chrisl

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.

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

Even if they're called up, what will they arm them with?  Do they even have enough rifles?  Did Russia secretly do a big buy-back of Mosin Nagants at Big 5 fifteen years ago and that's why you can't get them cheap anymore?
What vehicles will they ride in?  On paper Russia has 10,000 tanks in reserve, but given that many of the tanks went into Ukraine had egg cartons for reactive armor, and the active duty trucks had bad tires, how long would it take to piece together 1000 more functioning tanks.  Probably none of which will have modernised electronics.  Same with BMPs and BTRs - how many of the reserve could be put into running order? General Motors isn't going to dump a bunch of trucks on them.  So even if Putin declares it is a war and "fully mobilizes", how much of that reserve could they actually arm and how long would it take?

@akd
Follow up to your video of the Avian Air Assault Brigade. Here the operations staff is seen in the field conducting Battle Damage Assessments of earlier strikes: