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Strategic and tactical realities in CMBS


H1nd

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@ Steve in regards to demonstrations.

 

This is a subject of faith and point of view as much as any other spread by media. Ukrainian media and their stories have known to be grossly skewed and outright fabricated, so how much is really happened is unknown. You could say the same about Russian media as well, which wouldn't be untrue. However, what baffles me is that people chose to believe one, or another instead of discontinuing both altogether.

Exactly. The mindset and culture of reporting from both the ukrainian army and the separatists cannot be that different. After all, they are from the same region! There is little to no critical, skeptical or independent reporting from these people. The more nationalistic and patriotic someone is, the less I tend to believe them, and lets be honest, the area is litted with tribalism, religious fervour and hooliganism.

 

Any side that uses artillery in its own country like Ukraine does to its cities, cannot have a healthy military leadership with psychological stability or understanding of human nature. That goes for all sides of course.

That type of sickness also has to spread into their news reporting and make all kinds of biases and lies grow.

 

It shouldn't take much analysis to realise that there isnt any mass assaults going on at the airport where dozens are dying in artillery crossfire. People are sniping each other with rifles, tanks and artillery and reporting that as attacks that keep failing, for propaganda or blatant misrepresentation purposes.

 

Some truth comes out of course, its not all lies.

Edited by Schmoly War
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no harm done, I don't think dry wit translates well into Russian. :)

 

and no, that was not an offensive comment either. ;)

 

p.s. - This is going to cut into our humor factor if we have to worry what our members who are not fluent in english think we are saying. I just hope they don't wander into the Peng thread by mistake.

Edited by Sgt Joch
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About Ukraine I like how supporters of Poroshenko don't take in fact the videos they have where they execute a man by cracking his spine with a kettle. Or the countless videos of bombardment of residential areas, And a ballistic missile was used but, all they think is "Putin is a bad man he is still communist" or just the simple "We hate Russia" mentality that is being presented by the government of certain countries to the population. Same type of people who believe in this stuff also believe that Russian forces shot down flight MH17

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Listen, They have information out there a guy who operated on the same AA battery that was stated to have shot down MH17 belongs to the Ukrainian armed forces. But let's say that that is Putin's propaganda because he is a "very bad man."  Who authorized the Airplane to fly over the war zone? A war zone which has Aircraft and Anti air being used. Did the air traffic controllers fall asleep? They cancel flights because of bad weather yet they couldn't give another flight path because of a war zone? 

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SNIP

How I've seen this whole debacle is that due to the events at Maidan Putin was forced to act in Ukraine before the phase II was ready. The annexation/forming of Novorussia had been in plans before but due to the political situation rapidly changing Putin had to put it into action when they still didn't have enough support in regions other than Donetsk and Luhansk. I personally believe that all this was supposed to take place after the reforms of the Russian army, at least concerning the land forces, were ready. Had they been succesful, IE without Maidan, we might be looking at a truly divided Ukraine now.

I have to say that it was most interesting to be doing my time in the national service, training to be an infantry officer with all this going down and escalating rapidly during the summer (april - august). I remember sitting at a table in the middle of the night and reading news on my phone about Russian tanks crossing the Ukrainian border and just going "oh ****". It gave a different sort of motivation for the training, after all the reserve officer school is a stones throw away from the Russian border here in Finland.

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They did not find a Russian submarine, did they? For all we know it could have been an USN submarine, doing an intel run.

 

Or the Swedish Armed Forces looking into getting some money.

The trouble with arguing with you guys is the sub could have surfaced, been clearly a Kilo class, flown the Russian flag, had the crew come out on deck and sing the national anthem and there would still be with some excuse- it is faked, someone photo shopped it, the sub was a US CIA operation using an old captured/purchased sub, lord knows what, but it would be anything other than, yes Russia violated Sweden's territorial waters.  Really a USN intel run in Swedish waters?  That is the best you can come up with? If anything the declarations from Sweden are an embarrassing revelation as to how poor their ASW capabilities are.

 

Russia has clearly stated it is intent on restoring it's great power military status.  This includes an increase in aggressive overflights, armed forces demonstrations along it's borders and naval maneuvers.  Is it really that hard to think that maybe Russia is also testing the anti submarine warfare capabilities of it's neighbors?

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The trouble with arguing with you guys is the sub could have surfaced, been clearly a Kilo class, flown the Russian flag, had the crew come out on deck and sing the national anthem and there would still be with some excuse- it is faked, someone photo shopped it, the sub was a US CIA operation using an old captured/purchased sub, lord knows what, but it would be anything other than, yes Russia violated Sweden's territorial waters.  Really a USN intel run in Swedish waters?  That is the best you can come up with? If anything the declarations from Sweden are an embarrassing revelation as to how poor their ASW capabilities are.

 

Russia has clearly stated it is intent on restoring it's great power military status.  This includes an increase in aggressive overflights, armed forces demonstrations along it's borders and naval maneuvers.  Is it really that hard to think that maybe Russia is also testing the anti submarine warfare capabilities of it's neighbors?

Well was it a Russian submarine? No! And even if it was stuff like this is normal. The U.S. and Russia always have submarines in each other's water. And until one of them launch something at each other nothing will happen. 

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Listen, They have information out there a guy who operated on the same AA battery that was stated to have shot down MH17 belongs to the Ukrainian armed forces. But let's say that that is Putin's propaganda because he is a "very bad man."  Who authorized the Airplane to fly over the war zone? A war zone which has Aircraft and Anti air being used. Did the air traffic controllers fall asleep? They cancel flights because of bad weather yet they couldn't give another flight path because of a war zone? 

 

Dunno, Russia wasn't taking potshots at airliners, Ukraine wasn't shooting down airliners, as far as any one knew the seperatists only had access to captured Ukrainian stocks, which did not include that echelon of anti-aircraft asset.

 

It's almost like people expected a good faith effort not to put very dangerous, long range anti-aircraft weapons under the control of folks who can't tell the difference between an SU-25 and an airliner or something.

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Well was it a Russian submarine? No!

Probably but no conclusive proof. Guess we need another U137 that Russia can say "got lost" amazing how that same excuse keeps surfacing- pun intended.

 

And even if it was stuff like this is normal. The U.S. and Russia always have submarines in each other's water. And until one of them launch something at each other nothing will happen.

and the little green men in Crimea that Russia denied so vehemently ...and turned out to be oh yeah, Russian military. The problem is when Putin gets caught lying,the plausibility that he is lying about other stuff is going to be people's first choice. You can't have it both ways. Edited by sburke
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Probably but no conclusive proof. Guess we need another U137 that Russia can say "got lost" amazing how that same excuse keeps surfacing- pun intended.

 

and the little green men in Crimea that Russia denied so vehemently ...and turned out to be oh yeah, Russian military. The problem is when Putin gets caught lying,the plausibility that he is lying about other stuff is going to be people's first choice. You can't have it both ways.

I will not even argue with you on this thread, Because I'm sure if I do it will involve heated words and it will most likely lead to this thread being locked so I will just leave it where it is, If you want to argue this message me.

Edited by VladimirTarasov
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As ever, until there is proper evidence I'll dismiss these claims as another "Swedish submarine hunt". These declarations have been so numerous, and the amount of Russian casualties declared so high, that it reminds me of the boy who cried wolf.

In regards to the flow of men and equipment over the border, Russia was offered a way to verify that it is not involved. Specifically allowing OSCE (which Russia is a part of) to conduct true monitoring of the Ukrainian/Russian border. Even with the terribly limited OSCE presence they have documented a lot of military activity across the border. Which is pretty obvious why Russia won't allow independent verification of the border.

The thing about the Ukrainian declarations of Russian military forces fighting in Ukraine, they don't always cry wolf. They were quite accurate about the influx of Russian military ahead of the August counter offensive. And what do we have to counter balance this information? Russian government and media sources that denny that Russia has anything to do with what is going on in Ukraine. The same government and media that said they didn't invade Crimea.

If the Ukrainian government and media has zero credibility, then Russia is even worse than zero.

Steve

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Wow, there seems to be some Russian foreign foreign service operatives on the site now.

And I say it's full of counter-revolutionary hitlerite agents!  Emperor Putin will purge with fire!

 

On a more serious note we are wandering back into the realm of things that'll get this thread shut down.

 

 

If the Ukrainian government and media has zero credibility, then Russia is even worse than zero.

 

I do have to say this is actually a pretty valid position. We cannot trust what the Ukrainian press says to be reality.  But to that end it's a matter of low fidelity, we can certainly doubt the hell out of it, but with other corroboration and past trends sometimes we can say they're not all bull feces.

 

Russian press...I mean if someone showed me a Russian news report saying pizza was tasty, water was wet, and disco is dead, I would not believe it out of principal.  It'd be like if collectively the US media insisted Iraq's WMDs were camped out somewhere in Syria as a result of secret ba'athist trysts or something.  There's not much reason to trust Russian media when it is literally the state owned press with no additional oversight.

 

I do hope this never changes though.  I still get a chuckle out of the less morbid stuff. 

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How I've seen this whole debacle is that due to the events at Maidan Putin was forced to act in Ukraine before the phase II was ready.

Absolutely. I have examined the timeline as much as I can without access to classified information or contacts at the Kremlin. It seems to me the operation was put into effect the day before Yanukovych fled, but certainly no later than the day after he fled. This was possible because the invasion of Crimea was an existing plan that had been actively prepared for in the last few weeks, or probably months, as they realized Yanukovych had a real chance of being deposed in some way.

Since the invasion of Crimea was an "off the shelf" battle plan it went very, very well for the Russians. Up until the point where they expected to get into a shooting war with Ukrainian forces. This did not go according to plan and it left Russia in a very awkward position of having Russian military in Crimea with absolutely no legal pretext. No matter how many Russian APCs smashed into Ukrainian gates, no matter how many shots were fired into the air towards Ukrainian positions, no matter how many times Russian and "self defense" forces moved into the bases and beat up Ukrainians, they did not fire back.

Side note. Fairly early on Russia figured out that Ukraine was not going to fight back. Before they started the physical altercations at the bases Russia staged an "attack" on the Crimean Parliament building, which was so poorly conceived and executed that Russia quickly dropped it from their newsfeeds after initially reporting it. You see, people found out that the shell casings were blanks and the "Maidan" guys were using AK-100s tricked out with all kinds of Russian special forces stuff. So what if the bus they drove in on said "Maidan" on the front... nobody bought it. One of the lesser known, but more humorous, false flag events of the war to date.

The annexation/forming of Novorussia had been in plans before but due to the political situation rapidly changing Putin had to put it into action when they still didn't have enough support in regions other than Donetsk and Luhansk. I personally believe that all this was supposed to take place after the reforms of the Russian army, at least concerning the land forces, were ready. Had they been succesful, IE without Maidan, we might be looking at a truly divided Ukraine now.

I agree. In a perfect world (for Russia) it would have been the Kremlin that decided when the attack happened, not people on Maidan. However, Putin had a narrow miss during the 2010 Ukrainian elections and must have known that sooner or later things would come to a head. I am sure he hoped for later since a compliant and complicit Ukraine was vastly preferable to a country in open opposition to Russian domination.

The "Novorussian Project" was probably not a part of official Russian state policy. In US organizational terms we would call it a "public-private partnership". Durgin did the actual work, Putin gave him encouragement and some funding.

Kremlin insiders spoke of a conflict in the Spring/Summer 2014 between the oligarchs concerned about the financial impact of a conflict with the West and the ultra nationalists like Durgin. Putin needs both on his side in order to effectively rule Russia. So for a while he pursued policies that both could support. But as sanctions mounted there was a fork in the road. "Deescalation" was the course preferred by many oligarchs, "Novorussia" was the course pushed by the ultra nationalists. After a few signs that Putin might be going down the deescalation route, including the sacking of Durgin from his cushy university position (he earned more than the dean), Putin instead showed that he was in fact not interested in deescalation but instead having more direct control over what was going on.

I have to say that it was most interesting to be doing my time in the national service, training to be an infantry officer with all this going down and escalating rapidly during the summer (april - august). I remember sitting at a table in the middle of the night and reading news on my phone about Russian tanks crossing the Ukrainian border and just going "oh shit". It gave a different sort of motivation for the training, after all the reserve officer school is a stones throw away from the Russian border here in Finland.

Definitely an interesting perspective to have. And it is one shared by your Baltic cousins to the south.

Steve

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Russian press...I mean if someone showed me a Russian news report saying pizza was tasty, water was wet, and disco is dead, I would not believe it out of principal.  It'd be like if collectively the US media insisted Iraq's WMDs were camped out somewhere in Syria as a result of secret ba'athist trysts or something.  There's not much reason to trust Russian media when it is literally the state owned press with no additional oversight.

One of the tenants of Soviet, now Russian, propaganda is to create distrust of media in general. If you are convinced that your own government lies then you can more easily conclude that all other governments and media lie. More importantly, they lie to the same degree as Russian government and media. Further, the encouragement of "conspiracy theory" mentality undermines people's abilities to use basic logic to determine truth from fiction. Because whatever is advanced as truth could be a trick.

When hard evidence is put forward to dispute a major point of view, it is dismissed as either irrelevant, misinterpreted, falsified, or (my favorite) ignored completely. This is an intellectual defense mechanism, commonly called "denial".

I would love to think that in a few years time Russians will figure out what the truth really is and learn from it so they won't be taken advantage of again in the future. Unfortunately, based on how much love I see for the Soviet Union I don't have much hope.

Steve

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...Further, the encouragement of "conspiracy theory" mentality undermines people's abilities to use basic logic to determine truth from fiction. Because whatever is advanced as truth could be a trick.

When hard evidence is put forward to dispute a major point of view, it is dismissed as either irrelevant, misinterpreted, falsified, or (my favorite) ignored completely. This is an intellectual defense mechanism, commonly called "denial"...

 

This is very active in all countries (though of course it is much worse in some countries than others) and one of my largest areas of concern for the future. The ability of like-minded people to live in an ideological echo chamber and organize globally to defend that view, along with the ever-increasing power of technology to successfully alter images and video, and thus render them as "unreliable" is truly frightening.

 

Reading YouTube comments is just plain scary. And, the most thoughtful, intelligent ones usually get the least amount of attention/likes. They tend to be ignored, as you point out.

Edited by Macisle
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Where did he get those pictures btw?

They are not part of our military doctrine.

When russia will start mobolisation all coscripts will go into carde brigades to fill them to full strength.

 

Hello Weer

 

I Presume that you pointed your question to me, about the origin of the pictures. Good point, I forgot to link the sources in the post. My bad.

 

I found the pictures by simply using google picture search. 

 

"Ukranian national guard"

 

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2014/03/28/p18k2r8ra01hdf1n7msdk11hh13q44/big.jpg

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/world/2014/03/17/russia_moves_swiftly_to_annex_crimea/ukrainian_interim_forces.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg

http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/21/ukraine-s-newestfighitngforcestillaworkinprogress/_jcr_content/mainpar/textimage/image.img.png

 

"Crimean self defence troops"

 

http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/h_51272833.jpg

http://static.businessinsider.com/image/531ced6f6bb3f7a63ed6217e/image.jpg

http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/ukraine7.jpg?w=620

 

I can't really estimate the realibility of these sources, or where the pictrures came originally, although I have no reason to suspect the authenticity of them.

 

 

Yes, your conscripts and reservists are assigned to various level motorized infantry brigades during mobilization. That's for russian citizens on russian federation soil. With "pro russian militia" I referred to the local volunteers from occupied territories, which are armed by russian military (or other govermental organization) and working in auxiliary or secondary roles alongside with RF military.

 

Allmost all of the armies over the history have had similar arrengements in occupied territories and I presume RF ain't going to make the difference. 

Edited by wee
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This is very active in all countries (though of course it is much worse in some countries than others) and one of my largest areas of concern for the future.

Earlier in the conflict I spent a lot of time on a website that caters to paranoia. Mostly the "New World Order" types. There was a lot of good information there, believe it or not, but very little of it was correctly interpreted. The "Putinbots" were highly active on the forum and it was a great way to figure out what disinformation was coming out of Russia because it was close to the original source.

Anyway, I had to stop reading the forum because I felt like cutting myself off from the rest of Humanity. It is bad enough to know someone in real life that has problems with reality, but to see them all clustered in one place like that... too much.

 

The ability of like-minded people to live in an ideological echo chamber and organize globally to defend that view, along with the ever-increasing power of technology to successfully alter images and video, and thus render them as "unreliable" is truly frightening.

It certainly doesn't help when there is a group spending vast sums of money to create such "unreliable" information.

 

Reading YouTube comments is just plain scary. And, the most thoughtful, intelligent ones usually get the least amount of attention/likes. They tend to be ignored, as you point out.

As a poster just reminded us in this thread, basic logic is not paid attention to. For some every single shell that lands in a residential area is fired by Ukraine's forces. Separatists never fire from residential areas and the absolutely have never fired into one. Totally illogical and very easily disproven. However, it doesn't matter how many times it's shown to be untrue, it still is repeated as if it is. I have also found they don't like to see pictures of Grozny after the First Chechen War. The conversation that follows never goes well.

Steve

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Crimean self defence troops

 

They were formed before Crimea become part of russia and they are disbanded.

That's for russian citizens on russian federation soil.

 

Crimea is the russian soil too. And the ppl leve here are russian citizens.

I referred to the local volunteers from occupied territories

 

They are not part of doctrine. Russian troops will cooperate only with regular troops.

Allmost all of the armies over the history have had similar arrengements in occupied territories and I presume RF ain't going to make the difference. 

 

Russian military doctrine aims for the fast mechanized offensive, paramilitary formations are simply too slow and had bad gear.

Russian armed forces have enough AKs and BTRs to form new MRBs if needed.

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Allmost all of the armies over the history have had similar arrengements in occupied territories and I presume RF ain't going to make the difference.

I am sure Russia isn't an exception.

You forgot that there are actually three purposes for local militias:

1. Be a ready source of manpower for formal military duties (either on their own or absorbed)

2. Serve as "partisans" in the event of losing the territory

3. Reinforce the ties between the local population and the ruling regime

#3 is quite important if there is a challenge to the central authority. Nothing beats rooting out troublesome locals than other locals. Especially armed ones.

In Crimea there are armed gangs that are going about and stealing (sorry, "nationalizing") businesses that the new leadership wants for itself. It is quite possible that some of these guys are from the "militia".

Steve

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