chrisl

I'm familiar with him, and actually sat next to his former book agent on a plane a week or so before this past xmas (by dumb luck).  We didn't talk about Zubrin, but I think we did talk about space.
Russia is probably 40-ish years behind in space ISR assets, much like they're behind in things like microelectronics and NVG.  Most of it has the same root in the Soviet Union failing to try to copy Silicon Valley from the 70's on (and probably earlier).  The USSR and later Russia were/are fine at building big things made of lots of metal that spit out fire - tanks, missiles, rockets.   But without microelectronics they can't keep up with the kind of data volume that you can collect and integrate if you have relatively cheap high performance sensors and cheap, fast computers.  They've been able to buy some of those things to an extent, like the Thales targeting systems, and presumably microcontrollers for various things, but they can't do the kind of mass production that makes fancy chips appallingly cheap.
I came across an article (linky here) a while ago about when the big divergence between US and USSR capability happened in space. It's by one of the space journalists who figured out the capabilities of the first KH-11 in 1977 (launched in 1976) and sat on it for a year until a spy sold the details to the Soviets.  KH-11 can do about 10 cm (4 inch) resolution on  the ground, and there are 5 of the latest few versions in space right now.  And the NRO is giving away telescopes that size to other agencies, because they presumably have better. One of the things that the Aviation Week journalists held off  on publishing even longer was the existence of a second satellite network whose sole purpose was to be able to relay images in realtime from the KH-11.  So the US had realtime 10 cm resolution on the ground in 1977.  Russia was still returning film capsules in 2016.
And "New Space" has changed things drastically - commercial companies can give you multiple daily revisits of any location on earth at resolutions between 20 cm and 3 m.  Basically, kids in a garage in the US can make and launch cube sats cheap enough to do 3 m resolution more or less hourly.  If you have several billion dollars you could do half meter resolution that often, and there's probably a commercial market for it.  The stuff you need to do that is export controlled, and just about all the high res imaging companies are US based for that reason. The USG is the largest customer for those data.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is becoming comparably cheap and there are multiple companies doing that, too. And it can see through clouds.  And those companies also tend to be US based for similar reasons to the optical imagers.
There were some twitter posts early on about likely degradation of GPS over Ukraine, figured out from looking at the errors reported on ADS-B data.  There was speculation that it was Russia doing it, but it seems more likely that it was the US/NATO.  Ukrainians know where they are and have maps, but the Russians appear to have lousy mapping and were using some commercial GPS units, so even being able to mess them up by putting them a couple roads over from where they were supposed to be could help UA.
And that doesn't even get into the SIGINT and ELINT stuff.  But three things are happening to ISR from space right now - the cost of launch is going down fast, the cost of making stuff to launch is going down fast, and the size of the electronics you need to make that stuff work is going down fast.  So the west has tons of space ISR going on, both commercial and government.  And Russia, well, doesn't.  They have two optical satellites that are getting old and probably don't have anywhere near comparable performance to western stuff.  They probably have some SIGINT and ELINT satellites, but the lack of a microelectronics base makes it likely that those are very limited in capability.
All of which leads to the Russian anti-satellite test in November.  There was speculation at the time that it was intended to produce a ton of debris to blind the west so that they could do exactly what they did.  They did succeed in making a mess, but didn't take out any significant satellites.  And even if they took out a few, there are so many that they wouldn't be likely get them all, and the three letter agencies tend to keep some sitting around on the ground for launch-on-demand, so they could launch above the debris if they needed to.
edit: here's where Russia is with ELINT/SIGINT satellites and SAR, which is basicaly nowhere:
 

I'm familiar with him, and actually sat next to his former book agent on a plane a week or so before this past xmas (by dumb luck).  We didn't talk about Zubrin, but I think we did talk about space.
Russia is probably 40-ish years behind in space ISR assets, much like they're behind in things like microelectronics and NVG.  Most of it has the same root in the Soviet Union failing to try to copy Silicon Valley from the 70's on (and probably earlier).  The USSR and later Russia were/are fine at building big things made of lots of metal that spit out fire - tanks, missiles, rockets.   But without microelectronics they can't keep up with the kind of data volume that you can collect and integrate if you have relatively cheap high performance sensors and cheap, fast computers.  They've been able to buy some of those things to an extent, like the Thales targeting systems, and presumably microcontrollers for various things, but they can't do the kind of mass production that makes fancy chips appallingly cheap.
I came across an article (linky here) a while ago about when the big divergence between US and USSR capability happened in space. It's by one of the space journalists who figured out the capabilities of the first KH-11 in 1977 (launched in 1976) and sat on it for a year until a spy sold the details to the Soviets.  KH-11 can do about 10 cm (4 inch) resolution on  the ground, and there are 5 of the latest few versions in space right now.  And the NRO is giving away telescopes that size to other agencies, because they presumably have better. One of the things that the Aviation Week journalists held off  on publishing even longer was the existence of a second satellite network whose sole purpose was to be able to relay images in realtime from the KH-11.  So the US had realtime 10 cm resolution on the ground in 1977.  Russia was still returning film capsules in 2016.
And "New Space" has changed things drastically - commercial companies can give you multiple daily revisits of any location on earth at resolutions between 20 cm and 3 m.  Basically, kids in a garage in the US can make and launch cube sats cheap enough to do 3 m resolution more or less hourly.  If you have several billion dollars you could do half meter resolution that often, and there's probably a commercial market for it.  The stuff you need to do that is export controlled, and just about all the high res imaging companies are US based for that reason. The USG is the largest customer for those data.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is becoming comparably cheap and there are multiple companies doing that, too. And it can see through clouds.  And those companies also tend to be US based for similar reasons to the optical imagers.
There were some twitter posts early on about likely degradation of GPS over Ukraine, figured out from looking at the errors reported on ADS-B data.  There was speculation that it was Russia doing it, but it seems more likely that it was the US/NATO.  Ukrainians know where they are and have maps, but the Russians appear to have lousy mapping and were using some commercial GPS units, so even being able to mess them up by putting them a couple roads over from where they were supposed to be could help UA.
And that doesn't even get into the SIGINT and ELINT stuff.  But three things are happening to ISR from space right now - the cost of launch is going down fast, the cost of making stuff to launch is going down fast, and the size of the electronics you need to make that stuff work is going down fast.  So the west has tons of space ISR going on, both commercial and government.  And Russia, well, doesn't.  They have two optical satellites that are getting old and probably don't have anywhere near comparable performance to western stuff.  They probably have some SIGINT and ELINT satellites, but the lack of a microelectronics base makes it likely that those are very limited in capability.
All of which leads to the Russian anti-satellite test in November.  There was speculation at the time that it was intended to produce a ton of debris to blind the west so that they could do exactly what they did.  They did succeed in making a mess, but didn't take out any significant satellites.  And even if they took out a few, there are so many that they wouldn't be likely get them all, and the three letter agencies tend to keep some sitting around on the ground for launch-on-demand, so they could launch above the debris if they needed to.
edit: here's where Russia is with ELINT/SIGINT satellites and SAR, which is basicaly nowhere:
 

I'm familiar with him, and actually sat next to his former book agent on a plane a week or so before this past xmas (by dumb luck).  We didn't talk about Zubrin, but I think we did talk about space.
Russia is probably 40-ish years behind in space ISR assets, much like they're behind in things like microelectronics and NVG.  Most of it has the same root in the Soviet Union failing to try to copy Silicon Valley from the 70's on (and probably earlier).  The USSR and later Russia were/are fine at building big things made of lots of metal that spit out fire - tanks, missiles, rockets.   But without microelectronics they can't keep up with the kind of data volume that you can collect and integrate if you have relatively cheap high performance sensors and cheap, fast computers.  They've been able to buy some of those things to an extent, like the Thales targeting systems, and presumably microcontrollers for various things, but they can't do the kind of mass production that makes fancy chips appallingly cheap.
I came across an article (linky here) a while ago about when the big divergence between US and USSR capability happened in space. It's by one of the space journalists who figured out the capabilities of the first KH-11 in 1977 (launched in 1976) and sat on it for a year until a spy sold the details to the Soviets.  KH-11 can do about 10 cm (4 inch) resolution on  the ground, and there are 5 of the latest few versions in space right now.  And the NRO is giving away telescopes that size to other agencies, because they presumably have better. One of the things that the Aviation Week journalists held off  on publishing even longer was the existence of a second satellite network whose sole purpose was to be able to relay images in realtime from the KH-11.  So the US had realtime 10 cm resolution on the ground in 1977.  Russia was still returning film capsules in 2016.
And "New Space" has changed things drastically - commercial companies can give you multiple daily revisits of any location on earth at resolutions between 20 cm and 3 m.  Basically, kids in a garage in the US can make and launch cube sats cheap enough to do 3 m resolution more or less hourly.  If you have several billion dollars you could do half meter resolution that often, and there's probably a commercial market for it.  The stuff you need to do that is export controlled, and just about all the high res imaging companies are US based for that reason. The USG is the largest customer for those data.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is becoming comparably cheap and there are multiple companies doing that, too. And it can see through clouds.  And those companies also tend to be US based for similar reasons to the optical imagers.
There were some twitter posts early on about likely degradation of GPS over Ukraine, figured out from looking at the errors reported on ADS-B data.  There was speculation that it was Russia doing it, but it seems more likely that it was the US/NATO.  Ukrainians know where they are and have maps, but the Russians appear to have lousy mapping and were using some commercial GPS units, so even being able to mess them up by putting them a couple roads over from where they were supposed to be could help UA.
And that doesn't even get into the SIGINT and ELINT stuff.  But three things are happening to ISR from space right now - the cost of launch is going down fast, the cost of making stuff to launch is going down fast, and the size of the electronics you need to make that stuff work is going down fast.  So the west has tons of space ISR going on, both commercial and government.  And Russia, well, doesn't.  They have two optical satellites that are getting old and probably don't have anywhere near comparable performance to western stuff.  They probably have some SIGINT and ELINT satellites, but the lack of a microelectronics base makes it likely that those are very limited in capability.
All of which leads to the Russian anti-satellite test in November.  There was speculation at the time that it was intended to produce a ton of debris to blind the west so that they could do exactly what they did.  They did succeed in making a mess, but didn't take out any significant satellites.  And even if they took out a few, there are so many that they wouldn't be likely get them all, and the three letter agencies tend to keep some sitting around on the ground for launch-on-demand, so they could launch above the debris if they needed to.
edit: here's where Russia is with ELINT/SIGINT satellites and SAR, which is basicaly nowhere:
 

You probably will before Russia does, in every sense.

Polish scholar evaluates the overall operation and the debacle at Bilohorivka, from RU sources, with maps. Translated below.... 


 
How was it under #Bilohorivka? Two days ago, you could read an excerpt from the action thanks to @ kms_d4k
The Russians are shocked by the development of accidents and the losses. Today you can see the full version of the events from the Russian point of view
2. The entire operation lasted from May 2 to 10, but battles with the Russian survivors are still ongoing. A massive forcing operation that is not over yet
3. On May 2-3, Russian forces crossed Seversky Donets near Shipilovka [break 1].
After the crossing, the Russian army joined the battle with the garrison of the settlement. There were no troops ready to fight in Shipilovka, the garrison withdrew towards Privolye. 
4. Russian units dispersed in small groups around the area. The fighting started near Novodruzhsk, on the outskirts of Privolye and #Bilohorivka. Until the occupation of Shipilovka, a relatively small calculation of forces and resources was involved, which was less than half the BTG
5. On May 4, the bridgehead near Shipilovka [crossing 1] was lost. It happened most likely due to the underestimation of enemy forces in the surrounding settlements. A full-fledged battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was stationed in Privolye, which was soon reinforced by Novodrużesk and #Lysychansk.
6. On the night of May 4-5 and in the afternoon of May 5, on the left bank of the Donets Siewierski from Serebrianka to Privolye, massive artillery preparations began [yellow arrows]. According to reports from local chats, the coast and the vicinity of Shipilovka "were littered with the corpses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine".
7. On May 5, Russian forces crossed Donets near Serebrianka [crossing 2].
It was not possible to get a bridgehead on the opposite bank: the combat-ready units from Siewiersk were transferred to Serebrianka.
8. Seversk itself included newly rotated units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from #Sieverodonetsk, which were replaced by territorial defense units and national battalions. Artillery preparations at the positions of the #Ukraina Armed Forces continued for a few more days.
9. On 7-8 May, Russian troops crossed Donets Siewierski, near #Bilohorivka.
The Russian troops managed to occupy the dominant hills near the coast (the so-called Shipilovsky Mountains) and to capture the outskirts of Belogorovka along Pervomajska Street. 
10. Subsequently, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation met fierce resistance from Ukrainian units. The fortified area of the #Ukraine Armed Forces was in a residential area and near the Cretaceous quarry
11. On May 8, the Allied forces began a full-fledged pontoon crossing [crossing 3] across Donets Seversky near #Bilohorivka to introduce armored vehicles into the battle. Ukrainian artillery began to operate along the passages
12. Before the failure of the first pontoon, several pieces of equipment were transferred to the opposite shore. Russian forces continued their offensive on #Bilohorivka, where the Ukrainians transferred their reserves from Siewiersk.
At Sipiłowka, the Ukrainian troops were again thrown back to Privolye
13. On May 9, the pontoon crossing at #Bilohorivka [crossing 4] was restored. The transfer of up to 100 units of equipment began to the occupied bridgehead.
14. The approximate plan was to consolidate the success in #Bilohorivka and Shipilovka from Privolye, as well as prepare for the storming of  Seversk.
15. For an unknown reason, the equipment was not put into combat and was left near the headland on the other side of the Shipilov Hills. Presumably, on the night of May 10, the Armed Forces of #Ukraine conducted air reconnaissance and discovered a huge accumulation of equipment near the crossing.
16. Ukr. artillery launched a massive artillery attack on the outskirts of the Shipilov Hills. Most of the equipment moved to the eastern shore of the Dońca Siewierski (with the exception of the BTG equipment used in the battles of Shipilovka and #Bilohorivka) was disabled.
17. On May 11-12, Russian troops from #Kreminna and #Rubizhne were handed over to the assault on Privolye by the Russian forces remaining on the west bank of the river. Fighting in this area continues.
... 
4. A complicated situation under #Bilohorivka. Some of the Russian troops managed to survive (a lot of them had to be crossed) and are attacking the NE along #SiverskyiDonets. The Russians tried to evacuate them or send reinforcements, but the next crossing was destroyed by the Ukrainians.
5. Ros. They are gathering crossing equipment on the #SiverskyiDonets bend and will cross the river from the side of the captured #Rubizhne to connect with the unit from #Bilohorivka and go to the rear of the #Lysychansk defense. It is a very difficult place to defend due to possible attacks from 3 sides .

probably fake? The turrets usaualy  is located, way of the tanks. Not on them 

You probably will before Russia does, in every sense.

You probably will before Russia does, in every sense.

You could probably have autonomous truck-hunting drones by tuesday of next week if you're willing to accept some constraints on their deployment, like they may not be all that picky so you have to constrain them to areas with no friendlies.  
And your point defense of the artillery and its train will have to not only be able to spot and eliminate drones from the sky, but probably also detonate incoming arty high enough that all the explosive energy behind the shrapnel is spent before it gets to the ground.

It does look like it was used more for evacuation than getting BTGs across - the mud tracks on the UKR side indicate vehicles were going from that bank to the RUS side.  If vehicles were coming out of the water more than off the bank, they'd probably be dripping enough to rinse those better.  Also, that bank on the RUS side looks like the steepest of the three attempted points.  The had to put that pair of ramps there to keep from chewing up the bank too much and may have needed to do some winching to get up it anyway if it was really muddy.

If they keep trying, eventually they’ll just be able to drive across on the wrecks.

My suspicion is the detractors are Russian trolls or people with jealousy issues.  

Unless you're Oryx and have to try to ID them all.

Sorry, my post wasn't clear. I agree that there were three crossings. I don't, however, think that they swam vehicles from the Russian side of blue as there is no real sign of traffic there at a point when yellow and red have already been destroyed.

Unless you're Oryx and have to try to ID them all.

Unless you're Oryx and have to try to ID them all.

My friend, this is page 715 of amateur/professional uber-uber-nerding on the technical, strategic, operational, tactical, economic, political, cultural, geographic, naval, financial, geopolitical, manufacturing, infrastructural, demographic, psychological and comedic aspects of this terrible, stupid needless war. I assume you didn't get the memo yet >:)
YES we would like you to!

You have heard of urban planning for traffic, of course?  Yes, you can use math to describe human behaviour, or grocery stores would have too much or too little produce, buses would have no idea what routes to run and how often and the multi-trillion dollar industry if marketing would be in serious trouble.
"Oh but these aren't war", I hear those of you who are climbing on Clausewitz's grave to die upon.
You have heard of military logistics?  They do all sorts of math based on "human behaviour" in warfare, lots of margins and "spoilage".  If humanity was an impossible puzzle that only artistic genius could figure out, we could never keep them gassed up, fed and bombed up.  Hell we have developed some pretty simple methods to transform those mysterious humans into whatever we want...we call it Basic Training.  And this is without even looking at the hard physics frames around humanity, like we all need sleep, O2, food and water, a hug now and again, and we can't breath underwater for very long and cannot fly unassisted. 
So what?  Oh we are a complex, bordering on chaotic system at times but most people are NPC in this game of life, going around their individual loops day in and day out.  What about "crisis", they can plot fire escape planning based on how fast we will cram an exit, so there is that.
So what to war?  Not sure to be honest.  I don't know how far more complex modeling of human system in warfare will take us.  We applied some pretty simple ones here and were proven more right than wrong and we even used "simple math" like how many tanks Russian's had abandoned.  We basically had a data stream showing all this and the calculus that the Russians were screwed was not that hard to come up with.  
I think it is important to understand that math will likely remain indicative and not definitive, like weather forecasting.  We can say with high accuracy what a series of observed phenomenon are telling us, and shockingly we will us math. However, the context and human-meaning of those phenomenon likely will need human interpretation for some time.  I do not believe we will have models that say definitively "and by Tues you will have won the war", this is like saying "on Tues, at 10:03 am, the wind on your deck will be 12 kph, from this exact direction". 
What I do want to some math behind those indicators.  So you know that when the Afghans all start doing something, not normal, we can pick it up and have a good idea why.  Quantitative assessment that links back to qualitative.
It is the 21st century, I do not buy this "war is all art...let me listen for god's voice and we will know what to do".  Humans are very predictable in many ways and their behaviour follows patterns.  We would do better understanding them and using that to inform us in warfare, as opposed to this weird "finger painting towards victory".  The use of modeling has been part of war since the beginning, the question is how much we trust machines to do and how much we leave to the human minds, the answer is likely somewhere in the middle, at least for now. 
So as to math, one can oversimplify, and one can under-value, which we have seen both on this thread alone.

So do those 11,000 troops get loaded on trains at the end of the day and sent to Ukraine?

I am getting this vision of the Russians getting every truck they still own together in one  big unmissable target for for a GMLRS strike that eliminates several thousand conscripts, and literally ALL the transport the Russians have left.
 

I'm 90% sure that's the exact same location as in the video last week of the MLRS strike that nearly got Gerasimov and killed one of the Russian generals with a direct hit on the farmhouse. At least we can see here what the 'ground clutter' that was kind of visible in the first video is. 

Based on a lot of the video I've seen it should be a first & third-person shooter where the player cruises around in a drone-view and has the option to call in various types of scenario dependent artillery, or do a first-person attack by firing on-board rockets or dropping on-board bombs.  You can also place and move ATGM teams.  In larger scenarios you get to tab around for the view from different drones and loitering munitions and ATGM teams.  The other player gets to drive along roads or, if they want cover, into mud that immobilizes their vehicles, but never sees anything to shoot, and gets to fire rockets and artillery at scenario defined targets.  

Have to get a reasonable measure of the area, but probably comparably low for a direct hit.
A few comments though:
1) That barrage looked like it was entirely airbursts, and if you scroll through slowly, there's a burst at 0:05 above the unit that explodes on the ground very shortly before the big explosion.  So it wasn't likely a direct hit from a round, but from one of the fragments from that round, which spread over a much larger area than a single round.  So the chances are that most of the vehicles got hit with shrapnel, and that one got hit with a piece with enough energy in the right place to set of a secondary explosion.
2) There's selection bias in the videos that get posted - a bunch of rounds blowing up without dramatic results is less likely to get posted (i.e. how many rounds a day are they firing and how many of those bangs get posted on twitter)
3) I think that's the first time I've seen a barrage of airbursts from either side.

Have to get a reasonable measure of the area, but probably comparably low for a direct hit.
A few comments though:
1) That barrage looked like it was entirely airbursts, and if you scroll through slowly, there's a burst at 0:05 above the unit that explodes on the ground very shortly before the big explosion.  So it wasn't likely a direct hit from a round, but from one of the fragments from that round, which spread over a much larger area than a single round.  So the chances are that most of the vehicles got hit with shrapnel, and that one got hit with a piece with enough energy in the right place to set of a secondary explosion.
2) There's selection bias in the videos that get posted - a bunch of rounds blowing up without dramatic results is less likely to get posted (i.e. how many rounds a day are they firing and how many of those bangs get posted on twitter)
3) I think that's the first time I've seen a barrage of airbursts from either side.

Man, I don't even know what to say.  Sorry you had to go through that.  I expect not too dissimilar to what the allied troops experienced when coming upon the first concentration camps.  Thank you for sharing though.  It frequently helps to put the whole conversation in perspective and beyond the realm of just a theoretical discussion.
and if it helps to talk about it here I don't think you'll find a single exception.