dan/california

The_Capt said, many hundreds of pages ago, that top tier land warfare was becoming much more like naval warfare. With endless layers of countermeasures, and counter counter measures deployed to protect the actual ships. The question in both cases is CAN you protect the actual ships/tanks at a cost anybody can afford. A related question is do we want to put all of this stuff, and mental bandwidth required to operate it, on the heads of every tank crew. It might make a lot more sense to bite the bullet and make one tank out of four a countermeasures platform. My spitball on that would be a SERIOUS phased array radar, laser system, ~20-35 mm rotary cannon with smart shells, and a couple of whatever comes after the stinger. The goal would be for this unit to deal with threats as far out as possible. Lase drones the the second they clear the tree line, and or horizon, shoot down ATGMs when they are hundreds of meters out, blast out various kinds of ECM that will fry an egg a mile away, and let the rest of the unit do their already hard jobs. Just to be clear I think this needs to be on a survivable tracked chassis, Maybe even a modified Abrams hull. I am assuming you can hook that turbine up to one heck of a generator if you set your mind to it. For triple points you could let the ECM unit control RWS on other vehicles when there were high priority threats incoming. If the bad guys are not playing at the same level, well a rotary cannon is never a bad thing to have.

Some ground level pics from Steves favorite moment.

Now THAT is a RUMINT for the ages!

Small drones certainly can be shot down by small arms, but the internet is literally buried in videos of of ones that weren't dropping grenades. The "dropees" to coin a phrase were presumably not volunteers. And someone is going to start turning out truly militarized versions of the inconvenient size very soon, and in quantity.

Cost per round?

She lays out my view of Scholz rather well. If Steve were to drop a bone or three about the next game, Or even just release a tiny update for Black Sea that gave Ukr forces Javelins and NLAWS without torturing the editor to death we might have something to talk about besides EU politics, just saying.

https://www.army.mil/article/249549/army_to_field_laser_equipped_stryker_prototypes_in_fy_2022 https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/06/07/nato-gears-up-to-launch-new-air-defense-programs-in-2023/ The Pentagon seems to have gotten the memo that this is a real problem, all sorts of programs underway. Lasers are by far the best method if they can get it to really work. Much longer range, and no short term logistics requirements except fuel for the vehicle. Gun based systems are clearly needed but a drone can spot at ranges longer than a gun based system can reach, spot well enough anyway. They will probably have to be pared with something like this to defeat swarms of loitering munitions It is going to be a whole military specialty, maybe one of the two or three most important ones.

A treasure trove of technical details and procedures. Even more interesting was the repeated emphatic statements that none of it worked without competent technical personnel and secure and reliable comms. He seemed pretty certain the Russian army didn't have a nearly enough of either. In fact he sounded like a man was not having a good time.

I think we have a sort of. barely, ok picture of each sides vehicle losses. In that Oryx seems to set a checkable minimum number. I really don't think we have solid numbers on actual soldiers. Even if assume some confidence in KIA numbers, I don't, but even if. We are just clueless about the situation with the wounded, and how many are getting back to their units after a week or a month. The one thing we think we KNOW is that the Russians want the rest of the Donbas BADLY, and the Ukrainians seem to be capable of holding it anyway. We are fairly certain time favors Ukraine. They may actually be getting stronger, and at a minimum are losing capability far more slowly than the Russians. Where all those curves intersect, only time, and sadly blood, will tell.

I Ever so slightly in their defense this might be the first batch of Russians they have ever seen with more situational awareness than an amoeba. Happily they lived to learn from the experience.

The very large open question is can a really effective active protection system be built at a price anybody can actually pay? If the Trophy system, or its successor from Lockheed can knock down most ATGMs the future of warfare is going to look one way, and if it can't things are REALLY going to change. To reiterate I don't think it helps if tanks wind up costing more that fighter jets.

I think there are kinds of operations that are just not viable anymore. At least they are not viable with anything like the current force structure and doctrine. I would argue with 2020 hindsight, that getting out of Afghanistan was a prerequisite for success in Ukraine, because it obvious the Russians would have started supplying the Taliban with all the ATGMs and man portable SAMs they could carry. Deciding to take over a truly hostile country at this point in time requires some combination of an absolutely ridiculous number of troops, and a willingness to be as least as unpleasant as the Russians. That is just going to require a rethink of a great many things from the grand strategy level all the way down.

"Wrong" is the kindest possible interpretation. I have a more realistic one it includes the words tankie, appeasement, hopeless dithering, cowardice and twenty three words Steve has asked us not to use. At this point we simply have to hope the poles will send ~10-15 batteries and ask for forgiveness instead of permission. A lot of brave people who ought to be playing with their kids and planting wheat will die between now and when anything they announce at the next big aid coordination meeting can get there.

https://kyivindependent.com/uncategorized/in-sievierodonetsk-fierce-urban-battle-ongoing-to-exhaust-russia/ Nothing we haven't discussed, but it is a very recent article from as good a source as you are going to find in english.

Lets hope the same factory made a bunch of fuses for the Russians. And that Pentagon QA is better than that.

I really felt the author and/or the source was trying to imply the Ukrainians were doing something wrong or shady. As you just eloquently pointed out they are merely playing game intelligently. Doubly so as there are things the U.S. probably wants plausible deniability on.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-fight-to-survive-russias-onslaught-in-eastern-ukraine A lot of description about how unpleasant it is to shelled continuously. A great line about the 777s though “We used to have to shoot ten times,” Oleg, a sergeant and senior gunner in the unit, told me. “Now we take one shot to correct our fire and on the second hit the target.” Think about what that means for ammo supply.

That is a big number....

If some branch of Ukrainian intelligence could access a few stockpiles and add some intentionally wonky fuses it might be the final shove the Russians morale needs. Of course maybe they just did. I am sure the complete lack of care given to these old stockpiles extended to even pretending to guard them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/politics/ukraine-war-us-intelligence.html Someone in the intelligence blob with an exaggerated sense of their own importance has found the NYT reporter who might as well be on the Russian payroll. Bleeping irritating

NOTHING is worse than bicycles, there are literally 17 different standards for bottom brackets now. It can only be described as intentional industry self sabotage. They are trying to drive their customers nuts, nothing is compatible with anything. We really shouldn't go down this rabbit hole should we.......?

The biggest similarity between 1905 and now is the shocking nature of Russia's military failure. Both Japan and Ukraine were supposed to be short victorious wars against third rate opposition. In both cases they declined to follow the script. In 1905 the regime survived sort of, but from 1906 to 1917 all the regime did was try to put out internal fires and generally stagnate. Its confidence, international standing, finances, and military reputation were all deeply damaged. Furthermore in 1905 Teddy Roosevelt got the Czar a much better peace deal than he deserved. It remains to be seen if Scholz and Macron can manage that for Putin. Also 1905 did not involve anything like the financial and trade pressure Russia is under now. I agree the internal situation in Russia is very different. But in 1905 the Czar was in good health, had an heir whose health problems were not common knowledge, and several hundred years of tradition to prop it up. Neither Putins health, the theoretical certainty of his successor, or the regimes historical legitimacy are remotely similar. While the initial impetus too invade Ukraine was entirely Putin's, I really think much of this stage of the war is a contest between factions of the Russian regime for position in the post Putin "discussion". Who lost Ukraine? is going to be a blood sport when the time comes.

Because British industry is doing so well with Brexit...

I still want video of the meeting where they figured that out. It is the world historical example of smart people doing doing stupid things. As far as the bolts on the howitzer goes anyone who had ever turned a wrench in the mud, or far worse snow, would have made very sure there were only three sizes, and had a rock solid place on the gun to clamp a set. They should all be simple accessible hex bolts where an adjustable wrench would do in a pinch. I used to work on ski lifts for a living, I have seen unpleasant bolts in bad, frozen, 50 ft in the air places. Never once been happy about it. edit: I am quite certain incoming fire would not improve the experience.

The contract Ukraine just signed with Poland makes it pretty clear that is going to be their SPG going forward. That will give them ~80 of them total. I assume the will be happy to equip all their towed units with 777s eventually. All of this is a classic case of doing something in a very great hurry because their just isn't any other choice. Things will break that wouldn't have if we had started equipping Ukraine three years ago in a rational way. People are DYING who wouldn't be if we had started equipping Ukraine three years ago in a rational way. We didn't all we can do is accept that doing it now this way is unavoidably inefficient, and just keep sending them everything they can physically use, as fast as it can be moved. We can also get the bleep over idiotic fine distinctions in what we send. They need MLRS yesterday, they need better AA yesterday. They need those bleeping Marders YESTERDAY. Brave people are dying, and a fair chunk of the third world is getting very hungry while we worry about distinctions that just don't make any sense. The Russians would attack the supply bases in Poland if they thought they could, and still have an army three days later. They haven't, they aren't going to because the only two scenarios are they lose in days instead of months, or civilization gets an unpleasant reset, and even the Russians are not that stupid.