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!
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| 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!
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| "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!
"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.
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