womble
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Posts
8,872 -
Joined
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Days Won
12
Posts posted by womble
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1 minute ago, panzermartin said:
Unless there is a way to blow these from inside?
Russia owns the pipeline, or at least has full scale technical access to it. They could easily have inserted a maintenance pig into the line with the requisute quantiy of explosives on board and sent it downstream until just outside national territory. Piece of the proverbial cake.
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Does the RU "middle class apathy" extend deep enough into the psyche that the dragooned involunteers will actually march like sheep to their deaths (and unfortunately kill a few Ukrainians on their journey) rather than desert/rebel/plain surrender-en-masse at the first opportunity?
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I've seen bridges go in WW2 titles, too. A detonating Sherman 105 on the bridge will do it.
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20 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Not the end of NATO, because Ukraine is not part of NATO, as I am sure you know. But the Baltic states are. So the situation is different.
And for the other ultimatums, China has too much to lose in order to make such a threat. Putin doesn't have much left to lose at all.
North Korea has a limited amount of nuclear weapons and limited missile technology, so it's not the same as Russia.
How much Putin has to lose is not particularly relevant to how allowing the threat of nukes to be an automatic argument-winner is a bad idea for everyone else. Ukraine won't back down, because letting the Russians win "because nukes" means that, in the long run, Ukraine the Nation is dead anyway. Doesn't matter what their allies threaten to withdraw, in the way of support, they can't afford to let Russia off the hook; it's existential.
It'd be the end of NATO because the nuclear trump card would make NATO's existence pointless unless they were willing to answer nuke with nuke.
China has too much to lose to even start thinking seriously about jumping the Taiwan Strait in the first place, let alone threatening nukes. All that noise is for internal consumption.
North Korea can still eradicate millions of people (if it can do *anything* nuclear-weapon-wise, and even if it just opens up with its conventional weapons; Seoul is *right there*. Its threat, if nuclear-armed, is comparable to the threat of tac-nukes in UKR. At least.
Kashmir. Pakistan and India both have nukes, I gather. Does that need any precedent of nuclear threats being the argument-ender in aggressive wars?
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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:
Ukraine might be gung-ho, but they are still dependent on aid from their Western allies. Europe and USA could let Zelensky know that he had to back down. The war would end with an unease armistice, not a peace settlement, and Putin would get his off ramp.
The war would also end with the threat of nuclear weapon use having been legitimised as a means to back up aggressive, atrocity-laden imperialism. This is not a desirable outcome. I think the West will react differently to how you imagine.
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Blowing bridges up is a staple of military stories. They're valuable assets and the tension their potential destruction brings to the "table" when telling a battlefield story (which is a large element of what CM lets us do) is attractive.
But that tension doesn't actually require the "sFx" of blowing the bridge up, since the detonation and demolition is generally the end of the story, one way or another. The tension can be thoroughly adequately supplied by making the bridge an overwhelmingly important objective, maybe Touch for one side and Occupy for the other, depending on the story you want to tell.
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6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Report that Russia's real mobilization target is 1.2 million, with the 300,000 being only the first installment. I guess they're expecting a lot of casualties
Well they've already annonunced they're building 300000 extra Ladas to give to the bereaved families, so they are accounting for 100% losses from that first tranche...
6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:What this indicates is that the initial batch of mobilized men will be even less militarily useful than we speculated. I think Combat Mission might need some training level lower than Conscript. I'm not really kidding.
"Untrained"? Needs a -3 Leadership and worse-than-Poor Motivation as well. "Decrepit" for Fitness?
9 hours ago, danfrodo said:So maybe a big part of US holding back these cards would is because there'd be nothing left to use to escalate with.
There are a few stages below "nuke" and above the political and supply means you mentioned: (in no particular order of significance)
- elision of the BSF and or other surface assets (boomers are a no-go, it seems due to Russia's rules on nuke use);
- no-fly-zone (applicable to RU Air Force only) over Ukraine;
- cruise missiles deleting identified RU AD, arty and logistical assets in Ukraine;
- escalated and transitory sanctions (which would be widely backed by currently inactive players if Putin tosses a nuke).
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9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Now whether or not that is true really depends on how the Russians view it and whether it is a deal breaker. I am pretty confident Russian nationalist will play it up as such.
If RuNats turn out to be the winners in the succession contest (without actually tipping the RUF over into full-blown civil war), Ukraine's options for negotiation through superior firepower become reduced compared to "other options". With the Nats' level of ideological commitment to preserving the trappings of Empire, just turning Sevastopol naval base into cratered rubble won't persuade them there's no point trying to hang on to it, whereas a more lucre-focused "new Kleptoczar" might prefer to walk away from the devastaion.
As ever, Ukraine's options are going to depend at least to some extent on what future mischief the kleptocrats and nazis manage to inflict on Mother Russia.
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3 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:
These lads look big and fit, for a change.
Someone upthread mentioned that the "old-looking" ones must be the ones with the leadership and maybe combat experience. I think that's a mistaken assessment, in most cases; they're just the ones who did their square-bashing and grass-painting-green the longest-ago.
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19 minutes ago, Lethaface said:
What about Prussians?
Only a letter difference.
"Logically", they'd be "Porcs", wouldn't they? Think the French would've had an easier time in '70 if that had truly been the case.
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4 minutes ago, RandomCommenter said:
Now will the loss of Crimea put "the very existence of the state" in jeopardy. Clearly no. Although it may well put the existence of the current regime in jeopardy.
No, but it could well be considered to put a crimp in their nuclear forces' response actions: the BSF has ships that can fire missiles that could be nuclear-tipped, no?
Now, for me that line has already been crossed and ignored with the attacks on that airbase in Crimea, since it is a potential base for nuclear assets, but that wouldn't stop Putin if he wanted to legalise his way to the Big Red Button, I think (which is sorta fair enough; there's a difference between an airbase and a boomer pen).
7 minutes ago, RandomCommenter said:Why is it important to regain Crimea? Because then Ukraine will control the Black Sea. A Russian fleet in Sevastopol is an ongoing threat ...
Not once HIMARS is in range or Hrim gets into serial production, it's not. At least not a credible one, any more than the threat of a northern hook out of Belarus is, today.
9 minutes ago, RandomCommenter said:...the end state here is Ukraine in NATO. And NATO does not admit members with border disputes. So this needs to be resolved.
Hmmm. I think this bears re-evaluating. Ukraine-not-in-NATO has beaten back the invading super-army. If they maintain good relations with NATO, including non-NATO mutual defense pacts with the likes of Poland and Romania and the Baltics, their supply of HIMARS rockets will remain flowing, they'll have options to purchase heavy gear from Rheinmetal or General Dynamics (I mean Abrams, not Ajax - I'm not a monster
), at their choice, and they'll know they have to maintain their guard against the feral bear to their east, which will not have any of those options, nor even the options they started this war with for another 30 years. I think they might be confident they can do this as many times as they need to, and that their friends will continue to back them with supplies and sanctions against the aggressor state. I think that the reactions of the "West" so far has largely demonstrated that this "international regime" does, actually, still work.
I don't even see a need for UKR to sign a peace treaty with RUS. RoK seems to be doing just fine in the "sane family" while having an unresolved border dispute with their northern relatives. Freeze the conflict at the start '22 borders for now, and next time Russia has a paroxysm of self-destruction, or when the Donbas finally discard their Soviet-tinted spectacles and realise their future is so much brighter as part of a "Black Sea Tiger" nation, welcome their wayward kin back into the fold.
And while I've been typing, there have been 11 new replies, so sorry if I'm repeating anything
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4 hours ago, kevinkin said:
OK, I see what you mean. Should the figure below be used moving forward? Hard to tell exactly.
"As told representative of General Staff average rate of KiA usually not exceed 30-50 for a day."
The General Staff numbers do seem to be broadly reliable; the larger number* was their count, too, back in the beginning of "Phase 2". On the whole, the UKR General Staff seem to have an (understandable, sensible) aversion to being outed as propagandising hyperbolists, and recognise that they would probably get found out by "them as matter" if they told porky pies**, and this would hurt their cause. So they tend to stick fairly closely to the facts as they can discern them. Or so it seems. They have admitted error, in the past, too, which adds credibility.
Haiduk has confidence in their assertions, anyway, and his assessments carry some weight of prior accuracy.
* Which has been misused by people with agendas, recently.
** Cockney rhyming slang: pork pie - lie.
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The biggest thing in Crimea of material/military worth to the Russians is the military port of Sevastopol. The rest of its resources are "notional" (offshore, strategic-positional, psychological etc) or there largely in support/defence of the port (airbases and other ancilliary installations). Once the land corridor goes away, the water gets shut down to 3l/pax (Ukraine aren't monsters, and there are some potential UKR citizens living there that they don't want to kill anyway; they won't start off by killing the inhabitants with thirst) a day, and the Kerch rail link goes away and stays down, HIMARS will be in easy range of all port facilities. So they can be wrecked beyond utility and kept that way (or quickly reduced if they're allowed to be restored under some peace deal but later become a threat). Any vessels attempting to use Crimean port facilities will be vulnerable to similar interdiction.
Will Russia really want to keep it, and will anyone actually want to stay who isn't culturally tied to that land? The road bridge can stay...
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19 minutes ago, RandomCommenter said:
I mean we are just after an orgy of celebration of a feudal monarchy but yeah, whatever. And the arrest of protestors, super democratic. Holding up a blank piece of paper being a criminal offence. Nice.
New head of state and new prime minister in the past two weeks were selected by somewhat less than democratic means.
Current government trying to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights because it makes it a bit inconvenient for them to ship vulnerable people off to Rwanda.
One of the two houses of parliament being literally a House of Lords. Super democratic.
Don't get me wrong, the UK is no Russia. And I am grateful for all the help the UK is giving Ukraine. But definitely has work to do (as do most countries in fairness).
Well done. Misunderstandinatin' 9/10. Nice work.
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37 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
OK this figure jives with the other guy's and I guess is elevated due to offensive ops. However, increased causalities as the result of a storage of a single caliber of shell is puzzling even though the 152 is very commonly used. Sounds like the offensive was time sensitive and Ukraine needed to accept losses to take advantage of the situation on the ground as presented by western ISR to be damned with ammo deliveries. Would like to understand why this shortage took place, do you have a reference?
I think you're misunderstanding Haiduk's point.
The 150-200/day KIA number is from "way back" in May-June, when Russia was gnawing away in the Donbas. The reference to lack of ammo for the most common artillery piece is because the lack of ammo for the guns meant the Russian attacks couldn't be squelched by the King of the Battlefield, and the Queen (Poor Bloody Infantry) had to do the job up close and personal, in the face of Russian artillery supremacy, which meant a lot of the ground pounders had to pay the blood price to keep Russia's rate of advance glacial.
The cause of the lack was the immense expenditure earlier in the war which meant that, at that time, supplies overall were badly depleted. The NATO-supplied 155s were only just coming on line, and the other-nation supplies of Soviet calibres were only just, IIRC, being arranged/implemented.
It has nothing to do with offensive operations by the UKR armed forces; they've been undertaking those with adequate-to-overwhelming indirect fire support.
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8 minutes ago, RandomCommenter said:
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban wants EU sanctions on Russia lifted by the end of the year, a pro-government daily newspaper said Thursday.
Orban can go "whistle". Up a rope. In the dark with a torch and a map... And other mixed metaphors to avoid expletion.
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8 hours ago, Offshoot said:
An interview with a Russian tank driver POW who is now allowed to help out with trophy vehicles.
It's low level stuff, but he talks about how little training he received to drive a tank, the poor state of Russian equipment, and how his tank crew were the only people he really knew in his unit.
Another thing he mentioned (not a direct quote) : people are hanging on to patriotism rather than fighting for their squadmates. A much more brittle motivation to remain "in the fight".
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48 minutes ago, chrisl said:
As far as the Kerch bridge goes - I'd consider just hitting the rail bridge first. It would eliminate the best supply route that Russia has available, and put pressure on the trucks/motor vehicles that they need for supplying the main fronts.
It would also leave a way out for lighter elements/panicking potential future civilian issues that could be interdicted if the RU tried evacuating their heavy gear.
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4 minutes ago, billbindc said:
100% this is being read by the relevant state agencies of the opposition.
This must be true, since we have evidence that they have used BFC product for official purposes in the past, so are aware of the knowledge and effort that hangs about here.
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23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
What happens when a nation has tens of thousands of mentally scared violent "men of action" floating around with nothing to do? Nothing good, that's for sure.
Especially when a significant proportion of those "men of action" started out as either wannabe or actual felons. I mean, I know the armies of the West have a few wrong'uns sent there as a potential way of avoiding judicial action, but at least those guys get the benefit of an effective system of discipline before their term of service is up, rather than just being hazed and bullied and initiated in a dysfunctional structure of institutional corruption and brutality.
Though I guess that was also the case in the '90s after Afghanistan...
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1 hour ago, riptides said:
Seems like their definition of treasure was washing machines and toilets.
Those were mostly stolen by standard RUAF dogfaces (short and/or coerced contract "regulars"). Wagner contractors get paid regularly and highly enough to not need such mundane loot from the conflict zone (which is the point the putative arch-Nat is making about how PMCs can be more efficient than State troops).
ISTR that mercenary organisations are actually illegal under Russian law. Wagner is literally allowed to break the law, and granted impunity because Putin says so. Same will presumably apply to any PMCs raised under the auspices of other RUS institutions. Convenient for those in power to be able to simply (assuming they have the throw weight) act upon the law in the case of any PMC that does anything at all that they do not like.
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PMCs are basically mercenaries. Most mercenaries have a price. In treasure. The West is better placed to outbid Putin than vice-versa. Devolving the defense of the Realm onto the shoulders of Condottieri wasn't a sustainable approach for the Italian city states at the beginning othe Renaissance; it doesn't seem likely to be any more effective in the C21st.
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49 minutes ago, Huba said:
western style SEAD campaign
It has also been asserted that it's not so much a capability of "western" air forces as it is restricted in the main to USAF elements who train specifically and extensively with specialist equipment in order to prosecute the mission, and even then it's dicey against integrated RU-style AD networks. Russia doesn't possess enough of the specialist equipment (and the Russian versions have some pretty big flaws), and certainly doesn't maintain sufficient training tempo to develop such a capability.
20 minutes ago, The_Capt said:There were rumours that the RUAF had been effective in blunting UA offensives but no one ever had any proof of this, nor do the events of the last week and half support the idea.
I got the impression that those rumours were at least as much from the UKR side as from the RUS... Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Since those times, though, the UKR troops have had longer to figure out how to ensure MANPAD coverage on the offensive, and Gepard have arrived to provide some mobile AAA. Also, the sheer velocity of the Kharkiv advance will have thoroughly wigged out the RUS target-acquisition loop for CAS.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Nah. Russia definitely has the expertise to put a dive team or a submersible on the line anyplace they want to. They could even have installed a destruct mechanism when they dropped the pipe into the Baltic in the first place.
Using a pig has quite a big risk of identifiable debris being found by whomever comes in to investigate; a demolition charge would have less material extraneous to the explosion to remain to be found by a forensic examination. I'd say the possibilities are of a similar order of magnitude, at least