JonS
-
Posts
14,847 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
15
Posts posted by JonS
-
-
4 hours ago, sburke said:
I'm still wondering why they spent the effort and money to get a naval vessel after seeing how pretty much useless they are in this war.
There is an "after war" to consider. Sea babies are going to be pretty useless for maritime policing and control (just like drones are going to be pretty useless for COIN).
-
2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Also fighters from Mariupol
It'd be interesting to hear what they make of the way the war is being carried out. I assume they've been more or less in an info black hole since capture, and ... well, everything is very very different now.
-
9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Even mobility of a few meters can break that.
Make your lane a couple of metres wider. Problem solved. Next?
I thought *you* were the ginger bear?
-
13 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Not the stupid pinecone thing,
I keep forgetting you're a n00b here, and probably aren't au fait with some of the jargon.
-
[editor’s note: I drafted this about 12 hours ago but because reasons I couldn’t post it till now. The conversation has moved on a bit in the meantime – apologies for being a bit tardy]
***
Some time ago in this thread I asked ‘what is tank?’ and it’s not so surprising that almost 2 years later we’re still circling that tree. Traditionally, tanks are considered to embody three qualities: mobility, protection, and firepower, with trade-offs between the three depending on what your doctrine thinks is more important (Israel, for example, prioritises protection at the expense of mobility), but still having elements of all three – if you just have mobility and firepower then what you’re driving is a technical, not a tank. Or perhaps a drone. If you have protection and firepower but no mobility; you’re in a bunker, not tank. If you have protection and mobility but no firepower; that’s a truck, not a tank.
The tank will be dead when that troika is no longer relevant on the battlefield. The last couple of pages have seen some weird intellectual gymnastics, such as: “tank dead because tank only has mobility, protection, and firepower – all else is drone!” to which; um, yes? And “tank dead because tank only do infantry support! Tank only SPG now!” as if infantry support were not the very thing tanks were created to provide. Tanks entered the battlefield to assist the break-in and breakthrough. The breakout was the domain of the cavalry. The horsed cavalry. Since then tanks have proven useful in other roles, and endured on the battlefield because that troika remains valid.
In the intervening century there have been any number of times when tanks have immolated themselves on whatever the anti-tank defence du jour was; August 1918 at Amiens, May 1940 just down the road at Arras, June to December 1941 in Cyrenaica, May to October 1942 in North Africa, July 1943 in Russia, July 1944 in Normandy, March 1945 in Hungary, June 1954 in Vietnam, October 1973 in the Sinai … and those are just off the top. I am certainly forgetting many many other examples. And yet, and yet, despite all those salutary and sanguinary examples the troika remained relevant.
Armour was useful in Falklands and Vietnam. Granted there wasn’t a lot of armour in the Falklands, but the ground commanders – on both sides – appreciated the ones they had and would certainly have liked more. That they didn’t was mostly a function of logistics (and employability in that particular landscape), rather than utility. Similarly, in Vietnam the Australians, at least, found their Centurions (and their Gavins if you care to include APCs in the generic ‘amour’ bucket) so useful that the RAAC was finally able to shake off their reputation as being Koalas. Armour wasn’t decisive in either conflict, but that’s a different question.
Usefulness aside, noting that tanks aren’t supreme – or decisive - in all contexts is a startling insight into the obvious. For example it is true, as I fully and happily acknowledge, that tanks were not decisive and indeed had practically no impact at all on the Sikkim conflict in 1967, or on the Sumdorong Chu standoff in 1987. By the same token, aircraft carriers were of exactly zero use during the Chaco War in the mid-1930’s or the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, yet surprisingly that didn’t spell the demise of carriers.
Iraq 1991 was a gross mismatch of technology, which led to some extraordinarily photogenic technology-porn moments, which were subsequently used to prove everything from the supremacy of airpower, the accuracy of Patriot (whoops, lol), the relevance of the A-10 (lol), the dominance of tanks, or the superiority of the “Western Way of War.” But those all come back to technological supremacy – lose tech supremacy and the rest doesn’t matter; at tech parity you’re going to be stuck in an attritional grind, while at tech-deficit you get a turn at being the whipping boy. Tech parity is what happened in Normandy 1944, and it’s what happened in Iran-Iraq in the 1980s, and tech parity led to operational deadlock. And this dynamic is what we are seeing repeated again in Ukraine.
ISR has become more pervasive and persistent, which definitely makes life harder, but once again we’ve been here before. The whole point of aerial combat in WWI was to retain or deny aerial recce ability, and it led directly to the formation of national airforces. In 1944 a few stupid little toy planes that could barely fly bought activity along whole sections of the fronts in Normandy and Italy to a halt because those toys could see everything and were directly linked to overwhelming fires systems. And yet, the German army was able to adapt and overcome … for a while, at least defensively. They weren’t able to go on an general offensive despite having loads of shiny tanks, but that had more to do with loss of any ability to operate in the aerial domain, and more generally the yawning chasm of overall materiel inferiority, than it was to do with the Austers and the Cubs.
Neither side in Ukraine is at the point of having either air supremacy, or absurd materiel overmatch, or a significant technological advantage and so parity has led to a broad stalemate.
Tanks … and armour generally … and land vehicles even more generally … are taking a lot of hits in Ukraine, in part because they are facing a weapon system that has some novel characteristics. But then, so is infantry. And artillery. And navy. And air force.
But I don’t believe we will give up on infantry.
I don’t believe we will give up on ships, or airpower, or artillery.
And I don’t believe we will give up on armour or tanks, at least not while the troika remains relevant.
All of those systems will change over time though. Of course they will. They have to, to survive! But that’s normal – force densities, for example, have plummeted since the days of Waterloo, going from being measured by the number of men per metre then to the number of metres per man now, in response to increased range and lethality of weapons, as well as the ability to perform distributed and dispersed command, plus having highly trained and professional standing armies.^ Aircraft too have evolved over the last hundred years, finding new roles while at the same time inventing new ways to accomplish old roles. And so have tanks.
Will there be a next generation of tanks? I think yes. Will the next generation of tanks be broadly similar to the current generation in terms of the balance of the troika between mobility, protection, and firepower? Again, I think yes. Broadly.
What about the generation after that? I think there will be one, not least because yes; militaries are conservative beasts. They are conservative beasts because they're paid to be. Betting the farm on an unproven nascent technology is probably not a great idea, especially when 'the farm' happens to be liberty and independence for the nation and all its citizens.^^ Bet wrong and you get to say hello to Johnny Foreigner as your new head of state. See, for example, France 1940-1944 after they went all-in on shiny new high-tech heavy fixed fortifications, which no one else was doing.
But I also think that gen+2 tanks will be about as different to current tanks as the Centurion was to the Mark I “Male.”^^^ Still a tank that combines firepower, protection and mobility in a single package, but differently.
Wars tend to do that to equipment.
***
^ as an aside, to my eye modern professional standing armies seem almost akin to the ~16th Century mercenary armies in Italy in terms of their separation from the societies they nominally serve
^^ Yes; Unproven. The information we are getting from Ukraine is partial, highly biased, and selective. That is not a good foundation to make fundamental or existential decisions on.
^^^ fun fact: the British sent a Centurion south to participate in the Falklands War.
-
5 hours ago, The_Capt said:
At some point we have to simply admit that this is not social media bias. These are some big numbers being tossed around that match what we are seeing. So either this is a really big misread or something else is going on.
Context matters.
The article was written at the start of April, 'recent months' there being Dec '23 - Mar '24, ie. the low point of supply.
When you're out of everything else, you use what you have left - if the Finns had supplied them with 40,000 pinecones in Nov '23 and training on how to use them we'd be sitting around talking about the end of tanks presaged by the Cone of Death(tm).
(All the more so if Nokia had installed cameras in the cones)
-
5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:
For FPV drones, we typically only see successful strikes posted, we dont tend to see the many many many misses, poor angled attacks, EWAR casualties or simply hits that fail to inflict major damage. We have a few videos of tanks shrugging off numerous FPV hits its true but the majority of footage we see is usually pretty spectacular. The point is we tend to get the footage of the 'good stuff' when in reality both sides admit that a large percentage of drones will never reach a target due to the various factors involved.
Heh. Imagine if the internet had existed, and cellphones with cameras had been ubiquitous, in 1973.
We would be inundated with videos from AT-3 operators as somewhere north of 1,000 Centurions, Pattons, and what else not were destroyed or damaged in less than 3 weeks, leading, obviously, to Israel's defeat and the end of tanks as a weapon system.
-
12 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
Condensation is a powerful enemy?: "They also complain of how, in rain or fog, condensation can fry the electronics inside the vehicle."
Huh. I suppose spending 30 ... no, nearly 40 years designing and optimising kit for the sandbox will do that to your procurement system.
When was the last time a div-sized M1-equipped unit was based in Germany?
-
6 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:
Regarding “silver bullets”, I don’t believe there are any. It’s the combination of the full array of newer, modern Western platforms, sensors, munitions, and training that could have and still might have a more powerful impact when employed together. Dribbling in small numbers of each platform periodically and consecutively over the years dissipates much of the advantages of each. The enemy focuses on and adjusts to each one in isolation, with plenty of time before the next platform arrives. Reasons why it happened this way have been discussed here over the years of the war. But the dissipation effect is what is.
Never forget that one of the constraints on adoption of new equipment is the Ukrainian military itself.
It is undeniably true that deploying the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries, from soup to nuts, logistics to BDA, would make the Ukrainian armed forces incomparably more fearsome than they already are.
It is ALSO undeniably true that wholesale adoption of the full suite of goodies that marks out advanced Western militaries etc etc in one fell swoop would utterly break the force, indeed any force, that tried it. It would break them if they tried it in peacetime, let alone attempting it in the middle of an existential war. It is mildly implausible that Putin would step back, saying "oh, fair play, we won't do anything for the next 18-24 months while you figure out how to use, employ, and maintain all this new stuff. Give us a call when you're ready to go again?"
Keep in mind that every time you argue for comprehensive and sudden re-equipping. Either you're arguing for a fantasy, or you're arguing for a Russian victory along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's short story Superiority.
There is, of course, a middle path - upgrading as fast as practical whilst maintaining a credible and capable force. And there always is, and always will be, debate about whether the process is proceeding too quickly or to slowly. However the answer is never at either end of the spectrum.
-
20 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
e there's reasons to be leery. We saw this with various countries in Somalia 1993 (aka "Black Hawk Down"), Rwanda 1994 (Belgian paras), and the risk of it in Bosnia 1995 (Dutch in Srebrenica).
Mmm. Good point, and good relevant examples.
Still, interventuon/separation forces *have* been shown to be successful in various contexts. This would be different in that it'd be a half-and-half (ie, "this area is peaceful so leave us alone or we'll kick you in the balls. Go be dicks to each other over there, where we aren't"), which definitely adds complexity, but not necessarily impossibility.
The big kicker, I suppose, is that intervention forces are particularly successful when *both* sides want them to be. When only one side wants them there then shenanigans tend to ensue.
-
5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
The change is that everybody pulled their trainers out when the 2022 invasion happened in order to avoid the potential for sustaining NATO casualties. Putting forces back in reintroduces that possibility and that is very significant.
I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.
Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.
From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.
Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.
Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.
Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.
-
1 hour ago, Kinophile said:
Brexit was voluntary, my friend. 100% their own political process (even if 49% actually voted against) instigated by a spineless PM. So 100% of 51% (or thereabouts) decided to leave. No one "forced them".
Yeah, that caught my eye too. I *think* what he means is that while Orban might /want/ to leave the EU for WarPac 2.0 - or whatevs - politically he can't do that because ... reasons.^ So he's being an obnoxious dick in the hope and expectation that that rest of the EU will get fed up and show him the door.
Or sumfink.
^ strongman dictator wannabe isn't so strong after all? Or so dictatory?
-
4 hours ago, FancyCat said:
The fall of Ukraine will strike absolute blows into NATO, the EU and the Western bloc. ... let me be clear, the fall of Ukraine is a defeat for the West.
This is true, but those blows and that defeat are survivable and recoverable in ways that a strategic nuclear exchange is not.
See WWII for example - the UK did survive and ultimately recover from the loss of Poland, France, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma even though it wasn't all happiness and roses, and the UK was permanently altered after the war.
-
4 hours ago, FancyCat said:
Found it!
It's interesting that there's such an in-flight performance delta that seems to be based on the launch platform. I'd have thought that once they got to the glide portion their performance would be identical.
-
4 hours ago, dan/california said:
ISWs sources are better than mine, if they they say the Ukrainians did it I accept that.
You have sources?
-
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Gawd, typical gunner. Drone collects oranges, squeezes oranges, puts little umbrella in glass, delivers orange juice - “hey there is too much pulp…this whole drone thing is overblown hogwash!”
See? It wasn't an unreasonable request after all.
Wait, what was your point again? ISTR it was that delivering juice was impossible, or something like that.
Also, yes: gunners have standards, for which I shall not apologise. You can continue to drink beaver piss and swamp water if that is your wont. I shall be drinking craft beers and - as it turns out - freshly-squeezed low-pulp orange juice.
-
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
You want it to make you OJ in the morning too?
Well, given that drones are changing warfare all by themselves, that seems like the least they could do, no?
Even if they're not going to make it, they could at minimum deliver it.
-
1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
Making a UAS that can distinguish between a civilian with a shovel over his shoulder and a soldier with a gun is definitely more challenging. But nobody is talking about that sort of thing here.
What about between a muddy person with a rifle over their shoulder, and a muddy person with a rifle over their shoulder wearing a slightly different set of muddy clothes?
-
2 hours ago, chrisl said:
You're overthinking the autonomy and mentally turning "autonomy" into "AGI".
A few sensors and some rules is probably sufficient if you can send them to an environment where there are no friendlies. The rules can be ...
Emphasis added.
This is what I was talking about several dozen pages ago. The system you are describing could (future tense) be useful for battlefield assassination in an area devoid of civilians, but not for offensive maneauvre.
-
9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
However, the total cost of that 155mm round delivered to the breach block of a cannon is way higher than its acquisition cost. How much? I have no way to estimate it, but it's not cheap. An FPV drone, on the other hand, can literally be brought to the battlefield in a backpack.
That's ... wot? Are you asserting that people /walk/ drones from the factories in China and Iran to the frontlines in Ukraine?
Really?
I mean, I don't actually think you do believe that, but in that case you're trying to push a pretty hearty false equivalence.
So; weird belief, or false equivalence?
-
9 minutes ago, Carolus said:
The British and the French already have troops in Ukraine doing targeting for Stormshadow / SCALP, killing Russians without a declaration of war.
Your high horse is not just dead, you actually never realised it was an alligator you were riding this whole time. You are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.
What are you even talking about?
-
4 minutes ago, Carolus said:
No, you really were... "unique".
He really ... isn't
-
If you abandon your principles whenever it gets a bit hard, you don't have any principles.
-
50 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
This is why we put AA guns on the top of vehicles in the first place. The main gun should be focused on the primary mission, not its own self-preservation, that is what secondaries are designed for. The coax on the tanks was originally designed to blast off close in infantry assault. This was not a job for the main gun.
Is this true?
As I understand it, the 50cals on top of Sherman's (and every US tank ever since) were there because the main armament was literally incapable of engaging aerial targets. Furthermore, you couldn't ever man the 50cal /while/ using the main gun - for one thing it required one of the turret crew - who all have better things to be doing in ground combat - to be outside the turret and on the back deck. And secondly, the concussion of the main armament made standing around outside ... not a great life choice.
Was the coax there to provide a ranging device for the main armament and just happened to be useful for back scratching, or was it there as a back scratcher and was subsequently found to be useful for ranging? I thought it was for ranging, but maybe not?
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by JonS
Bet you wish you had more infantry though (drone fondler).
Drones (and artillery, and atgms, and tanks) are less and less useful as you move left on the spectrum of conflict. A drone might be handy for proving a route in a SASO or PSO environment, but not a lot of use on a key leader engagement.
[Quote]It is also a bit like saying ATGMs and sabot rounds are going to be useless after this war too (double standard)[/quote]
I suppose it might be if I'd said that, so good thing I didn't eh? Are there any other wilful misreadings you'd like to engage in, drone fiddler, or any other words you'd like to put in my mouth?