This.
This is what was meant by defense-in-depth in our June 5 post "Oh My God, What Are The Ukrainian Generals Doing?". Reprised in July 15's NYT: "After Suffering Heavy Losses, Ukrainians Paused to Rethink Strategy":
There is a video taken by a Ukrainian drone showing exactly the hell the generals sent their men to. It is horrific, not so much in the war-porn gore sense but in the godawful situation these recruits are being forced into. The drone watches a small squad of soldiers who have been dismounted from their armored vehicle in a minefield to take cover in a low ditch.About a minute into the video, one of the vehicle crewmen attempts to re-board the vehicle and carefully approaches. He steps on a mine.Scrambling onto the vehicle he begins maneuvering the vehicle toward his buddies stuck in the low ditch.Somehow a half dozen of the Ukrainians manage to board the armored vehicle,A bit later another of the soldiers attempts a return from the vehicle toward a wounded buddy in the ditch and he steps on a mine and has a foot/lower leg blown to pieces.And he applies a field tourniquet. And that's when I turned it off with a couple minutes left....
- Ryan Hendrickson has been working to clear heavily mined areas in Ukraine.
- The former US Special Forces engineer says the overwhelming numbers of land mines is wildly different from anything he saw in Afghanistan.
- "How do you clear all of this out?" Hendrickson asked in an online interview with a Ukrainian YouTube channel.
A decorated former US Army Special Forces engineer who cleared out improvised explosives in Afghanistan and has since been tackling threats in Ukraine says the monstrous minefields Russia is laying down are unlike anything he has ever seen.
"The biggest difference is the sheer number of mines," Ryan Hendrickson, who previously served in Afghanistan with the Green Berets and is now removing deadly mines as a volunteer in Ukraine, told Ukrainian Toronto Television. "There are millions and millions of mines in Ukraine," many put down by the Ukrainians, but significantly more by the Russians.
In one field, for instance, Hendrickson and his team found over 700 anti-tank mines, though they estimated there may have been thousands in total. That was just one field.
The Russians have "the capability to lay millions and millions of land mines, and they do," he said, stressing that "the biggest shaping factor of this war is land mines."
"Everything is landmined," he said in the interview, explaining that in Ukraine right now "all the farm fields are landmined, all the routes are landmined," and, in sectors along the front, "if the routes aren't landmined, then artillery has target reference points along the routes."
Hendrickson is involved with the Tip of the Spear initiative, his crowdfunded organization focused on removing land mines and booby traps in areas in the rear, areas where civilians are most at risk of being hurt or killed. In the field, he said, he and his team have encountered complex schemes where the minelayers intended to trap and maim or kill the de-mining crews, which are out in it working primarily on foot using man-portable mine-clearing tools....
....MUCH MORE
Just figuring out how to deal with this sort of defense when not under fire is very, very difficult. When the Ukrainian conscripts are trying to do so while getting machine-gunned and bombed by aircraft and artillery is damn near impossible.
And all the while the forever war grinds on.
If interested, here is a snip from a speech and part of a 20-page booklet from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler.
At the time of his death the General was the most decorated Marine in history with a Marine Corps Brevet Medal - awarded for "Extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force" and two Congressional Medals of Honor, two Distinguished Service Medals (one step higher in precedence than the Silver Star) with a chestful of lower-ranking awards and medals.
Via the Federation of American Scientists:
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
And from the booklet
CHAPTER ONE: War Is A Racket
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations....
