The_Capt

Help me out here. How does this make Putin look strong? His dog threw a public temper tantrum and threatened to walk away from a military offensive and take his troops with him. The guy gets pulled into Kremlin and promised whatever he wants, essentially giving into blackmail. Why on earth would Putin “stage” this? The optics are terrible. Like what is the angle here?

Unless he convinces some Army leadership it might be a good idea to throw in with him. The thing with these crappy autocratic klepto-crime syndicate-type governments is that once the boss looks weak the hyenas start coming out of the trees. Now not saying "this is it", but this is what "it" would start to look like. My faith in one potato head dictator able to hold this all together is fading rapidly. In fact that whole Drone-Kremlin thing could just as easily be an inside job to shake the fortress. Now if that was a UA op to widen a bunch of internal cracks; we are talking a ballgame. We have commented that this looks like positioning for endgame, but I am starting to wonder, which game? At some point the dogs in the reservoir start to turn on each other...the only question is when does the water get high enough?

The issue with GPS jammers is that - GOOD: they jam GPS and make precision strikes and UAS in an area much harder, BAD: they have limited range and put out an ungodly amount of energy, basically a giant flashing sign of EM. The Bad means that they become targets for good old fashion dumb artillery (in range) and SOF (in depth) really quickly. They also do nothing for NLOS systems or other forms of navigation/targeting unless they layer more EW on, which of course is more energy in atmo.

This guy has not been pushed out a window so clearly he has got the power to get away with this. Historically guys like this take their toys and roll on the capital (happening in Sudan as we speak - and Russia is in that game as well). That might just be what it takes for a Russian collapse of course we are then in a Russian civil war which is always fun.

A raging dumpster-full-of-hair fire.

Ok, so that would be a point for you then.

I am not buying this 9 May thing either. I mean if they hold it and it does not get attacked resistance looks even weaker. Attacking a second time will be incredibly hard now, damn near impossible. And I bet they surround Putin’s body double with children and old people for good measure. Great we just gave him a chance to look strong. I am more convinced this was an inside job.

Going to have to disagree on this one. Too little pay off for likely burning a team (hope they got them out). Sure, gets them riled a bit but too easy to spin - which they did. Best thing might be the blame game internally, could play that to get people tossed out windows. But if one wants to go high profile, well I think one needs an exploitation plan post-boom worth the squeeze. Now they may be doing this but we have not seen it yet. Right now it looks like a low tech terror attack that did nothing but play into the whole “look! they are Nazi terrorists backed by NATO, but failed to kill The Glorious Leader” and now we can over react to “protect you”. Will take some time to see but one does not burn covert assets lightly and scratching the dome on the Kremlin does not merit in my humble opinion.

Well if it was a Ukrainian op, it was poorly played. I mean you have to follow up with IO exploitation (which we should be hearing by now). Right now it looks like a pretty sad little UAV popped off aND scratched some roofing tiles on the old dome. Weak tea, and worse looks weak too. No HVT, no big drama like they had on the bridge or those airfields last year. It is more likely to play into Russia's narratives and anyone could see that one coming. Could be on outside job but it was amateur if it was - unless there are some big pieces we are not seeing but I am also leaning towards The Razor.

Ok, pre-Alpha disclaimer so details are subject to change but this is the first map in the Canadian campaign "On the Weser" - got big plans for this one. A Pete Wenman original: Just southwest of a little town called Boffzen and south of Hoxter (From Google Earth): Blow up of Canadian AO with rough zone of this map:

He forgot “world class analysis and assessment grounded in years of practical experience and theoretical study given away for free” - which was hurtful. Not entirely surprising that the guy with the flaming-eyes-skull thing above his handle would snap first, the pretty ones always do. Follow the uncertainty, and who it benefits. In the end it almost does not matter what really happened, it only matters how the phenomenon was employed. The uncertainty created in the security of Moscow, Kremlin to be specific is the core here and who the sponsor was is almost a side show at this point. Russia is clearly spinning this 1) their mighty defence defeated the dastardly attack = certainty we can defend ourselves, 2) but those under handed and weak Ukrainians are employing the tactics of losers that we have suffered before = uncertainty, but good uncertainties if one is running a dictatorship. The attack was highly visible but did no real dramatic damage, nor resulted in loss of life…and it created certainty and uncertainty where the Russian regime needed it. In the end it was either a Russian BS op and staged, or a poorly executed and thought out terror attack that may or may not have been sponsored by Ukraine. My money is on the first one. If it had been a terror attack it likely would have been an incendiary designed to start a big fire that makes the Russian narrative very hard to work. We have seen what are very likely Ukrainian (or western) sponsored asymmetric attacks in this war and they are normally aimed at big explosive stuff or really undeniable targets like airfields and bridges. Russian normally tries to deny - call them an accident (re establish certainty). In this case Russia is not denying, they are leveraging. So what? Well create a counter-spin to re assert uncertainty. Insert into the Russian info sphere that it was really Wagner or a regionally based break away military inside job…but hey we are just a bunch of guys sitting around chatting… Are we there yet?

I think we broke JonS.

I think a big challenge for Russia stopping this thing is not the ending - they can claim that they were minding their own business invading a non-country when the western world came along and beat on them because everybody always picks on “us poor old Russians”. Spin the whole thing into a valiant loss that they can use as propaganda fodder for whatever BS they get up to for the rest of the century. No the big problem for Russia is how to get someone to buy their stuff. First off a lot of high priced talent left and likely won’t be coming back home soon so producing “stuff” is going to get a lot harder. And then there is markets. Western normalization is not likely to happen for decades so now they will need to swing east. China so who is anything but dumb, is going to exploit this weak position like crazy. In the end it won’t be losing a war that gets Putin pushed out a window, it will be what he does to the Russian oil and gas industry. Of course I do not think Russia is in a long term planning mindset. They look and feel like they are in a constant crisis management mode and dealing with consequences is not high on the list. However, when it does come to whatever faux peace talks/ceasefire (because they are not likely to let this go, that is one long term planning factor we can count on) this stuff is sure to come up. I suspect some sort of renormalization concessions will be on the table - that will be a key indicator. We are going to have to see. I said last fall that we had entered into a Positioning for Endgame phase, the UA offensive will determine one way or the other if we are entering Endgame.

Ah but scope and scale cut both ways. A larger challenge for the UA, but also a much larger challenge for the RA to defend and support than Kherson. As to the civilian population - well two wrongs do not make a right but given what Russia has put Ukrainians through, I am not sure we are ready to start weeping for Russians that get trapped in Crimea. The answer is pretty well defined in LOAC, it is the besieged nations job to get its people out, and the besieging nations job to allow that to happen unmolested - you know, just like the good old Russians did in Mariupol? The question is: does it take a Crimean campaign to create a Russian strategic collapse? I am not sure, but it is definitely a possibility. And Crimea is a much better option than a series of brutal Bakhmuts in the Donbas except now the UA has to do the attacking.

Crimea is tricky, not easy but also not impossible. As a defensive location it is really not optimal. Once that bridge is cut the thing becomes a giant peninsula with your opponent controlling the access point by land. So Russia is down to trying to resupply a large enough force to 1) hold the bottleneck up in the NW and 2) have enough to cover off the rest of the shoreline from landings. So logistically this is not an easy go as everything has to be done be sea, which is highly visible and vulnerable, especially when it lands. My bet is the RA will be using the south coast for this. Sea and air control is another major issue and you could expose assets that would normally not be exposed trying to hold the place, particularly naval power in the Sea of Azov. Morale for land forces is an issue as they would effectively be cut off with no easy routes of withdrawal. Sevastopol gets dangerously in range of long range strike from UA held territory. This is basically one giant Kherson situation. If it comes to Crimea, a very large part of the RA in Ukraine will have already failed. To the point, as noted by Steve, the RA may fully collapse before a Crimean campaign if it comes to it. However, if they do hold on it will likely be a slow choke out. We will see the UA starting to ask for amphib type stuff, some raiding in deep and general mayhem. Civilian panic is definitely on the table, we saw a preview of that last summer when they blew that bridge with a VBIED. As to peace talks. I do not think we are there yet. Cutting the land bridge, pushing the RA back into Crimea and compressing Donbas puts Ukraine in a very strong end-game position - basically back to 23 Feb 22 lines. Russian defeat is still pretty clear in that scenario. Ukraine does not go back to pre-2014 but gets a reset to where is was. At this point putting pressure on Crimea becomes a solid negotiating chip on the table, as in “ceasefire or we keep strangling Crimea”. Dunno but clearly it is on the radar in the planning circles - one should always plan for success as much as one plans for failure.

Gotta tell you, I am kinda in the Hodges camp right now. Russia controls 15% of Ukraine, and it controlled about 7-8% before the war started. So all this has been over 6-7%. I agree that Crimea is the way to go, however, it will need a successful offensive in the next few months to split the land bridge, bring the new missiles within range of the Crimean Bridge and roll the RA back into the bottle neck south of Kherson (on this, why are we not hearing about terror/harassment arty into Kherson...did I miss that?). If Ukraine can retake Crimea, and Russia does not start WW3 over it, we have a very clear and undeniable Russian defeat. Donbas, as we have discussed here is a solid "meh", not critical, not a lot of Ukrainian left there, open would insurgency possibility - just a lot of bad, hell even kraze agreed in the end.

Kinda looks like they were trying to pull into low ground, which is the standard old drill - won't do much for NLOS or even a Javelin that gets a lock because it just carries that lock with it at altitude.

So that is about 833 casualties per day, Jan-Apr 23. That is approx half of the daily rate of WW1 on the western front when things got going. That is double all the KIA in 80s Afghanistan in 4 months. What we do not know is how much of this was cannon fodder and how much as enablers and operational level capabilities.

Working on it. No screenshots yet expect for a bunch of maps, you guys want to see shots of German countryside?

I honestly think someone is going to put a brain on these AD systems at which point stealth will require "invisibility". Stealth is very effective against radar; however it gets worse against thermal - airplanes burn a lot of gas. Even though they shield some heat, physics is a harsh mistress. Once you get into multi-spectral imaging coming out of a JADC2 type system and attach it to a onboard "AI brain"- and frankly that is right in front of us. Then anything big, manned and hot is going to need to stay way back, much like tanks are having to do now. Now small 5th gen UAS, now were are talking turkey. As to the whole "war shifting" thing. We have been seeing this coming from a long way out (e.g. RMA). It is just that every time someone is ready to call it we get into a fight that demonstrates that "it is not there yet". This war is really the first time that there are unavoidable phenomenon occurring. The central question remains, how much is unique to this war, and how much is more general and will apply to every war after this one? And I do not claim to be able to answer that one. All we can do is not what we are seeing and try not to talk ourselves into a false-certainty.

Well if the UA loses the ability to deny air space then Russia will likely fall back on "airplanes = artillery" doctrine and start using that a lot more. That said though, as far as I can tell Russian airpower is not what one could call a highly integrated and precision force. When they say "artillery" they mean Soviet artillery. Pick a grid square and hammer it. This will be problematic as the UA tends to disperse up and take advantage of Russian ISR asymmetry. It could definitely effect the UAs ability to concentrate and attempt a breakout battle. Assuming that Russia can glue together a better integration of air and land power, which has not really been that great. Now as to what "Ukrainian air defenses get degraded" well I suspect that is a spectrum. It may free up higher altitudes, but the lower one goes MANPADs start to kick in, and below that UAS space. So sure more high altitude strikes, likely low precision but massed much like we saw the use of artillery last summer. But the Russians are likely going to be pretty cautious. Aircraft are really expensive and hard/long to replace. Russia has a big sky problem and cannot lose too much in Ukraine or risk holes in their ability to control their own airspaces. I guess we will have to see if the Ukrainian air defenses really do start to fold- and if they do shame on us. It would be like investing in a car with only two wheels. I mean you buy the whole damn car or what is the point?

What is weird about this one is that the UA did not need to construct the "most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere in the world in many decades" and they held off multiple assaults that went on for months all along the line.

Fair across the board. I guess my only push back would be that whoever did the figuring on the Ukrainian staff side of the calculation turned out to be right. The RA did get out with forces intact but not enough to really make a difference down back in the Donbas. If the RA had seen a lot of success over the winter on its offensive than maybe a case could be made that this was a UA operational error at Kherson, but it really did not go that way. The RA did not have enough of anything, let alone "best units" to actually take Bakhmut - or pull off a breakout battle they needed to really get this thing going back in their direction. The RA could not even conduct decent corrosive warfare in depth as far as we can tell. So maybe the UA simply went "good enough" for #2, and did not want to take the risks given it was a harder go and they were still playing catch up on force generation. I am a strong believer that Kherson should not be viewed as a failure or lost opportunity that colours whatever happens next until we get a lot more data. I also am allergic to western biases (not saying you were going there...more the pundits) because we simply have zero proof that our way of war is somehow superior in all this. Until we have that confirmation we need to be very cautious in projecting failure on Ukraine because they do not fight like us - I am not sure fighting like us even works anymore.

The airpower conundrum. So here is the thing with AirPower - it is only about a century old as concept and we do not know if it has been a transitory phase in the evolution of warfare. Everyone assumes that it must be a thing because we can "do air" now, and this part is correct. However, "how we do air" is really in its infancy when compared to maritime and land military domains (and they have been bouncing around too), and is by no means decided. So the question as to Ukraine is a bit chicken and egg. Is this what they have to live with, or is this just how things are now? The issue is military economics. Airpower is really expensive right now and built around projecting airpower mass. Big planes with big payloads in big waves. One side has it and takes it away from an opponent - Bob'd your uncle and the war is over in a bibby, accept for all that nasty uncon stuff which really does not count - unless we are talking places like Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon Vietnam, Afghanistan (both times) and maybe Iraq - but we are not talking about them. In a real war airpower is definitive and deterministic to an outcome. Ok, sure...right up the point it no longer works. Now why is it not working? We the problem looks to be similar to the problems of other military mass - a concentration dilemma. Technology has created small little nasty systems that can be carried around that have suddenly gained ridiculous range and lethality. They are also really hard to suppress and toxic to massed concentrations. "Oh but we have all the SEAD". Well true but even our SEAD cannot solve for things like MANPADs and IADS, especially when they are hooked into a C4ISR architecture that can see everything. The cost gets too high very quickly. "Well we won't go there"...whoops, that is never the right answer. If we can't go "there" someone else will. So when we go there we will have to accept less than total air dominance, in fact we might have to live with air denial above certain altitudes. And then there is the below 2000 feet problem. It is the freakin Wild West for air power right now and no one is controlling it in any meaningful way. We get some denial but those UAS are so cheap that they can just keep lobbing them at the problem indefinitely. So we are looking at denial risks above 2000 feet and not being able to control below 2000 feet...none of this is good news that magic western might is going to wave away. Someone is very shortly going to figure out how to mount a Starstreak on a modest UAS and then we have a whole new set of problems. And then there is ersatz airpower in the form of long range strike. No one has the technology for whatever version of Chinese HIMARs looks like ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHL-03 that took seconds). Bottom line is that I, personally, do not think that the air denial and control problems we are seeing in Ukraine are specific to this conflict. The technology is moving too fast. We are likely going to have to accept that the airpower picture is going to be compromised and that we are vulnerable to whatever it is becoming and its cousins in long range strike. We do not have a magic suite of capability that can erase what we are basically arming the Ukrainian's to do against the Russians. I do no think the western assumption of air superiority, or space superiority, or EW/Cyber superiority or good old fashion land power mass and manoeuvre superiority are currently safe regardless of what conflicts we see them in.