The_Capt

One has to remember that military systems are highly redundant and over-engineered (yes, even Russian ones). So if the UA is effectively eroding the RA system of defence we are going to be seeing different indicators of this. Also we need to be watching for stuff we are not seeing but should be. So stuff like: - Russian logistics and artillery losses that lead to observable shortfalls - Lack or shortfalls in RA c-moves. Or RA c-moves that look like scrambles or dyke plugging (these lateral shift cause enormous disruptions) - continued denial and loss of AirPower assets. - RA loss of high profile and high value systems - EW, ISR and Engr - Indicators that RA morale is flagging - desertions and surrenders. - shortfalls in the RA medical support system All this (and more) need to add up over time in order for the RA system to buckle. Once it fails though it has to fall into a lower energy state in order to sustain and avoid a cascade failure. We normally call these fall-back positions. Corrosive warfare is not just attrition warfare. Attrition warfare is a grinding of the front end of a system until exhaustion sets in. Corrosive warfare needs ISR and precision to hit the entire operational system at key nodes of capability - you are essentially de-constructing their operational system. You need to do this at a rate that those nodes cannot be re-built or shifted. It takes time do this and compared to rapid manoeuvre and annihilation seems like it may be going nowhere. However, compared to real attrition warfare which can take years it appears it may happen much faster in the contemporary context. (ie months)

So how are we defining “gains”? If it is by ground re-taken, yes, very limited. If they are measured by strain and erosion of the RA I suspect they are doing a lot better. The question is “will the erosion be enough to force collapse?” And right now we do not know. In fact we do not even know if offensive warfare still works as we knew it. We could be at stalemate or this could just be a how offensive warfare works now. If it is stalemate, well ok then the conflict will likely freeze and have to end by other means. Everyone will point fingers as to why the thing has gone stalemate but the most likely reason will be that we have entered into an era of Defensive Primacy - not the first time this has happened.

Can’t read it now that Twitter has gone all club house. I suspect their significance is that the UA will not run out of ammunition for long range fires. They already have a significant ISR advantage and DPICM are - on paper at least - anywhere from 3-5 times more effect per round shot when compared to dumb artillery rounds. Or at least they were before modern fire control etc. The UA has been doing very well with dumb arty and PGM is next level of course. DPICM is very effective against mech and armor. It is supposed to be effective against dug in troops but there I am less sure. The stuff will definitely take out logistics and C2 nodes. I suspect it will definitely keep things going. Also no one ever planned to use a lot of DPICM, it was rarely more than about 15% of war stocks during the Cold War. So if the UA starts using a lot of this in a saturation type approach we in new territory as to what the systems can do. I personally do not think they are a game changer, they allow the game to continue to be played which is pretty important at this point. The holy trinity of this war has been indirect fires, ISR and infantry. So this keeps that first one going.

Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they are talking about. But seriously can we not jump on the “THIS WILL SWEEP THE RUSSIANS FROM THE EARTH!!!” band wagon again. And then when they do not result in immediate Ukrainian victory over a weekend we don’t have to do the “OMG Ukraine is DOOOMED because my favourite weapon/system/vehicle of the week is not chasing the Russians back to Moscow!!”

Well conveniently Poland is also not a signatory to the convention. So unless European nations want to wholesale ban US military transport overflights - which would be a bad idea. I would say that everyone is going to simply turn a blind eye. What will get interesting is if the damn things work out too well and member nations like Lithuanian start backing away from the convention. Of course it is freaking 2023, why we cannot produce sub-munitions that have a 100% neutralizing capability is beyond me. I mean making the fuses electronic on batteries alone will mean that they go inert when the juice runs out. I suspect we will see PGM sub-munitions (if they are not out there all ready).

Well the idea is that the international community would enforce the law, hence all the fuss about Ch 6 & 7 etc. Of course this all falls apart when someone gets a veto and can play exceptionalism cards. But it is what we have, otherwise it is anarchy of states and rule of the gun, and if everyone is getting upset over cluster munitions just wait and see that happens when we all decide to go all Genghis Khan.

Some good points but also only half the story. I would buy into this line of thought if we had the same framework of inaction. “(Or refuse to)”. We in the West have a very bad habit of pointing fingers and passing judgement on “bad actions” but we also tend to quickly grab the remote and change the channel when our own inaction causes immense suffering - Rwanda anyone? Syria? The only real thing we can rely on that is not solely “opinion” is the law - which in reality is a floating point of agreement at best; however, it is what we have to base some level of objectivity upon. In this case the use of cluster munitions is not against the law of armed conflict (obviously with all the “proper military use” provisions). Further neither party involved in this current situation, US and UA, are parties to the cluster munitions treaty. So unless other Western nations want to try and extort a forced acceptance of that treaty by withholding other military aid to Ukraine - which frankly in the middle of an existential war is one helluva dick move - while at the same time conveniently ignoring the consequences of pulling that support (ie inaction), then beyond making poopy faces and trying not to think about how fast we would likely abandon that same treaty were we in Ukraine’s position then we are where we are. If Ukraine did start using chemical weapons or dropping napalm on civilians then we do not need an opinion, we have the LOAC to point to and say “hey that is illegal”. Which then raises the spectre of support to an unlawful war…something Iran and China appear to have no problems with.

A solid point on PGM. DPICM was really a better way to distribute lethality before PGM. With PGM a few rounds can do the damage of many dumb, even DPICM. However, what we do not know is the ammo situation of PGM in this war, nor that of dumb rounds either. I doubt this decision ( if it is indeed not just a rumour) was taken on a whim “Oh hey, that’s right we got all those DPICM rounds” *slaps forehead*. I suspect that this decision is an offset to another development, shortfalls in PGM ammo most likely. So What? Well the calculus is clearly between bad and worse, and they have gone with bad. The terrain in the break in battle is already highly contaminated so this is fairly incremental risk at this point - I.e. happy rose cheeked Ukrainian children will not be frolicking in these fields for about a century regardless of UA DPICM or not. So in order to keep the momentum of the grinding a hard decision was made…and here we are. One thing this war has demonstrated is that when facing the harsh realities of long duration high intensity conventional warfare a lot of idealistic and aspirational ideas we had before the war have become strained. The “quick clean weekend war” was the first one. Facing existential conflict the dirty fact is that every nation on earth will likely abandon principles for interests and survival given enough pressure. War is once again a race to the bottom. Something to keep in mind on the whole unmanned debate.

That sounds more like FASCAM, not DPICM. DPICM from the old days had some pretty bad dud rates but that are not going to stop armor/mech based on duds alone. Newer stuff is designed for much better dud rates, likely an order of magnitude better than whatever the RA is lobbing around. I think we went around the tree a few times on this subject before. DPICM are not a great solution but they are a solution. They are also legal under the CCW and US and Ukrainian law. So while quite a few people are not going to like it, this is all above board. Mitigation is very careful record keeping of where those DPICM shoots are occurring. DPICM is much better at killing mechanized forces but that does not seem to be the main threat in this war. Not sure how they will fair against dug in troops. Although I suspect this may have more to do with ammo shortages. Once again this will not sweep the RA off the field but it may make up for ammo production shortfalls in supplying Ukraine - which may have gotten quite bad to take on this hot potato.

Fair point. It was more a shot at LLF who I get the sense is used to being the smartest guy in the room…until he got into this one. I know I am not either because I can barely keep track of what is happening let alone why. I mean we are about 90 seconds to midnight in a good day, Russians are using tanks as VBIEDs and our Prime Minister just tweeted Taylor Swift FFS.

Really? "Operational System"? "ChatGPT - why can't we have nice things?" "LongLeftFlank"

So if Putin gets the cat, who gets the CD collection? Gotta be the best 80s synth stuff around. And we all know they are keeping keys.

Meow! Someone didn’t get his pistachio pudding today.

This one is nuts. You can see the electrical grid melting down as transformers on power poles start to go (the blue flashes). That probably did more damage than the loss of ammunition.

Well it will definitely be viewed as an escalation, the question is “how much”. I think that Russia having some sort of escalation dominance has been a myth since the beginning of this thing. Repeatedly, Russian escalation has 1) been underwhelming and 2) resulted in a Western escalation that Russia cannot counter. I am less worried about Russia “thinking they can get away with it”because of western inaction at this point - we already have far too much sunk cost in this thing to back off now. NATO is securing the next decades worth of defence spending, industry in the west is ramping up - “war is business and business is f#cking booming baby!” We are talking trillions here and it all needs a scary enemy to point at. Russia was dumb enough to put up its hand up in Europe and we are talking ourselves into China one way or the other. Russia thinking it can get away with WMDs is one helluva leap to make for a below threshold action right now. My concerns are the other way - Russia figuring out that they have nothing left to lose, or simply losing control of the WMDs in the end. The end results we are debating are on opposite sides of a spectrum but have the same result…a lot of bad. So what are we doing…navigating the middle until there is no middle left. Outpacing escalation can actually drive us out of viable escalation room. Say we do start green lighting strikes into Russia…what do we have left? Someone said “strike the Russian Navy and take it out” while an escalation, it is not viable in the current strategic context. In fact it would be WW3 at that point and we would not stop at the Russian Navy. Your concern is valid: are we boiling them or are they boiling us? As this war has unfolded I was more concerned in the early days than I am now. While the West has been restrained, Russia has shown itself full of BS. No massive mobilization - millions of Russian troops pouring over the border were a no show. No carpet bombing of cities, just spiteful lobbing of a mess of a missile campaign which is only demonstrating their weaknesses. No WMDs, just some crappy flooding and maybe some sort of nuclear “whoopsie” that is just as likely to drift into Russia. None of this is the ”shock and awe” everyone was going on about a year ago. As to “silence”, well US Congress made a bilateral statement which in this day and age is a freakin unicorn. I also suspect that red phones are going off all over the place, the greater worry is that someone in Russia is actually picking up. As to war damage to Ukraine, Russia does not need to throw a radiation tantrum, great swaths of Ukraine are a century problem right now with RoW and mines. As I have said repeatedly the Reconstruction will need to be historic or there was no point. We are talking economic sector re-wiring epic, like Japan post WW2. And if Russia wants back into any sort of club and not wind up an Eastern European North Korea it is going to have to foot a portion of the bill. You, and others appear to be pointing out the glass if half empty. I am not saying the glass if half full. I am saying it is a freakin Christmas miracle that the bar is still standing and we are well past worrying about stupid glasses. This war has become a great power shaping and positioning exercise in many dimensions. The stakes got really high, really fast and we are pretty much committed at this point.

That is not really how it works. Anything short of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is not going to give strategic deterrence. Ukraine is waging an epic war right now but no weapons we can give Ukraine are going to deter Russia from the big nasty stuff. What is deterring Russia from the use of nuclear weapons on Kyiv is that it would raise our level of uncertainty about Russia as a rational state to a crisis point - the worse thing any revisionist power can do is get the West to get off the couch. If we are being brutally honest, we in the West would feel very bad about Kyiv on the receiving end of a nuclear device but that is not what would cause the reaction…it would be the uncertainty of nukes in New York or Toronto (well maybe not so much Toronto). That uncertainty would demand a response, and even Russia does not want to see what that would look like. We brought them to their knees in a proxy war with a small power that was supposed to fall in a few days. Do you think that maybe what happens if we really get involved isn’t in the Russian calculus? I argue that the evidence that they have tied themselves into knots to avoid direct escalation with NATO proves that they are very concerned. I do not think Russia has outpaced anything. They are on the freakin defensive right now while managing whatever that freakin thing was a couple weeks ago. No one serious is talking about Russian victory, we are too concerned with Russian full blown collapse. They are barely able to conduct coherent anything right now, let alone a game of escalation dominance. Most of the energy is trying to figure out how to prevent a Russian spiral, up or down because they are a complete hot mess. Syria, Georgia, Chechnya, we talked ourselves into a status quo lie, that much is true. We embraced our certainty to the point that it became a blindfold. Russia’s biggest mistake, and it is one for the history books, was tearing that blindfold off with this war.

I gotta be honest here, as much as we would have liked the RA front to crack like an eggshell on the first weekend, it was a bit of a dream. I wanted it too, and frankly given how hard the RA bled over the winter, and the frontages we are talking about, it was not a crazy dream. But the bastards dug in, mined everything and now are going to have to be ground out, hopefully to a breaking point coming to a theatre near you soon. I am not sure what, if anything, the West could have provided that they have not given already. I am not sure anything “new” would have really made a big difference. Even fighters 12 months ago would likely still be denied airspace. ATACMS would be nice but no one is on board with UA striking directly into Russia just yet…except the Ukrainians, which we get. The western failure was more likely failure to stock up and push the basics: ammo and engineer/logistical equipment type stuff - the boring stuff that really does matter. I think we are in a “slow is smooth, smooth is fast…when it happens” type of scenario. Now before we all go doom and gloom we were in the exact same situation last Fall. The Fall offensive went in at end-Aug and lasted until Nov. When the grandkids watch the war documentaries on this one, remember that was a loooong 3 months. This offensive likely started in Jun so we may be talking Sep before we know how it really ends. No point on turning on each other either, just do what we did last time, strap in and ride it out.

Ah so somewhat more complex…now we are getting somewhere. So what you are saying is that western deterrence is at risk of failing as Russia continues to prod along red lines. As we have failed to escalate in the past it shows our hand in not really planning to escalate in the future. Of course it really did not quite happen that way did it? We did escalate in scope, scale and effectiveness of capabilities sent to the UA. Hell you guys got Patriots…only Israel gets Patriots. We know it was viewed as an escalation as Russia came right out and declared it. Now Russia is definitely playing silly buggers at the dam, and may even have a “soft nuclear incident” as they continue to play footsy with the west - it is kinda on brand. And we will reply by finally giving the UA ATACMS and other higher end capabilities. Moreover, I suspect we will get more comfortable with footsy of our own - precise military strikes into Russia itself - will start non-kinetic and go from there. They have already started with SOF and partisan looking stuff (aside: Russia has also shown its cards on this one as these are “technically” direct attacks on the “motherland” but somehow we are also not in WW3 yet). We will (and should) get nervous at all this as if we escalate too far we not only risk “the big one” we also risk driving support in Putin’s direction - which is not what it was about a month ago. As to “narratives”, look I get the sentiment. I am pretty sure that a younger and idealistic kraze did not join Amnesty International or volunteer for the White Helmets when Russia was doing worse in Syria…and now Ukraine is basically Syria. But the good news is that unlike Syria, the West actually did get its act together and decided to “do something”. Of course I am not sure what you and a few others are expecting to gain by shaming or insulting the West writ large, especially on this thread. I mean what is your theory of change here? Do you expect us to riot in the streets? Write our government and advocate…what exactly? Do you not see the risk of alienating your biggest supporters? I get the need to vent, I really do but maybe we aren’t the bad guys here. The situation is all hell and sh#tty but the way out is going to be slow, no getting past that. As to consequences for Russia. Well beyond the obvious daily warcrimes and whatever comes next. Russia did this: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-russias-unconventional-operations-during-russo-ukrainian-war-february-2022 That is the real dark stuff. Pre-meditated and planned in egregious detail. I think normalization with Russia may be a generation away after this. Which is very good news for Ukraine after this war because it puts you on the “front line of freedom” and that is a good place to be...unlike Syria.

The two of you have two narratives - The Russians are savages who will stop at nothing to destroy Ukraine. And The West is sitting around and do nothing while the first one happens, and will continue to do so no matter what. So if these are true…why hasn’t Russia simply used nuclear/chemical/whatever since day 1? Why is this war even still happening? Is Ukrainian resolve and resistance an effective deterrence to strategic nuclear strikes? If the West is so useless and, clearly ready to let Russia do whatever it wants (and you can come read justifications of this right here on this thread)…why do we even still have this thread? Russias are genocidal savages who are being deterred from escalation…by what exactly? Because we certainly know it is not the bumbling western powers. Of course if this is the case then why are we spending billions to assist Ukraine? Symbolism? Boredom? Look, if you guys want to go bask in narratives that call for bloodbaths and holy crusades/WW3 there is a big ol Internet out there that will tell you exactly what you want to hear. If you want something that resembles a grown up conversation, stick around. But if you are advocating that we all jump on whatever crazy train that seems to float your boat right now: nope. What is it gonna take for the West to directly intervene in this war? You do not want to know. And frankly this thread won’t matter if that happens because a lot of us will already be dead.

Latest article I can find on the subject points to a generalized shortage. High concentrations are more likely the locality phenomenon if this is the case. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/04/05/when-will-ammunition-shortage-silence-russias-artillery/?sh=3d8071c36d95 UA is also struggling with ammunition however they need far less because they have a much greater ISR advantage (estimates seem to show that the UA is firing about 20-25% as much artillery and achieving better effects with it).

So if Russia is ramping up military industrial production, why is there a shortage of artillery ammunition? Further if Russia’s high tech/electronics is the main focus then why are they also not improving ISR or PGM? Attrition is not about “stuff”, it is about power. Power is: Will, Capability, Relationships and Opportunity/Options - so let’s play “how is Russia doing” through that lens.

Mine strike with an ATGM follow up would be my guess. Left track is blown off.

Helluva lot of credibility to blow up on this war, but he found a way. His wiki page read like "a next gen maverick too real for mainstream military service", followed by his whole government work. Turns out the guy is so extreme a pro-Russian mouthpiece that most in intelligence would likely suspect he has been compromised. He has no credibility left in my industry, at least not in the "real world" circles.

Assuming that these are legit and not recycled strikes with a Ka-52 gun camera aesthetic overlayed - this would average out to about 3-4 strikes per day along an +800 km frontage.