hcrof
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Posts posted by hcrof
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All good points, I also wonder whether going straight at the ship leaves a wake which is easy to see in the dark. By manoeuvring erratically the wake will be obscured by waves and so the drone will be hard to spot, even with image intensifiers.
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13 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
GUR unit "Group 13" has issued a video of attack on "Tsezar Kunnikov".
Budanov has good feel of humor - Soviet officer Tsezar Kunnikov, who led landing group on Gelendzhyk bridgehead was killed on 14th Feb 1943
I have noticed that sea drones tend to have a very odd attack pattern where they never go in straight lines and also attack one-by-one. This video shows drones almost making 90degree turns only a few hundred meters from its target.
It looks inefficient but it clearly works, does anyone know more?
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48 minutes ago, Fernando said:
Yes, Maginot Line wonderfully worked indeed. Like the Mannerheim line, the Gustav line, the Sigfried Line, the Molotov/Stalin Line etc. All of them were a great success stopping cold the enemy offensives they faced and allowing their side to win the battle, didn't they? Especially for the French, who expected a war of attrition, denial and corrosion but found themselves facing a war of movement and maneuver instead.
I don't think this actually responds to what I said. Rather than derail this thread however, I will direct you to this discussion which I think sets out my position better than I could:
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29 minutes ago, Fernando said:
Maginot Line 2.0. Good luck finding the troops to man a border which is about 800 km long. Hope it works this time.
But the Maginot line worked exactly as intended. It allowed France to man it's German border with lightly armed reservists and concentrate it's best troops against the actual location of the German attack. Their defeat in 1940 was due to other factors which we don't need to discuss in detail here.
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7 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
you're f--ing kidding right? TC is an experienced interviewer? He's the paid shill of a mass murdering monster. WTF? You actually sound like you think this sick farce is real?
(sorry for the tone, but can we please not treat this seriously and waste discussion on it)
I don't want to defend the guy, and would never watch his show, but didn't he work for fox news for years? You would have thought he would remember to come prepared, even if he was planning an easy interview.
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3 minutes ago, Tux said:
I just mean the code (not to diminish how complicated that is), not step-by-step following the rationale behind each actual decision it has made. But point well taken - emergent AI may be emerging as we speak.
Most things people consider AI right now, from self driving cars to chatGPT is almost as hard to understand as giving someone a brain scan to ask why they like the colour pink. The code is simpler than you would think, but the "thought process" is almost totally opaque. A major area of AI research right now is trying to get it to explain why it did stuff in a way we understand
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It seems that at least some Russians have come to similar conclusions about war as this forum:
https://www.armystandard.ru/news/2024129114-TnO1s.html
No comment really, except that we should not stereotype the Russian general staff as a bunch of drunks and incompetents stuck in the soviet past. They are learning, even if implementation is the hard part, not theory.
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18 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Theory, maybe. Practically, not really. How do you get enough troops on top of the freakin building in the first place? Both sides in this war cannot come within kms with tac aviation, let alone loading guys up to drop unsupported onto a roof. Then once up top you are taking fire from both below, and other buildings. And then the other team, not being stupid, booby-traps the ever living hell out of the top of buildings they are in, and you have that to deal with. Add in drone ISR and strike, and the whole thing can devolve into a nightmare.
This theory would work well if one is attacking an isolated building and had enormous resources to pull it off (helicopters?!), and still need a building afterwards. At that point this is starting to look and feel like a SOF op. I never heard of any troops going this way in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor do I remember any reports of partner forces doing it in Mosul - but that one is a bit more blurry. I mean sure, I suppose it is an eventuality - did anyone hear of stuff like this at Mariupol?
It sounds a little too "peacetime warfare" theory for my liking.
I have seen British troops train with ladders, which can also be used as bridges across an alley. Not saying I would volunteer mind, I would prefer the baseball sized boom-drones going in first.
Also, wasn't black hornet developed for urban warfare, to check round corners and in buildings for ambushes and booby traps?
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27 minutes ago, JonS said:
Nat Fick (of Gen Kill fame) talks about from-the-top-down as the correct doctrinal approach to clearing buildings in the late '90's in One Bullet Away. I don't think that has any Sun Tzu-esque veneer though - its just that it's easier to assault "downhill", and easier to set up a ground-level cordon when you dont have to create an entry corridor for the clearance team. Also, defenders most often orient themselves to contesting a ground level assault, so coming in at the top out flanks all that and makes the initial breach a lot easier.
But it does depend on resources (ie; helos, and an operating concept that embraces hot LZs) that most militaries dont have access to.
I also believe that coming in from the top flushes the enemy into the street... Where you have a pre-planned kill zone.
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11 minutes ago, Carolus said:
At £10 per shot and a range of 7 miles with pinpoint accuracy, when will we see this used as an anti-infantry weapon?
7 miles is far more than even an experienced sniper can reliably shoot. Imagine singing off the antennas of vehicles as they assemble for an assault.
Yes, the beam can be traced back with thermal sensors, but any weapon platform is eventually exposed when it starts firing.
Imagine this capability against a non-peer enemy and pinging off Mujahedin on a hill.
Also, I imagine that it would not be immediately obvious you are under fire too since there would be no bullet crack (a faint pop and a burning smell maybe? Maybe nothing if the impact is far behind you) You would probably get a second shot in before the enemy understood they were a target (especially if you miss).
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On the topic of mobilization and Ukrainian civil society.
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52 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
We've seen Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory since the first months of the war. The view of the West is that this is what Russia deserves, provided Ukraine goes after legitimate military targets (which does include some civilian infrastructure). Anybody who follows this war knows that Russia deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and has killed 1000s of civilians either deliberately or through gross negligence. Having some Russian civilians dying isn't a big deal provided that Ukraine isn't deliberately targeting them.
In the past I'd say Ukraine has very deliberately targeted legitimate military targets. Any civilian deaths/injuries as a result, including those in the Donbas, are excusable. Not only by keeping their deaths in perspective with the rest of the war, but also under international law.
The day we start reading about Ukraine deliberately and obviously striking civilian hospitals, schools, and shopping centers at times of peak civilian occupation is the day a lot of people, including me, will start asking some hard questions. But that day is not here and therefore I don't see any problem with what Ukraine is doing.
On the other hand, there are only a few historical precedents that show policy can shift due to airstrikes on civilian/dual purpose infrastructure. Every time we discuss this I bring up Serbia because that's the best example there is. Serbian resolve to keep genocide going was not as strong as it was to keep their country from being knocked back into the 19th Century.
Ukraine's problem is it probably lacks the resources to make a meaningful impact on Russian public opinion on its own. As part of the whole war, including piles of dead Russians, it is possibly meaningful. We simply don't know at this point.
Steve
I think a big difference here is that a tiny country like Serbia had no hope to resist US airstrikes. It was effectively a form of gunboat diplomacy, where a great power can coerce a smaller one because of the overwhelming power difference.
Where the two powers are more equal, such as in WW2 or now, bombing as a form of coercion will be counterproductive since the victim of the bombing simply wants to get revenge. This goes double when Russia perceives itself as the stronger power.
I would suggest Ukraines best strategy is to bomb targets specifically to cause divisions in society, such as oligarchs homes like last year or symbolic targets. Making a few towns go dark and shutting down major airports etc would also cause general irritation at the war, without the same anger as killing civilians.
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Based on the news this morning I guess we will see whether Ukraine will follow through on it's threats to Russian infrastructure or not. Personally I wouldn't mind a few Russian towns going dark but I really don't think Ukraine is ready to do that yet.
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8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
I don't know. Russia has shown a distinct "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again instead of thinking up something new".
Ukraine's attacks on Russian infrastructure, in particular the oil and gas port capacity at Novorossiysk, show that Ukraine can back up its threats with action. It's also been pretty vocal about production of UAVs that can hit that far out. Even the dumbest of Russian leadership understand that the threat is real.
So if Russia does call off the terror campaign for this winter, I strongly suspect it is because they don't want to pay the price Ukraine promises it will cost them, not because they determined they should do something else.
Steve
Do we/Russia know for sure Ukraine can follow through on those threats? I have seen lots of talk about Ukrainian shahed equivalents but not a lot of hard numbers and effectiveness.
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4 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
I'm not sure about Meteor, since that is pretty much state of the art, but Ukraine should already have piles of AMRAAM because they are used in NASAMS - the whole point of NASAMS is "let's build ground based air defense system that uses NATO air-to-air missiles to simplify the supply chain", and that is why it was given to Ukraine as well, since NATO was literally running out of surface to air missiles.
Ukraine could mount some of the on F-16 for sure.
But I feel Patriot is better for "sniping" airplanes because it doesn't really lock things until the last possible moment (according to this explanatory video anyway) so it's like "all is fine, all is fine, oh no, boom" (this is very technical description, I know).
Ukraine also promised that if Russia tries hitting energy infrastructure again, they will retaliate by attacking oil and gas, which is the only way how Russia stays afloat financially. Now normally I would say Russians are too dumb to be convinced by something like this, but it is possible it worked.
If they are just stockpiling for a one or two big strikes so they can say "we can do this whole winter, surrender" that would of course backfire hilariously if as a response half their refineries will go boom.
I really don't think Russia is dissuaded by threats like that. A combination of poor information supplied to decision makers and hubris would means the threat has to be almost nuclear before they will be dissuaded.
I just think the whole infrastructure campaign didn't work well last year and the defences in Ukraine only got better, so they are trying to rebuild their stockpiles of missiles for something else.
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If this peace offer from Putin on current front lines is genuine it certainly explains why the Russians are so keen to push Ukraine out of avdiivka and the dneipr salient at any cost. Those two areas would be serious problems in a 2015- style semi frozen conflict or even a Korea style armistice.
That also explains why it is so important for Ukraine to keep them and not retreat, even if it means taking losses.
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2 hours ago, OBJ said:
What do we think the relative 'time to clear' between using GPR/sensors and individual charges vs long or linked line charges? If the time is the same or difference negligible, what do we think the likelihood of incomplete clearance would be?
Credit to Steve, my limited knowledge of present heavy lift drone capability makes pulling a 'light' lead line across the mine field possible now, the anchoring, strength and power source needed for the winch to pull the MICLIC into position I am not so sure of. What @poesel said with calculations.
I think using distributed drones it would take much longer so the tactics would need to change. You might need to map out many potential breach zones to keep the enemy guessing which area being snooped by drones is the one that will be attacked. You might try to scan at night, or in heavy fog, or while the defender is distracted by something else.
The exploding part would be faster though, and much more surprising since a bunch of drones will appear out of nowhere and then your minefield blows up moments before the first vehicle hits the breach. Not like watching a heavy vehicle trundle towards the minefield, flinging a charge, waiting for it it settle, it exploding, and then all the vehicle that were kept safely out of range of that massive explosion drive towards the breach.
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
A zillion pages (= a couple of weeks) ago I proposed that a UGV or UAV fly with a cable instead of the full line charge. Then, when at its destination, activate a winch to reel a line charge to it. That fixes the problem of the massive cumulative weight of dragging the whole line charge while also trying to move the UV.
The problem with this is if the line charge triggers a mine while being reeled in then the op is fooked. They can cut the deployed part from the spool and detonate what they have, but they'll need to hook up another UV with a cable and try again. On second thought, that might not be so bad as you can have a LOT of drones in reserve for the price of one engineering vehicle.
Steve
I am quoting Steve but this is a general comment: isn't a line charge just dumb mass? You don't need hundreds of kg of explosives if you drop a small charge on every mine individually and that means you can clear a wider path with fewer assets. Sure you might miss some but it is not like a line charge is 100% effective either.
The key is to adequately map the field first but I am sure a combination of ground penetrating radar, infra red, LiDAR etc combined with clever post-processing would do the trick.
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12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Ya that is a really tricky point. Bridgehead teams can go in distributed so that is covered. Massing breaching teams is going to have to go in distributed and then concentrate rapidly. They will likely get picked up but signal might be hard to pull from noise.
You can likely erode tac ISR but operational and strategic are too far back. As to guns, this will be the mother of all CB campaigns.
So multiple breaches along the line, deception and decoys. Smoke. Still a mystery why they did not employ more smoke last summer.
One can’t really hide AFVs, so put them in many places and leave the enemy guessing which one is the crossing. Hell you may have to put out decoy bridgehead teams.
This is no small operation. And a lot of moving parts. Think Vimy Ridge are Cambrai - months to prepare for. And like those battles, it still might now work.
Single biggest problem that is shutting all this down are UAS and transport platforms. I just don’t think the scale is available.
I think that specialised breaching vehicles are more or less non-viable right now. They will likely be spotted and become target number 1 for a whole suite of very long range precision weapons even before the breach gets started.
The alternative is small cheap (obviously) drone breachers that can clear mines with explosive charges. They can be moved up in secret and if you lose a bunch then just employ more and then push the wrecks out of the way with a dozer tank/ifv when you actually move through. They can also be kept on hand in a distributed fashion to deal with artillery laid mines.
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4 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Ah you hit on the critical part of all this. Main ground force breach and link up. I am not even sure what that ground force would look like - could be IFVs and tanks, could be medium/light but it needs to be mounted and ready to move quickly.
So lets say we have three 500m minefield belts in front of us in say 5km of depth. Specifically designed to slow and attrit. Defended by all the stuff I posted earlier.
Phase 1 - Recon. ISR the living crap out of the place. Do not prosecute targets yet, map them. Map networks, control nodes and c-move routes in depth.
Phase 2 - Suppress. C-UAS, C-EW, C-everything you can see. You need to do this in multiple places or the enemy is going to know exactly where to prepare. Here CB will be critical.
Phase 3 - Isolate. You want to cut off the 5x1 breaching operation, so think 5x10. You need to cut C4ISR and c-moves. Here our own FASCAM and Deep Strike will be critical.
Phase 4 - Bridgehead X-ing. Combination of air mobility systems - jetpacks, quadcopters etc. Push JTA(G)Cs, UGVs and weapons to the far side of first minefield. Out to 1-2 kms. Night, smoke and suppression anyway one can.
Phase 5. Establish bridge head. Set those JTA(G)Cs loose and hunt every ATGM team. Cut off any c-moves.
Phase 6. Breach. Main ground force has about 5 mins to crack that minefield. Explosive and mechanical. And this would be after a thorough recon.
Phase 7 - Rinse and repeat. You have already set local conditions. Sustain them and move fast. Next bridge head force bounces next minefield. Next breaching wave (another 5 mins).
Add that all up and theoretically one could do it in maybe an hour so now you have the isolation window. You are basically killing anything looking to move into that box from well out. HIMARs and deep strike on logistics nodes. Good news is most RA are moving by trucks. Tanks and IFVs are still out there so those UGVs need Javelins.
Trickiest part is enemy ATGM teams. If you miss a few (and you will) you will need redundant breaches built in. But more importantly you need to be able to spot and kill those teams, likely with FPVs very quickly.
This whole dance is not easy or cheap. But if you can sustain momentum, you could have a mounted breakout force on the outer edge of this belt in about 60 mins by my calcs. You would need to drill it. You would need to enable it and empower it. It would cost a helluva lot of money.
And it still may fail. But so far it is the best idea I have heard. One might be able to do it from afar with nothing more than a swarm of UAS, but I am not sure the tech is there yet with respect to endurance. Human and UGV pairing gives the ability to hold those bridge heads. C2 forward means you can react faster.
Finally...and here is the real rub: you need to do this in several places at the same time. Overload RA C2 which is likely very comfortably static right now. Force a manoeuvre decision on them and then layer it with friction. Let them make the mistake. Once you get break out, you have whole new set of problems but minefields might not be one of them.
And damn won't the post-war movie be epic. Now whether it is a drama, tragedy or comedy is up to the Red God.
What I am not seeing here is how to deal with the fact that if you mass for a breach you will get spotted, then the enemy has time to prepare (by shelling the breaching vehicles and/or fuelling up helicopters).
It seems to me the jump teams (which can start dispersed) have got to be doing quite a bit of work sanitising the area before you can breach, then you end up breaching slowly because you just can't concentrate valuable equipment before it becomes himars/lancet fodder. Your drone defence will have to be airtight too.
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56 minutes ago, Carolus said:
Bradley was captured by Ruskis.
This account is very "rah rah" pro-Ukrainian but I felt it deserves to state its case for claimed Russian casualty numbers.
(I generally think Ukrainian numbers are inflated, while some Western estimates are overly conservative, but I have also zero qualifications on this topic, so I can be happy in my ignorance).
Interesting, but I flat out don't believe those figures are KIA only. I read them as "non-recoverable losses". Still, it does suggest that Moscow has taken an eye-watering number of casualties in this war.
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Looks like the polish border is unblocking. Still a way to go but the polish government appears to be making a sincere effort to resolve the crisis.
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33 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Wait a minute, who said that the Polish government is considering the possibility of unblocking the borders with Ukraine. Nothing like this. Only strengthening the blockade.
Overall, this is a pretty reasonable solution to keep Poland safe from the millions of Ukrainian refugees who will flee ahead of the advancing Russian troops deep into Ukraine. So I expect that the borders with Poland will remain closed until the fall of Ukraine and the blockade of these borders by Poland will only intensify.
Sorry, can you point out the bit where they said the border would be blocked?
As far as I can see they will "increase checks". If that is what it takes to stop the truckers from blocking the border then that would be good for Ukraine. And noone said how extensive these checks will be.
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7 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Moscow Times is a dissident publication that is now based in Amsterdam (I believe). I would describe them as broadly dependable with all the usual caveats.
Agreed but that author (Aslund) lives in copium land IMO. He has not got a great track record of predicting the Russians are gonna collapse any day now, and I label him as a propagandist more than a serious journalist.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
I think the problem here is that 2 years into the war Ukraine still only has a handful of brigades who actually fight. The line units and TD formations have not been developed into fighting units and trusted with hot areas of the front.
I wonder if our Ukrainian friends can confirm my my suspicions? And if this is the case, why?