Tux
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Posts posted by Tux
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6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Chris_O has an interesting thread on the costs to the Russian governmental budgets for their "Cope Defenses" of Russian territory:
What's really funny is all the Russian talk about the threat of Ukraine before this war, yet no fortifications were built on even close to this scale. Apparently Russia really wasn't all that scared of Ukraine until after it attacked. Yeah, shocking news!
Steve
To my mind these kinds of things are highly revealing because, to external eyes, they clearly *weaken* Russia's nuclear deterrent. How so? Because by building tank traps a distance behind the Russian border they are implicitly agreeing to fight a conventional conflict over Russian land. The concurrent implication is therefore that any invasion of Russian soil will not necessarily be met by a nuclear response.
Now I am not for a moment thinking that's the intended message, nor that Western leadership should or will read it that way. That's what's interesting: this seems to me clearly (as is often the case with these things) intended almost entirely for internal Russian consumption. Either:
1. To help address growing fears of those in the Kursk region that the Ukraine 'SMO' is not going well and it is not going well near their homes, or...
2. To encourage a bit of fear in the locals of Kursk and maybe elsewhere (how widely within Russia is this effort being reported?) in order to reinforce the idea that this is an existential war for Russia and that they are responding to an external threat.
My money's on #2 but it would be interesting if this level of investment and action was considered necessary because of #1.
Someone mentioned a few pages back that Russia has not begun to negotiate with itself around possible defeat, yet. I think this kind of action has to be seen as internal communication at the expense of the most effective possible external communication and is therefore symptomatic of an ongoing internal Russian war negotiation which at the very least is preparing the stage for a potential future defeat negotiation.
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Retracted.
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9 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
One of comments in UA Twitetr under this news: "With this mess in EU NATO I suppose it wasn't empty bravade from Russian side about week to La Manche"
One part of Europe spent the last few decades demilitarising as much as they felt they could (we can argue about whether they went too far) while another part of Europe spent its time focusing on things like ‘getting to the Channel in a week”. Which of those two approaches would your commenter say had been most productive, on balance?
Even having got itself into this “mess” the EU is playing a key role in Russia’s defeat and Ukraine’s salvation and it will likely play a key role in everyone’s (likely) recovery after the war as well.
Hopefully the explosives shortage can be puzzled through sooner rather than later.
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4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
For sure I'd say hitting the propeller was accidental, but the dumping of the fuel was not. The intent was to down the drone. It's just that it was downed through abject stupidity rather than through smarter means.
Steve
No, of course you’re right that the fuel dump(s) were intentional. Has that ever brought a targeted aircraft down though, as opposed to being the closest to a ‘disrespectful act’ that you can get in these scenarios? If not then I’m still not convinced the intent was to destroy.
Not that the intent matters very much, now.
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The more I think about it the more I suspect this whole thing is actually just a case of an idiot (and let’s just say it one more time: f*ing *reckless*) pilot accidentally colliding with the MQ-9. There’s no way he deliberately approached a moving target at a closing speed of something like 100kts, the last second or two with the ‘target’ out of sight, and then purposefully clipped just the outer 20cm of the propeller. There’s also no way his superiors ordered him to try to do just that.
I think this is an angry clown of a pilot trying to scare the drone’s operators with a very close flyby and… ahem… “messing” it up. -
8 minutes ago, panzermartin said:
So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok...
Wow. Another joke?
I mean, yes it can. It’s up to the Russians whether they want to cross the next line and attack said drone but I’m not even arguing that the attack was unwarranted, I’m arguing that it was done in a reckless and stupid way. I feel like this isn’t a productive sub-thread though, so will probably leave things there.
Oh and I meant to say it would have been a major international crisis if the SU-27 pilot had misjudged and gone down too, which he could easily have done if he made contact with the drone any more heavily than he actually did. My apologies if I wasn’t clear.
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1 minute ago, panzermartin said:
I dont think the camera can give us an accurate sense of distance between the two. Plus the Sukhoi is regarded as an exceptionally agile plane. And the footage confirms this.
So you don’t think the two aircraft collided? If they did that tells us all we need to know about the distance between the two…
The whole point is that when you get that close at that speed, the ‘agility’ of your aircraft becomes irrelevant. Whether you crash or not is largely down to chance (see my previous post re: turbulence). When you purposefully cede control of the situation like that, that’s reckless.
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15 minutes ago, panzermartin said:
This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.000 USD missiles.
Team BRICS win this air circus round
I assume this is a joke? One bit of turbulence and we have an ‘American drone purposefully rammed our peace-loving fighter jet’ international crisis on our hands…
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1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:
Hmmm once again, a very strange "malfunctioning camera" graphical effect that seems to start before the actual collision and then the camera starts working again later and we see the bent propeller. Looks like they wanted to simply censor out part of the footage.
But yes, the footage does seem to show a deliberate attack on the drone.
That effect looks more like a partial loss of a digital signal than a camera malfunction to me but I am not in any way an expert on such matters.
For me the outstanding aspect of this footage is the way the SU-27 approaches. We’ve all been assuming it would have been analogous to ‘tipping’ V-1s in 1944 (a dangerous enough manoeuvre in itself) but, if authentic, this footage shows it was nowhere near as controlled as that. The speed at which and aspect from which the SU-27 approaches both on the ‘fuel dump’ run and leading up to the apparent collision can only be described as extremely dangerous and reckless.
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1 hour ago, DesertFox said:
LOL!
For the love of God don’t anybody show this to Scholz!
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1 hour ago, Seminole said:
It’s not just Putin saying it, you spent the next paragraph pining for it. We can acknowledge it is a goal in the West, without that being labeled ‘Putin propaganda’, right?
I’m baffled people can see how NATO partitioned Kosovo, can point to the potential ethnic conflicts inside the borders of the Russian federation, but claim that they simply can’t perceive how Moscow could ever feel threatened by NATO.
The ‘duty to protect’ framework is how NATO would justify helping a separatist/insurrection movement. We’ve seen it before.
Only question is whether they’d put the Russians in a situation where they thought nukes were the only way they could avoid ‘losing’ (however defined).
Are you being deliberately disingenuous to make a point or do you honestly think discussions about the ways in which Russia might split apart were common before this war started?
Russia started a war. People on this board (amongst others) have assessed that as having been a bad idea and don’t think that Russia can win. The question is then raised: “what does Russia losing actually look like?” and a conversation follows which considers, among other things, what lines it might fracture along, if it fractures.
The only way in which it can be considered to be “a goal in the West” is if it is adjudged to be the least bad option. Kind of like how driving into a tree might become a “goal” if the alternative is to go over a cliff edge.
If Putin or Russians in general are truly afraid of westerners having that conversation then they should stop smashing their country’s future against the Ukrainian army and focus on making the Russian Federation into.. just.. *any* kind of good neighbour.
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18 minutes ago, LukeFF said:
Yep, and meanwhile, a small town in Ohio can't get the help it needs.
And before anyone says it, NO, I don't think the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was in any way legitimate. I just don't agree with the way this is all gone, throwing billions upon billions so one corrupt former Soviet republic can fight another corrupt former Soviet republic. Or so that Zelesnky and his wife can go and do a photo shoot with Vogue Magazine.It's a pretty ****ing sad state of affairs when our elected leaders are overly eager to send our taxpayer dollars overseas to fund yet another foreign war, but they can't be bothered with pressing issues at home (see also: East Palestine, Ohio).
How many taxpayer dollars would it have cost the US not to have supported Ukraine?
I don’t think the answer is zero…
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29 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
It failed because this describes an effective Air Denial strategy, however in order to accomplish air superiority (which is like "Invading Another Nation 101) you need to be able to conduct an effective SEAD and an Enemy Counter-Air Campaign. Simply denying airspace to an opponent does not accomplish either of these things.
For example, if Russia had it SAM network to keep the UAF back off and out of range, and then hit infrastructure and support while conducting a SEAD campaign to lead to a point where they had air superiority...ok, that makes sense. Problem is they didn't do any of that other stuff in any meaningful way. As with railways, they wasted a lot of operational strike on terror targets and not air infrastructure. (I mean you can still buy a flight from Frankfurt to Kyiv FFS: https://www.kayak.com/flight-routes/United-States-US0/Kiev-Boryspil-Intl-KBP#:~:text=Looking to visit Kiev%3F,for travelers flying into Kiev. )
More simply put, it failed because the Ukrainians also denied the airspace.
Also, the Russians have never really had a CAS doctrine. They were not set up for it in the Cold War and they never really bought into it because they have an unhealthy lust for artillery.
Air Denial was the perfect strategy for Ukraine as the defender with a much smaller airpower base. For Russia it is a slow road to defeat.
A very clear description of what they were lacking (my bad for totally neglecting the obvious need to occupy the air yourself in an “Air Superiority” situation), followed by…
23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:That checks out with everything I've read (I'm primarily a ground warfare guy, obviously!) and also what we've seen in this war so far.
The consensus I've seen, if there even is one, is that the Russian air forces failed in their mission for two very familiar reasons:
1. They built a force for a different sort of war
2. They did a half assed job at what they builtIt's akin to having a hammer with a broken handle for a job that involves needing a screwdriver. Even a perfect hammer would not work very well, but some progress might be made. However, a broken hammer has no chance at all of getting the job done.
As I understand it the Russians figured out a long time ago that if they were to go up against NATO they would be outclassed. Penetrating NATO airspace in any meaningful way wasn't in the cards. On the other hand, NATO's ability to penetrate into Russian airspace existed as a real threat. Russia correctly assessed that they had no hope of a viable offensive doctrine, so they instead spent most of their energy on air defenses. Fighter aircraft were tasked to be a part of that defensive strategy.
The offensive part of the Russian airforce, including bombers, was intended for beating up neighbors or, in recent years, a limited foreign campaign (Syria). For this they expected the environment to be fairly free and clear of most forms of AD, either in total or in volume. This assumption allowed them to reduce the doctrinal needs to "get in air, get to target, drop ordinance, return to base". No need for complex technology, aircraft, or tactics. Just get there, blow stuff up, come home.
Unfortunately for Russia, they did not anticipate a third scenario which was beating up a neighbor who started out armed with significant AD and then received top end NATO systems thereafter. As has been said, they weren't prepared for this at all and it shows.
Steve
…a very clear explanation of why!
Thank you, both.
(Love this place)
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37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Until the Russian Air Force can establish a level of air superiority - now with UAS is impossible at certain altitudes, it is failing to do what it literally exists to do.
I always thought (perhaps wrongly) that Russia intended to lean more on powerful operational-level SAM systems to provide air superiority, while aircraft were primarily supposed to do their best Il-2 impressions and act as an extra-intimidating supplement to the Army’s artillery.
If I’m right why do we think that’s failed? Off the top of my head I can’t think of too many confounding factors that Ukraine has been able to leverage against Russian S-400-type SAMs (notwithstanding what seemed like a sudden but fairly low-intensity campaign of HARMS use last summer).
If I’m wrong then the reasons for failure have pretty much already been covered and I am happy to stand corrected (and duly educated).
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41 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Thanks for the kind words about beggars. it's so nice to feel like a beggar in a destroyed country under rocket attacks, and you reminded me of this in such a timely manner.
While I (and I think most here) sympathise with your position here I think there may be a little bit getting ‘lost in translation’: “Beggars can’t be choosers” is a common phrase in English which is not meant to imply any additional offence to the “beggar” in question, to the extent that the word itself can be seen as derogatory. It’s just a pithy way of saying that people with no other choice shouldn’t be too critical of the form of assistance they get. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is another one.
Sorry if you knew that; I don’t mean to patronise.
Ultimately though Butschi does have a point: there is no legal obligation on any European country to give Ukraine anything (as brainless and immoral as it would be for them not to). The people on this board will likely be sympathetic to your complaints about the rate of assistance offered but there are those who would take offence and use it to justify ceasing assistance altogether.
It’s a bit like putting Wehrmacht insignia on your tank: ‘dark humour’ to you and your mates, forgivable foolishness to friends who understand your plight, gold dust to those who want ammunition to feed a propaganda war. -
2 hours ago, Huba said:
Free the Ariete! Failing that, free the Centaurs! At the end it will turn out that Scholz is a hero - by doing absolutely nothing he'll force all the European nations and Americans to send their tanks to Ukraine. I can respect that
Tongue in cheek, but it really starts to look like an organized action.Olaf takes the blame, but it cuts short the discussion about sending tanks in other countries - we have to push the Germans, don't we?
There’s also such a racket going on about MBTs I doubt anyone really notices much of what else gets committed any more…
But I now see that point has already been made. That’ll teach me to shortcut reading the whole thread!
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5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Here's something different for you guys to contemplate...
I am about to have a private in person meeting with a senior US policy maker on a matter unrelated to Ukraine. Unfortunately, the circumstances of our meeting do not allow for me to have a detailed conversation about this war, however I was invited to submit something in writing with a conversation follow up with policy staffers.
A few of us have been working together offline (some not participating here) on recommendations from our perspective outside of the "Beltway". I have no expectations about what might come from this other than us offering our 2 cents worth of advice that may be somewhat different than what is commonly circulating. I do not expect to be flown on a private jet to DC to testify
What follows are the "headlines" from the document, not the content. A cover letter explains where all this good stuff came from, so you can now consider yourselves policy advisors as well as gamers
Since the origins of this came straight from our conversations here your suggestions are already incorporated, but I'm curious to hear any additional thoughts before this gets handed over.
Recommendations for United States legislative action
1. Clearly define Objectives and Desired Outcomes – TOP PRIORITY
2. Form a Blue-Ribbon Commission to examine lessons learned and recommend changes based on that
3. Officially designate Russia a State Sponsor Of Terrorism
4. Establish the legislative framework for a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine
5. Work with the EU and Ukraine on reform roadmap that will gain it EU Membership
Recommendations For Military Aid To Ukraine
1. Intelligence sharing - TOP PRIORITY
2. Artillery, artillery, and more artillery
3. Expand Deep Strike capabilities
4. Procure and deliver Soviet era replacements until stocks are exhausted
5. Help Ukraine destroy Russia’s Black Sea Fleet
6. Provide heavy AFVs
7. Increase logistics capabilities
8. Increase scope of training to include all US schools
9. Expand long term professionalization
10. Plan for needs of the future Ukraine Armed Forces
Recommendations for US foreign and national security policies
1. Ensure Ukraine Wins the peace – TOP PRIORITY
2. Ukraine must win
3. Russia must lose, but not converted into ashes
4. Ukraine needs justice, not vengeance
5. Provide Russia with a roadmap to better relations
6. Prepare for Russia continuing hybrid warfare
7. Be ready to take advantage of Russia’s short term weakness
8. Devote significant resources to reinforcing the “Western Order”
9. Undertake a full review of US military preparednessIn the “Recommendations for Military Aid” category I’d have thought a key takeaway from this thread would have been the importance of winning the ‘drone war’ (‘dominating the dronesphere’?). I assume that’s covered somewhere in numbers 1 and 10, maybe?
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1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:
We did our job on many unpleasant and shameful episodes from our collective past, still not enough of it, but I can wholeheartadly say it is always beneficial for society in long run. Germans serve great example here.
This.
Most would probably agree that joining the community of “The West” (assuming that’s what Ukraine truly aspires to) is about more than just using NATO weaponry and signing up for free trade and a defensive alliance: It’s about striving towards a culture of (among other things) openness, honesty and integrity and that absolutely means listening to what other peoples think of your national ‘heroes’. However what I would say is that that is *hard work*; those within a nation who champion this kind of process are continually accused by those who oppose it of hating their country, distorting historical context or pandering to ‘foreign’ sensibilities and that kind of cultural tension could be… you know… ‘tough’ when you’re fighting an existential war. So I guess I’m not sure Ukraine will have the collective emotional ‘bandwidth’ to tackle it right now.
Regarding media showing Ukrainians ‘mocking’ those who claim they’re Nazis: in any country “black humour” is ripe for misrepresentation and being co-opted by tomorrow’s political opportunists. Ukraine will have to decide for themselves whether the morale benefits of tolerating/encouraging such humour are worth the definite political cost of its inevitable misinterpretation (deliberate or otherwise).
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3 hours ago, Ithikial_AU said:
That video with the interview, no idea why I'm still listening to it. This guy is a crackpot. Yes Kherson was founded by the Russian Empire but today the ethnicity profile of the city if 70%+ Ukrainian.
Oh, for the love of…
I mean, how many microseconds does it take a functional mind to realise the ridiculous and chaotic implications for a world in which that argument carried any weight? Apparently Macgregor himself was born in Philadelphia for crying out loud!
I’m glad I didn’t watch that far.
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13 hours ago, Beleg85 said:
This also raised suspicions in Poland, but can be explained on legal basis. Danilov demanded (in quite boorish words, to put mildly, considering the circumstances...) immediate access and right to conduct his own investigation. As I understand it, both states lacks even legal acts for conducting separate independent full investigations on each other territory, as it is literally undermining one's trust into sovereignity (which btw was one of reasons why exhumations of Wolhynia massacres were so difficult to conduct on UA soil for so many years). After several hours somebody in PL (or more likely US) side finally figured out it looks pretty bad to block them given gravity of the crisis, so Ukrainian investigation teams were given access to crash site and status of auxiliary investigation with wide insight into collected evidence. I frankly don't know if they have rights to interrogating witness, as couldn't find any info; they could be theoretically given such right on informal courteus basis,as it sometimes happen in such cases. They spend there at least several hours today.
Thank you for the information: I wasn’t sufficiently aware about the sensitivities that still exist between the two countries.
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38 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
Zelenskiy wants UKR militaries to take part in investigations. In Ukriane now very big suspicion, that there was also Russian missile, being chased by Ukrainian, but because finding remains of Russian missile would be put NATO in front of inconvenient developments (art.4 at lest = "escalation"), that USA hasted to make a statement only about UKR missile to hush up the question, hinting also to Poland they should make a statement also about UKR missile.
I think this can be true - I don't believe in accident launch. Russian missile have to be somewhere on UKR on on Poland territory.
By the way, yesterday Russians repeated this trick - they launched several Kalibrs from Black Sea, which passed through Odesa oblast very close along Moldova border and hit something in Khmelnitskiy oblast.
I can’t see why Ukraine would be excluded from the investigation but, in the meantime, is there any evidence to base that “very big suspicion” on? Sounds like unhelpful speculation to me. And I’m not buying NATO being that desperate to avoid an Article 4: nothing is going to force NATO to escalate any further than they want to or feel is appropriate anyway…
It’s at times like this that I’m reminded that it’s always ok to say “I don’t know”, especially when the alternative is baseless and potentially harmful speculation (in either direction). We don’t know, yet, what the missile was. Waiting for the investigation to conclude is what we need to do.
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27 minutes ago, kraze said:
There are only two ways a SAM missile would ever go towards Poland:
a) it was launched there deliberately in an "artillery mode"
b) it was chasing a target going towards Poland
It can't be an 'a' for a ton of obvious reasons, so only 'b' is reasonable.
But even if it was a russian missile alone - it's also reasonable that NATO will want to downplay the issue and kind of shift the blame without actually shifting the blame because the only other option is war with Russia and a lot more dead Polish citizens.
Realpolitik sucks and as I said there will be no response even if it's 100% of russian doing.
c) missile malfunction..?
d) accidental/mistaken launch?
If it was a Russian missile there will be some response. At least enough of one that Russia should be quietly wary of risking it happening again.
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Whatever the case, I agree with FancyCat and The_MonkeyKing that Ukraine would be wise to fess up to the mistake and then to switch to "We're sorry for the misfired SAM, but if we had better air defenses maybe something like this could be avoided in the future. Even better would be stopping Russia from continuing terror strikes on our civilians".
It’s worth remembering as well that Poland isn’t some neutral neighbour who Ukraine have to avoid provoking. There are few countries in the world who are as supportive of Ukraine’s fight.
In my opinion there’s no need to over-do the excuses, here: A plain, heartfelt apology and a high-ranking Ukrainian official visiting the bereaved families and willing to attend the funerals of those killed could easily undo the damage caused by yesterday’s premature denials and allow Ukraine to maintain its image as the mature and civilised party in this war.
The Poles know very well why Ukraine had SAMs in the air. The best Ukrainian response now is to support Poland in their mourning and thank them for their ongoing support.
If it was a Ukrainian missile, of course.
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12 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
Putin needs to freeze this conflict and get to the negotiating table w an abandoned Ukraine that is out of options -- but instead every time Putin escalates EU & US do more, not less, for Ukraine.
And if he’s surprised when that happens every time then maybe I’m wrong and the guy is just an idiot.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by Tux
Too many instances.
Everyone seems very focused on where western armour will make its first appearance, perhaps even the Russians (it’s been suggested here that they might even be reserving their major stocks of AT weapons for when such units show themselves, keen to publish videos of burning Leopards and Challengers to boost Russian morale). In this environment I wonder what games the UA might play: could western armour be massed in a diversionary location for instance, before the main offensive is launched with old (but still clearly dangerous) Ukrainian kit somewhere where the AT-weapon-density remains low? Perhaps the main offensive gets launched suddenly when the western-equipped units are still only ‘just starting to arrive’?
The next 2-3 months are going to be interesting.