hcrof
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Posts posted by hcrof
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5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Because we haven't had a "tank is dead" discussion for a few days, here's something to look at. This is a German vehicle designed to replace the Weisel airborne support vehicle. Small, highly maneuverable, light weight, and yet significantly armed. In theory vehicles like this can be produced quickly and cheaply (compared to heavier MBTs) armed with a variety of weaponry, including SPIKE or Javelins, to take on pretty much anything out there. Now picture this slightly smaller and controlled remotely.
As I've said about the Sherman for more decades than I can count... I'd much rather have a lot of something and know I can always count on it being there than something that's technically better but much less likely to make it to the fight.
You mean like this?
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Interesting documentary about the Ukrainians getting trained on challenger 2 with a look into the simulators and other activities. The Ukrainians seem to be a mix of veterans and mobilised personnel.
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14 minutes 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.
Maybe there is a lag in the signal of a few frames so that the "hit" happens before the signal is actually sent?
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4 minutes ago, dan/california said:
Interesting clip in a lot of ways. What struck me was that despite relatively accurate fire from the IFV, the troops in the trench were surpassed but not obviously hit. Am I correct in thinking this is one of many cases we have seen where an auto-cannon with programmable airburst would be vastly more effective?
The thing that struck me is that a drone makes fighting along a trenchline much less dangerous. You don't need to expose yourself since you can throw grenades blind into the correct section of trench.
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21 minutes ago, Grigb said:
The following is my analysis and interpretation of Mashovet's posts.
Mortars are not appealing. As a result, the UKR political and military leadership did not give them adequate attention before the war. This caused a system/structural issue with UKR's manufacturing capabilities for both mortars and shells. Worst of all, the mindset remained unchanged once the war began. They don't have any stock, can't make anything, and can't take any requests.
We must remember that everyone loves the role of elite artilleryman lobbing 155 from afar. Nobody loves being a dirty infantry mortarman buried beneath the majority of RU shells.
My question is why relevant Western military agencies are not putting pressure on the UKR command to resolve the matter. It appears that relevant Western military agencies do not completely comprehend the situation, which is unfortunate because the necessity for mortars was obvious back in summer 22.
While I agree with the above, I will also point out that rates of fire for mortars can be extremely high so maybe they genuinely blew through all available ammo?
Does anyone know the relative cost of a mortar bomb Vs an artillery shell? Mortars are very crude so they must be a lot cheaper?
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28 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
If Russia lost 150000 and Ukraine lost 75000. They are not casualties Ukraine can afford. This war is a tragedy these guys should compete against each other in the Olympics not on a muddy cold battlefield. I am not holding my breath that putin will ever be tried as a war criminal.
While every death is a tragedy, Ukraine has a population size similar to the UK in WW2 and is also supported by external powers (the US). We are a long way away from WW2 levels of casualties so it is probably reasonable to suggest Ukraine has a lot in the tank in terms of deaths, for better or for worse.
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15 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
Serbia? I thought they were pro russia? I guess not. I gotta keep up.
I believe their government wants to join the EU for the sweet, sweet free money (and I guess they see the writing on the wall re: Russia) but there is still a lot of pro Russia/anti NATO history to get over first...
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26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
We heard the exact same arguments at Kherson...and it went the way it did.
Well using civilians as human shields to protect military logistics is a war crime in itself. Further it does leave a lot of room for collateral damage calculations. And of course humanitarian aid is off the hit list, which I am also sure Russia will try and employ etc. In the end however, it takes lot so sustain a large military organization, even 10-20% attrition of supplies can lead to some pretty stark calcs. If the UA can deny access to military platforms and military controlled shipping, they are onto something.
In the end, yes there will be human suffering - not sure why we in the west think war is somehow sanitized now. The UA will likely do everything they can to try and keep this pointed at RA military capability but it will be a siege, and those suck...best to get used to the idea now.
I'm not saying you are wrong necessarily but I am personally struggling to put together a realistic plan to "do a Kherson" in my head. Because of the narrow choke points, Russia will not have to expend supplies at the same rate as the larger Kherson front. On top of that, even if the whole land bridge is captured to the shores of Azov does that mean that Ukraine fires a harpoon at anything moving in the black sea? How do they stop civilian ferries sneaking across the Kerch straits or even further south? And if they do they have to deal with the bad press of a lot of dead civilians on a civilian vessel which Russia will claim was transporting children and puppies.
In my mind the long ranges, long shoreline and easier to defend positions make the problem harder, and it was already very hard due to the Russian habit of using human shields in Kherson.
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12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Well the Dnepr was hard enough to get them to give up Kherson. Crimea does have a lot of coast line, the trick will be sustaining the tonnage required to sustain land forces, which can get pretty high. So while a lot of people here have been positively gushing over tanks, the UA likely has an anti-shipping/interdiction requirement right now that is much higher priority. Western ISR will be able to pick up any shipping, but being able to deny this space will get tricky and require different capabilities. Crimea will definitely extend this war deeper into the maritime domain.
Russia supplied Kherson by loading civilian vehicles with military supplies and also mixing them with civilian traffic. I am sure they will do the same to supply Crimea so unless Ukraine wants to starve the whole place out while bombing civilians I am concerned that "choking them out" will be a difficult process.
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4 hours ago, dan/california said:
This is probably more accurate than firing them from a helicopter, and takes a twentieth of the resources.
Note the added stabilizer legs and the fact they are firing quite slowly. Definitely going to be more accurate than earlier in the war when they would just spray off rockets from the back of an unmodified pickup.
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I will add that there are likely to be some local "national guard" type units to support the 1500-2000 Russian soldiers but the territory is so narrow they have zero way to manoeuvre and the best they can hope for is a bloody siege of tiraspol and blowing up the arms dump if the Ukrainians intervene.
Edit: the cobasna arms dump appears to be 2km from the Ukrainian border so a coup de main type attack is definitely a possibility
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16 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Not so enamored of the analysis in this. Should Russia launch a coup attempt and/or military intervention in Moldova is doesn't complicate anything at all for the US, EU or Ukraine. It proves every claim of Russian adventurism and imperialism yet again, it's a military commitment Moscow cannot afford or succeed in and in fairly short order, the Transnistrian forces would be ovewhelmed by Ukrainian intervention. Putin is rattling this particular cage because he wishes to demonstrate the supposed reach of Russian power. Don't buy it.
Agreed, those Russian troops in transnistria are utterly isolated from Moscow and can't be resupplied or reinforced. I seem to remember they have to use an airport in Moldova proper to rotate troops! There is a military airport in tiraspol but it is 7km of flat fields from the Ukrainian border...
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12 minutes ago, billbindc said:
A month ago I was saying this but it's clear now that there are very strong forces in Chinese government that are set on confrontation. Whether they made the balloon incident occur or if they simply took advantage of it, their approach is clearly ascendant. We should keep our power dry.
There are also forces in China which are for cooperation. They have not yet commited to helping Russia (see the post above about the Chinese visit to Moscow) or invading Taiwan.
I agree we should be prepared but keeping our powder dry also means not pressuring China into a confrontation ourselves. Just like in the cold war, direct conflict is not inevitable.
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22 minutes ago, billbindc said:
The most compelling explanation I have seen is the above. Russia had numerous motivations, both strategic and contractual, to explode the pipelines and it looks pretty clear that an accident forced their hand. In addition, the ships Hersh claimed did it where nowhere near the location and in one case was not even in service yet. His role as a conduit for Russian misinformation continues.
While I think this has some merit, it just seems too much of a coincidence that NS2 had an accident at that exact moment when it wasn't even operational at the time. I can believe that Russia wanted to blow up NS1 to force the Germans to accept NS2 but the "accident" is a step too far for me.
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6 minutes ago, Donaudampfschifffahrtsgese said:
For the non-Mil here (such as myself), these observations from a relative in the British Army:
The fella fighting was going through a mag every couple of seconds. They all need to be reloaded. The grens are shipped in two parts, fuse and body and they have to be married almost immediately beforehand. The RPG warhead has to be fused, and married to the motor. The frightened bloke did well to keep at it. He came out to fire at one point, but fighting bloke told to get back in.
There is enough work in that intensity to take half a section out just maintaining the fire. In a platoon; The reserve is constantly rebombing the mags and sending them forward. That pit was held because of the sheer amount of suppressing fire that bloke laid down, and it was only possible with the support from the frightened guy.
[The Shooter] has been in that position for weeks, but I’m surprised he didn’t have a firing ledge cut into to get better visibility.
You’d wonder at the BMP crew. They just ate a RPG, and second one, and didn’t return fire into the position. Might have been too close to depress their cannon.
Yeah, milchat is laughing at ‘most engagements are at up to 300m’ yeah chew on 30m....
Nice summary, although I wouldn't be surprised if the BMP crew simply didn't notice that a RPG round flew over their vehicle - I think the first shot went high and given their poor sights and the fact they are deafening themselves with their own shooting I guess the situational awareness of the BMP was very poor.
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7 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Looking at the map, it seems to me the obvious location for a Ukrainian summer offensive is in the south, from Orikhiv to the coast at Berdiansk, cutting the occupied areas in two and putting the whole western part, including Crimea, in one big pocket.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Is there any reason they wouldn't do that, apart from it being too obvious?
Melitopol is a shorter drive and would achieve the same effect. Even if you didn't capture the city outright, you would still cut the Russians in two with fire control. Then you just need to reduce the pocket.
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11 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
I am going with @Lethaface on this one. We are in the middle of winter and other than some dry humping by the RA there is not much going on. The reflex is “oh my god, the conflict is frozen!” So the follow on “send them the entire German military!” to keep things unfrozen makes sense…from a certain point of view.
I suspect - also from that video Steve posted - the weather has not cooperated and it is too muddy for any major UA operations. It took the UA the entire summer to set up for the Fall Offensive, so if a major winter offensive is off the table it is not because the UA is unable to attack, it is because they do not want to. Conditions are not right and it is more advantageous right now to let the RA break its hands at places like Bakhmut.
In principle I agree but the Ukrainians reported 700+ Russians killed daily for the last few days (910 today!). Is this just catching up on those big hits of Russian mobiks last week or is something else going on?
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Very slick, almost like a training exercise.
I think having people together to discuss is useful if you have time. You could also speed up decision making by including bluforce tracking and/or some other battlefield management system to display additional context. Not just positions of units but maybe also artillery vectors and CEP with various types of ammunition
I know that the US is working on image recognition for this kind of thing too - the outline of a vehicle, fresh vehicle tracks, smoke etc. That would speed up identification a lot and allow one operator to control multiple drones.
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3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Is it technically feasible to make a vehicle proof against 30mm cannon and have it run on battery power? I'm in general a big fan of electric vehicles, but I'm not sure battery power is enough here.
Honestly I don't know. In the art I left room for a lot of batteries (1/3 of the total volume!) but maybe a hybrid system would be better. I see this being quite heavy for its size due to the batteries (a Tesla semi truck uses 5000kg of batteries apparently)
QuoteWhy can each support vehicle only support two hunter vehicles? Does this assume that each hunter has to be manually controlled by a human operator? Or could they mostly run on AI?
I am trying to keep the sci-fi aspect to a minimum so I see it 95% controlled by humans at first, although obviously that can change in the future. The support vehicle can tow and carry supplies for 2 Hunters so I thought it was a decent number. If you increased the numbers of Hunters per support vehicle I guess that burden would fall somewhere else on the logistics system, but of course you have fewer vehicles in the combat zone. I guess someone would have to test out what the perfect ratio is!
QuoteWhat do you do when the enemy also employs this kind of system? It seems to be designed to fight armies that are one or two steps down on the tech ladder, and that's probably not an assumption that's safe to make...
Its a fair point - I actually posted it here for people to find the counter to this so I can improve it!
QuoteHow about killer drones? I've always thought it would be more effective that instead of having duct-taped drones drop a couple of imprecise hand grenades, a military grade "assassin drone" could be equipped with a lightweight rifle controlled by a computer.
Agreed; I think these could be nastily effective if they can defeat those anti-drone rifles reliably (and my guess is yes they can). You could supplement them with tiny drones the size of your hand that fire a single bullet at very close range (say 10m). Deploy them like cluster munitions and clear trenches/woodlines in seconds.
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22 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:
Interesting concept. I would argue though that the "Hunter" vehicle seems overengineered and you'd get more bang for the buck by mostly substituting it with lots and lots of Toyotas and quad bikes carrying portable missiles, small loitering munitions and micro UAVs.
You could do both as a high/low mix? Your suggestion helps with screening but I would anticipate a peer enemy would bring a LOT of drones to the fight and a technical is not great at keeping them away from you. A truck is an unstable firing platform for AA guns and firing even cheap missiles at quadcopters not an economic first choice to defeat them.
I actually expect you would need some sort of truck with a MANPADS on it to support the system above because more advanced drones can stay out of range of the 20mm cannon but layered air defence starts to move into another topic!
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Following the excellent discussion about modern warfare on this thread, I have tried to condense my thoughts on what a "modern" army should look like based on the lessons from Ukraine.
I would love to hear your thoughts and criticism. I not touching the whole tank thing directly though - I am not sure I am ready to go there yet!
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Following the long discussions on tanks and modern warfare in the Ukraine thread, I have proposed a new vehicle concept as per these images. The idea borrows a lot from @The_Capt and others on that thread so thanks for the discussion.
All of this can be done with todays technology. Some development would be required for some of the "harder" aspects such as shooting down ATGMs with a chain gun (it is similar to CWIS), but that is not central to the concept.
The really radical part is the Hunter concept, but it is actually quite simple. Reduce the size/signature/expense of a vehicle by putting most of the crew in another vehicle, while optionally having one crew to pull it out of the mud/take over during heavy EW etc. This means the Hunter can be pushed aggressively towards the enemy to push back their ISR bubble and screen your own force. If you lose a few Hunters it is not a big deal since they are relatively cheap and you can use them uncrewed in more dangerous situations.
The other emphasis is lots of drones (like 4 in the air per platoon, plus replacements) with operators in vehicles using big screens and reliable comms rather than squinting at a phone in a field. These drone operators can have a birds-eye view on one screen while commanding the Hunter on another for maximum situational awareness. I anticipate a lot of help from AI visual recognition to spot enemy signatures too.
Given you now have borg-spotting and your enemy doesn't, the lack of heavy armour doesn't matter so much. I still see a use for modern MBTs as hyper-specialised breakthrough vehicles, but the Killer fills all the other roles of the tank on a much lower logistical/visual footprint.
Let me know what you think!
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The light is bad but it almost looks like they made the thing out of plywood then did a skim coat of concrete!! If that is true then just wow...
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1 hour ago, Zeleban said:
typical use of the BMP-1. As you can see, this type of military equipment is used as a self-propelled gun. The gunner conducts massive fire at a pre-targeted place
This is such a huge improvement for the vehicle - they are useless in CM because anything they can target with that short range gun (including infantry) can usually hit back harder. Indirect fire is a game changer.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Trenches are easy to dig with an excavator, even easier with an entrenching machine. Looks like a "reserve" position that can be improved quickly if/when they decide to man it with mobiks