TheVulture
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Posts posted by TheVulture
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28 minutes ago, Battlefront said:
Do we know for sure that the missile was an NLAW?
Comparing a still of the round from the video with an actual NLAW rocket, it certainly looks the same
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More evidence in support of the idea that while Russia is abandoning its attack around Sumy to focus on the south / east of Ukraine, it is still keeping the thrust against Kyiv from the north active.
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Interesting that for the first time the city of Kherson has sounded air raid sirens (around 2 hours ago). Which rather suggests that at least some parts of the city (or outskirts) have Ukrainian forces and a bit of a lack of Russians.
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Mayor of Slavutich: Russian forces have left the town.
Slavutich is pretty close to the Belarussian border, west of Chernihiv,, and Russia troops ignored the town on their way to attack Chernihiv, an only sent forces there in the last day or two. But now apparently they've upped and left again/
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More from Macron on the mentioned humanitarian mission to Mariupol. I notice the plan is to "tell Putin the details" that they decide, rather than to involve him in the discussions.
Quote"This must not be a humanitarian operation in the hands of Russia" stressed this morning President Macron on the humanitarian operation currently planned by France, Turkey and Greece for Mariupol. "There is an international humanitarian law that we intend to enforce. In Mariupol, we must absolutely protect the most vulnerable people. We have therefore launched a proposal for a humanitarian operation, in conjunction with Turkey and Greece, which have communities in this city. It must be done quickly, in the next few days. We are organizing this operation with the
authorities, our partners and NGOs. Then, I will have a discussion tomorrow or the day after with President Putin to tell him the details ("transmettre les modalités")."
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1 hour ago, CAZmaj said:
One quote from that that stood out to me:
That means that while old engineers were dying and retiring, too few capable youngsters came to learn from them. So many competences of old engineers died with them. As then deputy minister of defense Makarov pointed out Russia lost Soviet technologies of producing a tank barrelThe whole thread makes it sound like a late 1930's Japan scenario. The US thought it was fighting an economic battle with Japan. Japan looked at the same situation and saw an existential economic threat, and so turned to a military solution as its only hope to change its predicament before it was too late.Hence Pearl Harbour.The West figured it was punishing Russia economically after Crimea, Donbass (and Georgia etc. ). And much of the talk in the Western press is about how little effect sanctions have, and the ways in which they are circumvented to continue to trade with Russia. This twitter thread on the other hand portrays it as having a serious effect on Russia's military, and put them in a "do nothing and die slowly, or try and change the game entirely" scenario. But like Japan, by the time they did something it was already too latelI've no idea how credible his analysis of the effects of sanctions on the Russian economy is though. It might all be obviously bollocks to sometime who knows what they are talking about. -
Here's some light comedy for you all this afternoon / evening:
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2 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:
In addition to SEAD->DEAD->EXPLOIT the lesson may be Win EW->Win ISR->EXPLOIT
"Win EW" is also going to include winning control of various space domains too to destroy enemy satellites and (hopefully) attempt to defend your own from destruction - both for intelligence gathering and for communications.
Countries are also going to need to develop backup systems if their satellite comms get taken out - such as a network of high altitude drone access points that can talk to each other creating a damage-resistant web much like the internet.
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7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Is that a 9mm heart attack?
He was referred to earlier today as being involved in discussions with Armenia re Azerbeijan this afternoon, which would seem to imply that he's still in post.
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From the world of economics, China showing some caution:
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Now what the hell does this mean?
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Interesting non-military overview of the situation so far from GeopoliticalFutures.
QuoteUkraine and the Long War
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
For as often as it happens, nations typically don’t elect to enter wars if they know they will be long, drawn-out, uncertain and expensive affairs. They enter wars when they think the benefits of winning outweigh the risks, or when they think they have the means to strike decisively enough to bring the war to a quick resolution. Long wars result from consistent and fundamental errors: underestimating the will and ability of an enemy to resist, overestimating one’s own capabilities, going to war for incorrect or insufficient reasons, or underestimating the degree to which a powerful third party might intervene and shift the balance of power.
If a nation survives the first blow, then the probability of a victory increases. This is particularly the case in the long war. The nation initiating the war tends to have committed available force at the beginning, maximizing the possibility of an early victory. The defending power has not yet utilized its domestic forces or those of allies prior to the attack. Therefore, the defender increases its military power much more rapidly than the attacker. The Japanese could not match American manpower or technology over time. The United States underestimated the resilience of the North Vietnamese, even in the face of an intense bombardment of their capital. There are exceptions. The Germans in 1914 failed to take Paris, and in the long war were strangled by the British navy and ground down on the battlefield.
This is not a universal truth, but long wars originate in the attacker's miscalculation, and with some frequency with the attacker moving with the most available force, while the defender, surviving the initial attack, has unused resources to draw upon. It is possible for the long war to grind down the defender's resources and will, but having survived the initial attack, the defender likely has both will and resources to draw on, while the attacker must overcome the fact that it is fighting the enemy’s war, and not the one it planned.
The war in Ukraine is far from over and its outcome is not assured. But it began with a Russian attack that was based on the assumption that Ukrainian resistance would be ineffective, and would melt away once Russia came to town because the Ukrainians were indifferent or hostile to an independent Ukraine. This faulty assumption is evidenced by the relatively casual deployment of Russian armor. It also explains the Russian strategy of both bombing and entering cities. It’s difficult to subdue cities by bombing alone (think London, Hamburg and Hanoi). They are resilient, and the tonnage needed to cripple them is exorbitant. And they are notoriously advantageous for their defenders, who are more familiar with alleyways, roads, dead ends, and so on. The fact that the Russians operated this way indicates that they had low expectations of their enemy. This is to say nothing of Russia’s massive intelligence failure, which misread the enemy. (There are reports that the chief of the FSB intelligence agency's Ukraine unit has been placed under house arrest.) The most important failure was the failure to see that Ukraine would counter with a large, relatively decentralized infantry force.
The protraction of the war allowed the West and its allies to initiate economic warfare against Russia on an unprecedented scale. It takes time to implement economic warfare, and the Russians gave away precious time. Similarly, Moscow didn’t anticipate the substantial military aid that would flow into Ukraine, particularly the kinds that were ideally suited for a light infantry force.
None of this has defeated the Russians, of course, but it has created a crisis. A military force shocked by the inaccuracy of intelligence must determine without confidence in its intelligence what to do next. Russia thus seems to have abandoned the goal to occupy all of Ukraine or even Kyiv, shifting instead to a strategy of creating a land bridge from Russia to Crimea. If there is no military dimension to the future, this is a reasonable retreat for the Russians. But a long, relatively narrow salient – military-speak for a bulge or vector – is vulnerable to many forms of interdiction. This leaves the Russian salient at the mercy of Ukrainian action at the time and place of Kyiv’s choosing.
The question of the long war depends on Russian resources, without which there is nothing to discuss. Russia is apparently short on infantry, or it would not be recruiting and trying to integrate Syrian and other soldiers. The possibility of having forces that don’t speak Russian and haven’t experienced Russian training would only be considered by a force short of manpower. And such a force, depending on how it is integrated and what the mission would be, would be taking a large risk in maintaining large-scale operations.
The problem has thus become political. The initial war plan failed. The Russians are certainly able to continue the war, but they apparently need more people and an overall better logistics system, which is hard to improve in the face of constant combat. The United States, facing the same essential problem, chose to continue the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost was substantial but did not threaten core national security because of the vast oceans between the war and the homeland. The Ukraine war is on Russia’s doorstep, and an extended war, with intensifying distrust of the government, can result in a trained Ukrainian special forces group expanding the fighting into Russia. Russians cannot assume immunity.
It is painful, from a political point of view, for presidents and chiefs of staff to admit failure and cut their losses. The desire to keep trying, coupled with a reluctance to admit failure, carries with it myriad problems. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs an honest intelligence review, but he had one before invading. It was not a lie; it was just wrong. In a long war, the defender has the opportunity to grow strong, and the attacker is likely maxed out in anticipation of victory and the intent to throw everything into it. If Russia has resources not deployed and held in reserve for another possible threat, and doesn’t ruthlessly cut its losses, it will be joining a long line of defeats, from Algiers to Khartoum to Hue.
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News from related theatres (Azerbaijan / Armenia / Nagorno-Karabakh) - I believe that this is an Armenian source:
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19 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
both videos absolutely unbelievable. Not sure if the explosion part is edited? but still...
The explosions look very suspect to me. The camera in the second one doesn't even appear to move and starts showing a smoke cloud inside a few frames. From that distance. I have a many doubts.
But it still seems like a suicidally stupid way to handle artillery shells and propellant charges.
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4 minutes ago, db_zero said:
Unless this is completely fake…
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-promises-use-nuclear-weapons-26543507
It's the Daily Star, so it's completely unreliable.
OTOH Lukashenko did threaten WW3 if Polish troops were deployed in Ukraine, but it's not in his power to call that.
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One of the Ropucha landing ships that got out of Berdiansk this morning is apparently sailing around in circles off the coast now. Anyone have any insight in to whether it might be deliberate or indicative of damage?
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8 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/tm2s82/russian_landing_ship_orsk_destroyed_at_port/
excellent drone video of the aftermath. One Alligator-class total loss, two Ropucha-class retreating, both on fire, one significantly.
That's a really good quality video, and yeah, there's no doubt that that Alligator is history.
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8 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
Here is probably first moment after strike. Two landing ships side by side
The Ropucha class ship on the outside is later seen getting the hell out of there in one of the videos on the previous page, but the Alligator didn't go anywhere.
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From the videos and images combined it looks to me like it was the storage tanks on the dock that were burning and exploded. But that looks very close to the ship, so it might easily have caught fire too and/or been damaged by the explosion. And it does look like there is one flash at least that comes from the hull of the ship.
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2 minutes ago, Thomm said:
So the equivalent of the Kinzhal missile warhead in terms of kinetic energy would be:
- 220 Abrams tanks travelling at full speed
- 2.8 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers travelling at flank speed
Does this make any sense?!
On the other hand 1 kg TNT has the equivalent of 4.184 MJ, so this kinetic energy corresponds to 697.5 kg TNT. Which sounds more plausible than 2.8 destroyers at flank speed.
Our intuition regarding kinetic energy isn't that great, particularly when dealing with things of very different mass - we tend to visualise things more in momentum terms. The Kinzhal may have the same KE of 220 Abrams at full speed, but it has the same momentum as 1.25 Abrams at full speed. Which comparison is more relevant depends a lot on what exactly you are considering.
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10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Some argue that war is too chaotic and non-linear to ever be able to create effective models that provide predictive analytics; we do it now with a collection of human brains called staff, and as we see in the current example they can fail too.
The other important point is that modelling in general (thinking in terms of scientific modelling as a whole, rather than anything military specific) is often not about "predicting the future" in the sense that most people think of it. More often, i is about seeing how outcomes change with changing assumptions and input conditions.
You might find that parameter A barely matters at all - you can change it by a factor of 10 and it makes 1% difference to the outcome. So for parameter A, don't waste too much time trying to evaluate it precisely. While parameter B might have a large effect on the outcome for relatively small changes, which means that your prediction is only as good as your ability to measure B accurately (and tells you that you need to know all of its interactions very precisely).
So often it isn't about predicting the future, it is about determining which the critical parameters are in your model, and what information you therefore need to be able to find out in order to make any kind of relevant prediction at all. It is about identifying the critical factors and understanding how they interact with each other.
We've all seen factors in this war that probably wasn't in many military models before, or were only just starting to be appreciated. The willingness of Russian troops to abandon important equipment. The ability of light infantry with modern ATGMs to be able to hit high value targets. The use of drones in reconnaisance, fire control and as weapon systems. Crowd-sourcing intelligence from a friendly population. Modelling can (hopefully) be used to figure out how important each of these are and how they interact with each other.
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18 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Second point -> the northern pincer of this big envelopment hasn't moved in weeks. Mostly because every time it tries to the Ukrainians give the Russians yet another bloody nose. As for coming up from Mariupol, with so much of their combat forces being ground down taking the city they have a ways to go before they can try to move north again.
Even the northern push from the southern pincer, between Donetsk and the Dniepr, which was the last part of the Russian offensive that was still making progres - I've not seen any evidence of it gaining ground in the last few days. I'm sure there's local movement happening (in both directions) on the ground, but operationally the Russians are static everywhere right now.
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11 minutes ago, Lethaface said:
However, I remember somewhere last year not understanding why the USA (/NATO) felt the need of emphasizing that they won't send any boots on the ground in the case of a potential conflict in Ukraine. It was free info for Russia, while not saying anything or being vague about it wouldn't have cost anything and might have influenced Russia's risk-analysis.
At the time, no-one knew if Russia was going to invade, and many people thought the force build up was a bluff / negotiating tactic.
The danger in that scenario is that if Putin thinks that there is a risk of NATO forces being prepared to fight alongside Ukraine, then there is no way he can win the war. Which means that his window of opportunity for a successful invasion of Ukraine only lasts until NATO forces are in sufficiently in place (even if only in Poland rather than Ukraine itself). This means that Russia has to invade now before the window of opportunity closes.
So if NATO is prepared to defend Ukraine, then saying "we will come to Ukraine's aid with combat troops" will possibly trigger an invasion before NATO is in a position to be able to actually do what they said, and then find themselves with a fait accomplis with Ukraine occupied by Russia and no longer fighting.
Of course now we know that Russia was going to invade anyway. But without that hindsight, it might have been a reasonable attempt to try to avoid triggering a Russian invasion that otherwise might not have happened.
But also with the benefit of hindsight, it turns out that Russia's window of opportunity closed several years ago.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by TheVulture
Russian column moving out of Kherson west towards the Mikolaiv direction this morning (although it looks like they are going up the T1501 coastal road rather than the direct M14 highway):