The_Capt

This is very interesting. The Ukrainian defence at the beginning of this war did not look like a traditional conventional defensive, and it worked brilliantly. This sounds a lot like they have solved for offensive as well, but it also will not be traditional or conventional. Could just be disinformation to keep the RA guessing, or maybe the UA is going to do something to melt our doctrine. Many have long suspected that something was up - a lot of ideas back and forth. The UA feels like it is building towards something.

That is exactly what I was going for. It was designed to let the player take a breath after Neuhof and the larger battles that come next. It was a love letter to I-TOW and blowing stuff up. Plus I love the map, same one Bil and I did the Beta fight on.

This whole thing is getting an “escalating towards something” vibe. Russia security has to be losing its mind right now.

!

Starting to look like a campaign at this point.

Here the question of Russian AirPower comes into play. We have heard of the Russia Air Force being able to hit concentrations of UA (rumoured on twitter but I have seen no actual proof of this, mind you). If the Russian are still able to gain air superiority, at least locally then heavy concentrations of UA mech/armour have a problem. AD is the obvious answer but that needs to extend the entire length of the UA LOCs or they risk running out of fuel and ammo as well. My guess is that Russia has been trying hammers of different varieties. Ukraine has been this weird rubber anvil that can push a lot of energy back on the hammer and damage it, while resisting. Question is that when the Russians have broken enough hammers and wrists, can a Ukrainian stiletto finish the job? Or are we looking at something else?

All war is sacrifice. It is a bad thing if people forget that sacrifice for a greater good is an ongoing requirement in order to sustain their way of life. Or they could use a “great peace” to completely forget that, get rich off human insecurities and raise generations of “me-centric” entitlement (i.e. “sacrifice is for others) who believe that their last selfie is a great work of art and they should get a participant medal for everything. Now I know this is a gross oversimplification, plenty of the last generations are doing great things. However, after watching democracy wither largely because people don’t bother to show up, and now an egregious embolden act of war against the west by Russia that is becoming “boring”; I am concerned to say the least. I too hope for a Rousseau-like state and an end to war but until that day comes we all need to be ready to pay the bill when it comes due.

That, backed up with deep strike and ISR might just cause the Russian system to buckle under it own weight again. Fog eating snow until we get systemic failure. Then a modest amount of highly mobile mech/armour might bring the whole rotten house down. Massed mech/armour before that condition is met could just leave it as vulnerable as the Russian systems were on the offence. Or at least that is the working theory. We are talking about a battlefield where a principle of war, “surprise” does not seem to exist, at least for the Russians. And as we have noted from early on, Mass is also behaving weirdly. However, it is really hard to determine if both sides are fighting this way because it is all they can do with what they have. Or is it all they can do because that is how things are now. It is likely in between those statements but how much is key. Right now no one knows the answer, the UA and RA are trying to figure it out (Russia is failing badly) and they are closest to the problem. Its why I really do not listen to pundits, experts and analyst that try and say what the answer is, or is not. I know enough to know that we are kinda off the map here and it is going to be a bit before things become clear. The analysts to listen to right now are the ones asking the best questions, in my opinion. I am not worried about Ukraine because they appear to have the learning advantage here. They have access to all the western expertise and data. They have some brilliant leadership, and they have shown they can adapt as fast as we can send them stuff. News for Russia not so good. They were unable to really adapt or learn from Phase 1. Many pointed to Phase 2 as some sort of Russian brilliant re-think when it was in fact a devolution back to an even older form of warfare. One that did not produce results anywhere near fast or as far as they would need to. So here we are entering Phase 3, Russia is in worse shape and Ukraine is starting to dance circles around them.

There it is. This is what Ukraine needs to be very concerned about (and likely are) and Russia is counting on. Western “change the channel” apathy. “That’s way over there”, “What about my gas guzzling truck?” “What else is happening on TweeterTocwhateverthef#ckpeoplewatch?” We are an entitled/spoiled set of generations that have had a fraction of a percentage of its youth who have had to fight and die for it, in small low stakes wars on the other side of the world. We have forgotten that defending our way of life isn’t yelling at the other guys, and nor do we understand real threats when they appear….present company on his thread excepted of course. If we lose the bubble on this one, we deserve what happens next.

Very big assumption, and not surprising coming from a western analyst, is that “more metal” will work. Russia had all the metal and we saw how that worked out. Now I am not sure if the problems with mech would go the the other way against the Russians but I have my suspicions. The problem with metal is its support chain and here Ukrainian might be as vulnerable as Russians. I am not sure but I have seen this before and it is a western biased weak assumption that “if the Ukrainians could only look more like us, this would be over quickly”. Russian ISR is not at the level that the UA has access to, but a mech unit/formation is very hard to hide and getting much easier to hit. I am growing more and more convinced of the idea that operational manoeuvre is becoming deep strike. I am not sure giving the UA a bunch of metal is the right way to go.

Sweet, gotta love math.

The presence of something that looks like RA BMD is a pretty good sign that the Russians are worried. Not sure where you are getting “slower than a V2”, it’s terminal velocity was around 800 m/s as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket). Regardless, not a BMD expert but I do know that you try and hit them going up, at very high altitude near apex, because hitting them coming down is incredibly hard.

I did the numbers on a ballistics calculator a few pages back and came up with a terminal velocity of around 800 m/s, which is about Mach 2.3.

I will say one thing, if this was missile work, they look like they came in at exactly at the same time. Gotta be honest, the two fireballs look more like a controlled demolition. Damn, I really hope it was SOF or a complex attack - that would do so much more damage to the Russians.

Heh, so a complex attack...well that would turn it all up to eleven.

Which is 30 minutes longer than you last in Sudan. It is not easy by any stretch, that’s why they are called “special”.

One of the signature attributes of SOF is an ability to create negative decision. I am not convinced that this was a SOF op, but the effect is obvious. Deep SOF infiltration, especially in a nation where one speaks the language and understands the culture, has no maximum range. This is the kind of thing that keeps enemy executive leadership up at night. It will be interesting to see what Russian internal security does in the coming weeks. Heavier hands to protect from Ukrainian ghosts just reinforces any organic resistance in the country and makes things worse, especially when the economy starts hurting. If it was a SOF Op, it ranks with Op Gunnerside.

The problem is setting them off. Look here: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/fab-250.htm. Only about half the weight of a Soviet aerial bomb is explosives. The rest is casing and fins. That casing is heavy and metal, not an eggshell. So in order to get the bomb to sympathetically detonate you need to direct enough energy at the explosives to get them to go from solid to gas. The Switchblade 300 has about 50g of explosives (same as 40mm), and it is not likely to get through the casing in order to set off the explosives. Further, a small explosive that does trigger one bomb does not guarantee that they all go off. A lot of time explosives just blow off and you wind up with a partial. Even if this job was done by hand (i.e. SOF), the explosives would have to be carefully sighted, likely in the center of the stack, with multiple redundancy in order to ensure they all go off. Now if you are dropping 500+ pounds of HE in an airburst, right on top of the bomb pile...well you can see how that would be a better way to go.

Wasn't there a girl who could start fires with her mind? Oh wait, squirrels...what about squirrels? Seriously - none of these really add up based on the scope and scale of damage done.

I think Steve's point is that the Switchblade 300 is not going to be able to high order those munitions piles. Something obviously did, and that is the question.

Except the part where Sergie then double crosses you and sells you back to Russian security for another bag of rubbles. Much better to put a bullet into Sergie's vodka soaked brain and vaporize him when the whole show goes up. It comes from the observations so far that: - The UA is not supposed to have a high trajectory/high speed missile with this range (but might). - No reports of a cruise missile, which is odd given the daylight nature of the strike. - No UA aircraft reported. - Russian fire safety "whoopsie" does not match the numbers or dispersion of craters. So people are thinking SOF action. Pretty long shot from where I am sitting, but is it possible? Sure.

Equivalent to a 40mm HE, not going to reliably do the job we see before us here. The 600 maybe, but the odds of no one getting video of this in broad daylight is pretty low. The timing of this thing was brilliant.

Walks like a high altitude/high trajectory mach 2+ duck, and blows the hell out of an airfield like a high altitude/high trajectory duck....

Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan would likely disagree, but I am not sure if an IED constitutes "sabotage", sure felt like it at times. If this was a SOF job, it was black bag. Not DA, zero evidence of that, and too loud to cover up. Small team that has likely been living in Crimea for some time, so now you need a cover. Have to feed them detailed ISR and targeting data, securely, unless of course they are already working at the airfield. Then get them the stuff for the job, or they have to source it locally - and quietly. They have to get access into the airfield and the secure areas (which based on photos were maybe not that secure); again, local workers, or if you have done your job very well Russian military. They then need to know what and where to hit in detail with what they have, small explosives on a pile of Russian air ordinance is not simple a "slap and go" job. Place to stuff, get out and remote detonate...then extraction of some sort because Russian security is going to lose its mind. There are variations here but essential elements are basically the same. Tricky, lotta points of failure on that, and a long time to set up. But if you did, first question the Russians are asking themselves: "where else do they have teams ready to do the same thing?"....and hilarity will ensue.

So I totally get the impulse to unpack this attack, especially from a forum of - let's just say - "detail orientated" wargamers. Kudos to those that continue to Zapruder this thing, and I am sure in time the details of how the UA pulled this off will come out (my bet is missile strike, but I would not rule out one helluva SOF black bag job - could be both in reality; complex attack). But for all the lurkers out there I would recommend we all keep an eye on the follow-on impacts of this strike on a strategic and political level. We bounced around this a few pages back but here are some thoughts: - All war is communication and that is a complex concept of 'the message', 'the means to send the message', and 'the method of transmission'. Every piece of those components in themselves create information that is interpreted in multiple dimensions. For example Ukraine said things thru this attack that create certainty and uncertainty - in case the second one is the most powerful: Ukraine stated, with certainty, that they can hit a high value target with extreme precision at 225km (at least) behind Russian lines. I say 'extreme precision' because it appears they did more damage with the secondaries than the initial strikes, and that takes a very high level of precision in time and space. This was not lobbing a missile at a target, they hit exactly where they needed to in order to create a very high profile "boom". That is communicating 'capability' that I am pretty sure the Russians were sure they understood, right up until yesterday afternoon - based on the scrambling narratives in the Russian info sphere. Ukraine has clearly communicated intent. If they wanted to hurt Russian airpower, they would have cratered the runway and then FASCAM'd the thing...but this was not about airpower. They were signaling that they are coming for Crimea, and the Russians were not safe...anywhere. This will likely create a lot of uncertainty in Russian thinking, as the pretty much figured they had Ukraine pinned down in the Donbas in a grinding war. We talked about it before but this is strategic manoeuvre thru strike. The kind of thing the US does by hitting Afghanistan from the other side of the world back on 2001 (https://www.airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2016/December 2016/1216hours.pdf). This was a high profile attack that both demonstrated and signaled intent and resolve in a very visible manner - that is certainty creating uncertainty in their enemy. I don't care how constipated the Russian political machine is, and it is already trying to spin this in crazy directions to blunt the message - they get that much. No way to dodge it, this is very bad news for the Russians. They have been relying on the narrative of "hopeless cause": Russian has 'escalation dominance', it can create a never-ending 'stalemate', it can and will fight forever...there is no way Ukraine can win: so stop spending your money in a pre-recession...look we even have Steven Segal! This is clearly playing on the western psyche and our recent scars from places like Afghanistan. Ukraine just demonstrated that they can still hit a strategic target, with breathtaking precision, at the time and place of their choosing. That directly attacks the Russian narrative. Militarily, this type of attack creates enormous uncertainty. The fact we have people on vacation on a beach watching this happen, and then blow it up all over social media, is a clear indication that Russia considered this area outside the warzone. You can ignore or sidestep "industrial accidents" and the rash of weird fires we saw back in Mar-Feb, you can ignore HIMARs that hit your logistical system within 70-100kms. You cannot ignore a strategic strike, that just happened in front of the entire world, at over twice that range. The Russian military now needs to not only figure out how to secure itself at ranges it thought safe, it has to figure out how to defend Russian certainty, which just got seriously mauled. So what? Well the first reaction will be "it was a lucky one off", and "this is war, these things happen". However, information is funny with humans, we cannot un-think it. As a minimum, Russian has to re-think the battlespace, significantly. That is a lot of assumptions that just cracked in military planning - the fact that they did not see it coming in time to interdict is the biggest one. Russians may try to ignore it, but I am betting western ISR is picking up a lot of scrambling going on in the Russian rear areas right now. Again, this is more friction being imposed via uncertainty. And that uncertainty will spread like a virus. All those beach goers will scramble back home with it. The Russian reaction will be key to determining just how badly this strike hurt them. Now the war is not over. This was not positively decisive, at least not yet. The UA will have to follow up with more of these, humans are also able to ignore reality - which is paradoxical I know. More of these strikes will build up pressure until something gives. But for the west, this is a clear demonstration that our proxy is not only still in this thing, it demonstrates they are getting better at it. Better they are emulating warfare we recognize - high precision deep strikes on clear military targets with almost zero collateral civilian casualties. Nice, clean and very western - worth investing more into. I have heard at some pretty high levels the idea that "Russia has shifted this war into one that favors them"...well strikes like these send the message that Ukraine is shifting it back. May have been a 'one-off' or a lucky day; however, it is going to cause the Russians a lot of hot and bother to figure that all out...and in a war, that is good communication.