factories.
Giving them to Ukraine rather than scrapping them makes sense. Australia can’t use them, as they’re transitioning to F-35s, and the U.S. can’t use them since they’ve already transitioned both carrier-based and Marine F/A-18s to the much beefier F/A-18E/F Super-Hornets.
The F/A-18 was originally designed as a carrier plane, but several militaries around the world use them as all-purpose fighter aircraft.
Will Ukraine be able to make use of them? Sure! Just like the F-16s that Ukraine may get sometime, F/A-18A/Bs are reasonably modern fighter aircraft that can more than hold their own against any but the very most modern Russia jet fighters aircraft. (Maybe the Su-57 is better, just like it appears on paper; but a lot of Soviet and Russian gear that looks great on paper turns out to be crap.) One of the first rules of warfare is that you can’t beat something with nothing.
But, as with the F-16, it’s going to take a lot of training before even experienced fighter jet pilots would be cleared to fly F/A-18s in combat. Probably at least six months of type trying in simulators and tandem and solo flying. Maybe more, because Soviet/Russian jets are so different from U.S. jets, maybe less Because War. In any case, it will be too late to take part in the vaunted Spring Counteroffensive, which may or may not be going on right now.
But the way this war has dragged on, there’s a good chance Ukraine will still need them by 2024…
As the 88th Texas legislature regular session races toward sine die on May 29, here’s a quick update on two bills that caught my attention:
The senate is debating a bill to prevent banks from tracking firearms purchases. Good. We should not be letting the government set up a gun confiscation list, or banks a list to start banning law-abiding gun owners based on the goal of goosing their ESG scores.
Rep. Gary Gates (R-Richmond) took to the back microphone this week to make the case for greater regulation of a controversial state program offering millions in tax exemptions to developers for affordable housing.
One of several lawmakers to propose reforms to the Public Facility Corporation (PFC) program, Gates had introduced a reform bill with tough standards, but allegedly former Speaker Dennis Bonnen repeatedly pressured him to drop his proposals.
Gates told The Texan he was urged by Bonnen to sign on to arguably weaker reforms authored by Rep. Jacy Jetton (R-Richmond) — House Bill (HB) 2071 — and warned that although his own legislation had been approved by the House Committee on Urban Affairs, it would be killed in the powerful Calendars Committee.
Instead, Gates successfully tacked on multiple amendments to HB 2071 during Tuesday’s floor session.
“I’m pleased with these amendments, but I still have my own PFC reform bill, HB 3568, which I hope to get to the floor in short order. It has 69 authors and co-authors, while HB 2071 had only 10.”
Under the PFC program, local government officials may offer a 100 percent tax exemption to developers who build or purchase multifamily housing, as long as some rental units are set aside for “affordable” reduced rent. But both Jetton and Gates acknowledged there have been abuses of the system; in some cases, PFCs have been authorized with only 10 percent of units designated for low-income families.
On the House floor, Gates queried Jetton about whether his reforms set new minimum standards and noted that the current system took tax revenue from public school districts without their approval. He also pointed out that in some cases developers were already charging below-market rents before transitioning to PFC status and were therefore not obligated to demonstrate a public benefit.
“This is hurting our schools, this is hurting our counties and our cities,” said Gates. “This [tax revenue] is being taken from our fire departments, our police departments, our neighborhood schools. They are getting their taxes wiped out and we can’t determine if there’s any public benefit.”
In response to Gates’ questions, Jetton acknowledged that other taxpayers or the state’s general funds would have to make up the loss in revenue to school districts.
Gates’ first proposed amendment, opposed by Jetton, mandates that 60 percent of the developer’s tax savings must be dedicated to reducing rents. It was approved in a bipartisan vote of 87 to 54, with two members registered as “present, not voting.”
Under the formula, 12 percent of units must be set aside for those earning 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), 12 percent for those at 60 percent AMI, and 12 percent at 80 percent AMI.
After the House voted for a second Gates amendment requiring approval from counties and school districts for any new PFCs, Jetton gave up his opposition and accepted four more revisions as friendly amendments.
Noting that some PFCs had been granted 100 percent sales and property tax exemptions for up to 99 years, Gates also questioned Jetton about HB 2071’s language setting a minimum tax exemption period of 10 years while removing even the 99-year limit.
Among revisions accepted by Jetton, the tax-exempt status will be limited to 12 years for new construction and 10 years for the conversion of existing properties.
So one cheer for Gary Gates for getting rid of a tax kickback.
Ideally, government should get entirely out of the business of giving different types of tax breaks for different rental housing. Get out of regulating any but the most essential safety and business standards and let the free market come up with solutions. The main obstacles to building actual affordable housing are too many regulations, not too few.
But we shouldn’t disdain even baby steps of reform in the right direction.
I previously covered this case while it was ongoing. Now Obama bundler Prakazrel “Pras” Michel has been convicted.
A Fugees rapper accused in multimillion-dollar political conspiracies spanning two presidencies was convicted Wednesday after a trial that included testimony ranging from actor Leonardo DiCaprio to former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel was accused of funneling money from a now-fugitive Malaysian financer [Low Taek Jho] through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, then trying to squelch a Justice Department investigation and influence an extradition case on behalf of China under the Trump administration.
So a Democratic Party bundler committed a felony to channel millions in illegal foreign donations to the Obama campaign and the mainstream media can barely be bothered to cover the story. We all know that if the amount had been mere thousands, and the words “Trump” and “Russia” appeared in the story, the mainstream media would still be talking about it…
The Democratic Party may not be any good at cultivating a healthy economy, governing, or protecting the rights of average Americans, but they excel in all forms of election cheating.
But don’t think Democrats are content with merely sucking up illegal American contributions. No, Democrats have also mastered the art of illegally sucking up illegal campaign contributions from foreigners abroad.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio took the stand and testified in the federal trial of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, founder of the hip hop band Fugees, and his alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme that included a huge — and illegal — donation to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
DiCaprio recalled a conversation with Malaysian financier Jho Low, who mentioned that he was looking to donate millions of dollars to the Obama campaign by giving the money to Michel and having him pass it to Obama’s people.
Fast Facts:
Low was sentenced — in absentia — to a 10-year sentence in a Kuwaiti court for his role in laundering roughly $1 billion of the almost $4.5 billion worth of Chinese currency he allegedly swindled in what’s known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.
Low claimed he wanted to donate between $20-$30 million dollars to Obama.
It is illegal for American presidential candidates to accept donations from foreigners.
The DOJ charged Low for trying to donate money to lobby the Trump administration, hoping to have the charges against him relating to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal dropped.
Low is on the lam and is believed to be hiding in China or Macau. China denies harboring him.
“It was a significant sum, something to the tune of $20-30 million,” DiCaprio testified in court. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”
Additional witnesses testified that they were wired money from Low and asked to forward it to the Obama campaign.
Michel allegedly took the mad stacks from Low and used them to lobby Obama’s government on behalf of Low and the Chinese Communist Party.
He distributed $21.6 million to American straw donors who would then donate it to the Obama campaign, concealing the fact that the money came from Low.
But just because Democrats seem to love sucking up money with people connected to communist China, don’t think that they’re not looking at other foreign Sugar Daddys.
The Berger Action Fund is a nondescript name for a group with a rather specific purpose: steering the wealth of Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, into the world of American politics and policy.
As a foreign national, Wyss is prohibited from donating to candidates or political committees. But his influence is still broadly felt through millions of dollars routed through a network of nonprofit groups that invest heavily in the Democratic ecosystem. Such groups don’t have to disclose the source of their funding — or many details about how they spend it.
Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for “solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,” swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor.
Representatives for Wyss insist they comply with laws governing the giving of foreign nationals and have put in place strict policies limiting the use of donations to “issue advocacy” — not partisan electoral activities. But the fact that the money cannot be publicly traced highlights the difficulty of putting such assertions to the test.
Those same groups have helped to bankroll efforts to lift President Joe Biden’s agenda and paid for TV ads promoting Democratic congressional candidates ahead of last year’s midterm elections.
Sunday and Monday this week, I gathered up all my dead branches from the ice storm along the curb in advance of Tuesday’s announced neighborhood-wide branch pickup. I know it’s going to take some time, but it’s Friday and I see no signs that brush has been cleared from anyone’s curbs…
He said ESG poses a threat to the American Economy and individual economic freedom, he further said it’s an attempt for corporate’s elite to discriminate against those who do follow a particular “ideological agenda.” His proposal will outlaw this.
“By applying arbitrary ESG financial metrics that serve no one except the companies that created them, elites are circumventing the ballot box to implement a radical ideological agenda. Through this legislation, we will protect the investments of Floridians and the ability of Floridians to participate in the economy,” DeSantis said, at the news conference.
Heh. “Federal District Court Judge Orders Illinois to Show Examples of Every Newly-Banned Firearm.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Maybe they should spend more time on schools instead. “Not A Single Student Can Do Math At Grade Level In 53 Illinois Schools.”
“Judy Monro-Leighton, one of three women who accused now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, was found to have lied during a congressional investigation and is now being charged with making materially false statements and obstruction.”
Nicaragua’s scumbag commie government sentences Roman Catholic bishop Roland Alvarez to 26 years in prison for “treason” for daring to stand up for Catholics and refusing to be exiled.
What began as a trickle is now a flood: the US government is using the banking sector to organize a sophisticated, widespread crackdown against the crypto industry. And the administration’s efforts are no secret: they’re expressed plainly in memos, regulatory guidance, and blog posts. However, the breadth of this plan — spanning virtually every financial regulator — as well as its highly coordinated nature, has even the most steely-eyed crypto veterans nervous that crypto businesses might end up completely unbanked, stablecoins may be stranded and unable to manage flows in and out of crypto, and exchanges might be shut off from the banking system entirely. Let’s dig in.
For crypto firms, obtaining access to the onshore banking system has always been a challenge. Even today, crypto startups struggle mightily to get banks, and only a handful of boutiques serve them. This is why stablecoins like Tether found popularity early on: to facilitate fiat settlement where the rails of traditional banking were unavailable. However, in recent weeks, the intensity of efforts to ringfence the entire crypto space and isolate it from the traditional banking system have ratcheted up significantly. Specifically, the Biden administration is now executing what appears to be a coordinated plan that spans multiple agencies to discourage banks from dealing with crypto firms. It applies to both traditional banks who would serve crypto clients, and crypto-first firms aiming to get bank charters. It includes the administration itself, influential members of Congress, the Fed, the FDIC, the OCC, and the DoJ. Here’s a recap of notable events concerning banks and the policy establishment in recent weeks:
On Dec. 6, Senators Elizabeth Warren, John Kennedy, and Roger Marshall send a letter to crypto-friendly bank Silvergate, scolding them for providing services to FTX and Alameda research, and lambasting them for failing to report suspicious activities associated with those clients
On Dec. 7, Signature (among the most active banks serving crypto clients) announces its intent to halve deposits ascribed to crypto clients — in other words, they’ll give customers their money back, then shut down their accounts — drawing its crypto deposits down from $23b at peak to $10b, and to exit its stablecoin business
On Jan. 3, the Fed, the FDIC, and the OCC release a joint statement on the risks to banks engaging with crypto, not explicitly banning banks’ ability to hold crypto or deal with crypto clients, but strongly discouraging them from doing so on a “safety and soundness” basis
On Jan. 9, Metropolitan Commercial Bank (one of the few banks that serve crypto clients) announces a total shutdown of its cryptoasset-related vertical.
More at the link. I’ve long been skeptical of cryptocurrency advocates assertion that crypto provides a useful alternative to government-backed fiat currency. But it sure looks like the federal government is acting like that’s the case…
An important message about eternal truths from well-known biologist Fred Rogers:
TRIGGER WARNING. ⚠️ This is the most upsetting thing you will see all weekend. pic.twitter.com/eVLPZ3J3RI
CRT-pushing commie Angela Davis finds out that one of her ancestors was on the Mayflower.
A British farmer reviews Clarkson’s Farm. He says despite obvious setup bits, a lot of it (like the unexpected catastrophes and intractable town council bureaucracy) rings true.
In a non-embedable video, the YouTuber formerly know as The Russian Dude announced that he had been called up for military service as part of Putin’s “partial mobilization” to throw more cannon fodder into the Ukrainian meatgrinder. (I’m pretty sure that’s an important decision point in why he’s now known as The Canadian Dude.)
Oddly enough, all his male friends received conscription notices as well.
Commenters have long stated that Putin doesn’t want to declare a General Mobilization, because under Soviet Russian law, that requires an actual declaration of war, something still lacking in Vlad’s Special Military Operation.
Now this is not even a theory, only conjecture based on a single data point, but what if Putin is actually carrying out a General Mobilization of all eligible males of military age while calling it limited mobilization? It’s not like Putin’s war machine hasn’t already committed more heinous crimes, or that Russia has an independent press capable of calling him on it any more.
Maybe Putin wants to roll the dice on one final spring push for Kiev, putting a million men under arms to launch a massive attack, relying on the Russian doctrine of quantity having a quality of its own to final snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Like I said, conjecture only, but it certainly doesn’t make any less sense than the multiple bungling stupidities Russia has committed in the war…
When the Russo-Ukrainian war kicked off back in February, I relied on https://liveuamap.com/ to track military action in the war, just as I had used their similar map when tracking the war against the Islamic State. However, after the initial phase of the war, LiveUAMap seemed to update less and less frequently, and it’s been practically useless for tracking progress in the Kherson counteroffensive.
Today, most video commentators on the war seem to rely on https://deepstatemap.live. Here’s today’s snapshot from Kherson:
Better than nothing, but not as good as LiveUAMap used to be.
Here YouTuber Suchomimus compares different maps of the Kherson offensive, and how the differ on territory captured.
He mentions the War_Mapper Twitter account, which I haven’t been following due to my ongoing Twitter timeout.
Updates:
🇺🇦 have entered the settlement of Arkhanhelske, which is now contested.
🇺🇦 advanced from the Inhulets bridgehead, capturing Sukhyi Stavok and continuing to the outskirts of Kostromka and Brushkyns’ke, briefly cutting the supply route to Davydiv Brid. pic.twitter.com/x1ZiAg4Pig
He also mentions the official Russian-sourced map, which I’m not particularly interested in trusting.
The Institute for the Study of War includes a map with their daily assessment updates, but they’re not interactive or particularly detailed.
There are also a few YouTubers who do daily map updates. There’s Denys Davydov (“Hello, my friends…”). He’s Ukrainian and upfront about his bias, and covers the various clashes across the entire front (which makes his videos a bit long, and I tend to skip around for the bits I’m interested in). He suffers from “The map is the territory” syndrome, and isn’t a deep tactical thinker or versed in the intricacies of combined arms operations, but he’s useful if you understand his limitations.
One of the maps he relies on (in addition to DeepState) is the MilitaryLand map, which looks really useful.
Ukraine News TV relies on the DeepState map, and goes into considerable detail recount the day’s events.
War in Ukraine isn’t great in terms of voiceover, but seem to have a lot of unit-specific information on his maps.
For the sake of completeness, I note WeebUnion, who says he’s objective but seems pro-Russian (and his commenters even more so). He’s not a dynamic voiceover talent, and he begins this video with “Hello, comrades,” so…yeah, I don’t follow him.
