chrisl

SIDE NOTE 
THE SAGA OF THE LAPTOP, vol. 45.
@Haiduks laptop is still in Poland with my mother-in-law,  who, get this, has the idea in her head that he's a potential Russian agent. 
I sh*t thee not. 
I've told her to drop the idea, her own son has told her and she's talked with Haiduk on the phone! I don't really think she's really serious (I think...). 
Plus she doesn't trust couriers or Polish mail. The idea was she'd get to Przemsyl with the stuff and hand off to a friend or family of Haiduk. 
However She had other ideas, strong and unusual ones, that I learned of from her son in a call at 11pm at night (hes not part of the madness, she just badgered him incessantly). 
She wanted to pass the package to a music band, just before they went to Kyiv for a concert. Now, it's Kozak System, who are known but...eh of all the people that Customs might take a long hard look at,  I'm pretty sure Musicians and their Entourage are near the top of the list. Plus she literally knew no one on the band, and they were leaving that evening. Somehow she got in contact with,  I think, a guitarist (?) and they agreed. Sure, ok, I guess? But not really. Fine, the guitarist (who's name I never learned)  but what if a hanger-on takes a shine to this expensive,  well wrapped packages? I'm sure the Musicians are decent people, but a concert tour is not the way to get a $1700 value package across the damn border! This was all extremely last minute, and untraceable. 
Yet she doesn't trust a signed courier service. 
I love her as family but, lol... Oh man. 
https://giphy.com/gifs/snl-l46CoyPN7mdW3C1Fe
Anyhow, I'm going to take this madness in hand and pay to get the package couriered to a family friend of Haiduk.
*siiiiigggghhhhhhhhh*

Yes, but also the way around this now is volume.  We have been saying for years to stop treating UAVs like an aircraft and a munition instead - dear gawd the UAS argument is so insane sometimes.
The obvious answer is to 1) harden against direct EW effects on the vehicle, and 2) make more autonomous.  Both which are very doable with todays technology let alone tomorrows. 

Jack Watling
Why didn’t Ukraine fall?
The lessons we can learn from Russia’s failed war
17 September 2022, 2:30am
Why didn’t Ukraine fall?
(Photo: Getty)
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Aweek before Russia invaded Ukraine, expectations varied considerably. The US government was certain the Russians would strike at Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian capital in 72 hours. The Russian presidential administration concurred. In Paris and Berlin, officials were briefing that Anglo-American hysteria was leading the world to another Iraq WMD moment and that the Russians were just posturing.
Views varied in Kyiv, but the government’s assessment was that a period of political destabilisation would be followed by a limited Russian offensive against the Donbas. I thought Russia would invade only to find itself in a gruelling unconventional battle in Ukraine’s cities; the roads west of Kyiv would be severed, cutting off the city from European allies; Ukrainian troops in the Donbas would withdraw owing to shortages of ammunition after about ten days of fighting. All of the above assessments as it turned out were – to varying degrees – wrong.
Ukraine now has a viable path towards bringing about the Russia’s defeat within the next year. It is important to reflect upon why pre-war assessments were incorrect and how these errors can be avoided in the future. I, along with my colleague Nick Reynolds, have worked in Ukraine both before and during the conflict, interviewing senior Ukrainian security and military officials, observing operations, and examining captured Russian equipment. More recently, I’ve been reviewing the operational data gathered by the Ukrainian military. For much of that period, it has not been appropriate to publish detailed information about Ukrainian operations. RUSI, the defence thinktank I work for, has therefore focussed on assessing the enemy’s most likely and most dangerous courses of action, and primary vulnerabilities. Now that the threat of further Russian offensives has abated, however, it is becoming possible to discuss some aspects of the Ukrainian side of the equation.
The data demonstrates that the realities of the war diverged considerably from the public narrative. To take an example, many have speculated that Russian electronic warfare systems – comprising interference with electronic systems – have been ineffective. Just look at the proliferation of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) throughout the conflict: surely Russian electronic warfare and air defences could have neutralised these technologies. Yet UAVs have proven their usefulness. The Ukrainian military would agree that the overview of the battlefield they offer is vital.
However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems.
This is a good example of where having both sides of the equation – Russian and Ukrainian – is critical to identifying the right lessons from Ukraine. Beyond confirming that Russian electronic warfare is effective – and that the lack of NATO investment in this area is a mistake – the loss rate also demands a re-evaluation of how NATO armies think about UAVs. At present, UAVs are treated like aircraft. They come under flight control and in the UK must be assured for flight by the Military Aviation Authority. This means that the force cannot generate large numbers of trained operators and limits how many UAVs can be deployed. UAVs are therefore designed to have higher payloads and longer flight times to compensate, driving up cost. Instead, UAVs need to be cheap, mass producible, and treated like munitions. The regulatory framework for their use should be changed.
The example of UAVs is specific, but it is precisely in these tactical details that the truth about the inaccuracy of pre-war assessments lies. To use my own assessment – that Ukrainian forces would hold their initial positions in the Donbas for a maximum of ten days – this was premised on a calculation of their available ammunition. The assumption was that much of their second line ammunition would be interdicted by Russian air and missile strikes.
The Ukrainian military began to disperse its ammunition from major stockpiles several days before the war as a precaution against widespread strikes. This was noted and tracked by Russian agents. Nevertheless, the Russian military appeared very reluctant to adjust the order of its priority strike list for attacking targets. Some of the targets towards the top of the Russian targeting list hadn’t been military sites for up to a decade.
Even though the Russians observed that the ammunition was being dispersed, they still prosecuted their initial strikes against the ammunition’s original location. Consequently, of the 20 major ammunition stockpiles used by the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russians destroyed significant stocks at only one. Russian strikes often lagged more than 48 hours behind their targets’ movements, not because the Russians lacked new information about the target’s location, but because they still struck its previous position first. Russian forces massively underperformed against their potential, largely for reasons of culture, process and weaknesses in planning.
We are still in the process of conducting our assessment of the operational data, but it is very clear that the gap between Russian success and failure was often narrow, and more often a product of culture, morale, and training than equipment or numbers of troops. It is also evident that the Ukrainians adapted faster in conditions of uncertainty and that it is the capacity of a force to recover from mistakes that often gives it the edge on the battlefield.
WRITTEN BYJack Watling
Dr Jack Watling is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute

It might be time to really utilize that interior lines advantage, and see if they can catch the Russians with their reserves stuck on rail sidings in Rostov on Don. If they have any reserves???

"They need a numerical superiority of at least 3 to 1."
 
Yes. Locally, you dumb arse. Even a certain corporal had better military sense then this uni(n)formed clown.
 
 

Only thing I would add beyond the solid replies so far is that Ukraine has a significant - some may say decisive - ISR advantage.  This means that RUAF aircraft are being spotted likely as they are rolling out the hanger doors, or in some cases as they are being prepped.  The multi-layer defence of the UA combined with better C4ISR means the UA can position point defence well ahead of RUAF sorties.
Clearly this is working as has been noted the RUAF is basically doing stand off attacks and almost zero CAS.  There were rumours that the RUAF had been effective in blunting UA offensives but no one ever had any proof of this, nor do the events of the last week and half support the idea. 
My guess is that we have a situation of air parity thru denial right now so both air forces have largely been held back or used in standoff attack roles. Kind of a "if it flies, it dies" parity.  The Western and UA answer is HIMARs and deep strike systems that are basically acting in the role of airpower at increasing ranges.  Russia does not have the same thing, its missiles are largely focused on terror attacks which are more often than not decoupled from operational or tactical objectives. 

There are multiple volumes to be written about how the Ukrainians have kept the Russian air force bottled up, and the info to write most of them is going to be classified until the war ends or well after. The thing I will state briefly is that the Russian air force is just not the the big growling bear we thought it it was. What on paper are pretty good airplanes, in fairly large numbers, have performed far below expectations due to some combination of technical problems, unskilled pilots, and a completely broken system for picking and prioritizing targets. One specific mistake was starting this war with perhaps a tenth, or even less, of the precision guided weapons needed. It is hard to overstate the size of this failure on the course of the war. Pretty clear someone, maybe everyone, stole a lot of money. they have lost this war because of it.

Maybe it's desperate attempt to get UKR to negotiating table to try to freeze the conflict.  I expect lots of staged 'attacks' on nuke plant.  What other cards to Putin have to play other than creating damage that he hopes will get URK to the table?  he can't win but he can lose big and soon.  

Seems pretty bad, the target is clearly the dam and strike could have taken it out. There are going to be successive strikes until Russians get the result they want.
The destruction seems limited so far so I am guessing this is maximum emergency release to empty the basin as fast as possible in somewhat controlled way, before more strikes that could cause a catastrophic near instant failure.

Russian mobilization viewed by reconnaissance satellite in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-1aVVEKep0
 

You are right in general but in specific details it is not as clear cut as you stated.
RU lost. RU lost even before the war started Despite this fact the war in Ukraine is still going on and it might turn to the worst As i said - we (me included) consistently underestimate RU Nat capability to prolong and male bloody any conflict they are involved in  Let me give you an example of how you underestimated RU ISR capabilities
What if I tell you RU Nats saw it weeks before it started?
Here is an example from 31-Aug 8 AM
This is from 30-Aug. Note Balaklya. 
But actually, they noticed UKR preparations in Kharkiv direction at least one month before the offensive started: 
22-Jul
7-Aug
Balaklya and Sukhi Yar are on the roads from Chuhuev to Izum. He basically described UKR offensive intent. 
You are telling me how bad RU ISR is while I was looking for a weeks at RU Nat writing - UKR are concentrating forces at Kharkiv direction for offensive most likely aimed at Izum. 
What if tomorrow RU Nats blow up Nuclear station. What if tomorrow you will have to fight them? What your estimations will be? That their ISR is crap? And what if it is not? What if they have a lot of civilian eyes looking at your every move? What's if they have Telegram based network of volunteer agents all over Ukraine? What if it is incompetence of RU MOD that mask their true HUMINT capabilities? 
Do not underestimate RU Nat ability to take lives of our boys if RU crap hits EU fan.  I cannot be there with boys but at least I try to warn you and others here not to dismiss RU Nat volunteers. It is their turf as well. They can and will surprise you.  

It is like making a cup of coffee. Not possible because the department store sells coffee machines. But the reason is some one likes a cup of coffee. They would win anyway in the long run now it goes a little quicker.
 

Kherson as-is is more of a resource sink for Russia than for Ukraine.  Everybody currently enclosed is going to end up dead or as a prisoner, and it's just a matter of them deciding which they'd rather be, and when.  
In the meantime, Russia has to keep using up supply-chain capability trying (or at least pretending) to support the units penned up there.  Once they're gone, all that capability can go back to supplying what's left of their Donbas positions.  So in some ways it's preferable to let Kherson stew a bit longer, running out the resources that are stockpiled there and using up supply capability (and bridging equipment) to keep supplies moving.  So for now, I'd leave them as a logistics problem for Russia rather than turning them into a logistics problem for Ukraine.  But it's also something of a humanitarian and political question, because there are a bunch of civilians in there, too, and it would be preferable to liberate them quickly.

Yeah, I suspect there is a significant amount of variability in warfare that is distinct from changes over time. Just as, in WW2, the fighting in North Africa was very different from fighting on the Eastern Front, and both were different from the fighting in the Pacific, I suspect that if another high intensity war between two different peer or near peer armies broke out in another part of the world it would look very different from this one in a lot of ways. It's not that this war has its peculiarities, so much as every war has peculiarities. Differences in objectives, scale, level of commitment, doctrine, force structure, and terrain may create a massive amount of variability even in wars fought in the same time period. Time period/technology obviously does make a big difference. If you reran WW2 with modern technology, but all other factors kept identical, it would still be a very different war. But I think it is far too simplistic to think of time period/technology as being the only thing that makes wars different.
For an obvious example, there is probably a comparable amount of difference between a modern land war in eastern Europe and a modern air/naval/amphibious war in the Pacific as there is between a modern land war in eastern Europe and a 1940s land war in eastern Europe, or between a modern air/naval/amphibious war in the Pacific and a 1940s air/naval/amphibious war in the Pacific.
So I don't think we should be talking about how modern war is different from war of decades past, as if modern war and war of decades past are homogeneous things, but about how specific types of war are different from their older counterparts. How is modern European ground war different from European ground war of decades past. How is modern counter-insurgency in desert/jungle/etc... different from counter-insurgency in desert/jungle/etc.. in decades past. How is modern air/naval/amphibious war around scattered island chains different from air/naval/amphibious war around scattered island chains of decades past. How is modern peer vs peer desert combat different from peer vs peer desert combat from decades past.

Vlad is asking the professionals for advice on how to surrender?

I suspect the 50K is accurate, and the number that's being overestimated is the WIA:KIA ratio.  Russia has demonstrated absolutely crap logistics for the past 6 months.  Do you believe that they somehow have managed to maintain high levels of battlefield medical support?  They aren't drafting doctors from St. Pete and Moscow, or we'd hear about it on Twitter and Telegram, and anything they fly is into contested airspace.  I don't think I've seen a single image of a helicopter with a red cross on it, or any mention of mobile hospitals.  It's plausible that the WIA:KIA rates are closer to 2:1 or even 1:1 for much of the action.  So they could have a total of 100K casualties that remove men from combat, with half of them KIA because the medical response is so poor that injuries that shouldn't be terminal are.

Given the amount of data that has to be processed I would say it is impossible.  For the ground war alone - this is a Theater Intelligence Cell's job.  That will be a lot of people working in specialist areas - eg current battle, future plans, order-of-battle etc to feed the grown-up who's going to make sense of it and then brief it to the guy who's going to make the decisions.
I am that guy in Afghanistan - On average I read 500 individual reports a day and it takes me about three and a half hours to make sense of them all.  About an hour or so to write up the individual incidents of interest and about 45 minutes to 90 minutes to find and plot where they took place.  About 20 incidents is a busy day for me.  Databasing the incidents takes about 20 minutes.  On top of that it takes me about an hour and a half to write slightly more in-depth pieces for my daily summary.  In-depth collation or in-depth reading?  Forget it ... not enough time in the day.  This is small beer compared to the amount of reporting that's coming out of Ukraine.

dang it, edit issue.  To the  above:  I like this, some nice out of the box thinking.  Let's put ourselves in shoes of folks in LPR.  RU has shown it thinks you are nothing but cannon fodder, have sent most of your men off to die.  Once the war is over, if you are part of russia or some independent oblast, you will be under sanctions w no prospect for economic and infrastructure recovery.
But let's say you decide to ally w Ukraine and turn against RU.  As part of Ukraine you are facing a future as a western facing and (over time) prosperous nation that doesn't send you off to die.  It's not a bad bet for LPR to make.  All the hard core RU nats would flee to RU and Ukrainians who had fled LPR could come back.  Which I think is a big win, politically.  Less zealots, more normal people.

Sounds like it was taken by an Improv Everywhere flash mob.
Just wait til they roll out the no pants day.
 

Vlad is asking the professionals for advice on how to surrender?

I've been thinking about this for a while from the technology side and what you really have to do is ask what the tank does for you and how to replace it, like you did here.  And then reframe the question in those terms.  I think the real question is "What's the future of direct fire for ground forces?"  The "ground forces" part is important because we've already seen direct fire disappear in the Navy (WW II was the transition), and in the Air Force, where if you see the enemy plane visually before it's smoking on the ground you probably effed up somewhere.  It hasn't happened on the ground because, as I think you pointed out, war always comes down to a guy in a hole in the ground with a gun.  Somebody has to actually take and hold areas, and it's that guy and his friends.  
Tanks are just a way to bring fire against that guy in the hole, because until recently, indirect fire was imprecise enough that clever guys can make their holes in the ground fancy enough that when the "boom" stops they can come back out with their guns to defend the hole against the other guys who want to sit in them.  But modern tech is at a point where we can almost identify all the holes with remote sensors (air and space) and send each hole its own targeted munition.  Tanks are/were a way to bring up HE for addressing harder defenses and masses of guys, mobile MG pillboxes for addressing moving masses of guys, and AP sources for addressing the tanks that are there to do the same things to your guys.  But it's also a big heavy target with a very demanding logistical tail, and you have to protect the tail as effectively as the tank or you just have big monument to build a park around when it breaks down or runs out of fuel.  And now every squad (in some armies) is carrying a missile that can destroy that tank from the horizon just by pointing in the general direction and pushing a button.  
A swarm of loitering munitions with long dwell time can supply the targeted HE on-demand.  Or a MLRS with PGMs if you need a lot of bang a little slower.  Drones are at a point where they can knock on the door of a bunker like a land shark and wait til you open the door before blowing up.
A swarm of lightly armored UGV with swappable modules can provide a lot of the other services:
MG without a head that has to be kept down. CIWS for defending against the other guy's loitering munitions Rocket launcher for close (a 100 m up to a few km over the horizon) fire against various targets, including residual tanks Rescue vehicle to get the guys in the hole out to medical care quickly Contribute to the Borg spotting network, because it can have eyes in every direction at all times.

A certain large asian country likely has comparable EO capability at Mars to what Russia has over Ukraine.
They're not at parity with the west, but can realistically get there.  Successfully landing a functioning rover on Mars on the first time out (along with an orbiter to watch it and relay for it) is no mean feat.

A certain large asian country likely has comparable EO capability at Mars to what Russia has over Ukraine.
They're not at parity with the west, but can realistically get there.  Successfully landing a functioning rover on Mars on the first time out (along with an orbiter to watch it and relay for it) is no mean feat.

A certain large asian country likely has comparable EO capability at Mars to what Russia has over Ukraine.
They're not at parity with the west, but can realistically get there.  Successfully landing a functioning rover on Mars on the first time out (along with an orbiter to watch it and relay for it) is no mean feat.

Kherson as-is is more of a resource sink for Russia than for Ukraine.  Everybody currently enclosed is going to end up dead or as a prisoner, and it's just a matter of them deciding which they'd rather be, and when.  
In the meantime, Russia has to keep using up supply-chain capability trying (or at least pretending) to support the units penned up there.  Once they're gone, all that capability can go back to supplying what's left of their Donbas positions.  So in some ways it's preferable to let Kherson stew a bit longer, running out the resources that are stockpiled there and using up supply capability (and bridging equipment) to keep supplies moving.  So for now, I'd leave them as a logistics problem for Russia rather than turning them into a logistics problem for Ukraine.  But it's also something of a humanitarian and political question, because there are a bunch of civilians in there, too, and it would be preferable to liberate them quickly.