sross112

Was there an update? The videos and such were stating they were M109 155 SP arty? Just curious as I think we were all under the impression that they were SP and not towed.

Nope, you are assuming that their axis of attack is to the south and southeast. If you look at Izium and the salient they have there the road network leads out in 4 major directions. They pushed out and widened their bridgehead in all directions. Then they continued to probe to the south along a couple avenues of advance. Those avenues are the ones everyone expects them to attack down because they are still showing a little push here and there and it ties in to the plan of a Donbas encirclement. Yes it is a fishbowl, but if there is a tank parked in Izium can you reliably tell me which road it is going to take from there? You can't, I can't, only the guy that gives the order can. If I'm giving the order and you are commanding the defense, I want you to put every swinging dick you got to the south because in the end I'm not attacking there. We were talking about possible maskirovka (sp?) options and how the RA could achieve any level of surprise. They can't really deceive anyone as to their disposition or composition of forces but they sure could with their intentions. Kharkov may be a defensive bastion but I'm not saying to assault it. Encircle it, pound it, make it a hostage to negotiate with. The RA absolutely doesn't have the combat power to take it and shouldn't try. I'm just trying to be open minded and look at alternative options to the ones that everyone else is so focused on. The Ardennes? Not possible. They will have to attack through the low countries or smash themselves on the Maginot Line because that is what we think they will do!!

The talk of the upcoming offensives today is based on the concept of destroying a large number of UA in the Donbas. Our general synopsis is that without some sort of magic wand it is fairly impossible for the RA to do this. With an all out effort and a bunch of luck the RA might be able to pull off the breakthrough and encirclement but I'm pretty sure no one here thinks that they would have anything left to reduce the "trapped" troops. Like we talked about a couple weeks ago, if they did manage to make the kettle, who would truly be surrounded? The UA has a lot of combat power in there and it isn't likely to roll over and play dead. On top of that, this has been their AO for several years now so I would think that they would have lots of supplies stockpiled within that area and wouldn't run out of beans, bullets and Band-Aids as fast as and encircled pincer would. Basically we are gaming the same thing that the "experts" are gaming. Said experts haven't gained our confidence and trust so far so why are we following their lead? Yes it is the most obvious attack from a military stand point if your goal is to destroy the enemies military, but is that their goal? If we compare to the negotiations Putin has realized that his vaunted military might wasn't what they thought it was, the UA is a beast, the people are very troublesome to logistics and everyone on his side is running low on combat power and high tech munitions. The surviving generals have to know this too and such and operation is out of bounds by May 9th. Throw in some crappy weather on top of it and how could they realistically expect to achieve that goal? If they have rolled back their demands on the negotiations I would think that means they know what kind of pickle is coming for them if this isn't over fairly soon. I said a couple weeks ago that I thought they would do whatever it takes to clear Mariupol, secure their land bridge and any gains in the L/DPR and then shoot for a ceasefire. Their problem right now is they don't have anything to bargain with. How do they get a bargaining chip that Zelensky will take seriously and the west will pressure for a cease fire? They need hostages. Where is a big bunch of hostages that they could take? Kharkov. It's been pointed out several times that the forces that withdrew from the Kyiv area haven't been moved south to form a stronger pincer from that region. The reinforcements coming in aren't predominantly going south. The units being rebuilt and reinforced haven't been moving south of Izium. So if this Donbas pincer movement is expected to take place, why isn't there a southern pincer? Especially considering for the past few weeks that has been deemed to be the weak point in the line. That is where the schwerpunkt should be coming from. Instead all the forces remain in the northern sector where the UA and the world expects the attack and is building up for it. Even if the Donbas encirclement worked the UA units in the kettle really don't work as hostages. Even if the RA managed to somehow reduce the entrapped UA units in the end the losses that they would sustain ends the ability of the RA to do anything else for a very long time. The "victory" would surely lead to defeat as they have nothing left to defend against a Ukraine that has added more resolve to crush them and continues to grow their military through western aid and training up reserves. No win this way. So instead, encircle Kharkov. Everyone expects the attack to the Southeast, go Northwest. Shorten the encirclement distance considerably. Pocket only a couple brigades instead of a dozen that you have to deal with. Your combat power can be more focused out than in. Even if half the population of Kharkov and the surrounding area has left you probably still have a million civilians in the cauldron. Now you have an instant humanitarian crisis and a nice hostage to trade for some concessions at the negotiation table (Putin keeps L/DNR and land bridge, gives up Kherson and Kharkov). Since you are a soulless piece of dung you make your point by an intense 24 hour indiscriminate artillery barrage just to add some pressure to act quickly at the negotiation table. Do I think this is possible? Probably not due to all the problems with the RA ops so far, but they'd have a much better chance at this than a Donbas encirclement. It also works with who they are, what they are willing to do and what we've seen with their troop locations/movements so far. It's really the only way I see for them to get any leverage for negotiations. Thoughts?

Sure are paranoid, they even immobilized that poor little tiny tractor out of fear of being towed away in the night! On the video there are at least 5 grads and their support trucks there. Pretty nice hit.

Whenever anyone references the steppes I envision western Kansas. These descriptions sound more like a Normandy light. Definitely a lot of defensive opportunities but probably still bad terrain for support units as it is so difficult to hide nowadays.

Does anyone know the code name for the Russian invasion? If it hasn't been named yet I vote to call it Operation Dumpster Fire. That should even work for Battlefront in a couple years when they put out a new game covering the war it can be CMDF.

There have been a couple references to why the RA didn't take out the bridges over the Dnepr on day 1. Personally I think it was because they planned a swift 3 day war and it was over. They didn't want to destroy infrastructure that they would need in the long run. I think the real question is why they are standing over 6 weeks later. I can only think of two reasons: the usual - incompetence The UA had prepositioned enough stocks east of the Dnepr prior to the conflict that they aren't considered a high priority for affecting ground operations in the Donbas. My gut says it is number 1 but number 2 is plausible.

LOL, guess with all the tractor videos and memes I've seen my first thought was "Sevastopol or Odessa?"

This failing seems to be par for the course across the board. Is it possible that Russia decided 30 years ago that they needed to keep their Navy afloat and come out with a few new air and ground toys to act like they were a world power? Looking at it from the aspect of they want to be big and tough but know that they aren't ever going to fight a peer to peer conflict because NATO is not going to attack them? Figuring that they had enough quantity of brute force leftovers to handle their wayward colonies like Chechnya? It makes sense when you look at their force compositions and equipment. They come out with a fancy new tank and equip a battalion or two of their "elite" formations and everyone else is in old gear. Same with most of their other platforms. The western army's don't have active units running around in M60's, Chieftains and Leopard 1's. We've seen base grade T-72's on up, a virtual smorgasbord of variants throughout the different units. Same with their IFV's. They make enough fancy stuff to point to and say watch out for us but they don't field 4800 up to date MBT's equally spread across their formations. Why? If they were truly trying to defend against NATO or planned on attacking any peer country they would have had to have kept their whole first line up to date. They have to know that, again there aren't a lot of secrets as to what is in the ground forces of their adversaries and the capabilities of most of our weapons systems. If the people on this board know the difference between the air defense systems on the Moskva and an Aegis they certainly have to. If they haven't updated those systems in 40 years then they were never seriously planning to defend themselves from us or attack us. I know their corruption is systemic and has caused a lot of their problems as well but they couldn't realistically believe that what they have for an army could have challenged NATO or even the US on it's own. That isn't even counting in the air or on the sea. There have been plenty of examples of western warfighting capability over the last 30 years so they can't be in the dark as to just how far below the bar they would be in an armed conflict with the bigger contestants. They just can't be that stupid or uninformed. Call them what you want but I don't believe stupid is accurate. Staggeringly poor gamblers at the moment, yes. So with the mindset of looking tough mostly for bluff because they knew their economy couldn't support a rival war machine to NATO (they tried that and lost) but having enough to systematically subdue the former regions as needed looks like a possible compromise that could have placed them in this situation. It also falls in line with what others have said about this being Putin's Pearl Harbor moment. Watching Ukraine they knew that they had a quickly closing window of opportunity to act and if they didn't jump now it would be impossible in a couple more years. Of course as we have seen their assessments and gambles on western support and the fighting spirit of the UA were a little off the mark. I think a lot of that was based on the assumption that the UA hadn't yet developed much from the conflict in 2014 and the same mistake that most of the MSM "experts" and simply looked at the basic math without accounting for all the other factors involved. The assumption of more tanks and airplanes wins. You might say, "But, but, what about the Kremlin's rhetoric of how they are defending against an aggressive NATO and will defeat them!" or "Why would they develop the costly technologically advanced weapons systems if they were only going to beat on Georgia?". Well, to keep up the pretense to their people and have pretty toys on May 9th. Seriously, especially in an autocratic regime you have to have an enemy. You need to be the strong guy protecting the poor people of your nation from those foreign devils. The fancy toys inspire confidence in your leadership and make them feel safe, therefore you make them feel safe. Then smash a small state from time to time and make sure you let them know that you barely saved them from ruin at the hands of the Moldovan masses backed by the dastardly British Intelligence. And all that would make sense as to how we got to where we are today. Thoughts?

Someone posted a video from the youtube channel Eli from Russia a few days ago that was talking about the effects of sanctions on Russia. I watched it and found it interesting as well as a couple others she did. She wanders through their biggest mall in Moscow and talks about some of the closed stores (McDonalds, KFC and a couple I can't recall), but what I thought was interesting were all the stores that weren't closed. The Gap, Nike and several others. It looked like about 90% or more of the outlets were still in operation. Surprised there isn't more public pressure on those companies as well. Anyway, for those interested in the effects of the sanctions I just watched a video of her and another vlogger comparing prices of electronics: The gist of it is prices have increased on phones, tv's and appliances 50 to 100%. For example the new Iphone I think was 160,000 ish rubles and they state that the average income in Moscow is 60-80,000 rubles a month and that is 2-3 times higher than most of the other provincial cities around the country. She also stated that she was looking for lenses for her camera that she bought in December (price of said camera has doubled since then) and she absolutely can't find any anywhere. So I reckon the sanctions are starting to show and this inflation will continue higher and higher until the warehoused stocks of electronics are gone.

I had to look up the Neptunes after seeing the article. They way out range the Harpoons so I was scratching my head as to why they hadn't used them already but what you say makes sense. Now that there is no fear of a credible amphibious landing (sunk and damaged transports, offloaded combat units, etc) the UA can spend some to hurt the naval assets. Also knowing that the Harpoons or whatever ASM system is coming to backfill lets them commit what they have knowing the other assets will replace the used capability.

From today's ISW report: Russian forces continue to deploy damaged and ad-hoc units to Donbas.[9] The Kremlin introduced a ”yellow level of threat” in Russian regions bordering Ukrainian from April 13-26, likely to organize the redeployment of personnel and equipment to eastern Ukraine by imposing restrictions on civilian movement.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russia has formed five understrength Motorized Rifle regiments (the 103rd, 109th, 113th, 125th, and 127th) from forcibly mobilized personnel in Donetsk and Luhansk.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff stated these regiments are composed of up to five ”battalions” of 300 personnel each, and that only 5-10 percent of recruits have any combat experience. That is up to 7500 forcibly conscripted former Ukrainians that will be added to the butcher's bill when committed. Going to be brutal. Or best case scenario would be 7500 newly armed conscripts refusing to fight or mutiny. Probably wishful thinking though.

Ok, I concede to round 3. Actually I was thinking of cold war army force structures. Learn from this and go back to what worked for them with structures and doctrine. I actually think their older models were more flexible and useful compared to the BTG model. The BTG was formed due to a lack of manpower and trying to make the most with what they had. In my scenario they can scrap that and conscript a large enough number that they can revert back to earlier structures.

I admitted quite a bit earlier in this thread that I know very little about modern navies and modern naval combat. This article pretty much says that 72 harpoons is enough to wipe all the RuN ships off the Black Sea. To those that know how the missile defenses on ships work and have knowledge of the Russian systems, is that enough? I've always heard that the Aegis system could track and engage multiple targets, do the RuN ships have comparable systems? If 72 isn't enough, what would it take? Thanks.

So round one is pretty much called in the favor of Ukraine unless something that truly amazes all of us happens and everyone is wrong. How it exactly plays out we still aren't sure. Does the RA make a Zitadel lunge on a Wacht Am Rhein budget and then the remnants get slowly pushed out of Ukraine? Does the RA decide it would be fruitless to waste more manpower and machines and switch over to the defensive and get ground to nothing? Do they decide that it is lost for now and fight a tentative delaying action and get slowly pushed out while trying to bleed the UA as much as possible? Once they are pushed out I don't see the UA pursuing them into Russia. That just turns the tables, gives up their strengths and hands the advantage to the RA. So a stalemate/self-imposed DMZ goes into effect with most everything pulled out of arty range along the frontier, probably for both sides as it makes no sense to let the other side pound on you incessantly. So how does Russia do a round two? The war won't end until both sides agree that it is over and again the Ukraine is not going to invade and conquer Russia. So a stalemate at the border. The UA will benefit from western support in continued equipment and help, the RA is pretty much on it's own. I could see a limited amount of new techy stuff from China but I don't think the Russians will have the money to buy very much and the Chinese won't probably want to sell them a whole lot with the world opinions as they are. But we can assume that there will be some of that. It has been pointed out that Russia doesn't currently have and won't be able to conjure the ability to produce high tech weaponry due to sanctions. So no chance of them coming back with a fleet of T-14's and Terminators covered by all sorts of other sophisticated stuff. What options would they have? What if they go low tech? The economy won't support huge expenditures for fancy stuff, but Putin can spin the situation any way he wants. Rally the motherland for war with the nazis. Go back more in line with the Soviet system and seize the arms industry "for the people". Pull those thousands of tanks out of storage and start refurbishing everything. Conscript in a couple million troops. They have the low tech ability to produce the rifles, grenades, bombs, ordnance and all the other pre-microchip stuff. Again, they can wait the two or three years or whatever it takes before initiating round 2. It doesn't have to be right away and well, it can't be right away. Build up a powerful 1985-1990ish force with traditional concept for the RA that quantity has a quality of it's own. In the meantime they get to purge the officer corps and have time to get commanders and troops into the right positions and trained up to an adequate level to conduct old soviet doctrine attacks. Then when they deem themselves ready they can kick it off. Phase one to the Dnepr, phase two to a Zymotir/Odessa line, phase three the rest. How does Ukraine defeat that? I know the occupation will be long and bloody but under the Soviet era regime that Putin has instituted the Soviet era repression tactics come back too. So no uprising in the motherland would be tolerated and definitely nothing in occupied territories. Iron curtain goes back up on the borders and the insurgency would only last so long. Might cost the RA a million men, but I bet Putin is willing to pay that sort of a price. Thoughts?

I do believe these are my favorite weapon system of this war. The commercial drones fitted with re-purposed old anti tank grenades is just awesome!! Love the ingenuity and the instance of the RA losing expensive equipment to a cheap grenade that was probably manufactured in Russia.

It looks like they were trying to go for the BMP with a second shot and it overflew the target. If you look at the video at about 18 seconds you see a second launch just above where the first one came out of the tree line and then it explodes off to the left of the burning tank in the trees. Yes they need to get better at protecting their assets. Those shots were less than 500 meters from that tree line. The only excuse would be if the RA LP/OP over there is dead in the foxhole with their throats slit. This is a pretty common thing we have been seeing in these videos. Like in this one you see armor, bmp and soft vehicles scattered around this village and always close to houses. I'm thinking that most of the RA is choosing to stay in the houses instead of active patrolling or digging into positions in key terrain. Is this for comfort? Are they trying to hide from drones? Poor leadership and situational awareness?

I think another thing to look at is the difference in combat unit structures between the UA and RA. The BTG's have been gone over pretty good so far in this thread and in general we have compared them to US structures. If you look at the UA brigades it isn't the same. The first thing that you see is that the standard UA mech brigade contains 4 battalions of infantry (3 mech and 1 motorized), a tank battalion and an arty battalion along with service and support elements. This is twice the infantry of the US model and way more than the RA model when considering everything said about their deficiencies in manpower, etc. The airborne, airmobile and motorized UA brigades are lighter with 3 battalions of leg or motorized infantry and no tank battalion. This structure has several advantages over the RA. Being on the defensive they can cover a bigger frontage with their infantry. Their tanks can be massed and used as a Bn sledgehammer when needed and not parceled out. Their supporting fires can be used in mass and not split amongst BTG's. So overall the UA formations appear to be way more flexible and can mass their combat power easier. Combine that with the overall better ISR and the UA knows when and where to mass that power. Huge advantages. If we look at all the failings that have been observed about the RA to include poor communications, poor ISR, poor logistics, poor operational planning and poor air superiority we point to the "Russians suck" and leave it at that. Of course this is really easy as you can look at literally everything they have done up to this point and find nothing, NOTHING, to point to and say, "Wow, the RA did a pretty good job at X." But I digress. If we were to look at the comparative units with different operational assumptions, how do they stack up? Take the BTG's and have them operate under what you would consider normal conditions for supply, communication, etc. Could 3 or 4 BTG's attack a UA mech brigade and succeed? Maybe, but I really don't think so due to the flexibility of the brigade vs the BTG. The brigade retains the ability to shift their heavy mass and support as needed where the BTG is an island to itself. I think this is some of what we have seen in the Donbas area. The UA there are predominantly regular forces dug in and defending against repeated assaults and holding. The ISW reports over the past few weeks would state how those forces around Donetsk were repelling multiple assaults every day. This situation should play into the hands of the RA with dug in forces being prime targets for their supporting arms. Yet the result of break throughs and totally smashing the UA line hasn't happened. To me this points to a high degree of inherent flexibility among the UA formations as without it they should be pummeled to death in that situation. In conclusion I do believe that the actual force structures of the UA and RA do play a part in what we are seeing. Of course it is hard to tell to what degree when all the negative factors affecting RA performance are present.

I can't speak about the other Western countries, but in the US there are a lot of very good reasons to sign up. Pay is decent, educational opportunities are made available (even required in the case of officers), professional development is promised (though imperfectly implemented at times), there's a raft of benefits for veterans after leaving, and if you stick with it there's a significant pension paid out for the rest of your life. And then there is the best reason of all, because they want to be a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. This is a very big qualitative difference especially when it comes to morale. Then add in the other things that have been mentioned like the support and respect of their country and it's people backing them. Lay on the good gear and training and a trust that your life won't be thrown away by your commanders and you have a good recipe for a solid war fighter. So the difference between a western soldier and a conscript is pretty big and hard to quantify. It is probably the difference between the slave and the gladiator in a colosseum. Yes, longleftflank, your painting all infantry with that big old brush is pretty offensive to those that served. It is pretty par for the course though for the educated elite to look down their noses at those that aren't. The thing that I always thought was funny though is that when a young person is a Marine they are a dullard who couldn't do anything else with their life so they joined the military. Then after they get out and get done with college and are working as an engineer somewhere they were miraculously transformed from the knuckle dragging imbecile that they were to this newly intelligent creature by some magic wand. Education does not equal intelligence. The position that someone holds in life does not equal their potential. The inverse to your statement is that those that didn't serve are a bunch of soft pathetic effeminates with no concept of honor, integrity, pride or courage. We know that is not the case, just like we know that classifying all combat arms soldiers into the too dumb for anything else category isn't the case. I think when you paint with a wide brush like that it is called bigotry. In my opinion everyone needs to be very careful with the wide brush when applying it to people. Everyone is wired different. Everyone makes choices. Everyone has their own set of circumstances. It is very dangerous when people are viewed as faceless masses and not the individuals that they are. I will concede that there are some dullards in the military. I was blessed with serving with a couple of them. However, the vast majority were awesome and don't deserve such derision.

Maintenance question for you tankers. There appears to be a lot of rust on the rifling of the BMP barrel. Is that normal? Could it just be from being abandoned for a couple weeks or would it be indicative of long term poor maintenance? I know you don't want rust in the rifling of your small arms but maybe it is different on the larger guns (wouldn't think so but have to ask to know for certain). Thanks.

Scott Ritter is yet another expert that has been on Russian TV over the years. He was the WMD attack dog for the inspections in Iraq and leading the charge, until he was no longer leading the charge and resigned pointing fingers at everyone else for hindering his ability to uncover the WMDs. Then when he was no longer in charge he was suddenly convinced there weren't any. He's gone around the bend and don't think he can be considered as a good source for this board. And on top of everything else he is, he is a twice convicted sex offender. So right at the baseline you are looking at someone without morals or ethics which makes them pretty hard to trust. Just saying.

From today's ISW report: Russian forces are implementing increasingly draconian measures to conscript previously ineligible personnel. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on April 10 that Russian forces are now conscripting previously ineligible categories of people, including those with childhood disabilities and workers in protected industries.[3] The GUR reported that DNR/LNR authorities are enabling traffic inspectors to issue on-the-spot conscription notices and are establishing checkpoints on key highways. DNR and Russian military police are additionally reportedly destroying documents granting exemptions—such as medical records or work certificates—to forcibly conscript people.[4] So instead of handing out traffic citations their traffic police are issuing draft notices. I promise I'll never complain about a speeding ticket again!!!! On a serious note there have been mentioned of increased conscription in the DNR and LNR areas a couple weeks ago. The Russians must be using human wave attacks to depopulate those areas and those are the places that are supposed to be Russian friendly. Sending skilled workers and physically unqualified into combat shows some pretty severe desperation.

It is so hard for me to wrap my mind around Russia. They want to strut around and tell everyone how tough they are and how their military is so formidable, then say they are scared of Ukraine invading them. They have to attack Ukraine for their own security? But, I thought you had a strong military so you should be able to defend yourself if you were attacked. The circles of their logic makes my head hurt.

Agree. I think that direct intervention by any western or European country is the worst thing we could do. Yes, everyone can argue that weapons and aid is direct intervention but I mean by committing our military forces against the RA. As much as I'd like to see a couple ABCTs smash whatever is left of the RA in Ukraine while the RuAF is cleansed from the sky and the RuN is feeding the fishes, it is completely counter productive. First off, it actually legitimizes and strengthens Putin. He gets to use the "See, I told you the western Nazis were going to attack us!! Unite for the motherland!!" bull. Attacking a country usually generates a negative opinion of the attacker by the attackee (see Ukraine since 2003 for reference). It will solidify their resolve to resist not make them magically depose of their crappy leader. It just makes the problem bigger and last longer. Second, NATO does not have the manpower to conquer and control Russia. Take the area of Ukraine times about 24 and sprinkle in 4 times the population hating our warriors and trying to kill them. It becomes a worse idea than Putin attacking Ukraine. China (the real threat) would love to see every trained soldier and reservist of the entire free world tangled up in an unending conflict in Russia. Pretty much allows them to do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever they want. And yes, they would feed a Russian resistance high tech weaponry as fast as they could, so would Iran and everyone else around the world that hates us and could. The worst part is the faster and more complete we whoop them, the more likely we end the world as we know it. Back Putin into a cave in the Urals and give him nothing to lose and see how long it takes him to push the button. Lastly, like said above, it takes all other options off the table for a settlement. We attack and it is to the death, probably of everybody. So Ukraine sadly needs to win this one on their own. We should give them every bit of material that we can. I don't know why we haven't stripped our National Guard bare and sent every bit of kit we can to them to arm up and protect all the reserves they are mustering. What will make this war last longer than it has to is the lack of equipment for the UA and especially it's reserves. By Ukraine fighting this on their own with only material help from the west and winning it they destroy Russia. They destroy the myth of Russia. Russia being beat by a little neighbor not even a third of it's size is going to be really hard to sell to the people, the elite and the army. Best of all, the whole world knows it. Russia becomes a non-entity and the whole world thumbs their nose at them. Most likely their federation would fall apart. If they value strength as much as it seems they do in their mythology, this is the worst thing that can happen to them as a country. It's also the best way to negate Putin. He won't be arrested and tried by the Hague, we all know that. It is unlikely that he will be deposed of right away no matter how bad the RA gets beat. But by handing Russia this big defeat it puts into question everything about Russia and Putin. Now he will be too busy internally to be a problem to anyone externally and in the long run will probably be deposed, but I don't think it will come quickly.

There was a lot of talk earlier about computer chips and them being a major stumbling block for Russian manufacturing of armament. Can computer chips be repurposed? Would a chip out of my F150 be usable or be able to be made usable for a weapon system of some sort? Just wondering if they would be able to cannibalize other existing stuff to fuel their production short term.