Breshy, Chuvak!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - Ukrainian For 'Lie, Man'

We're going to be covering the second part of an interview 'Preston Stewart' did with Sergeant John 'Jack' Roberts, whom serves in the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps, with a few additions thrown in by Your Humble Scribe for extra illumination, concerning Operation Vivaldi.

     Make no mistake about it, the orcs in the Lyman area have been given a proper shoeing, to use a technical military phrase.  Art!

Attack of the killer wheelbarrows

     Jack described the operation as resembling an avalanche, beginning small and getting increasingly larger week by week.  In fact he compared it to an attack during the First Unpleasantness, but with much greater ranges involved.  As per the above, UGVs (Ukrainian Gun Victimiser) were air-dropped by large 'Vampire' drones well behind orc lines, forcing the minions of Mordorvia to fight them, creating utter chaos and diverting attention away from the assaulting Ukrainian infantry.  Because, as Prez very aptly put it, they have no idea if an 'Exploding robot' UGV is 1 of 1, 1 of 20 or 1 of 500.  Art!

Caption courtesy of Anton Geraschenko

     These particular killer wheelbarrows were equipped with two rocket launchers, which they used to keep the orc's heads down, so they could get close and explode.  Rather scary stuff and evidence of how modern warfare is going; very much the way of British doctrine in the Second Unpleasantness - 'Steel not flesh'.  

     Prez then addressed one of the key facts that is crippling Ruffian military efforts; they don't report the real situation on the front line.  John scornfully retorted that, according to Ruffian figures, everyone in Ukraine has died three times over, and, another crippling factor, they have a BAD mission command system.  To quote him, "They misreport and lie all the time" and you could hear the naked contempt dripping from his words.  Prez agreed with the example of Kupiansk, which Putinpot probably thinks they still hold, but which fell to the Kozaky months ago.  Art!

     The blue parts are the territory Ruffia has conquered in 2026, at the cost of 400,000 casualties.  One reason for this is, as Jack explained, that there is no 'Contact Line' any more.  It's now a 'Contact Zone' 30 kilometres deep.

     "How do you track changes on a map?" asked Prez.

     Jack, careful not to give away details, explained that whilst it might be messy for OSINT trackers - people like you and I whom are not in the military - it was fairly easy for the Ukrainian army, because they report in an accurate and timely manner up the chain of command.  UNLIKE THE RUFFIANS is what he thought yet did not say.

     Another hearken back to the First Unpleasantness was Jack's mention of 'American elastic defence' which is actually the Teuton adoption of multiple lines of defence, rather than a single massive one.  

     Talking of which, I need to mention that the canny French in the First Unpleasantness came up with possibly the first UGVs in history.  Art!

     You've never heard of them before as they weren't very successful.  The Ukrainians came up with another first during Vivaldi; they took an old BTR eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier and - Art!

     Stuffed it full of anti-tank mines - which they don't need as the orcs ran out of tanks - and added in remote controls, then sped it at Ruffian lines.  Art!

Note how far away the orc lines are

     The orcs were caught napping and failed to notice, much less stop, the oncoming BTR, which went up in a very large explosion.  Art!

     Other important factors Jack pointed out were that the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Corps was significantly outnumbered by the Ruffians, whom amounted to three Armies.  What helped to level the playing field was Corps Commander Biletsky, whom has been fighting for over four years and who was responsible for the Corps adopting Western NATO doctrine over the old Sinister one.

     For a bit of background history, Jack explained that the old 3rd Assault Brigade was turned into an Army corps by the addition of 4 other brigades: 125th, 50th, 60th and 63rd back in 2025, and that these units had their performance turned around inside 6 months.  Yes, well, he would say that; every soldier that ever lived is convinced his regiment is the best ever, ever.  Still, the proof is in the pudding; that salient north of Lyman that took the Ruffians 48 months to grind out is now gone.  Art!

Jack!

     Jack also explained about how the Ruffian front lines are being starved of everything thanks to the incessant Kozaky drone strikes up to fifty kilometres from the front lines.  Thus, instead of Ukraine having to mount frontal attacks, the Ruffians will have to fall back closer to their supply lines or risk total logistical collapse.  A good point.  Or, perhaps, a good Fire Point.

     Which is where we came in.  Thank you Prez and Jack.

Concorde At Duxford

As promised, or threatened - only you can tell! - here are the pictures Your Humble Scribe took of the Concorde interior, a miniature museum in it's own right.  Art!

     Interior seating and boxes of mystery instruments.  The testing of Concorde went on for years, something like 1,800 hours flying time, to ensure it was as safe as possible.  That's Sal and Tom ahead of me.  Art!

     The laughingly-titled 'escape hatch'.  If anything went wrong and the test-flight crew needed to bale out, they had to get into this one-man chamber, after blowing the outer hatch off by detonating explosive bolts, whilst wearing a parachute.  I think I'd rather take my chances in the aircraft.  Art!

"Abandon aircraft beacon"

     The upper photo shows the instrumentation that the test-flight crew would be monitoring, since there were more people aboard than merely those present in the cockpit.  All the test-flight crew wore flight suits and oxygen masks, given that they were operating at an altitude of 60,000 PROUD IMPERIAL FEET, or, if you like, 11 miles.  So high it would take you 5 minutes to hit the ground, and slightly longer if you had a parachute.  Wowsers.  The AAB, you'll be glad to hear, never needed to be used.  Art!

     A somewhat blurry shot of the corridor leading up to the cockpit.

Paint And Brush Rather Than Pen

- nington.  Yes, we're back on 'Sci-Fi Art's slideshow of Bruce Pennington's evocative artworks and are now at 5:49 of a total of 7:09 minutes.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure what this is - a werecat? - but is pretttty certain it doesn't have my best wishes at heart.  Surely it must be uncomfortable, perched on a headstone like that?  A bench would be much easier to sit on.  Aha!  I did a bit of digging and whilst 'Monster sitting headstone' and 'Monster in a graveyard' were busts, 'Monster graveyard' got a hit.  Art!

      Still no explication of what the werecat is doing there.  Art!

     I suspect this one is an exercise in creating a spherical perspective.  Note that the trademark coral architecture and flying objects receding to the horizon are both present.  I tried searching but got no hits at all, hence my suggestion above.

Another You What? Moment

That MSN newsfeed I refer to has thrown up another bizarre screen item that Your Humble Scribe is having trouble understanding.  Art!

     I've heard of 'NVIDIA' even though I'm not sure quite what it is.  Something to do with mobile phones?  Or am I confusing it with 'Nokia'.  Never heard of any other of whatever they're describing.  A little digging is in order.  Aha.

"NVIDIA Nemotron is a family of open-weights, high-efficiency artificial intelligence and multimodal models built by NVIDIA to power agentic AI applications and complex reasoning workflows"

     Hmmmm.  Only slightly less confused.  AI?

     DO YOU WANT SKYNET?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!

Finally -

You see, I can avoid mentioning Cankles Von Y for a whole blog.

SIIVET!

Which Is, Of Course - Obviously! - The Finnish For 'Wings'

Because we're back on a slideshow from IWM Duxford, the home to hundreds of planes and other large vehicles.  If I had to tramp around the enormous site for seven hours and take photographs then you are most certainly get the benefit of my actions.  Art!

     This is the rear port side of the Victor, seen in the background in an earlier blog.  Can't have you seeing the whole thing, you'd get too excited.  Your Humble Scribe is unsure if this is the bomber or tanker variant; I suspect the bomber as I think the tankers just had a single monochrome paint scheme.  What you see in the foreground is a Thunderbird, with transparent panels so you can see all the goodies inside.  This is a stripped-down version.  Art!

     It's a big beast when fully assembled, intended to destroy Sinister bombers up to 30 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES slant range.  It also featured briefly in an episode of 'Doctor Who', where The Master described it as being nuclear-powered with a nerve-gas warhead.  Rather egging the pudding, one feels.  Art!

     A study in opposites.  What you see in the foreground is a Northrop MQM reconnaissance drone, made in the Fifties to supply eyes in the sky for the South Canadian army.  It was their first unmanned drone, seventy years ago, and would not recognise it's own grandchildren of today.

     The big white missile in the background is the 'Blue Steel', a British nuclear stand-off missile, built to be carried and launched by the 'V' bomber fleet.  It toted the 'Red Snow' fusion warhead of 1.1 megatons yield, meaning more like Red Vapour than snowflakes.  Art!

     You can tell these things are ordnance, BUT there were no explanatory plaques, so all I can tell you is that the one nearest the camera is a bomb, 200 PROUD IMPERIAL POUNDS at a guess.  No idea why the others aren't streamlined or have tail units.  Art!

     A torpedo!  Shiny and black.  Behind and above it is one of the only surviving TSR2s. a name that makes plane geeks weep in anguish.  It was an extremely advanced supersonic strike and reconnaissance jet, but it was also a money-pit of black hole proportions and was scrapped before entering service.  Conrad also believes that Lord Mountbatten The Mountebank had something to do with the cancellation, because it threatened the Royal Navy's carrier budget.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  The missile nearest the camera has the look of an anti-ship item (it's not a Harpoon as I checked), and Conrad has a sneaking suspicion that the hefty green guy in the background is a nuclear bomb.  I seem to remember seeing a similar item at IWM Salford.  Art!

     Three young chaps in suits.  Very suspicious.  Art!

     More nameless ordnance.  That yellow one strikes me as being First Unpleasantness dateline.  Aha!  A modicum of digging reveals that it's the British 1,650 pound bomb.  Art!

Puny human for scale

     This whopper was constructed to be carried by the enormous Handley Page bomber, which craft is sadly absent from Duxford.  I think the bomb with the orange nose might be an aerial mine, which was dropped by parachute and hung nose-down.  But don't quote me on that.  Art!

     I can't find any photos of aerial mines in colour, nor did Googling provide any more clues, so my hunch must remain just that.  Art!

     An helichopter!  This is the Westland Wessex, one of the ugliest aircraft to ever wobble into the skies.  That's as much as I know about it and go Google if you want more.  Art!

     Here is the only surviving Concorde in the world, and it looks fast standing still.  I have cheated here and used teh Interwebz for a photo as I may have taken one myself but not in sequence and I don't fancy trawling through 200 photographs to track it down. As you may have guessed from the stairs, you can take a stroll through the interior, which is a museum in it's own right.  I'm not going to inflict that on you today, it will drop tomorrow or maybe later.  I bet you can hardly wait.

 

Let's Be Literary

Allow me to buff up my reputation as a shallow pseud <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> whom has a keen WHAT? That traitorous appendage!  No, I mean another entry from that list of books dealing with the classical world.  Art!

18. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903)

by Jane Harrison

     That human-animal hybrid on the cover looks rather like the winged bulls of Assyria, about as far from ancient Greece as one can get.

     The blurb explains that Jane's magnum opus, well over a century old, is very readable and witty, but that's not enough to tempt me <wallet sighs in relief> and also it's over 700 pages long.  Conrad is still ploughing through Volume 5 of 'The Expanse'.


Whilst On The Subject Of Books -

Nothing as high-brow as Jane's work, just a nod to the list of sci-fi novels that are similar to 'Greybeard' in being post-apocalyptic.  Art!

IGNORE THE FILM!  IGNORE THE FILM! which is only slightly based on the book.  Hell Tanner, the protagonist, for starters, is a Hell's Angel, not a clean-cut Air Force officer.  The mission is to cross Damnation Alley and get plague serum to Boston.  I forget why they can't use aircraft; Roger wanted his characters to sweat a bit.  The mission also starts out with three 'cars', since the author believed in redundancy.  Hawkwind also do a pretty rocking version of it on 'Quark Strangeness And Charm', condensed as it's not a triple concept album.

     I think that the DNA of Rog's story is also clearly visible in the '2000 AD' Judge Dredd serial 'The Cursed Earth', where atmosphere conditions don't permit cross-continental flight, so Old Stony Face has to transport plague vaccine overland.  Art!

The Clock Is Ticking, Donold

I am typing this on October 1st, meaning there are now 34 days until the South Canadian mid-term elections and, as predicted, Cankles Von Yamteats is not bothering to go 'on the stump' and campaign in contested districts.  Mostly because he is as welcome as plutonium soap in a jacuzzi and candidates want to boost local issues, not 'They Stole My Election' for the 1,423rd time.

     People with special circumstances are already sending in postal ballots, which process King Piggy was unable to stop.  Cynics - or realists - are now pondering if he's going to fake an emergency and use that to 'postpone' the elections, which will then never happen.  I doubt it.  Even Don Snoreleone understands the South Canadians won't take that sitting down as they aren't supine sheep.  Unlike another electorate I can think of.  Art!

Awww.  Doesn't he look sad?

FLIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!

      That bottom one is proof Fat Caligula's hair is a sentient symbiotic organism and has taken on it's winter plumage.

Back To Brucie

Mister Pennington, the man who wields a paintbrush not a pen.  We have skipped over some of his paintings, especially the earlier "Dune" variant covers.  We are now some 5 minutes 37 seconds into a 7 minute slideshow.  Art!

     Verrrry symbolic, Bruce.  I believe the sinister horned chap is modelled very closely on Brucie himself.  Nice to see the coral architecture back.  Not sure if that's a comet, meteor or asteroid about to cause grief in the background.  the city to starboard looks as if it's already been hit.  Art!

     I like this one - very evocative.  It has a look of the Oriental to it, nicht wahr?  I wonder if it was a book cover - not quite a Title Gap at the top but close to it.  Allow me to dig a little.  Nope, not coming up with anything.

AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!

Jack The Giant-Killer

No! We Are Not Talking About The Film

Which I have seen, but many decades ago.  There was something about a magic mirror and stop-motion animation?  Art!

     They're calling it a 'Pendragon' but I don't see any evidence of a Parker Platinum fountain model.  I believe there was also a remake, which died the death at the box office and tanked the director's career afterwards.  Art!

     Ah yes, the director in question was Bryan Singer and it starred Nicholas Hoult, not Ben Cross, because the film above is one of the Asylum mockbusters and I cannot be bothered to correct what is, after all, merely an intro to the Intro.

     For Lo! we are going to be looking rather closer than other pundits have at the sonorous-sounding 'OPERATION VIVALDI', the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive in the direction of Lyman.  If you're not a fan of granular current military analysis you might want to sit this one out.  Art!

     This is one of the better maps I've seen of what's going on in The Lyman Direction, as people keep calling it.  You see, back in May 2022, the orcs managed to occupy Lyman.  They had to abandon it five months later during the Kozaky counteroffensive, and have been trying to get it back into their sweaty mitts ever since.  Over the past 4 years they had created a salient north of Lyman, which they hoped to lever into a pincer that would have come at the city from the rear.  This has come with enormous expenditure of blood and treasure as they grimly ground forwards, heedless of loss.

     "Where is this Jack you -

     SILENCE!  NO CAVILLING!  I WILL GET TO MY POINT IN GOOD TIME!

     A couple of months ago the Ukrainians began Operation Vivaldi, which their commander, exhibiting Slavic satirical sense, forecast would take place in 4 parts - after the composer's 'Four Seasons' meisterwerk.  Seriously, check it out, it's a fantastic piece of eighteenth-century baroque composition.

     ANYWAY we abruptly change tracks to mention 'Preston Stewart', the South Canadian ex-101 Airborne officer, whom on his Youtube channel was interviewing another interesting character: Art!

     Before you is Sergeant John 'Jackie' Roberts, South Canadian army veteran whom moved to Ukraine to combat the orcs - today's title 'Giants' - five years ago, and who has a long history of working both front and rear lines.  Now you know where our title comes from.  John agreed to an interview with Prez, and what follows is their discussion.

     OPSEC:  'Operational Security' or keeping what needs to be kept secret, secret.  The Kozaky found out the hard way in 2023 that informing the South Canadians of what they were going to do was a splendid way of having Jake Sullivan, the Biden presidency Sec Def, immediately leak all that info to the Kremlin in search of an Off Path, a De-escalation or Let's Not Humiliate Putinpot Route.  Or so the conspiranoid loonwaffles would have us believe. Art!

     Excuse me if my bitter political hatreds come to the fore <mashes voodoo doll of Sullivan with a hammer>.  Art!

Third Army Corps in Ukrainian

     Jack pointed out that one consequence of the Global West providing aid to Ukraine is that the latter required information about what was going on, or had been going on, or was going to be carried out, to further obtain more support.  Which, if you're not sure, is the opposite of Operational Security.  Oooh-er Matron! 

     Salty Jack also lambasted the GW for not believing the current rate of loss of orcs versus Kozaky in his area: 20 to 1.  We shall come back to that.

     ANYWAY AGAIN Prez asked Jack about why an Ukrainian attack in the Lyman region as of now and when?  Art!

     Well, there are 2 reasons.  One is that 50,000 Ukrainians live in the 'Fortress Belt' and Prez Zed does not want to see any of these people being sent elsewhere into Ukraine as internal refugees.  The other is that Bunker Dwarf Excuse Me Putinpot maintains that he is going to occupy this region and the Fortress Belt is stopping him from managing this.  Art!

     One practical example Jack cited was the defence of Izyum, a major road and rail logistics hub, which you can see on the map above.  The Kozaky liberated it from orc control, which means the orcs are desperate to get their vile greedy sweaty talons back on it again.  Tough.  Jack explained that the Ukrainians are centering their defence on Borova.  Art!

    Keeping the maggot-folk of Mordorvia at distance at Borova means they cannot mass fires against Izyum, or over 45 kilometres away in barrier terms.  The terrain around Borova is not ideal for defence, but it is a lot better than having Grads and tube artillery killing people in Izyum.

     Prez then mentioned the orcs use of Ruffian drones to carry out long-range strikes inside Ukraine, much as the 'Human Murder Safari*' <long redacted description> orcs do so in Kherson.  Art!

     Jack's rather clinical response was to describe 'Cost Per Shot', meaning how much it costs to carry out a particular drone mission, since these having gradually increasing costs with elevated mission profile.  

    CAUTION RATHER DARK FOLLOWS     

    CAUTION RATHER DARK FOLLOWS

     To kill a Ukrainian civilian walking their dog in Kherson - which has absolutely happened but which I will not illustrate since apparently Conrad has scruples - you would need a drone with a 75 kilometre optic spool.  This costs a lot and has to be balanced against the payoff: Do you want to see a dog-walker being <redacted, redacted and once again redacted> or practical military effects?  

     We will assume common humanity and move on.

     Don't worry, Jack, we will be back.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Bring On The Gentle Shoes

Or the not-so-gentle ones.  King Piggy, whom seems to be rotting apart as he stands before us, is once again the subject of medical speculation as he falls apart in public.  Art!

LEGS!  LEGS!   LEGS!

     Bear in mind that Cankles Von Yamteats also wears elevators in his shoes, and is just an hideous person, and you'll have an understanding of where he stands today.  I have more horrid photographs to bring in of His Sepia Awfulencess:  Art!

The sepia skin!  The neck vajayjay!  The hideous smirk! The eye-bags!

     He looks about 102, or twenty years  on from where we are today.  Is Droopy trying to smirk whilst stroking out?  100 to 1 says he doesn't make it to 2027.

From The Hideous To The Sublime

We've not had anything related to RAF Duxford for a couple of days but you don't get off that easy.  Art!

     Trucks.  The ugly, unglamourous side of warfare, yet so, so essential to running a modern army.  Conrad is pretty sure these chaps graced the London IWM and got moved to Duxford as part of the Large Object Move, as there is more than enough space at Duxford to put them on display, rather than having to rotate them as exhibits.  Art!

     This is a Bedford 15 CWT truck, or a ton and a half truck in proper speech, and 'TAF' stands for 'Tactical Air Force' unless I miss my guess.  This unit would have been based in Europe, either in This Sceptred Isle, Italy or France, given the camouflage scheme.

Read The Room, Dimya

Art!

     ' - to bits' if you want the rest of the headline.  If even a yellow rag like the 'Daily Star' (imagine 'The Sun' but with more boobs) is lambasting you, then you really are in trouble.  One notices that The War now consumes 40% of the Mordorvian budget and that, post-election, taxes on everything have jumped, as have food prices.  Conrad confidently predicts the orcs will whine, grumble and do nothing.

Finally -

I need this to get to Count.  Thank you, that is all.

*  Believe me, this is the one of the most awful things you will read about today