Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

The Moscow region has had very spotty internet for 5 days, which is interesting.

The Institute for the Study of War has said that Russia has had to dig deep into its strategic reserve to send reinforcements to the crumbling Zaporizhzhia front and shore up the rot on the Kupyansk front. In some areas, Russian units are being told to simultaneously defend a front from a significant offensive and advance without support, resulting in the unit either not moving in confusion or moving out of cover and being destroyed.

The ISW conclusion is that Russia's manpower limitations have now reached a crux and Russia must either decide to concentrate forces on one big offensive on one sector of the front, mobilise hundreds of thousands more troops or abandon plans for a Spring 2026 offensive and go over to the defensive along most of the line. Or carry on as they are now and risk an entire front just collapsing.

It'd be interesting to find out how they're planning to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Their entire navy has effectively ceased to exist, and the straits are pretty wide, you'd need to drop hundreds to thousands of mines out there, and ensure they stay put, and can't easily be destroyed.

I'd be more concerned if Iran had bought Poseidon from Russia to go after the US carriers, but that would probably trigger an American nuclear strike on Russia, so very unlikely.

Tiste Simeon, on 09 March 2026 - 08:54 PM, said:

Ukraine rotates its anti-drone teams off the line for R&R regularly, it's a pretty stressful job, since if you miss or get it wrong, an apartment building in Kyiv might be getting blown up or power might be cut off to half a city. But it's also not the most technical job, there's a lot of people trained to fire a machine gun out the back of a chopper or off the back of a pickup truck, or increasingly using those British-built anti-drone microdrones, which sometimes sit on the ground until a Shahed wanders into its field of view and then automatically blows it out of the sky with minimal oversight.

So there's a lot of Ukrainian anti-Shahed teams sitting around off the line who can pack up and go to the Gulf. This is also important because it earns them a ton of goodwill. IIRC, a couple of the Gulf States by themselves were talking about underwriting 20-30% of Ukraine's ultimate rebuilding costs, so staying on their goodside is a good thing.

Ukraine also desperately needs Patriot missile refills from America, so sending their teams to help protect American soldiers earns them goodwill from the USA (probably not Trump, who'll forget about this in five minutes, but still).

Iran has launched over 120 drones in one day, an sharp uptick from the previously declining number.

Israel has suggested that Iran only has 120 missile launchers available and this number should come down quickly. However, sceptics believe the number is much higher, especially since Iran can launch the longer-ranged missiles from north-east Iran, where the US and Israel have failed to make a single attack as yet.

Some analysts suggesting that since the United States took twenty years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, and only nine days to replace Khamenei with Khamenei, this demonstrates a market improvement in American strategic efficiency.

Some signalling from within the White House that Trump may be listening more to the voices calling for an end to the conflict, particularly MAGA voices upset that he broke his promise not to get embroiled in overseas conflict as well as Gulf and Asian allies. In addition, test-leaks about American troops needing to deploy on the ground have gone down very badly. The USA blaming Israel for taking out the "more moderate leaders" who could have replaced Khamenei and for targeting the oilfields might be a way of offloading the blame onto Netanyahu. However, Netanyahu may be aware of Trumps' changeable nature and might be trying to escalate to pull the United States further into the conflict. Suggestions that Israel could use a tactical nuke in Iran seem, so far, to be unfounded and hopefully will remain that way.

Iranian television believes Trump will be forced to capitulate once oil passes $150 a barrel, which at current rates will be quite soon. I suspect Trump would not capitulate at that point but the reality of the situation might start to bite.

The US has lost its 11th Reaper MQ-9 Reaper drone over Iran.

The US has ordered all diplomats to prepare to leave Saudi Arabia. It has also closed its consulate in Adana, Turkey, and advised citizens to avoid southeastern Turkey for the foreseeable future.

11 countries have asked for Ukrainian air defence advice and assistance, including the United States. Some reports that Ukrainian interceptor drone teams have arrived in Jordan and set up defences for American forces based in the country, and are teaching the Americans how to defend themselves. It's unclear if the Americans have shown gratitude.

A further Iranian ballistic missile entered Turkish airspace and was shot down.

An eighth American servicemen has died from his wounds.

Bahrain's Bapco refinery, processing 267,000 barrels a day, has been hit by Iranian missiles. 

Telegram reports show the Russian situation on the front in some sectors is dire, due to Ukraine regaining drone superiority. Logistics within 15km of the front is non-existent, and it can take Russian troops to up to four days to reach the front line from where they are dropped off, as they have to take cover every few minutes from drones. Some troops report leaving their dugout basically means a 60%+ chance of being killed or injured.

Myrnohrad, which Russian recently secured (at least partially), is particularly dangerous. Several vehicle columns have been destroyed there recently by drones.

Ukraine has scored a new record by destroying 2,558 Russian drones in a single day.

A Russian unit was cut off on the Zaporizhzhia front without the unit realising. The battalion commander got confused about soldiers approaching, angrily walked towards them without realising they were Ukrainian and was promptly shot (unclear if fatally).

Ukraine has devastated a drone storage facility at Donetsk Airport, hitting it with multiple ATACMS and SCALP missiles. Not only was the facility heavily damaged, they killed and wounded multiple senior staff from Russia's Alabuga drone factory in Tatarstan who were visiting the facility. Ukraine had previously destroyed this facility last year, so the Russians rebuilt it...on the exact same spot. Stunningly intelligent move.

Ukraine's FP-2 drones are increasing their warhead to 158kg of high explosive. The FP-7 drone, with 300km range, has completed field testing wand will enter large-scale combat operations in the next three months. The FP-9, an ATACMS and Iskander-beater with a range of 850km, a larger warhead than the US system and costing significantly less, will begin field testing shortly. The FP-9 is designed to hit targets with a closing velocity of 1,000m/s, faster than the Iskander.

11 countries have asked for Ukrainian air defence advice and assistance, including the United States. Some reports that Ukrainian interceptor drone teams have arrived in Jordan and set up defences for American forces based in the country, and are teaching the Americans how to defend themselves. It's unclear if the Americans have shown gratitude.

Heavy Ukrainian attacks on Crimea have destroyed four radar systems.

The Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies believes that Russia will transfer several missile corvettes from the Black and Caspian Seas to the Baltic to act as escorts for tankers. Apparently they will "threaten the Swede" into making sure passage through the Danish Straits is not contested.