Jump to content

hcrof

Members
  • Posts

    1,083
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by hcrof

  1. Not necessarily true, another crew member can take over gunners duty if the link goes down, albeit at reduced effectiveness. Hopefully that is just temporary and the tank can return to 100% when the link goes back online. Edit: a driver is the only crew member who absolutely has to be there if the link goes down or the vehicle gets stuck. All other crew can be moved to another vehicle to make the tank smaller/lighter/cheaper
  2. As far as I can see the vast majority of these hits on civilian targets are just misses from nearby (real or imagined) military related infrastructure (they have a fairly loose definition of that though). The Russians are not deliberately terror bombing they just don't care if they hit civilians while they go after what they perceive as higher value targets. These misses are caused by old/bad information, inaccurate missiles, poor mission planning, AD shootdowns etc. The Russians (rightly or wrongly) think they are targeting ammo dumps, machine repair shops, factories, training centres, transport infrastructure, hospitals, substations etc. If the Russians really wanted to do a terror bombing campaign they would just fling a bunch of dumb bombs or rockets randomly at Kharkiv or Kherson and we would be getting daily updates of the destruction. Don't take this as me defending them, but they are not carpet bombing like it's 1945, and they don't want to waste million dollar missiles on a handful of civilians in a tower block.
  3. interesting thread as to why the Russians are behind the Ukrainians with regard to small drone use. Their focus on larger drones may even be correct in the long run but they are suffering for it right now, which is probably more important!
  4. I think we are generally in agreement, it's just that there is so much effort to debunk the naysayers here that sometimes it feels like it has gone too far in the other direction. To clarify some of my points: The Russians are definitely being stubborn in this war, there are quite a few stories of blocking detachments, medieval punishments etc for troops who retreat and we have seen stories of Russians killing themselves before being captured. Even when they retreated in Kherson and Kiev they did so in reasonably good order. Kharkiv was different but I think it will always be an outlier. Obstacles: any breaching operation is always going to be difficult and risky. I am not sure the Ukrainians have such an overwhelming advantage in corrosive warfare to offset that. In Kherson we saw russian airpower being used against temporary bridges (I remember a few videos of vehicles moving past a lot of destruction at various choke points). Also, yes the Russians are holding back now, but will they do so again if they feel it is all or nothing? Russian EW is now disrupting starlink and is continuing to adapt. Russian drone warfare is still behind the Ukrainians but they are only 6 months or so behind from what I can see so it is still being felt. I am not denying that the Russians are in a bad shape, but they will try to project enough friction to make the Ukrainian operation collapse under its own weight (and green troops just add more friction). They hope that mobiks in trenches combined with a more assertive Russian air force is enough to do that. Let us hope they are wrong.
  5. I think there is a little bit of smug misinterpretation of what he actually said there. He was surprised by the napalm because you have to fly low and slow to deploy it. This implies either the Russians are either suicidal (and we haven't seen any massive losses in the VKS) or at least somewhat confident they can fly low and slow over part of the front. The other point which I think is worth taking seriously is the fact that the hundreds of russian planes currently preparing for the Ukrainian offensive don't need to be very effective to be a threat. They will introduce a significant amount of friction and constraints into the offensive, just like in Kherson. Related: a lot of talk here like the whole operation is going to be easy and the Russians have learned nothing/are terminally incompetent. 1. The Russians may be incompetent at (pointless politically driven) offence, but they are still stubborn on the defence. 2. The Russian defensive trenches, mines and anti tank ditches are a formidable obstacle 3. The Russian air force will be used to bomb rear areas, ammo dumps, bridges etc. They may be slow to react and inaccurate but a e.g. bridge isn't moving anywhere and they will hit it eventually. That puts constraints on the operation. 4. Russian EW and drones will be used to add more friction: your arty has to move due to counter battery fire, a Lancet hits an hq vehicle on the move, your attack is blinded by EW etc 5. The Ukrainian formations doing this did not exist this time last year. They have not had a lot of time to train together and are still quite green. I am not predicting disaster, in fact I think the offence will be a limited success, but I think we should not write the Russians off just yet.
  6. It kind of blows my mind that Russia can drop a bomb on its own city and simply shrug it's shoulders as if it was no big deal... In any other country heads would roll, it might even take down the government but in Russia, barely a whisper.
  7. Not sure I want a quadcopter with an armed PG7 round duct taped to it landing anywhere near me!
  8. Yeah, it kinda sold me on the app - seems pretty good! I can't see how using an antiquated soviet bureaucracy which is rife with corruption could ever be better than a transparent online system modelled on a successful application in Estonia, and has survived everything the Russians can throw at it for years? But conspiracies...
  9. Trenches are easy to dig with an excavator, even easier with an entrenching machine. Looks like a "reserve" position that can be improved quickly if/when they decide to man it with mobiks
  10. You mean like this? https://community.battlefront.com/topic/142139-new-armoured-vehicle-concept-lessons-from-ukraine/#comment-1973330
  11. Interesting documentary about the Ukrainians getting trained on challenger 2 with a look into the simulators and other activities. The Ukrainians seem to be a mix of veterans and mobilised personnel. https://youtu.be/S9-Eghtai3s
  12. Maybe there is a lag in the signal of a few frames so that the "hit" happens before the signal is actually sent?
  13. The thing that struck me is that a drone makes fighting along a trenchline much less dangerous. You don't need to expose yourself since you can throw grenades blind into the correct section of trench.
  14. While I agree with the above, I will also point out that rates of fire for mortars can be extremely high so maybe they genuinely blew through all available ammo? Does anyone know the relative cost of a mortar bomb Vs an artillery shell? Mortars are very crude so they must be a lot cheaper?
  15. While every death is a tragedy, Ukraine has a population size similar to the UK in WW2 and is also supported by external powers (the US). We are a long way away from WW2 levels of casualties so it is probably reasonable to suggest Ukraine has a lot in the tank in terms of deaths, for better or for worse.
  16. I believe their government wants to join the EU for the sweet, sweet free money (and I guess they see the writing on the wall re: Russia) but there is still a lot of pro Russia/anti NATO history to get over first...
  17. I'm not saying you are wrong necessarily but I am personally struggling to put together a realistic plan to "do a Kherson" in my head. Because of the narrow choke points, Russia will not have to expend supplies at the same rate as the larger Kherson front. On top of that, even if the whole land bridge is captured to the shores of Azov does that mean that Ukraine fires a harpoon at anything moving in the black sea? How do they stop civilian ferries sneaking across the Kerch straits or even further south? And if they do they have to deal with the bad press of a lot of dead civilians on a civilian vessel which Russia will claim was transporting children and puppies. In my mind the long ranges, long shoreline and easier to defend positions make the problem harder, and it was already very hard due to the Russian habit of using human shields in Kherson.
  18. Russia supplied Kherson by loading civilian vehicles with military supplies and also mixing them with civilian traffic. I am sure they will do the same to supply Crimea so unless Ukraine wants to starve the whole place out while bombing civilians I am concerned that "choking them out" will be a difficult process.
  19. Note the added stabilizer legs and the fact they are firing quite slowly. Definitely going to be more accurate than earlier in the war when they would just spray off rockets from the back of an unmodified pickup.
  20. I will add that there are likely to be some local "national guard" type units to support the 1500-2000 Russian soldiers but the territory is so narrow they have zero way to manoeuvre and the best they can hope for is a bloody siege of tiraspol and blowing up the arms dump if the Ukrainians intervene. Edit: the cobasna arms dump appears to be 2km from the Ukrainian border so a coup de main type attack is definitely a possibility
  21. Agreed, those Russian troops in transnistria are utterly isolated from Moscow and can't be resupplied or reinforced. I seem to remember they have to use an airport in Moldova proper to rotate troops! There is a military airport in tiraspol but it is 7km of flat fields from the Ukrainian border...
  22. There are also forces in China which are for cooperation. They have not yet commited to helping Russia (see the post above about the Chinese visit to Moscow) or invading Taiwan. I agree we should be prepared but keeping our powder dry also means not pressuring China into a confrontation ourselves. Just like in the cold war, direct conflict is not inevitable.
  23. While I think this has some merit, it just seems too much of a coincidence that NS2 had an accident at that exact moment when it wasn't even operational at the time. I can believe that Russia wanted to blow up NS1 to force the Germans to accept NS2 but the "accident" is a step too far for me.
  24. Nice summary, although I wouldn't be surprised if the BMP crew simply didn't notice that a RPG round flew over their vehicle - I think the first shot went high and given their poor sights and the fact they are deafening themselves with their own shooting I guess the situational awareness of the BMP was very poor.
  25. Melitopol is a shorter drive and would achieve the same effect. Even if you didn't capture the city outright, you would still cut the Russians in two with fire control. Then you just need to reduce the pocket.
×
×
  • Create New...