TheVulture

Exactly. So let’s take that Ukrainian trench problem. That is a full scale battalion assault problem.  As per western doctrine we would assign a full battlegroup/TF to that job.  3x infantry Coys, Tanks, Engineers, close support.  That is roughly 50 F ech vehicles.  I do not think people appreciate how much real estate and road space that sort of force takes.  The there is the added logistics support behind it. We are talking about a force likely in and around 100 vehicles all up.
So in this environment 100 vehicles concentrating are going to get picked up maybe 20-30 kms out.  Nobody has vehicle parks closer than 100kms because they are prime targets for HIMARs.  So you pull 100 vehicles together to organize and mount this attack - that is a coupe major road moves.  Now the UA is supported by ISR from God.  AI support can pick out patterns. Space-based, strategic high flyers and operational stand off - all of this before the tac drones even kick in.  At best 100 vehicles are going to be spotted 10s of kms out and if you are really lucky won’t get hit by long range fires. But the UA knows you are coming and has plenty of time to swing resources to meet them.  
Once you cross the line of departure you can expect long range drones, loitering munitions, PGM artillery etc to hit you before you even get into DF range. You are a big force so the UA is going to muster a lot in your direction. Then you get within DF range and the tac FPVs and ATGMs kick in - hell, the UA might even send a sniper tank or two your way.
You have no surprise. Concentration has brought concentrated fires. Your logistical lines are vulnerable and being hit.  And the enemy can see you, down to the squad level the entire way,  air support is denied, except maybe for bomb lobbing from 50kms out. This is not that the Russians have somehow forgotten how to put a Bn into an attack. It is that to try and do so is suicidal.  So what do they do?  Penny packet, disperse and try smaller attacks on separate axis.  Of course then you simply do not have enough troops to do much even if you them through to an objective.  So what do you do?  Send in wave to try and exhaust the UA and take small bites.

You obviously have a very different idea of "very successful " than I do.  By that token,  the Ukraine summer 2023 offensive was even more successful.
And not to sound too cynical, you sound a lot like Zeleban/Zekezilka, and your first post was 6 days ago. Not a sock puppet by any chance?

That's because the role for which the tank was invented- breakthrough of a fixed front - is not the one it excels at. It has been quickly discovered, that breakthrough can be obtained by other means. However, the problem is what next. Once you are out of the enemy reserve trench and want to make ground, it really does not do to slow down to a crawl each time a HMG starts shooting in the vicinity. Serendipitously, the tank has turned out to be the thing that could reliably go forward in such circumstances. It was invulnerable/less vulnerable to the things that kill mobility of soldiers on foot or horseback- HMGs and indirect HE artillery fire, later also aircraft strafing and bombing (particularly deadly against cavalry). And (mines excepted) it could be destroyed only by things it could itself outfight, numbers permitting, and then continue on its merry rampage through the enemy rear. It made the exploitation possible again .
In that sense, it is less important whether we are talking strictly about tanks, IFVs or armoured cars. Functionally, tank had the role of the vehicle which can reasonably well shrug off indirect and machine gun fire,  move forward over lightly contested ground at speeds significantly higher than walking, and overcome moderate enemy resistance by the onboard weapons of itself and others inj its unit before moving again. Now there is no way to be reasonably protected from indirect fire because of the anti tank drones, while their reconnaissance cousins also improve the accuracy of artillery fire to the point that even ordinary HE can obtain direct hits. Also it is questionable if tanks alone can outfight any enemy, since even basic infantry platoons have several moderate-range, high-PK missiles each .
There is no vehicle currently which would fulfill the above described role. During the Kharkiv offensive, Ukrainians were exploiting the breaktrough in pick-ups, on quads and buggies. Not that they were the better vehicles for it it than tanks. But the additional level of safety that the tanks provided was not so much higher to warrant their enormous price tag.

I can understand why the US went nuts over this if the Ukrainians used Patriots inside russia against US wishes. However, I'd argue the facts on the ground have changed now.
Firstly, Ukrainian forces have been killed and territory has been lost because of the VKS's use of glide bombs. There is a need to use long range AA that hit targets in russia that didn't exist back in summer 2023.
Secondly, it's very difficult to argue it would be escalatory when it has already been done and didn't result in an escalation. Unless one wants to go down the rabbit hole of 'ah but this time it may be escalatory'.
Thirdly if the ban is in place as punishment for that incident, the Ukrainians have been punished enough (IMHO)
I really feel for the Ukrainian operation planning guys. There are some countries saying yeah you can use our stuff in russia. Some are saying you can use some of our stuff in russia. And others saying no you can't. Take F16s, the Dutch are saying whatevs and the the Belgians are saying 'don't use our stuff in russia'. Mission planning is hard enough without that added crap.
I can imagine a scene where a M777 crew are having to work out who provided a particular shell before they can decide whether it can be fired or not.
Anyway, rant mode off!

Good discussion started by ArmorTopHat.  I am heavily biased because tanks are god's chosen ones, obviously, but I still think TheCapt is right.  
This is great example of how to disagree and debate on a complex subject.  Well, done to both of you (and Steve also). 

Good point.  Not the stupid pinecone thing, but this also demonstrates that we are looking at a major shift nicely.  Ukraine was running out of ammunition of many natures.  Artillery rationing was noted.  They were also still deep into manpower shortages.  So the UA just conducted a 3-4 month defence and the backbone of that defence was ah hoc drone technology.
And it worked. The RA did not achieve any operational level breakthroughs and their losses were eye watering.  I have to be honest, I am not even sure why Unmanned Age debate is still a thing.  The largest conventional peer on peer war in over 40 years just saw an entire phase of defence done on the back of civilian drones with RPG warheads glued on them.  The RA threw everything but the washing machine at this offence over the winter based on their losses…and all those losses were in the majority delivered by cheap, nearly disposable drones. To the point it was being successfully employed as a substitute for artillery.
If the UA had used pinecones I am sure you and a few others would be arguing that “well you see the pinecone is less efficient than a tank…ahem, ahem.”  But your support in my argument is well appreciated.

I think Perun's analysis hads some pretty plausible suggestions, that it's probably some combination of (in varying degrees)
* a soon to close window of opportunity of Ukraine having limited support and mobilisation issues
* a propaganda push, supported by a media/ online push of "Russia is on the offensive again and Kharkiv is about to fall" 
* the big purge/ reshuffle in the military means that lots of new guys in post want to prove that they are indeed the right guy for the job: look at their proactive can-do attitude unlike the previous losers
* unreliable internal reporting meaning that high command had a much rosier picture of the forces available to them than was actually the case
* wanting to be seen to do something in response to the cross border raids into Belgotod by the Russian volunteer legion last year
 
Edit: one more point I forgot.  Since the question is "why Kharkiv and why now?", one more answer on the "why Kharkiv" point is that most Russia  support assets : artillery, supply bases etc are inside Russia, and thus can't be hit with the most effective systems that might actually threaten them,  since NATO supplied systems can't be used to hit targets over the border. If they tried the same in the donbass, ask the artillery, air defences,  radar etc would be on Ukrainian territory and be fair game.  So Russia gains a degree of impunity by operating from the Russian border.
Although the attack might have been a trigger  for  most NATO countries to reconsider that stance, so possibly the net result is another strategic own-goal by Putin.

I think Perun's analysis hads some pretty plausible suggestions, that it's probably some combination of (in varying degrees)
* a soon to close window of opportunity of Ukraine having limited support and mobilisation issues
* a propaganda push, supported by a media/ online push of "Russia is on the offensive again and Kharkiv is about to fall" 
* the big purge/ reshuffle in the military means that lots of new guys in post want to prove that they are indeed the right guy for the job: look at their proactive can-do attitude unlike the previous losers
* unreliable internal reporting meaning that high command had a much rosier picture of the forces available to them than was actually the case
* wanting to be seen to do something in response to the cross border raids into Belgotod by the Russian volunteer legion last year
 
Edit: one more point I forgot.  Since the question is "why Kharkiv and why now?", one more answer on the "why Kharkiv" point is that most Russia  support assets : artillery, supply bases etc are inside Russia, and thus can't be hit with the most effective systems that might actually threaten them,  since NATO supplied systems can't be used to hit targets over the border. If they tried the same in the donbass, ask the artillery, air defences,  radar etc would be on Ukrainian territory and be fair game.  So Russia gains a degree of impunity by operating from the Russian border.
Although the attack might have been a trigger  for  most NATO countries to reconsider that stance, so possibly the net result is another strategic own-goal by Putin.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears we have a russian troll!  He finally gets to his point.  The only way for the suffering to stop is for UKR to capitulate.  I am hoping this post leads to an immediate ban because you are obviously just an RU propagandist.
And same with NATO countries, the only way to ensure you are not attacked is to capitulate now!  

You mean the damage to the early warning radar, or some other installation? I believe you have the burden of proof backwards. I think, far from needing proof that it was the Ukrainians, we would need some significant reason to doubt that it was the Ukrainians. It's a legitimate military target that they have the means to strike, and no one else is at war with Russia, so it would be very surprising if it was someone other than the Ukrainians.

So if the camera moves at exactly the right (or really wrong) path, you can't see that the thing is flat.  So what.  Drones aren't going to just be moving in a straight line and not gimbaling the camera.  You're thinking too automotively.  You don't even need heuristics or assumptions if you have a reasonable IRU (which can be done on a chip) - you can fly around and build a 3D model.  My dentist does that realtime now with a stick that they wiggle around in my mouth to make crowns, instead of making a casting.
Tracking without doing individual frame by frame detection is not only possible, but there are multiple ways to do it.  Doing frame by frame and stitching sucks when you have low SNR or are near the resolution limit, but you can improve SNR by taking advantage of relative motion of the camera and scene.

This isn't a "they go low, we go high" scenario.
This is a "Russia is a dictatorship which doesn't respect international laws; we are democracies which do respect and uphold international law" scenario, where the idea is raised that "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did away with all the democracy and human rights so we can do monstruous, unspeakably evil things against not just Russia, but also against neutral, uninvolved countries and even our own allies?" as part of some strange, unexplained idea that this would somehow bring about the collapse of Russia.
It's like a completely backwards version of being a war hawk. They're keen on discussing notions such as liberalising rules of engagement to produce results because they don't believe that doing so would neccesarily be wrong. This reasoning though sets out with the idea of "let's just be ridiculously evil, because along the way of being to human decency what Bernie Madoff was to the stock market, we might come upon something that will be effective".

How about "because it's not within limits?" There's nothing morally defensible about the idea of subverting Georgia into going to war with Russia on "Ukraine's behalf" (quotation marks, because it sounds a lot more like the West/NATO using Georgia as a pawn).
By that logic the DNC might as well have reacted to Pizza-gate by ordering a bunch of child sized traps from the ACME Corporation or Amazon since they'd already been accused of child trafficking. It's clearly morally wrong as well as just completely non-sensical.
 
Edit: Just re-reading your post in detail... what the cr*p? The half of the examples you proposed which wouldn't justify Russia declaring WW3 are just cartoon villain evil-doing for the sake of nothing more than proving the worst Russian propagandist right. I'm almost surprised that you didn't include "let's re-open the concentration camps" to your list of ideas.

Oh dear Ukraine is doomed Kharkiv is about to fall...
Let's look at recent past history.
Has Russia been able to mount an attack that has taken and held any sizeable amount of territory in the last year?
Has anything changed that will mean they can?
Has Ukraine annoyed the Kremlin by launching attacks across the border?
Has the Kremlin issued orders to say stop those annoying attacks on our territory?
Has Russia launched attacks on this area before especially if as you say it is so exposed to Russia?
If it was an easy place to attack why has Russia not done so in the last year?
As for your "No clear picture of what's in the city or how it's defended" are you for real? Why would we know, why would you know?
But hey let's look at recent past history...
Has Ukraine been able to make decent defensive positions?
Did they know the attack was coming? Yes they did...
So I would counter your usual doom and gloom with Ukraine will be able to handle it.
Of course I could be wrong but I am happy to bet a stack of donuts on my view that they will handle it.
Russia might be able to create a buffer zone but that's about it. 
Why don't you ask some questions about if Russia can keep sustaining all their losses for sod all territorial gains...

Ignoring Trump for the moment as I personally don't think that he is the determining factor.  The war will not end regardless of the US.  This is Ukraine's decision and EU support will continue.  Not sure why you assume the EU will just follow the US on this.  What could happen is a drop in US support levels but there are many in the GOP who want to continue support for Ukraine to the point they helped force the vote in the house despite Trump.  It is worth watching the response to MGT's motion to vacate on C-Span.  She got booed from both sides of the aisle for what was essentially her reaction to Ukraine aid passing.
Russia has made clear what it wants from this war and those demands are not ones Ukraine can or will concede to.  If there is a push you can be sure that references to Munich "peace in our lifetime" will be blasted everywhere.

OK, my answer to the question "what is Putin actually up to?" (which should be read with a massive dose of skepticism, as it involves making a theory of mind of man having massively more information and usually thinking in massively different way than I; i.e., a wild guess)
1. Putin thinks the war will end through Donald Trump becoming the President of the US and successfully implementing his plan to pressure Ukraine politically into armistice on the basis of status quo in early 2025.
2. Therefore, the war has a probable end date in early 2025 which is based  on external political considerations and not dependent on any actions of Ukraine or Russia. All territorial gains must occur in 2024 and on the other hand, the risk of all losses is also limited in time to 2024. Timeline after early 2025 does not matter much - Russia is not worried about NATO or the Ukraine rekindling the conflict at any reasonable time after 2024, and even if its army is generally wrecked, it thinks it will always be beenough to defend the armistice line (even provided that NATO and the UKR muster political will sufficient to even think of restarting the war). 
3. Therefore Russian army is going all in to maximise territorial gains in 2024, particularly in the Donbass area which Russia claims to be its own, but has not conquered it yet. If they are successful in Donbas or if they statemate in Donbass, they may try to do the same thing in the Zaporozhie area. They do not care about the losses, they do not care about the war materiel stocks (they know they won't be attacked) and they do not care that much about their economy either, which they think will somehow limp through the rest of 2024 anyway, and Russians will start rebuilding it in from 2025.
 

This! The National prejudice attitude that many on this forum seem to have toward Russians tends to color their comments and lead them to dehumanize and demonize the Russian people as ignorant savages who are always drunk, raping and killing babies. Yes, possibly the conscripts and prisoner “volunteers” are more brutal and resigned to their deaths than seems the norm. Can you say Igor Sikorsky, Tolstoy, Tchikovsky? Not everyone is ignorant, uneducated, and brutal. No one should be surprised by Russians who make intelligent and insightful statements. I see the same ignorant and prejudicial statements about every opponent the U.S. has ever faced. It’s much easier to kill a fellow Human being when you make that person out to be so inferior to you.

Glad that the Ukrainians seem to be more in line with Patton’s thinking 
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

Just to pile on, the military conservatives arguments are getting weaker and weaker.  There is no military on earth that is going to prepare or go to war as they would have in 2021.  We ignored Azerbaijan-Armenia but we cannot ignore Ukraine.  The harsh reality is that our adversaries in all directions are going to work very hard to make sure our next wars are not “ideal”.  Our ability to make war “ideal” is in fact the historical anomaly and frankly it has a single data point - Gulf War.  Every fight we have been in since then has been far less than ideal by adversarial design. Why?  Because they do not want to be Saddam in another freakin Gulf War scenario.
So forget ideal.  That ship has sailed.  We are going to be looking at acceleration of trends and collisions of others.  The flip side of this whole Abrams thing is the Russian experience.  Russia has lost in the order of 3000 MBTs and around 5600 AFVs.  It is not the horrendous losses, it is what they accomplished with them - largely defensive deadlock and limited tactical gains…after three operational collapses.  The lesson here is that battlefield friction has fundamentally changed.  It has changed for everything, not just the precious tank.  Cheap, many and ISR have hunted heavy and expensive into very limited utility - not zero but much more limited than we ever imagined.  This is a large system failure.
We are pretty much at the point where only truly fanatic devotees of the old conventional system are even arguing.  Most modern military complexes are wrestling with how deep this hole is or is not.  We know we are looking at a shift, we are all arguing on how much.

Not unrelated, but the UK army started receiving its first Archer artillery systems (L52) from Sweden in early 2023, so yes, they are basically shipping the AS-90s to Ukraine as they are being replaced in active service by new systems.
I believe Sweden have also sent some Archers to Ukraine, so they're getting some more modern systems too, not just stuff that's being retired. Archer I think is on a par with the French Caesars that are getting a lot of praise.

About developing of warfare by spiral again %)
Since Russia unable to use A-50 AWACS close to our borders, it flooded our space by long-range recon drones Orlan, Zala, SuperCam, which with rotations are may to observe large squares of frontline and in the deep rear. Reportedly only for one day up to 200 UAVs can be spotted behind out lines. UKR side just hasn't enough radars, EW assets and SAMs, SHORADs etc to cover all frontline to prevent penetration of such number of drones in the rear. Except all of this we have large lack of anti-aircraft missiles of all types, including SHORADs and even MANPADs 
Yesterday likley as experimental act of desperation training Yak-52 was use to shoot down two Russian drones over Odesa oblast. Like in WWI times second crewman takes LMG in the cabine to fire at the drones. BTW this flight was successfull - two enemy drones were downed. And this is obviously more cheap method, than waste missiles. There is a one problem - risk of friendly fire, because small aircraft can be similar on radar to the drone

Videos of "dogfihgt" with Orlan-10
So, if some have operational P-51, Spitfires, Bf-109 , it will be useful

 

That Vladimir Putin makes bad decisions from our perspective is not the same thing as him making irrational decisions.
In that light, I think you should ask yourself whether or not the Russians would have preferred the US to be still mired in Afghanistan while also trying to support Ukraine. And you should ask yourself whether or not Putin would have preferred a safely pliant Ukrainian government (being coerced not just by the Kremlin but also the White House) over the risks associated with going en banc with a full attempt at conquest. Finally, please come up with a single evidenced example of Trump giving Russia or China pause in their foreign policy behavior. This claim is often made yet nobody can point to one…though moments of pause and dismay abound among American allies during the same time period. 
Putin’s timing wasn’t about losing the restraining hand of what we are supposed to imaging was an intimidating Trump administration vis a vis Moscow…it was the recognition that a window of opportunity was closing. Indeed, events have shown Putin didn’t realize it already had.

More likely that we're going to get back to the mid-2023 situation where Russia is no longer able to make incremental gains and Ukraine can push them back slightly in a few places. I'm not expecting anything dramatic personally - just a shift in the media narrative which is currently "Russia is slowly grinding Ukraine down".