hcrof
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Posts posted by hcrof
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9 minutes ago, sross112 said:
Did Putin actually refer to Ukraine as an equal sovereign political entity and not a wayward Russian possession? If so, that is a pretty big change in rhetoric out of Moscow.
Not sure about that - they say the government is illegitimate. They say that all russian speaking areas of Ukraine should be part of Russia. But I don't think they have ever claimed the whole country - all their maps of a future Ukraine show a small rump state centred on Kiev.
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Relevent video for the previous sea drone conversation. Defending against them seems like a hard problem to solve, especially when you are in a peer conflict and you can't just be pumping out radiation all the time to try and spot drones.
Having watched the video, I tried to think of solutions to the problem he described. A tethered observation drone might help, but quite easy to spot if it is emitting radar and less effective if it relies on passive measures. Sonar may be the solution but it limits your speed and is only really usable by high-end ships with quiet propulsion. Finally the defensive sea/air drone swarm may work but also limits your speed and is resource-intensive.
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3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Both can be true and you have no evidence to suggest they aren't. In fact, since this war started there's far more evidence to suggest that tank for tank, rifleman for rifleman, shell for shell, and drone for drone the Ukrainians are (on average) superior to Russia. This has been discussed in much detail by many experts, as well as in discussions here. Artillery effectiveness has been a big one, with Russian laying waste to empty fields while Ukrainian gunners successfully sniped actual targets with their far more limited artillery.
Further, there's the qualitative difference in the weaponry being used. You can't seriously argue that the Western equipment being provided to Ukraine doesn't (generally) achieve better results than the Russian equivalent. All I have to do is say "Javelin" and that discussion is done.
So, you have a false premise and that is that Russian and Ukrainian capabilities are on par when on defense. That is demonstrably counter factual. The best you can argue is that if Russia adopts a defensive posture or ceases wasteful attacks the gap between relative casualties (as seen thus far) will shrink. I'd even go along with that to the degree the delta adjusted in favor of Russia is supported by factual evidence. Yet you are arguing parity, and I find that nonsensical and counter factual.
No, the disregard for demonstrated qualitative superiority of Ukrainian capabilities is what refutes the idea that if Russia were to cease attacking that casualties would more or less equalize.
We have already had this discussion recently, as we have many times in the past, and it's (at best) a partial view of reality.
You really should listen to Perun's video from 2 weeks ago about this topic. The fact is that it doesn't matter if Russia can replace its losses if it needs more than it has to achieve its' goals. I'll put it in abstract form.
I have 100 beers, you have 10. We get into a drinking contest to see who can drink the most. We both start drinking and we're 5 beers in. It's looking like I'll win because, well, I have 95 left and you only have 5. But oh wait a minute... you're German and were raised, from the time of infancy, to drink real beer. I am American and when I was born we had Miller and Budweiser. Which means you're probably still capable of drinking a few more beers, whereas I get half way through my 6th one and I get sick. Doesn't matter that I still have 94 beers available, you win. Especially because we're drinking in your bar and you have an incentive to push yourself harder than I do.
The fact is neither side can afford to lose its men and equipment indefinitely. We know this to be true. We also know that Russia is digging deeper and deeper into ever lowering quality of replacements, both men and material, due to the catastrophic losses. Ukraine, on the other hand, has arguably a higher quality force now than it did when the war started. It could even be that Ukraine has increased the amount of certain things fielded while Russia has seen a decline.
For example, Ukraine's starting IFVs contained exactly 0.0% Western models, now it's some number higher. This is significant because nobody disputes Western IFV superiority over Russian IFVs. On the other hand, loss records seem to indicate Russia is suffering from declining numbers of BMP-2s and is having to substitute with BMP-1, MTLB, and even trucks, thus indicating that their force quality is declining (there is plenty of other supporting evidence of this).
This is all stuff we know with varying degrees of specificity. What we do not know is where each side's fail points are and how close they are to reaching them. We only know they exist and that both sides are getting closer to them, not further away.
Steve
I don't think your argument really addresses the point here. Russia does not have to be as effective pound for pound as Ukraine, they can use more resources sustainably. So in a static situation they can use more shells than Ukraine so even if they are more wasteful the number of casualties may end up being the same.
That is obviously not ideal for Ukraine - if both sides are just sitting in trenches taking 500 casualties a day then the war is not going to end any time soon.
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19 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
Thats still just a policy setting, no? Eg France no longer exporting to ME. And a half of a steadily rising capacity is not a static number.
Whereas Russia cannot spare anything for export, with that situation not improving. Its munitions production is three years into a full scale war and is barely sufficient for how it fights.
Ukraine both fights differently now and in the future. Even with the bad shell hunger that lost Avdiivka the Rus offensive still petered out afterwards. There's now strong indications that that hunger is fading.
I'm really curious about domestic UKR shell production...
Agreed that NATO can choose not to export, but that would badly damage their reputation and I would be surprised to see many countries following France's example. I guess the point is that NATO is not at war but Russia is, so NATO might have more potential but not use it.
Also both sides are importing shells from 3rd countries (often under the table), and both sides use various calibres.
In other words it is really complicated and I don't think counting production numbers alone is a very good proxy for how many shells will be fired by both sides this year. Thankfully the NATO numbers are finally going up at a faster rate than Russia's so hopefully Ukraine will be at least stable soon with regard to the artillery balance.
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2 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
There's more nuance than that. 250K in Russia is All calibers. Nato 1.2M is 155 mm only. Quite a difference, plus NATO/West has far, far more latent capacity than Russia.
On the other hand NATO countries have internal needs beyond Ukraine and also export ammunition to other countries, so Ukraine will not see even half of that production.
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1 hour ago, ASL Veteran said:
In this context my assumption would be that the Russian assets would be used as a form of collateral and since they mention 'Surety' then I would say as collateral vs a form of Surety bond (a bond is a form of loan - when you buy a corporate bond you are essentially loaning the issuing company money in exchange for an interest payment) sort of deal and since they mention reparations perhaps they could demand some form of reparations in exchange for getting their assets returned when this whole thing is finally over.
Alternatively, the interest on any russian money in banks etc can be handed to Ukraine, even if they don't get the money itself.
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and a video from the Sergei Kotov attack. Looks like the ship spotted them at least a few hundred meters out but they may have approached from behind a civilian ship. The Sergei Kotov is retreating from the drones while shooting (with a deck gun?) but the drones are faster. I wonder how stabilised the deck gun is?
Edit: rewatched with sound and that doesn't sound like a deck gun - maybe another RPK over the rail which explains why they can't hit anything!
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6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Another option would be to go NLOS, like the Spike. That system can be fired blind and acquire the target in flight. One already has a rebroadcast platform on the unmanned boat. These systems also tend to have longer ranges.
Or a salvo of cheap(?) vampire missiles with a drone mounted laser guiding them onto all the squishy bits like radars and aiming systems for ciws. If the ship pops smoke to protect from that then it has just blinded itself to the real threat of the kamikaze boats.
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video of the attack on the landing ship Caesar Kunikov from the deck. Lots of MGs, not a lot of night vision by the looks of things. And it seems that maybe the seababy can take a few small calibre hits (modern inert explosive warhead?)
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6 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:
Why would you assume they're telling the truth? Remember when Moskva went down they were pretending the crew survived using old and faked videos and stuff.
Or maybe, hitting the ships while under the bridge means they can't maneuver and are easier to hit but it's also easier for crew to survive.
To be fair I thought the Ukrainians said that it was 12, but I lost the original quote and can't seem to find it again. Also it doesn't say much about the condition of the rest of the "evacuated crew"...
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One thing that struck me is that a relatively small ship got hit by multiple massive (900kg) warheads and yet only 12 deaths? Was the ship operating with it's full compliment? If not then no wonder they can't have multiple people manning deck guns 24/7
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15 minutes ago, photon said:
I hope the USN is currently bolting AGLs and thermal imagers on every square meter of available rail on our ships.
My concern is that you need crew to operate these things and the USN (or RN for that matter) do not have bodies to spare, thus the decision is postponed for another day...
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25 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
The BSF is no joke and is still a considerable force, But having destroyed the UKR Navy it lacks the organic units to perform the second of its two missions. First is control the open sea (nominally done), second is control the littoral zone. (third would be support inland ground forces with ranged strikes).
It eradicated the UKR Navy as a fighting force but has failed to control the shores. Its ships are too vulnerable, its training and operational performance are abysmal but where it truly seems to fail is leadership.
Operationally, the lack of basic fleeting/convoying and Air support around VIP units (cough Moskva cough Ropucha class cough) is just incredible. I mean, did these guys not read naval history at all?
These are old tactics but effective. Even if they are not a full solution (because drones) they still increase the friction against any attack. Stack up the layers and attacks start to fail, or at the least the damage inflicted is lessened.
Are they not looking at current events and past losses? After so, SO many drone strikes why are their ships not bristling with HMGs and search lights? Why, why when attacks begin, are their ships not going full speed, maneuvering like mad and making work for the USVs? Why are helos not in the air, on call, stafing the USVs? Why don't they have their own drone ops onboard, striking back at USVs with FPVs?
None of the above is hard or requires integrating new tech (drone ops are self contained).
Seriously, wtf?
But hey, if you need a family murdered in their home at night then these useless ****s are just who you want.
I wonder if the issue is money - if the fleet budget is being plundered to pay for the land campaign they can't adapt ships and training easily, let alone develop a new drone force. On the other hand they need to demonstrate they are trying to do something to keep Putin happy so they put assets at risk (Russian attitude being you are not fighting if you don't take casualties anyway.) This is all compounded by remarkably poor leadership.
This situation can't be stable though, surely the Russians will have to think of something eventually...
Edit: I imagine (with no evidence at all really) that the BSF can barely pay for fuel right now due to cut budgets, let alone more crew to man machine guns and searchlights. But they can't have the hard conversations with Putin to say the fleet needs to be mothballing ships to save money right now, not charging off to fight Ukrainians.
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Just now, The_MonkeyKing said:
Yeah, I agree.
Even with refurbishments the quality problem is not yet materializing on lets say "to a critical" extent. T-80BV and T-72 2000's models keep coming. By many estimates (including "perun"), the cases of T-55 and T-62 have been because of totally different production, warehouse and ammo "pipelines" for these being fast and available.
We shall see when Russia starts choking here. Next year by most estimates.
https://twitter.com/verekerrichard1
I seem to remember from peruns last video he focussed more on artillery. Russian artillery quality is degrading from mostly SPG to older towed guns and they are beginning to run low on barrels. There are still loads of towed guns in store but many of them are very old indeed and can't take modern ammunition or are limited to 12km max range (dangerously close to the front line for a relatively immobile system and very vulnerable to drones).
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44 minutes ago, squatter said:
I'll take you up on this.
I firmly believe it's within the power of the USA to end this war pretty much immediately (setting aside the madhouse of US domestic politics.)
I believe Putin has been desperate to freeze this conflict pretty much ever since the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives raised the specter of total Russian defeat.
For me, the USA has to threaten Putin with massive upscale of support to Ukraine - F16s, more himars/glsdbs/sams/amraams etc - if he doesn't come to the table. The kind of levels of support that would empower Ukraine to attrite RUS forces to such a level that will terrify Putin and his commanders. I believe Putin would take this chance. Once ceasefire is achieved, the West begins process of arming Ukraine to the point that Russian re-opening hostilities would be insane.
In negotiations, West agrees not to take Ukraine into NATO, but accepts into EU, and makes concrete security guarantees to in any case. UN peacekeepers in along border. Russia gets symbolic non-NATO status for Ukraine. No future invasion of Ukraine for Russia.
As for territory - Ukraine will have to accept some loss. Crimea for sure. Perhaps return to 2022 borders, with landbridge as demilitarised zone. This is difficult to accept for Ukraine obviously, but as of 2014, I don't Ukraine was ever going to get Crimea back.
Continued sanctions and pressure on Russia to give up Putin for war crimes tribunal but he'll probably die before that happened I would guess. Reparations claims to go to international arbitration etc (obviously Russia owes immense reparations to Ukraine, but will that ever materialise under whichever circumstances this conflict ends, who knows?)
So while there will have to be difficult concessions made in negotiation, just like in Gaza, I believe the USA has the power to end this conflict whenever it sees fit.
So I don't want to dogpile this, and to be honest what you said sounds good in theory. Having said that, US threats would have little credibility right now, large deliveries would have to be made. On top of that, those deliveries would likely not include large numbers of 155 shells since the whole world is running short of those at the moment.
So that puts us in the position that the US government has finally mobilised to help Ukraine, so expectations are going to rise again - why not take another shot at victory? Maybe because they don't have the shells - well at that point the threat is not looking so bad for Russia after all so they continue, at least to get a better negotiating position.
The sorts of coercive diplomacy that works on small, isolated countries does not work on a conflict of this scale and commitment. Both side are in too deep to back off now.
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31 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Does anyone have a source for what current Russian arty usage looks like…as in for the last three months leading up to the last few days? I’m hearing that stockpiles of DPRK and Iranian rounds available to Russia are now depleted and I would like to see some actual evidence of such. If correct, we could be seeing a more general shell famine than public expectations of inevitable Russian offensives expect.
I heard there have been no further deliveries, but I would be surprised if all those shells are already spent, unless the rumours about ever second shell being a dud are actually true. For now I will not be optimistic on this front for another few months yet, but what do I know...
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48 minutes ago, squatter said:
I don't mean to suggest that there was a peace settlement in reach in 1916, but there could be one today.
Er, yes, and it was won by the Allies of course, but not sure your point here?
I'll bite...
Similar to 1916, both sides are exhausted but still swinging. Both sides think they can win and noone has proposed a solution that is remotely acceptable to both sides. Russia wants a divided and submissive Ukraine with a puppet government in power. Ukraine wants to return to 1991 borders and a substantial security guarantee to prevent Russia from invading again. Those are totally incompatible positions so they keep fighting.
In WW1 the central powers were blockaded until they were unable to keep fighting. It took another 2 years. That is likely how this war will end.
If the West allows Ukraine to lose then pax Americana is over and we return to the bad old days, except now we have nukes. So we need to make sure they don't lose. It really as simple as that.
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4 minutes ago, squatter said:
And that's why I think we need to bring about an end to this carnage because we are well and truly into 1916 territory in terms of senseless slaughter over minimal gains.
I don't disagree about the 1916 analogy but how do you think the warring sides would have made peace in 1916? Under what terms? And who would enforce them?
Edit: and wasn't the war being fought in french and russian territory in 1916 due to rapid early advances by the central powers? And who won in the end?
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28 minutes ago, Ales Dvorak said:
Literally the only "evidence" they have is a picture of a submarine with a tarpaulin on top. That's it. The best part is that "Liz Truss disappeared for three days" like she personally swam over and blew up the pipe. This is getting desperate...
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18 minutes ago, Grigb said:
Imagine an underbarrel setup where the shot is initiated by a proximity sensor. Soldier has to point it in the general direction and push the trigger to activate the sensor. Once the sensor detects the drone, it fires 2-3 rounds in rapid succession, leaving you with 2-3 more in case of a second attack.
Something like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAUL_(shotgun)
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7 minutes ago, FlemFire said:
The issue's complicated beyond Ukraine -- it has to do with the U.S.'s southern border which is currently wide open and letting in millions of illegals, nevermind granting literal free entrance for hostile fifth columns if rivals wish to insert such a thing (spoiler: they do). Killing the value of American organized labor via cheap immigrants has been a distinct issue dating back to at least the early 1900s, it's just that nowadays the numbers are so high that leadership is having a hard time hiding it from the plebs. Pro-immigration propaganda is also running out of gas, as fifty years of stagnated wages isn't matching the rose-colored theories of the economists (the economists paid by the industrialists making the most buck off said migrants, what a shocker).
I think you and others are reaching the wrong conclusion in perceiving this as the Biden administration failing to get what they want. They're getting precisely what they want: an open border. Other matters are secondary to such an extent that they will be sacrificed for the primary. Ukraine is either collateral damage in this spat or the powers that be are using the topic to slowly navigate to an off-ramp, though this is a distinction without a difference if you're a Ukrainian in a trench somewhere.
You make it sound like the border is a binary issue, which just plays into extremist talking points:
"Biden wants millions of brown trans rapists to cross the border because he is an evil person who hates white America - trump would shut it all down"
Vs
"The fashists want to shoot Mexicans on sight so the solution is to not come up with any solution to the border because if bad people want something we should do the opposite "
Not helpful.
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25 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
Not a, BMPT, a BREM.
To be honest an armoured recovery vehicle is probably more useful to the Russians than another tank at this point (yes I called a BMPT a tank, the purists are all clutching their pearls right now...)
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5 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
Costs down, weight of explosive material up. Tube artillery in this war resembles a forge with thousands of very myopic but very strong smiths constantly hammering away all around them. It is best used on the offence to batter down fortifications and buildings, and on the defence, to set up fire concentrations on the attacking units and barrages in front of them so that they cannot go forward.
You need to be able to deliver via drones the HE equivalent of, say, 5000 155mm rounds per day without bankrupting yourself to think about replacing tube artillery in this war.
I wonder if precision artillery rounds like Excalibur are going to get rarer - a drone can do the same job for a tiny fraction of the price. But dumb artillery, especially mortars, will be around for a while.
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16 minutes ago, panzermartin said:
OK just saw these numbers. Yes RU are losing a lot but still seems within the 1:3 defender /attacker ratio, is this correct?
1:3 is the numbers/combat power required for a successful attack. It is not supposed to be the expected casualties.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Just to add to that, encryption adds latency (lag) to the signal. I understand FPV video signals are typically unencrypted analogue signals to minimise the latency, otherwise they get harder to control due to the delay from video input, processing, sending, display, human reaction time, input, sending, processing, motor reaction time etc. it all adds up.