dan/california
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Posts posted by dan/california
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
I guess I have heard from the military conservative school for most of my career...hell at one point I think I was inside it. They have declared "fad" since 1991 for everything from EBO, RMA and Multi-Domain. They have also mounted evidence to prove their "rightness". This war is unique, not only for its time in history, but also what it is demonstrating - just how far war is evolving beyond our former doctrinal status quos.
What we are seeing in Ukraine is not a "fad". It is fundamental on many levels.
The current doctrine is hitting two fundamental physics problems. Tanks simply can't get any heavier, they are already so heavy that they can't go more places than they can in any environment except hardpan desert, never mind crossing anything but the largest bridges. Second a well designed five or ten kg tandem shaped charge can kill any land vehicle in existence, and the actual warhead cost at most a few thousand dollars. With tanks running five million and up the math doesn't add. All the points of friction that used to make introducing the expensive tank to cheap warhead are melting before our eyes. We need a whole new plan.
1 hour ago, The_Capt said:Solid "meh" from me. I mean, sure if we see scope and scale that overtakes artillery and begins to hunt it to extinction, like we have seen with tanks...but the evidence is not there yet.
Guns teaming with Unmanned and Light infantry has happened in this war to pretty solid effects, I suspect it will be a trend that continues.
I will put 50$ on the bar that the eggheads in the western MIDs are scrambling to figure out how to build and employ a cheap hunter-killer c-drone, drone. So an equilibrium wave is coming, but the needle will be moved and cannot be unmoved.
Whether it moves far enough to drop a second pillar of the combat arms teams (ie artillery) though? I am betting "no," at least for another decade. My guess is that they will share the battlefield and advantage will go to whichever side can combine them the best.
The biggest reason, at least in western warfare will be "control". Unmanned AI could be let off the leash to swarm and eliminate grid squares, but we will likely get bogged down in legality. Artillery still has high levels of direct human control, and legal frameworks that govern its employment. That alone almost guarantees a generational shift.
In the end we are talking about "killing at distance". Artillery and UAS share the qualities to push that out over the horizon when linked into modern C4ISR. Anything that can stop a drone, won't be able to stop PGM artillery and vice versa. Tanks simply do not have the range and are too big and heavy for what we get out of them. Infantry can hold ground. Now UGVs are a revolution for holding ground that we have not seen yet. But there I also expect human-unmanned pairing forward. At least at the start.
Everyone is being way to rigid about categories, drones and artillery are going to merge into a single multiply cross threaded complex of explosive delivery on demand. There will be unmanned indirect fire systems from 40mm all the way up to 155mm or even larger. There will be artillery and rocket delivered drones all the way up to the payload of an ATACMs.
QuoteThe artillery deployed sub munitions in the very effective German smart round were developed in 1989. They deploy a parachute and float over an unlucky target, or not. Electronics and and and everything else have improved in the last thirty years, just a bit. There is ZERO reason except some development time and money that a new version of this couldn't deploy the exact same submunition with pop out glider wings instead of a parachute. So now instead of sweeping a a strip a few tens of meters wide at the mercy of the wind, it systematically searches a square kilometer for the highest value target. And communicates with the rest of the salvo to avoid double kills. and if they can get it working with new some of the rocket assisted shells it might have a range of 80 or a hundred kilometers. Something approximating GLSDB could probably deliver 10 or twenty of the little monsters, and they wouldn't have to stand as much acceleration either. The possibilities just spin on from there.
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14 minutes ago, chrisl said:
And for modern naval vessels packing a single 5" gun, I imagine if things got hot they'd get used much like the guns on WWII era submarines. For an isolated, unarmed ship (or small hostile scout vessel) they wouldn't want to use their equivalent of a missile (a torpedo), especially for small targets that might not even trigger it. They'd sneak up and cut loose with the deck gun (or guns, sometimes they had a 20 mm and/or .50 cal too). Sometimes you need to be able to deliver an explosion from moderate range and don't need a whole missile for it.
In particular the gun can respond to close targets far faster than anything else. Say you are in the process of stopping and boarding a freighter of unknown provenance/registration/intentions, having a fast firing five inch gun pointed directly at the bridge of said freighter is a extremely good guarantee of the ships behavior unless the people on the bridge are suicidal. Furthermore the boom the five inch makes is unlikely to damage your own ship if it detonates a kilometer or two away.
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14 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Hmm, not sure this tracks. They can be made less efficient through defensive manoeuver but naval warfare simply added volume. Up until modern missiles they were the primary weapon system for ships of the line. We still put them on ships for a reason. A/C took primacy due to range, even thought they lost volume. Missile offset with range and accuracy.
So naval gunnery expanded its options spaces through volume of fires effectively. Firing many salvos to reduce defensive options. This is how Jutland happened.
Just pulling these metrics together - range, energy-time, composition, accuracy, volume, agility. These are looking at lot like modern military High Level Military Requirements (HLMRs). To my mind these are the framework for an options space.
Precision as "small energy at the right time" of "smart energy" really resonates.
The problem with battleships guns is that they can only be fired from a battleship. They are sort the poster child for somethig that is going to be few, expensive, and too valuable to lose. Where you can dump cruisse missiles out submarines, and other PGMs out submarines that are much harder to kill, or cheap surface vessels that could be praticlly disposable. The unbelievably expensive radar, defensive lasers, and who knows what else a surface ship will need to actually be survivable can go on a platform dedicated to staying alive, and providing C4SIR to the miisslie barges..
57 minutes ago, The_Capt said:Steve forgot a fifth one: logistical weight. Guns are still big steel tubes with complex firing mechanics, towed or self propelled and heavy. That is fuel, spare parts and a lot of heavy ammunition. Not to mention human crew costs - but FPVs also come with crew costs as well, still not sure how these stack up against per-firepower compared to unmanned. Drones are not zero weight but do not need all that dense weight. Makes them far more distributable and much lower support bill. They are highly precise, more so than even artillery PGM - have not seen many 155 round make a U turn on a road to hit a tank from behind. Ranges are comparable now, but may get longer for tac UAS over time. FPVs can be massed produces cheaply, artillery ammo can as well but not the guns themselves.
Ranges for artillery and drones are just going to go up, and then up more.
https://www.nammo.com/story/the-range-revolution/
100 km 155 is in late stage testing.
Perun covers current and near future drones here with his usual brilliance, was posted a few pages ago, but definitely worth your time if you haven't watched it yet.
What all of this adds up to is an ever expanding grey zone/no mans land in a more or less equal fight between first tier militaries, and probably vastly higher costs for a first tier power to take on a second, or third tier one. We are already at the point where both sides in Ukraine can barely bring a vehicles within 10km of the front, and they certainly can't stop moving in that zone for more than a minute or two. Next year in Ukraine that could easily be twenty km instead of ten. In the next war, five or ten years from now it could easily be fifty.
QuoteU.S. is at the point of trying to get rid of towed guns completely. They can't shoot far enough, or scoot fast enough.
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1 minute ago, The_Capt said:
That is just insane. Forget situational awareness and they cannot swing the gun. Sure it may stop FPVs but now gets lit up by ATGMs and artillery.
It has to be really bad for vehicles if the Russians are trying out stuff like this.
The worst part is that it is open in back, so it isn't even particuraly protective against a competent FPV pilot. I assume they tried closing it up, and found that either the crew was in danger of suffocation, or the engine experienced severe overheating. I could be the ever popular both.
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Apologies for the double post.
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1 hour ago, Tenses said:
Taking a few steps back and looking at overall situation, what exactly do you think can really change the tide of this war? Beacuse even with these recent massive mechanized losses the pressure is pretty much the same and we know that when BMPs, BMDs and tanks will not be available, Ruzzians will just go on foot. We currently wait for(and Ukrainians die in the meantime):
- ammunition to artillery/more artillery: This will provide support, which is badly needed, especially in defence, might actually stop most of the attacks but not for long due to penetration of Russian ISR up to and beyond artillery positions.
- F16s : Just as above and might also have some impact on air defence. I don't see much usage in offence deep behind the frontline, definitly can provide good very close to the frontline air support. If will be properly used, with superior Ukraine ISR, can be hard to deal by Russian anti-air. The minus is that every mistake will be extremely costly and irreplacable(mainly the pilots, planes to the lesser degree).
- air defence, anti tank weaponry replacements : this should assure keeping the quality of both of these on current, in my opinion, pretty high level
Apart from these, which should come from the "West" exclusively we have the drone war, but is it possible to achieve quality+quantity=pressure of drone swarms to actually push back? I see that as currently the only option to do that but I am not sure, if gaining that high pressure is actually possible. It was analyzed here many times that using classical means for counteroffensive is generally death sentence.
And if pushing back is not possible what are we looking at here? Either there is a plan to turn the tide or not, I would not count on Russia running out of something, even if it looks like it. It went for the ammo to North Korea, it went for drones to Iran, it produces a lot by itself, if real necessity arises I don't belive it won't get support from China in a meaningful way. And I think it is clear to everyone that China has no bottom, the current "Games of Hegemony" is exactly because of that.
So, do we have a clear target here or just "wait and see"?
1 hour ago, Holien said:Yep, Ukraine to win just has to stay in the fight...
What game plan does Russia have to win this?
Time is on the Ukrainian side, they just have to keep fighting.
Afghanistan is the model to look at...
If and it's a big IF Ukraine can weather this year and generate enough new force they might have options next year...
In the meantime keep poking the Bears eyes out and making it costly (oil refineries) for Russia to continue...
I one hundred percent agree with Holien, a thousand casualties per DAY is not something the Russians can do forever, NOBODY can do that forever.
The second thing the Russians can't do is fight this war without diesel and jet fuel. The Ukrainians need to push their campaign against Russian oil refineries as hard as they possibly can, and then harder than that.
The one thing I would add, is drone DEFENCE. If the Ukrainians could could suddenly start knocking Russian drones out the sky wholesale, the entire Russian system would come apart in a month. This works both ways of course, so NATO needs to be absolutely sure the Ukrainians get there first.
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5 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/06/ukraine-war-zelensky-options/
Where are these articles coming from? Is the war worsening? In what way?
It all part of the Russian propaganda/disinformation push. They are a whole lot better at that than they are actually fighting.
4 minutes ago, Haiduk said:The story with Tsar-EW-tank got a continue.
After Russian attack was repelled, additional recon showed that this tank hadn't critical damages and can be moved to our positions as valuable source, because almost all Russian portable anti-drone EW assets were mounted which just were possible. It's turned out our FPV damaged only targeting system, then a tank tracks stuck in barbed wire with attached AT-mines, tank lost control, crashed into disabled BMP and stopped - the crew abandoned tank.
During several nights two "Azov" tankers have been providing reparing works. They unlocked driver's hatch, because a gun was directly under it, them they changed a 70 kg battery, which brought from own positions - this work should be done by three men, but they did it together. Then they unraveled and cut the wire on the tracks and removed a mine under the tank. All this in the nights and not in calm situation - one night Russians tried to recapture tank, sending a group on the bikes (!!!), but it was eliminated.
After all "Azov" tankers turn on engine and drive to own positions in Terny. But on the route the tank in the darkness fell into bomb crater, the driver hit head and lost consciousness. Fortynately he came to senses soon and could drive out the crater. Tank arrived to Terny, where the crew already awaited Serhiy "Flash" - admin of FB/TG channel about EW and communication systems. On the photo below he already researhes trophy equipmnent
EPIC! This has to be a movie eventually.
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Quote
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5dlfbiLx_y/
Ukrainian kamikaze drone hit Russian truck but failed to explode
God is giving them one last warning to go the bleep home...
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/positional-warfare-alexander-svechin’s-strategy
Introduction
Discussions of the character of the Russian war in Ukraine have increasingly adopted terms such as “stalemate” and “attritional” to describe the state of the conflict. Both terms draw parallels with the Western Front of the First World War that are not wholly inaccurate but that can be misleading if taken too far. The current Russian war in Ukraine is certainly not stalemated in the sense of having reached a point where neither side can make further progress. Nor is it, properly speaking, attritional. An attritional war is one in which attrition itself is the victory mechanism — that is, one side aims to win by wearing the other down through losses. The Germans indeed pursued an explicitly attritional campaign in the 1916 Battle of Verdun. But neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians are currently seeking to win by imposing greater losses on the adversary. They are, rather, engaged in a kind of war best described as “positional.” Positional war is characterized by relatively static frontlines and regular combat that produces little movement, but the aim of such combat is generally either to create forward progress through steady if small advances or to create conditions to restore maneuver to the battlefield. This essay explores one of the most detailed considerations of positional warfare, offered by Soviet military theorist Alexander Svechin in his 1926 work, Strategy — a work that has influenced the Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian militaries. It offers an important corrective to our understanding of the current conflict and its likely trajectories.
Has this been posted already?
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
China is in a weird spot. They need Russia weak and dependent so they continue to have access to cheap energy (and maybe the odd land grab). But they do not want Russia to totally win, it would 1) really set off the US and West, and 2) A re-energized Russia doesn’t sell cheap energy as easily. And then they do not want Russia to completely fail and fall apart - see access to cheap energy.
They are kinda threading a strategic needle like we are, but from the other direction. If they had to accept “less” from their perspective it is likely a Russian short win the West signs off on. They avoid economic punishment from the West and still have a shot to access cheap energy because a Russian short win would likely still see the West no longer buying said cheap energy.
Whereas the West likely wants a Ukrainian short-win. Russia taught a visible lesson and still in penalty box. But in a slow decline, not a full on freefall. And China’s problem in the longer term.
I agree with this as far as it goes, but I think a great many people over estimate the predictability of the whole situation. There are nine different ways this whole thing could just BREAK. Jake Sullivan thinks he is acting in a way that decreases that risk, I am strongly of the opinion that he is mostly increasing the risk it breaks the wrong way.
The chance to tie this thing up in a neat knot and pretend it never happened disappeared in April or May of 2022, after two years of ever increasing commitment of lives and treasure by everyone involved, someone is going lose.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/opinion/ukraine-aid-congress.html
Allowing Russia to impose its will on Ukraine would be a devastating blow to America’s credibility and leadership — fulfilling one of Mr. Putin’s long-term goals. That, in turn, would risk encouraging him to test waters further afield, whether in the Baltic States, in western Europe or to the south, and would signal to Xi Jinping that China, too, can throw its weight around.
NYT editorial page having an attack of sense.
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39 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Johnson is in a tough spot, for sure. But leaders are supposed to up for the challenge of, er, leading. McCarthy flubbed up badly and Johnson hasn't shown much improvement. Except, he seems far more aware of his own limitations than McCarthy and that's possibly a good thing regarding Ukraine support.
The way I see it, there is NO avoiding a leadership challenge at this point. It's pretty much assured no matter what Johnson does. His options appear to be:
Option 1 = do nothing to support Ukraine, continue to piss off a very large % of the House and Senate GOP. I think it is likely he's been warned that no vote on Ukraine soon means a call for new leadership (it's not just the wingnuts that can make this happen). It seems that Johnson has determined doing nothing is not viable, so this one appears to be off the table.
Option 2 = put forward a weak Ukraine bill, have a wingnut call for leadership change, and have 100% of the Democrats vote for for Jeffries. There is a fairly good chance this might mean the next Speaker is a Democrat.
Option 3 = put forward a decent Ukraine bill, get assurances from at least a handful of Democrats that they will not vote for Jeffries ("present" is acceptable), have a wingnut call for leadership change, go into leadership chaos like McCarthy, have nothing else get done, and likely wind up losing as happened to McCarthy.
Option 4 = put forward a solid Ukraine bill, get assurances from a large number of Democrats to vote "present", have a wingnut call for leadership change, avoid the McCarthy chaos, and retain his Speakership.
The logical option is #4 because it is the best for Johnson and the GOP generally (nothing would be worse than Jeffries getting to Speaker). He'd probably only need 30 or so Dems to vote "present" for him to win a quick reappointment. From the Democrat's side, they get something they really want (Ukraine), they avoid something they really don't want (chaos in the House), they remind everybody how weak the GOP is going into the next election cycle.
I view #4 as a win-win for both parties and the majority of members, but that option was available to McCarthy and he chose chaos and dismissal instead. So... like Putin, Johnson has bad choices in front of him and there's no reason to think he'll favor the best of them.
Steve
34 minutes ago, billbindc said:Democrats fully intend to forestall any attempt to overthrow Johnson...if he puts through a Ukraine bill. There will be enough Republicans to go along and make it happen. In fact, only three or four would do.
7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:Yeah, the 30ish number would be pretty much an overkill lockdown on reelection. That would insulate him from a larger Freedom Caucus defection. Since those members have shown that they aren't as unified as they once were, if I were Johnson I'd be looking for more than a handful of Democrats to pledge a "present" vote (obviously NONE will vote for Johnson EVER).
For those not familiar with the significance of voting "present", here's a quick recap.
The Speaker is elected by the majority of the members that show up to vote that day (provided they have a quorum). A vote of "present" takes that person out of the entire equation. 1 person voting "present" is the same as that person staying home and munching on popcorn. The GOP has only a 2 seat majority, which means they have almost no room for error. However, if Democrats vote "present" that effectively increases the GOP majority PROVIDED they all vote as a block for one candidate. They do not have to.
Here's a scenario. On the day of a leadership vote 100% of all House members show up. The vote goes forward with Dems sticking together and 100% voting for their leader; Jeffries. If 3 GOP members vote "present" or for another candidate, then Jeffries becomes the new Speaker. On the other hand, if in this situation 2 Dems agree to vote "present" then Johnson stays on as Speaker.
This is why the only viable path for Johnson to keep is seat is to either not have a challenge at all (seems unlikely) or to give the Dems enough to be assured of sufficient "present" votes.
Steve
Everything Steve and Bill have said above is is correct, but there is one or two more layers to it that is worth keeping in mind. Johnson understands that whatever happens in the next ~nine months, he is very unlikely to be the Speaker in the next Congress. The second issue is that according to all publicly available information Johnson is flat broke, or near as makes no matter. By broke I mean his financial declarations when he ascended to the Speakership showed a negative net worth, and only a few thousand dollars cash on hand. Throw in four kids and he has been on the ragged edge of bankruptcy for forever.
I detail all this because it has a huge bearing on his current choices regarding Ukraine and the Speakership. The best choice for absolutely every one else is bad for Johnsons post Speakership career. If he does the right thing for Ukraine and the rest of the civilized world he greatly hurts his access to the wing nut welfare system that supports the right wing talking heads. Since his entire record in congress before the last year indicates he is an apparently sincere religious conservative with extreme views on abortion, among other things. He isn't going to get a job with MSNBC or one of the Centrist think tanks. I have no idea how he squares this circle.
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Bleep me I hope he is wrong.
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The Baba Yaga octocopters are just lightly modified agricultural drones. The Ukrainians have taken out entire battalions with them, cumulatively. Virtually all the FPV drones are the 21st century equivalent of a 32 Chevy hopped up to run moonshine, it can barely be called engineering. They have accounted for several motor rifle division worth of vehicles at this point. Whoever gets purpose built semi autonomous drones drones to the battlefield first in quantity is going to win this war. That is if all those drones do is make decently packaged, halfway thought out, versions of things somebody, somewhere, can already do. If they think of even one or two new tricks along the way....
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4 minutes ago, Hapless said:
@dan/california Seen as though I was eyeballing it.
Having to re-read it to edit this post down only makes it sound crazier.Thanks!
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32 minutes ago, White2Golf said:
My guess is trying to show the difference between strategy and tactics. I'm just curious what this audience thinks of the analysis, by itself.
Twitter is hating me more than usual, can you post the full text?
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3 hours ago, Beleg85 said:
Poor jihadists; so much effort and like stone in the water.
Sometimes that inspires people to find a bigger rock...
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I think the las two post are now showing me different twitter posts than they were 20 minutes ago. I suspect Twitter is losing what is left of its "mind", and if somebodies post doesn't make sense, that might be why.
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-4-2024
Key Takeaways:
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov claimed that NATO and Russia are in “direct confrontation,” likely as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to intensify existing information operations meant to force the West into self-deterrence.
- Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov appealed to Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) members to increase cooperation against perceived Western threats as part of the effort to posture against the West.
- The Kremlin leveraged this overall information operation about escalation with NATO to target France specifically, following French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent calls for the West to expand the level and types of security assistance it sends to Ukraine.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also promoted information operations feigning interest in negotiations, and Lavrov’s and Shoigu’s likely coordinated informational efforts may signal a new round of intensified Russian rhetoric about negotiations.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin continues attempts to balance the Kremlin’s opposing efforts to set social expectations for a protracted Russian war effort and to assuage Russian society’s concerns about the economic consequences of the war and labor migration.
- Russian forces conducted a roughly reinforced company-sized mechanized assault towards Chasiv Yar (west of Bakhmut) on April 4 and advanced up to the eastern outskirts of the settlement.
- Russian forces also recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut and Donetsk City.
- An unspecified senior NATO official reportedly told Russian opposition news outlet Vazhnye Istorii that NATO intelligence agencies have not observed indications that Russia is preparing for a large-scale partial mobilization wave.
Russia is pushing propaganda and disinformation on every possible channel. Indeed I think the ritual suicide charges they keep doing on the actual battlefield have more to do with propaganda than any meaningful military goal.
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Two things from ISW we haven't already discussed. I wonder how Putin feels about air defenses that are not controlled by the Kremlin?Quote- https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3-2024Republic of Tatarstan Head Rustam Minnikhanov warned that Russian companies and local authorities must defend themselves against Ukrainian drone strikes and not rely on Russian air defenses following the April 2 Ukrainian strikes on Russian military production and oil refinery infrastructure in Tatarstan.
- Russian-backed former Ukrainian separatist politician Oleg Tsaryov complained on April 3 that no current Russian political party adequately represents the political interests of Russian ultranationalists, highlighting a possible source of discontent between the pro-Russian ultranationalist community and the Kremlin.
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How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
So some body has already done pop out wings. It already has a pretty good sensor package. All it needs is a tiny solid fuel motor and some way warp those wings for control purposes, and instead of a 150 meter circle, it is a 1500 meter circle. I think that might worth the some engineering effort. setting up a new line is almost free, as a marginal cost, because we need LOTS of new lines for every type of 155 round in the inventory. They might as well be better 155 rounds with current generation electronics.