dan/california

I think Sumy might be the clearest case of the Russians just being two battalions of infantry short. And in addition to what they lost initially Sumy holding out bleeped up their ability to utilize the road and rail networks in all of North eastern Ukraine, for want of a nail. This isn't THE engagement that doomed the Russian push on Kyiv, but it on the list. This lecture, and it is an hour long lecture, makes a pretty good case that THE single biggest factor in the first ~three weeks was aggressive and effective combat engineering in Kyiv's northern suburbs. Dropping dozens of of bridges, blowing one dam, and opening others. This reduced the number of routes the Russians could advance on to such a small number that Ukraine could concentrate more forces against the heads of the columns than the Russians could push through, and this gave the Ukrainian artillery static targets. Edit: someone else posted this video some time in last three days, but i could NOT find my way back to the original post.

I am always curious how many of the guys who get out of a tank after a hit like that can still move under their own power an hour later when the , quite justified, panic wears off? It looked like it hit the engine rather than turret, which gave them time to get out.

From the Kos article I swear I didn't write this. Although I think he is stealing from the thread.

Very helpful background!

I would argue the critical moment for the infantry shortage was the first ten days of the war. At the very beginning Russian supply trucks were being killed by any and everything down to molotov cocktails and shotguns, wielded by civilians who just refused to give up. As the war got more organized on both sides it has steadily moved towards a point where drone directed precision fire and loitering munitions rule the battlefield. This video being exhibit A. This morning the Ukrainians had drones up, good coms, and artillery batteries with ammo. All the Russians could do was die. As crushing as the expense is going to be, some sort point defense for the entire mechanized force just seems to necessary going forward.

I make it 8 or nine seconds, just for reference, per google...

A long, well written article about the lessons China is drawing from the Ukraine war. Primary lessons learned. 1) Putin waving the nuclear stick has been effective at keeping NATO from doing more in Ukraine. Waving the nuclear stick will be China's primary strategy to keep the U.S. from committing to defending Taiwan. 2) Starlink has been absolutely critical. They need their own version, and a way to take Starlink down. 3) They seem to be absorbing many of the lessons the board has discussed at length. Don't bleep up your supply lines, do have enough infantry, no such thing as too many drones, and so on. My two main take aways. 1) A war over Taiwan will absolutely trash EVERYTHING in low earth orbit. There needs to be a plan to deal with that, a good well resourced program to deal with that. The economic damage will be vast too, but a war over Taiwan is going to trash the world economy regardless. 2) The U.S. needs to put a truly large military force on the ground in Taiwan. Large enough to reduce ambiguity to zero. I like the entire Marine division idea, but regardless it needs to big enough that their is no question that the U.S. is going to fight. Ambiguity is how Ukraine happened, if we make it absolutely clear attacking Taiwan is starting a war with the U.S. China might not do it. I have real doubts about anything less, barring a complete change in China's approach. My two cents, worth what you paid.

Excellent discipline and hard work to get that trench shoveled out. That must have &$%$& E&ER&. And of course your clothes are soaking wet when you are done, and that is pain in a trench as well. Am I correct that this storm has absolutely blanketed the Donbas, but missed a bunch of the land bridge in Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson? Because if so this might the moment to take at least a nibble out of the land bridge. Nothing much is going to move in the Donbas after that blizzard for a week or more given the mud that will surely follow. Edit: Forecast for the next two days in Donetsk is warm rain. The mud is going to be whatever is worse than bottomless.

I think we should have sent brand new tanks, and AFVS from current units with APS, and have sent them months ago. That said Russian tanks and ATGMs are about sixth on my list of worries regarding threats to the new NATO equipped units. The thing that worries me the most is mines, which to knowledge is problem nobody has solved for very well. I realize breaching/engineering vehicles are being sent as well, but mines are still an unsolved problem in a lot of ways. The second thing is whatever semi guided and/or cluster MLRS munitions the Russians have left. The third is a once NATO tanks are committed to battle the Russian air-force might might be ordered to do the kind of semi suicidal close support missions it has so far sat out. Of course if their are enough SAM systems forward that they are trading an SU-35 for every tank they take out that is probably a win for Ukraine. I do think Ukraine is going to have to do some fairly cold hearted things, using NATO tanks on overwatch while T-72s/T64s advance into danger. But the NATO stuff should be so much better at range, and especially at night the harsh truth is that it just makes sense to do it that way.

The number of point detonating shells it took to take out that trench implies that the efficiency gains of the new rounds that detonate at the programmed distance would be large. Spec sheet for the new round.

It depends on what war you end up in. One plane=one reinforced battalion. It depends on what war you end up in. And I have no access to the classified info that would let me judge the planes performance.

T There are a lot of different technologies out there. JonS is correct that the ideal way to run an army is to use the same battery tech across as much of the force as humanly possible. He also highlights the difficulty of picking a technology and sticking with it when the tech itself is advancing so quickly. So maybe you try to at lest standardize everything in single brigade. He is also correct that you have to take a hard look at the entire use cycle. To use my favorite example there are a lot of jobs in the kitchen I can do much faster with food processor than a knife, but this advantage is totally overridden by the hassle of cleaning the food processor. In terms of the technologies that are currently at least somewhat mature, I emphasize somewhat, I think hydrogen fuel cells, and reforming diesel into hydrogen at the drone servicing unit are probably the most robust tech combination. You just need to standardize the hydrogen fueling connections across as much of the fleet as possible. One of the bigger issues with fuels cells is contamination overtime if the fuel isn't perfectly pure, and/or there are imperfections in the materials of the actual cell. The average life of drones Ukraine would argue that 99% of them would be lost before this became a problem, and you could live with less than perfect performance in the whole system. The great advantage of this system are most of the logistics train just has to worry about delivering the same fuel they are delivering to everyone else, even sub par fuel cells probably have a performance edge of current battery tech, and drones could be refueled very quickly relative to recharging, at least to the limits of the charing vehicles hydrogen storage. All though at a three mission average life span there is an argument for regarding drones as one hundred percent disposable. Just acknowledge that drones are a munition and let the aforementioned bureaucracy take that into account in advance, if you admit they are single use you could probably power them with a non rechargeable lithium /air battery that would have considerably higher performance . After the war we should be able to get a better handle whether that is an overall figure, or just the bad parts of the front on a bad day. The number of missions you think the average drone of a given class is going to live through really drives the entire process here. If you optimize for a three mission life span, and get ten or twenty mission lifespans you have wasted a lot of money, the inverse is also true. Am I making Jons cry, or is he about to agree with me for the first time ever?

And the tension between Mr Higgin's having the ability come up with boat that works, and the ability of the Pentagon to recruit and organize the military-industrial complex to produce 20,000 of them is kind of what I am getting at, however badly. In many ways the Ukraine war has been showpiece for the Pentagon's processes, almost everything we sent to Ukraine has worked more or less as advertised, and with some hassles we have been able to keep that equipment in the fight. At the same we are in a moment where what we should and shouldn't be building is in real question. The Switch bBade 300 is one of my canonical examples of the process going slightly wrong. And I am not saying it doesn't work as advertised, but somewhere in the process things went subtly wrong. The board is littered with video of civilian racing drones with an anti tank grenade zip tied to them doing real damage, and they cost somewhere between a tenth and twentieth what a switchblade 300 does.

Fair, but whether or not the F-35 belongs in the winners column is a matter of some debate. Especially at $80 million per copy.

it may be that the cost curve between the drones, and various drone countermeasures is so divergent that the drones just can't BE countered. If that is true all first world militaries need to be rethought form the ground up, and that 100,000 dollar ghillie suit is going to be a thing if it is possible to build one that works.

Worth pointing out this means the Armenian government is 100% certain Putin is going to lose this war. Because otherwise they are all dead men walking. Not saying they know more than anybody else, but they just committed pretty much everything.

A tank that is half as effective, but has a fifth of the logistical burden suddenly becomes a very attractive proposition.

There was a lot of discussion about this a thousand pages ago. My summary, worth what you paid, is two sort of equally matched technically competent militaries in conflict are going to strive to project mostly unmanned ISR bubbles. The highest priority for each side will be whatever they see as the weakest link in the loop between the other sides ISR and fires complexes. If one side wins this contest conclusively, the other side is just a bunch of targets that are running or surrendering if they have any sense. If, and only if, the bubbles defeat each other more or less symmetrically you will get to see how the rest of the opposing forces match up. This also lays out my optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for the Ukrainian spring offensive, effectively.

Drone defense, drone defense, DRONE DEFENSE! If you don'y have it you simply cannot keep anything resembling a mechanized army in the field. That is a hard enough question. The even harder question is when either the U.S. or China puts up a fully militarized version of Starlink. There is no barrier except expense to putting up a Starlink clone with small addition of imaging, and or signals intelligence capability on every satellite. That is off the shelf technology at this point, and no army on earth more complicated than the Taliban could operate under it.

I suspect it was the purchases in ~2014-16 that mattered.

Yes, that particular LIDAR, which is optimized for measuring things in your living room is rather limited. But the fact that it exists means production lines for high volume consumer electronics can do lidar systems. Now look at what high end, and until now very tightly restricted systems can do. Edit: cross posted with Steve I would not be surprised if the Ukrainians are fitting an 80% percent capability for two percent of the cost system on a done as I type this. Bureaucracy is surely the only reason the Pentagon hasn't already done it. and by literally next week week, or maybe last week, big tech is selling an AI package that will actually make the mass of data a squadron of LIDAR drones can put out comprehensible. And all of this is just one of a dozen more examples/probabilities. The Chinese are taking notes on what works and what doesn't. I suspect Xi is making it very clear to his military that the consequences of being as feckless as the Russians are SEVERE. The IRGC are awful human beings, but also seem at least three tiers brighter than the Russians. The next war will not look like this one, even if it happens within a year or two, much less five or more.

It is the base line quality of even upper end consumer stuff that is the curve you can't beat. This is the ~specs for the iphone 15. a decade ago this would have been a stretch for DARPA to fit on helicopter, much less a drone. 48 megapixels in the actual sensor, mind you this comes with a bonus phone.... People and AFVs still haven't changed much.

I have been promoting the 100,000 dollar ghillie suit as the next big thing for a thousand plus pages on and off. Someone mentioned a refinement some sci fi author came up with, the suit is designed to use external water sources for cooling whenever possible. The bit about being too invisible/quiet has shown up in a few novels as well. I still think sensors are winning, 10X more so since it is now shockingly clear that real AI is a thing. Finding everything in multispectral image that might be a person or an AFV is a case study in what it seems to be good at.

Any idea of the differential impact on Ukraine vs the relevant parts of Russia?