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The_Capt

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Everything posted by The_Capt

  1. That is plausible as an explanation. Or perhaps a combination of a SOF MANPAD action with an S-200 salvo. Regardless it has to be driving the Russians crazy and has reinforced air denial within Russia itself. The ground war may have devolved into a grinding stalemate but Ukraine has definitely upped its strategic strike game. They need to move on from demonstrations though and onto campaigning to impact Russian options spaces.
  2. Means, motive, opportunity, risk. Means, yes but stealth does not mean invisible so risk there. Motive, may be a good way to send a message but Russia would need to know a western power did it or the message to “back off” is lost. Opportunity, possibly. Risk…madness. We are talking about direct western military action against Russia. That is an act of war. The US or UK would need to be ready to get caught and essentially give Russia and their allies permission to escalate. I mean what would we do if Russians actually killed an AWAC trying to send us a message? Given the risks, the demonstration itself is not worth it. Sure we bag an A-50 but Putin get his dream scenario for convincing his own people that this whole thing is an existential war for Russia against western powers. He can take this to China and Iran as a blank check and this whole thing becomes World Proxy War One. Cool Tom Clancy novel plot line but entirely fictional.
  3. Dude, take your meds or something. You have come out swinging on a number of issues even when it was clear you were way off base. You were going after folks on that A-50 when it was clear that you were looking at an older incident - and not the one with the posted video from the last 24-48 hours. Now you are coming at someone else for whatever the hell this is about…gee you think Russian troops could not get their hands on Ukrainian coveralls? Kinophile commented on how the Russian Army has brutal practices and you object…so your position is that the Russian Army does not have brutal practices? Based what? The sign translation? You seem to be in a fighting mood for the sake of simply fighting. Seriously go to a bar and get smacked around, get it out of your system and then come back.
  4. Kinda feels like a deep strike op. Hitting on multiple levels. Unless they sent in Starstreak which can hit up to 20k feet. Or maybe something we haven’t seen yet.
  5. Unless it was landing or on approach...exactly where I would put SOF teams with MANPADs.
  6. I do not think we are talking about the same incident. The video above reports to show a low level A-50 being shot down. It fires off a string of flares, which are not normally a counter for long range radar guided systems. Hence Steve's MANPAD theory - which would make some sense given the video.
  7. That would explain the flares. And that video seemed fairly low level.
  8. I am not sure we have enough evidence to call "coup". That is normally done with internal security services and the military. There is no evidence the UA was directly involved but there may have been passive insiders. The initial op was supposed to Afghanistan in 1980 - in some ways it looks like they simply pull that one out of a drawer. Massive multi-front/axis roll over with deep strike airborne air assault at the capital. I honestly do not think they expected resistance in Eastern Ukraine, let alone what they got. I have a hypothesis that it was IT that enabled the resistance happen. Strikes like this depend on isolating people from each other, so they go hide in their houses. If people feel connected and can communicate, they rally together. That is what we saw back in Feb/Mar '22 and they did a lot of that over cell/internet (hell Haiduk was broadcasting the whole time). People could see others a few towns over resisting, which reinforced their own resistance. The UA rolled with this instead of telling people to "stay in your homes, we will take care of it" which would have been a mistake. The UA enfranchised - and in doing so, empowered, local resistance. That created friction for the RA everywhere, all at once. Bog down and start losing important stuff to UA SOF...run out of gas and walk home... And that is how Russia lost the war. Now this war needs to stay lost for them.
  9. I am not sure if anyone has The Plan because that would probably be held by captured intel, piecing together what they have pull in, so classified. This one was written in Jan 22, and damn if it did not call the ball - these guys had to be hooked in because this is basically what happened...and then didn't. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/220113_Wasielewski_Jones_RussiaUkraine.pdf?VersionId=11uM1oad1HbgqtEL7bwkMjYzNHThWW8I And Ch 1 of this doc lays it out pretty well too. https://static.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine-Preliminary-Lessons-Feb-July-2022-web-final.pdf I think the May timeline to do the whole thing is realistic, or at least be at a point to declare victory of some sort. As per that CSIS doc they really opened with 2a, which I suspect that is what they wanted in 10 days. The follow on ops (2b and 2c) realistically would be another 2 months as resistance increased in the West, backed by western powers. They also would have had to have been deliberate and cautious the closer to the Polish border they got. My bet it was 7-10 days for political decapitation and securing Kyiv along with other power nodes in the East, the theory was likely once Kyiv fell places like Kharkiv would not hold out for long. That RUSI Unconventional Operations piece outlines what the occupation/pacification plan was and it is pretty damned brutal.
  10. The Exec sum points hold up for the most part. I don't think they had a "2 day" plan...Ukraine is a big country. But the whole thing was supposed to be over in a week or two. I think they may have been ready for resistance in Western Ukraine in the longer run but more insurgency. They had one helluva nasty occupation plan : https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-russias-unconventional-operations-during-russo-ukrainian-war-february-2022
  11. I can think of about a half dozen reasons why this is a terrible idea. Just give the guys the damned dumb blasty shotgun.
  12. That is not really "data", those are anecdotes. The fact that we have drones chasing individual soldiers with even half decent effects (in a four drone strike, I count two cas) is mind boggling. Of course they are just going to get more effective as people figure out better ways to employ and arm them. I think this shotgun thing will work and what is needed right now. But then someone will figure out stand off/EFP, but this is the nature of things.
  13. I cringe at a bunch of soldiers blasting away at the sky when everyone has to whisper to avoid getting picked up. Troops are going to get spooked and start shooting at birds and bats, so fire discipline will be an issue. New ammo and sustainment requirements are also an issue. But as you note...gotta give em something if for morale alone. Some sort of PD weapon. I think a fragmenting round from their existing weapons would have been a better way to go but that is likely an industrial production problem.
  14. At this point better than nothing I suppose.
  15. True, but I suspect this is where things are at. Any ISR on the breach will mean PGM artillery and long range loitering munitions. A lone ATGM team with a modern system can take out lead vehicles. And standoff tac aviation has demonstrated what it can do. To be perfectly honest our entire mechanical/explosive breaching tactic has only ever been done in one war that I can think of, Gulf War. And we essentially did all the pre-conditions I am talking about with air power…and Blind Pew and his dog rolled right through them. We never actually did live opposed minefield breaching operations. We exercised them for decades and always “won” but never under real battlefield conditions, let alone modern ones. The very uncomfortable truth of this war is that there is a whole lotta stuff we have only ever exercised going back into the Cold War. ATGMs, air parity, denied environments, firepower parity, EW. All things we practiced but never had our assumptions tested. Gulf War looked like a validation but that war had specific context. We assumed every war would be like that one and ‘03 reinforced that idea, even though the hints were starting to show up. Then this war comes along and presents some major counter evidence that our tactics work at all. So we say “Russia Sux”, “Ukraine Sux” “but we are good” like a benediction. Worse we are tying the narrative to all of this. If Ukraine can’t “win like we would”, well then it is on them. The reality is that we had (have) a bunch of assumptions that have never really been tested and I suspect they are being tested in this war. Some are enduring, like training quality, infantry and precision. Others are not holding up too well at all, and it is making us very uncomfortable. “Well we would roll over those minefields just like we did back in ‘91”. Well this is not ‘91, and it is not that war. This one has the look and feel of Korea, with 21st century technology. Our tactics underpin our operational constructs (manoeuvre and Mission Command), which all support our military strategy (short sharp wars of massive overmatch), which all feed into funding and spending in the trillions. So when a war comes along that suggests we might be in the wrong movie, you can easily see people start getting their backs up. “Aw unmanned is a flash in the pan. Someone will invent counters and things will go back to the way they were.” But the evidence is piling up. It is not just unmanned. Precision weapons like the Javelin or artillery fires. C4ISR that pretty much anyone can cobble together, including the Russians. Denial, which will impact us as well. It is all adding up to something shifting but most do not want it to shift too much. Basically we are at the situation where if the enemy Blind Pew and his dog can see that minefield while we are breaching it, and they have a few precision smart weapons in range…the breach will likely fail because that breach is reliant on maybe 6-10 critical systems that can be hit very accurately by a number of systems we cannot fully deny. We put APS on the breaching teams and PGM artillery drops on them. We push back the artillery and UAS come in with more mines and reseed the breach. We do everything right and the enemy has c-moves ready to bottle up the breach. And this is before the real stuff that can defeat our defensive systems has even shown up (stand off EFP, ATGM sub munitions and mines with legs). We need to start coming up with new ideas, not stuff to bolt on our old ones to try and keep them alive.
  16. I think mech and explosive breaching could work but one has to set pre-conditions. Essentially scrubbing an area of enemy, or suppressing them. Pushing guns back or destroying them. And somehow blocking enemy UAS (air superiority below 2000). Get a bridgehead across in front of all that and the old 2-4 conventional breaching lanes may stand a chance. But that is a lot of pre-conditions. Pushing the enemy back 20-30kms and denying enemy UAS is going to take a massive firepower suit. Which will of course give the game up and allow the enemy to position c-moves, so now you have to do it in multiple locations with deep strike to interdict. I don’t think anyone has invented cheap/expendable/replaceable mine clearance that can be done quickly. The old way was to use people but they are too slow. Those minefield really remain a tough riddle. The only other way I can see around them with the current forces is to attrit the RA until it is so brittle that it collapses. But that takes time, and we are not even sure what that will take. So there we are. Waves of FPV systems, like hundreds in waves, backed up by a lot of fires is probably the best start. Or UGVs but no one seems to be ready to upscale production. Behind that, air superiority but that is a bit of a mirage. And finally, attack where the minefield are not…but that gets smaller everyday.
  17. MacGregor is a black mark on our profession. He knows better but has let his political position hijack sound military analysis. You need only watch his stuff from year 1 (and year 2). The sorry was always the same: the UA was collapsing and major failures are going to happen imminently. He said this back at Kyiv, again at Severodonetsk and that whole thing. Bakhmut, and no doubt has come out of the woodwork for Adiivka. MacGregor is blatantly skewing analysis towards pro-Russian narratives but it is repeated “wrong-ness” that should really be hung around his neck. The man has repeatedly made the wrong call on just about every major phase of this war (although I am sure he predicted the UA offensive would fail…so broken clock). But by his assessment Ukraine should have fallen and been defeated completely back in ‘22. My advice is ignore him unless you want to see what the other side is pushing.
  18. I would be surprised if they had a half dozen. I am assuming that system was already KO’d and just hit again. It is weird as these systems are part of a larger mech breaching package. It is odd that this one seems parked out in the open on its own. If it was part of a failed breaching op, there should be a lot of other lost vehicles too. Could have been left behind on recovery but that is a pretty rare platform to leave last in a recovery effort, it would normally be first. Whole thing looms weird. But of course not a lot of mech breaching going on right now so not a critical piece of equipment for the defensive phase. They may miss it if the UA goes back on the offensive later this year.
  19. Oh dear that one hurts. Only 239 of them ever produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1150_Assault_Breacher_Vehicle
  20. Dog **** Rolling...oh my that is a nice one.
  21. Well I find your description of chickens hurtful and offensive to a wonderful bird that had given so much. However, isn’t clusterf### too broad. I think we need something else. Dog humping a football. Idiot orgy. (Both still have sexual connotations). Or we go right to the source and make it personal: Russian Army Operation.
  22. But F#ck is so over used in the English language, to the point it loses nuance. Goat Rodeo? Dumpster Fire?
  23. Whoa, everybody settle down. I don’t think anyone believes in war winning platforms anymore. If we can inject them into the UA to sustain current capabilities that is a great idea. But as we have seen with numerous platforms and equipment, none really changed the course of the war. Together they ensured the US stayed in the fight and frankly right now that is what they really need. The closest things we have seen to game changers are HIMARs and UAS. HIMARs were able to go that last mile - UA C4ISR could see (being linked into western ISR) but could not reach. HIMARs and other deep strike allowed for targeting much deeper than before. This did cause operational effects as the RA scrambled to shift logistics and C2 nodes, while getting hit. One could argue the RA failure of Summer ‘22 followed by massive gains that fall were enabled greatly by these systems. But then the RA adapted, and although has to live with this new constraint, have continued to operate. No point in getting all worked up. F16s are not a bad idea but what we don’t want are F16s but no artillery ammunition. Many of us have been saying - C4ISR, Precision/Fires, Unmanned and Infantry. Try everything and anything else but do not get those four wrong. And right now we are starting to fail on that Fires pillar.
  24. So a complete withdrawal to pre-2014 lines and a lasting peace agreement that allows Ukraine to enter NATO. You are on and I earnestly hope I lose this bet.
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