panzermartin
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Posts posted by panzermartin
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There have been reports that the intiital UKR force in Bakhmut was around 30.000.
On 10 January 2023, Polish think tank Rochan Consulting estimated Ukraine may have ten brigades fighting in Bakhmut, or around 30,000 personnel.
I understand this includes artillery crews and reserves that could be outside the ring but, has any part of the main force withdrawn to avoid encriclement or Ukraine is going to sacrifice this huge capable force to the last man?
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1 hour ago, Zeleban said:
This article was written by a guy from Russia. The praise of their military equipment among the Russians is a national sport. A-10 is a much more advanced aircraft than the Su-25. The choice of weapons, sensors, ballistic computers for the first are much more developed. Smart weapons are the weak point of the Su-25. Without a smart weapon, he is forced to approach the target so that the pilot can see the target, increasing his chances of being shot down (the Su-25 does not even have a primitive electronic-optical zoom system). What can I say, the A-10 has been constantly upgraded with new electronics, while the Su-25 has existed in its original form since 1980.
But seriously a jet slower than a P51 mustang?
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5 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
I think the A-10 was designed to withstand small arms, not missiles. It's a pretty slow airplane, vulnerable to MANPADs.
Also it was made to hunt tanks. And Russia doesn't really have many tanks left to hunt. And the ones that are left are no real problem.
Heck, not even the ones they started out with posed much of a problem.
5 minutes ago, dan/california said:The A10s apparently need SEAD support than they are likely to get in this war. I am not saying they wouldn't be of some use, but they couldn't be used aggressively enough to REALLY change the balance. If we are going to give the Medvedev an embolism, ATACMS is the the thing that could be going boom on Monday morning.
Hmm good points and apparently Ukrainian pilots who have previously flown the frogfoot might be disappointed with the new bird : https://www.google.com/amp/s/theaviationgeekclub.com/su-25-vs-a-10-heres-why-the-frogfoot-might-be-better-suited-than-the-warthog-for-cas/
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14 minutes ago, poesel said:
I've read that the Typhoons and F16s are rather unsuited for Ukraine.
What plane would then be useful?
(apart from the Soviet types they already have)Tornados? And why A10s havent been discussed much , they could be the equivalent of SU 25 which seems popular in this conflict , flying low avoiding the fat S400s and going tank hunting in the stepes
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6 hours ago, JonS said:
There is a chart floating around that seems to show Russian imports of chips has ~doubled c.f. a year ago. I assume the numbers on the chart are correct - I have no reason to doubt them, and no way to verify them.
Ah, here it is:
The thing is, the chart says nothing about the VOLUME of chips being imported, it only refers to the VALUE of those chips. If Russia is paying four times as much - because: sanctions - then they're only receiving half as many chips this January as last.
Edit: What the hell? The right tweet shows in the preview, but then this loss summary shows up when posted. The one I'm referring to is from @elinaribakova , dated 3.25am, 31 Jan 2023
Edit2: grr, and now it's displaying correctly. I'll leave the first edit in case things go screwy again.
That's an interesting observation, I hadn't noticed. The original tweet is to blame because it makes a conclusion with a chart not based on a fixed number and then claims "increase in chip imports". Why she did that?
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Oh cripes, we get tens of violations from turkish warplanes everyday for decades deep in the agean, that balloon story is almost cute. Poor thing got lost so many miles away from home
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42 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:
Video from Russian side (sorry for Zoka, but this is very close encounter worth to watch). Russian tank passess near UA trenches, directed by drone operator. Katsap commander (not very wisely) informs his by radio that Ukrainians only have rifles...until somehow at 0:36 he sees rpg, shouting to tank crew to stop but machine is still going forward. Ukrainian soldier shots at muscovite armour from behind, but unfortunatelly missess/granate fail to explode properly/is not effective. Tank does not even seem to be bothered, clips stops.
CM tank situational awarness was usually much better than this Russian crew...
What a crazy war. Imagine this kind of footage from WW2 battles. We haven't grasp how erratic to the extreme everything could be.
(And politely wishing for more uncertainty and randomness and a touch of analogueness in the inevitable digitalness of modern CM titles)
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9 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Perhaps your father did not witness the famine organized by his government, when a person could fall and die of exhaustion right on the street, and parents who went crazy from hunger eat their own children. My great grandmother knew people who engaged in cannibalism in 1932-1933. I think if your father had witnessed this, then the executions organized by the Nazis would not be remembered so well by him.
No he couldn't, he was in Athens in 1941. But this was equally awful enough to shape a collective memory and hate for generations of ukrainians.
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1 hour ago, Zeleban said:
It was not the deliveries of leopards that caused Russia to invade Ukraine, and thousands of Russian citizens have no problem killing people whom they consider their brotherly people, who took part in that bloody war shoulder to shoulder with them. If they were really afraid of NATO, their tanks would now be in one of the NATO countries and not in Ukraine.
My distant relatives also died in World War II. My grandmother's older brother died in 1944 in Moldova. Her another brother was hanged by the Nazis for being a partisan. But I would not say that our family was traumatized about this. These events took place over 80 years ago and have long been forgotten. Grandmother also did not feel hatred for the Germans, on the contrary, she recalled how German soldiers shared chocolate with her. In Ukraine, there was no such strong cult of victory that developed in Russia, inspiring people that they supposedly should avenge their dead.
This cult is very similar to scams in financial pyramids. People are zombified with loud music and loud slogans, thereby preparing them as victims of fraud
Well it depends. For instance my father never got over his dislike for germans , seeing executions, people dying from hunger , life was very difficult in the big cities. Nothing to eat etc...Even hearing the german language would raise his hair. I could understand but I couldn't carry on the hate which I guess was the healthy thing to do. For sure it has more impact on older generations but we should not underestimate the "collective memory" either.
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15 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
For goodness sake; WTF:
https://news.yahoo.com/putin-expected-channel-stalingrad-victory-111534377.html
"We don't send our tanks to their borders but we have the means to respond, and it won't end with the use of armoured vehicles, everyone must understand that."
A new bust of Stalin was erected in Volgograd on Wednesday along with two others, of Soviet marshals Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilyevsky.
Despite Stalin's record of presiding over a famine that killed millions and political repression that killed hundreds of thousands, Russian politicians and school textbooks have in recent years stressed his role as a successful wartime leader who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower.
You can have zombies without an apocalypse.
Not surprising. Generations of russians were raised with the wounds of the great patriotic war, inflicted from enemies coming from their western borders. 27 million dead, every family had lost one or more members. Putin will play this card again and again and people will follow. Leopards are great but they trigger more and more population into a "new patriotic war" mentality and this is against Europe in the long term.
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9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
There's been some good responses to your post already, but I think it's worth one more
We've seen some raging debates here, and elsewhere, over the years between "Manueverists" and "Attritionists". The Maneuverists have an attitude that you can always use maneuver to achieve success. Something gets too tough to handle? Maneuver around it, pull back, or do something other than stay and fight. Attritionists trash this argument by saying this only works for the attacker and only if it has multiple physical paths to whatever is trying to be secured. On the defensive, you can't just pick up and move every time the going gets tough. If you do that you forfeit the advantages of the defender and open your forces up to being caught on the move and slaughtered.
Therefore, the basic premise of your post is on very unsteady ground.
The second part of your premise is wrong as well, which is that Ukraine has been caught repeatedly in situations where it needlessly sacrificed troops it could have otherwise pulled out. Mariupol is the only engagement where significant sized Ukrainian forces were surrounded and destroyed. Every other instance Ukraine has withdrawn in good order when it was ready to or, with only a few small scale exceptions (I'm thinking of Popasna). No military in the history of warfare has fought, at any scale, perfectly so I don't think it is fair to put to much emphasis on such failures.
Now, what Ukraine has done is what *ANY* military defending their homes should do... fight and fight hard until the situation becomes unfavorable. Unfortunately in war, "unfavorable" does not necessarily mean losing men and material.
Even Mariupol, for all its horror and loss of Ukrainian military personnel, was a critical element in Russia losing its strategic initiative in the Spring of 2022. We do not know precise casualty figures, but we know that Russia's forces engaged in the battle were decimated. We also know that Russia's efforts elsewhere were hampered for nearly THREE MONTHS because Mariupol was like a thorn in its side.
The battles for Sievierodonetsk area, as costly as it was for Ukraine, was a big success for Ukraine's larger war effort. The DLPR and Russian forces that fought in these battles were laid waste. The Kharkiv offensive would not have been as successful, or perhaps even possible, without out the sacrifices made by Ukrainian forces fighting there.
To summarize... by all tangible and militarily relevant assessments, I think it's pretty clear that Ukraine fought intelligently and effectively, while Russia did the exact opposite. Not perfect, but compared to Russia's train wreck performance, pretty close to perfect.
Steve
Yes I don't doubt they have been fighting in a more coherent compared to Russians in a situation of overwhelming enemy firepower that could otherwise lead to chaos and panic. And let's accept that last stands like Mariupol were probably not in vain. Bakhmut probably will be a case study in this depending on the outcome and the strategy Ukraine will follow till the end.
But in general I doubt the losses estimates and the ratio with Russians is right. @MikeyDs 1 to 6,5 seems extreme. 1/2 to 1/3 as @The_Captnoted could be closer to the truth.
But even in this ratio and if we take the most pessimistic numbers and the UKR losses are over 100.000, Russians will have lost more than the whole original invasion force at best and at worse close to half a million troops.
Anyway, the main point of my post was, there is a chance Russia could finally exhaust Ukraines effective manpower and maybe we will see less WW1 defenses from the high command as the war goes on. Ukraine will be more mobile with the new hardware anyway, we will see.
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13 hours ago, FancyCat said:
Its my impression that at least for Mariupol is that withdrawal from favorable urban terrain is not recommended, and served as the best ground for Ukraine to sap Russian strength with the best chance of maintaining Ukraine's strength. In the summer, the defenses in urban terrain best keep Russian artillery and combined arms from annihilating Ukrainian forces.
Yes its true that in some cases they had no other options. Also in the beginning of the war they had no APCs to safely escape the battle zone. But there are voices from the front lines that indicate that sometimes they are left to their fate under fierce TOS, arty and airforce bombardment.
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12 hours ago, Zeleban said:
But this is already interesting, if you do not trust ORYX statistics, then you have more reliable resources where you get your information. Could you share your source with us.
And about the relationship between the loss of equipment and personal. Do you really think that equipment fights on its own, without a crew?
Wiki is also providing various estimates from different sources that can help, but it's hard to fully trust anything especially as the war goes on. Vehicles losses are more reliable, as there is usually visual evidence. On the crew losses you refer its a good point but even if the Russians have lost 3000 tanks for example with all their 3 man crews that would be only 9000 casualties. Painful casualties of specialized troops but still in cold numbers not a difference. And we know many of these tanks were just abandoned, stuck in the mud, damaged and even in the destroyed ones crews could get away. So I don't think vehicle crew add that much to the total casualties. Destroyed BMPs with squads inside could be multiplying losses but how common were those we don't know.
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8 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
That is, you assume that the losses of Ukraine are equal or even greater than those of Russia, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary from various independent resources like ORYX?
I assume they could be equal, at least in human losses. Especially because of the great volume of enemy artillery and the stubborn UKR static defenses in a a year of fights. Plus RU had the ability to strike bases, barracks and concentrations of troops relentlessly in a daily base with a variety of long range rockets and air force, an ability UKR didn't have for a long time and somewhat the HIMARS covered that gap later.
As for the numbers on ORYX and other sites, I don't really trust them especially in human losses. I think they are probably accurate in vehicle losses for RU, those were enormous.
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1 minute ago, Zeleban said:
An interesting attempt to equalize the Russian and Ukrainian systems of government. But as we see the number of losses on one side and the other varies greatly, don't you think that this is evidence of different approaches to command and control?
My intention is not to equalize, but to question the decisions of an otherwise troop preserving top command. And we don't really know the actual casualties of UKR.
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Probably this war won't be won on western equipment alone but how many personnel Ukraine will have left in the end.
We are bashing Russia for sending ill prepared troops in human wave style assaults but I haven't seen mentioning that a lot of UKR troops were lost in encircled traps like in Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Soledar, Bakhmut etc while they could have withdrawn to fight another day with better chances.
On the contrary RU has shown much more preservance reflexes(at least in defense) , pulling out of unfavorable situations instead of fighting to the last man. I understand the different mentality of someone defending his homeland but it seems these "no step back" decisions are coming from above.
A lot men have left Ukraine as well. And a lot have deserted to the east or joined the DPRs and LPRs and some videos of enforced recruitment have been circulating lately. How many can Ukraine sacrifice and how many losses can the foreign volunteers replace as the war widens.
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I remember one basic argument of Russian military collapse a few months ago was that Russia was running out of micro chips essential for manufacturing precision weapons. And China would be too afraid to provide these because of West's reaction. Well neither happened, there is a surge of chip imports and China was more than willing to provide these.
I have started to think It's a global war already that probably can't be won only in Ukraine.
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13 minutes ago, FancyCat said:
Do we have a source for this speech other than this idiot? he spent days arguing with ppl over the definition of a tank and insisting he was correct. If he told me the sky was blue, I would triple check him.
You mean it could be deep fake AI?
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Just now, Beleg85 said:
Yeah, Michael Tracey seen better days for sure...
Don't know him. I meant Zelensky
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54 minutes ago, LukeFF said:
Somewhere Eisenhower is spinning in his grave right now.
Sad to see war taking such a toll on him. And this speech is... Sad.
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40 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Were there Leopard factories in Iraq and Afghanistan? Please note that ha logistics across the ocean will have to be paid to Ukraine in the form of promissory notes. Lend Lease is not a free thing
The problem is, I don't think the barrel of debt this war will create for economies has any bottom. It will keep growing and escalating and the final bill will be that big that the Abrams maintenance difference cost will be a drop in the ocean.
Personally I think the M1A2, despite the headaches, is a more battle proven and a nearly indestructible platform that could prove an Uber weapon like HIMARS. We've seen the issues with Pz2000, who knows what more troubles LEO2 will reveal along the way.
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9 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
What factories for the production of spare parts for Abrams tanks do you know?
Or do you think American military bases are engaged in the production of spare parts?
So when US invaded and occupied Iraq, Afghanistan etc (even further away from Europe) with hundreds of M1 tanks it had problem to maintain them because the factories were in US? Doesn't make sense. Or maybe Iraq and Talibans were more important than a world shaping conflict in Europe.
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1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
It is not bs. You just really have to get to the weeds to see the Leo is the better option. Of course other options can be made to work if Leo doesn't work out
The chart is somewhat misleading. I think there are numerous gigantic US military bases in Europe that provide most basic Abrams maintenance as we speak.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Apart from balloons they are also strange exagonical things flying around. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/12/politics/unidentified-object-canada-alaska-military-latest/index.html
What is going on, aliens?