Markus86

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

What Haiduk posted seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Social media is full of really really terrible pictures and videos. I can't even imagine how Israel will react and how far this will spread in the region. 

The question facing military professionals everywhere out of this war are:
- "What is unique to this war?"
- "What is universal to all future wars?"
We had a whole thread going on the General Forum on development of warfare over the 19th century and I believe modern militaries are facing a similar conundrum.
"How would NATO do in this war?"  Well it depends which side we are going to be.  As Ukraine against Russia we would likely have seen a shorter sharper war but the costs would have been a serious shock to the western world. [note: let's not get dragged into another nuclear equation discussion, we can just put that one to the side]  We are talking likely tens of thousands of casualties and a lot of expensive kit lost.  Why?
- Air superiority.  I do not know what this means in a modern context.  A2AD capability is rapidly becoming distributed and highly portable.  We may have been able to gain air superiority over 20,000 feet but below that we would have been taking serious losses as there is not such thing as SEAD for MANPADs basically everywhere.  Modern MANPADs and IADs can operate independently all over the battlefield.  Further they can deny airspaces at much higher altitudes and higher ranges.  Why?  Because while we were stonking Iraq, Libya, Serbia and a bunch of dirt farmers in Afghanistan competing states were taking notes and investing heavily in the tech.  Take away our air supremacy and the western way of warfare is immediately in trouble.  And, shocker, places like Iran really don't like us and do not want to be invaded.
Below 20,000 feet it is the freakin wild west right now.  I do not care how many lasers we strap on every tank, IFV or truck.  I do not care how much EM is pumped into space - birds f#ucked up for the next 20 years.  Unmanned systems are 1) cheap, 2) highly effective and 3) everywhere.  Whether they are doing ISR or strike they have changed the fabric of warfare between about 3 to 20,000 feet...and they are just getting started.  Air superiority below 20,000 feet does not exist as a concept right now.  Hell we lost it below 2000 feet in Iraq to freakin ISIL, who were basically the lowest bar one can get with respect to conventional warfare.   If we were fighting the RA the UAS problem would be extremely costly...as in freakin nations pulling out after losing too many people, costly.  Can anyone imagine if the Taliban got their hands on this tech and started dropping old cluster munitions right on our heads back in the COPs and FOBs?  I slept for weeks about 200m from a 50,000 gallon fuel bladder that was resting under an open sky ...let that sink in.
So what?  Well "wither goest Air Superiority" is one of the biggest questions of this war, and as you can see it is a multi-dimensional one.
- C4ISR.  Russia does not have a world class C4ISR architecture.  But even with what they do have the principle of "making them go dark" to establish C4ISR superiority - far more important in this day and age then any domain superiority - is also in question.  With everything being a sensor hooked into crazy comms and networks - hell with hotspotting everything can be a node in a comms network.  So I am not even sure how to make an opponent go dark anymore (see unmanned).  I am sure we got people working on it but the fact that an even poorly armed opponent can see me tens of kms out makes me nervous.  Worse, they can see my logistics train as well.  The fact they can record all this and stream it all over the planet in real time turns really concerns me.  A half decent opponent would be broadcasting every screw up and horror show, which makes sustainment of national will a big problem.
- PGM.  Artillery, ATGM...insert whatever nightmare comes next.  No one is ready to face this.  I cannot begin to imagine trying to do an obstacle crossing when my opponent can hit me at 3-4kms with an 80% success rate with ATGM.  "Oh that is ok, we have APS"...fantastic, right up until someone comes up with workarounds like sub-munitions or EFP.  And even if we do magically put bubble wrap around ourselves, nothing on earth can stop artillery round that can land directly on my head.  Oh and this is while I am still trying to deal with old stuff like mines, and new stuff like UAS.
All of that  adds up to some very disconcerting calculus.  As in "is combined arms dead as we know it?" type of calculus (someone is going to try and answer this, someone always does...just don't bother.  I do not post my mil quals for some very good reasons but trust me when I say no one has this figured out yet).
Now here is the punchline: this is all if we were fighting Russia.  I, frankly, am far less concerned about fighting Russia - now more than ever.  I am very worried about fighting Ukraine.  If we get stuck on the wrong side of a proxy war and our opponent is armed with C4ISR, PGM and A2AD like Ukraine is right now, we are in very serious trouble. 
"Well we just won't fight those wars."  Ya, that is not how it works.  We don't get to choose the wars we decide to fight, gawd that is a post-Cold War perception that needs to die, and fast.  This is the nightmare scenario and I do not know if you guys have been paying attention but we kinda been doing a lot of expeditionary operations in all sort of places to push the brand.  What happens when Chinese space based ISR start lighting us up?  We wind up in a hybrid fight with the other side armed with HJ-12s?
I do not know.  This is a big reason when [insert talking head] says "Ukraine needs to do this"  "We need to give them that"...and the war will be over in a week.  My advice is to stop listening.  No one in the west has been in a war like this since Korea and the freakin needle has moved miles since Korea.  I say this without hyperbole, we are going to be spending the rest of this century trying to figure this all out as things like UGVs start coming online.  Tell your (grand) kids to get into the sciences of killing because it is a major growth industry.  For now, the best we can do is watch and learn.  Both the UA and RA are feeling their way through a war unlike any we have seen before.   

Or if you focus too much in one direction. Apparantly a russian is sneaking into the trench, while ukrainian soldiers focus on what is in front of them. 
 

Or if you focus too much in one direction. Apparantly a russian is sneaking into the trench, while ukrainian soldiers focus on what is in front of them. 
 

Or if you focus too much in one direction. Apparantly a russian is sneaking into the trench, while ukrainian soldiers focus on what is in front of them. 
 

Or if you focus too much in one direction. Apparantly a russian is sneaking into the trench, while ukrainian soldiers focus on what is in front of them. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

You must watch until the end. 
 

Seems we have another UKR attack

Sorry, that's enough for me. I am sorry, Germany doesn't act the way you want us to. I am the last one who wouldn't admit what we have done wrong in the past and where we still fail. But this really goes too far. Your first paragraph was interesting then you go on bashing Germany based on rumors you can't prove and the rest is just a rant which is frankly insulting to a high degree and things like "when they haven't done anything worth talking about" is just plainly, factually, wrong. You make it sound like we are allied with Russia or something.
I usually refrain from quoting the bible but "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
 

Colonel-general Oleksandr Syrskyi comanded of this operation. Also he commanded the defense of Kyiv
 
 

Edit: Haiduk explained that this is an old video from 2016 and shows an ukrainian vehicle. 
Do you guys remember when the amphibious ability of vehicles was discussed (epically failed river crossing)?
Someone explained how important maintenance is, to ensure this ability. 
Guess how this bmp ends, trying to cross a river ...
 

Edit: Haiduk explained that this is an old video from 2016 and shows an ukrainian vehicle. 
Do you guys remember when the amphibious ability of vehicles was discussed (epically failed river crossing)?
Someone explained how important maintenance is, to ensure this ability. 
Guess how this bmp ends, trying to cross a river ...
 

Edit: Haiduk explained that this is an old video from 2016 and shows an ukrainian vehicle. 
Do you guys remember when the amphibious ability of vehicles was discussed (epically failed river crossing)?
Someone explained how important maintenance is, to ensure this ability. 
Guess how this bmp ends, trying to cross a river ...
 

So, again, do not get too focused on the tactical here.  The UA currently looks like it is balancing two simultaneous operations at either end of the front, one in Kharkiv and one at Kherson.  They are seeing gains in both and look like they are balancing resources to each of them...at the same time.  This is by no stretch "basic competence" for any military, to the point that  I highly doubt 3 out of the 5 EYES militaries could pull this off right now without a lot of prep time - and even the UK may be stretching it.
C4ISR, logistics - especially transport, force generation and projection and deep strike are all being coordinated at a high level between these two operations, and they look like they are doing very well.  No more "oh but the Russian's suck" on this one, what the UA is doing is on the upper end of difficult for any military, let alone one that has been in a meat grinder over the summer.  The last time the west did anything even remotely like this was Gulf War (Iraq 03 was a single axis), and we had air supremacy and it still took months to pull off, and we were not being attacked the whole time. 

Not the smartest thing, to operate a drone over enemy territory with a video tour of your military base saved on it.