BletchleyGeek
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Posts
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Posts posted by BletchleyGeek
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12 minutes ago, paxromana said:
A Russian missile not hitting anything important ... Shock! Horror! Stop the Presses!
A chimpanzee with an AR-15 in a crowded train station will also miss a lot of shots, but I wouldn't like to be there to have a laugh at its lack of prowess
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Just read on @Osinttechnical that there are reports of a likely cruise missile strike on an Ukrainian power plant about 60 kms west of Kryvyi Rih
Edit: didn't hit anything important, it seems
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1 hour ago, billbindc said:
Of interest....
That is indeed interesting for various reasons... if the Ukrainian project just needed a little push (and new facilities) that would be probably a cheaper and politically safer way of empowering Ukraine with long range strike capabilities.
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3 hours ago, paxromana said:
You know the recently released 4th Edition of Twilight 2000 (Free League) had to assume that 1989 collapse of USSR never happened to make for a 'believable' AD 2000 war (assuming you understand that believable in this context means downright bat**** crazy!)?
Didn't check it out... yet! I heard there was a new edition on KS.
Of all the possible futures, why don't we get the one with flying cars, fusion power and warp drives? C'mon...
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1 hour ago, Grigb said:
I would be Intel officer, I would start tracking RU Oligarchs with capabilities to form PMCs. Most likely it will be Oligarchs from manufacturing sphere. Just having money is not enough. But if you have a plant, you surely have security service to serve as nucleus for PMC and you have manpower resource (plant workers) to tap in for expansion. Given the deteriorating situation you will have to do it anyway to protect what you have.
If I am right and the Shift will happen, the West will have option to influence events in the RU sewers without direct military intervention.
RU PMCs are basically tribes linked to businesses that generate income. They will press each other to get control of the business. And the weakest ones will look for help. Any help. And they could get it under conditions favorable for the West.
The notion of Russia descending into a crossover between Somalia circa 1992 and Twilight 2000 without the nuclear mass death/fallout is frankly terrifying.
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Interesting bit, on Ukraine acquiring anti drone systems via Poland
Maybe Poland may want to buy other stuff as well from Israel.
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6 hours ago, Huba said:
No way it is. It is inside UA artillery range along considerable part of it's length. And at least parts are single track. All Russian transports to Kherson in Melitopol are routed through Crimea.
Then all that chatter is just noise and the most likely axis if attack for Ukraine in the south is Orikhiv - Tokmak - Melitopol.
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12 minutes ago, Huba said:
Here's a really cool tool for tracking all the railway lines in the world, I can't recommend it enough if anybody want's to familiarize himself with the rail logistics in Ukraine: https://openrailwaymap.org/
You are absolutely right here, to support Donbas, Russia will have to redirect all the traffic to south of Luhansk, or to Rostov. The closest big city that could serve as a main supply base is Volgograd. It really takes a moment to comprehend how screwed they are, even without any UA strikes on the rail infrastructure.
And regarding ATACMS, I wonder how soldiers of the western grouping would deal with Crimean bridge going down...
That map really says it all... Looking at it, the push from Vuhledar south makes more sense to me (if that rail line going in parallel to the Azov sea coast is still operational).
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I am unsure of how related is to the topic at hand, but Azerbaiyan and Armenia just had a significant tussle.
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2 hours ago, chrisl said:
But I don't think that would help protect their armor against Ukraine with current equipment. NLAW has a 1 km range, and Javelin and Stugna P can hit at 5 km, which is the horizon for a 6 foot tall person. All three of those are "If you can see just a little bit of it you will hit it, and if you can hit it you will kill it" weapons. So the infantry have to be well ahead of the armor if you can count on every enemy squad having a couple NLAWs, or maybe a Javelin with multiple rounds. Russia is missing the G part of most of their ATMs, so Ukraine is in a much better position for using vehicles in closer support to their infantry.
Totally agreed. And how often we see an infantry force break through a "modern system" infantry defense (buttressed by heavy machine guns, mortars and grenade launchers) without tank support? Overcoming such a defense quickly would require infiltration to seek surprise and hope for the defenders to lose cohesion and fall back. Or having close air support. Or knowing how to organize the artillery arm to use UAV observation effectively and radically reduce the time lag between the need for artillery support being formulated in the battlefield and the supporting fires zeroing on targets?
Using superior numbers in infantry when attacking under the modern system is hard. It requires finesse to avoid carnage (and failure).
By the way, infiltration and surprise possibly was the key for the Ukrainian breach of Russian lines, I look forward to read/learn how those early hours played out.
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I am personally looking forward to see how many reputed experts claiming that "looking at the tactical, open source intelligence details obfuscates the big picture", that also have completely failed to even imagine this Ukrainian operation was possible are going to try to somersault into the position of "having called out this all along". It baffles me that one can construct a - true to reality - "big picture" without taking into their consideration any data at all.
I found the video of the Ukrainian soldiers singing their national anthem quite poignant. A country whose "national music" goes well to the tune of the violin deserves to be free and prosperous.
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I recommend to set aside some time to watch Perin latest video. The topics covered couldn't be more timely.
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27 minutes ago, JonS said:
Op COBRA stands out as a conanical example here - the first couple of days looked like, well, maybe not "failure", in absolute terms, but re-emergent stalemate and the failure of the hopes that had been laid on it by the buildup and extraordinary expenditure of resources.
Then suddenly, on day 3, hey ho we're off to the races.
As a wargaming aside, very few games capture this well. The one thing John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns does best - with its 2 hour per turn - is to capture this... the challenge is go through the ~36 turns of grim slogging out until, as you say, we're off to the races (or one gives up). Flashpoint Campaigns is also quite good (and covering a modern era conflict with ATGMs, high lethality counterbattery artillery fires, etc.).
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1 hour ago, Holien said:
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Also you have to add in that folk when dealing with the media need to take a position and be very clear and concise with a simple POV. Media don't ask you back to talk (and pay expenses) if you are full of greys, rather than blacks and whites when talking.
Excellent couple posts @Holien. TV producers cast their experts balancing many concerns and the requirement "specific and relevant expertise on given a topic" may sometimes take a back seat to other concerns.
In the same way that an obstetrician may not be the best person to bring to TV to make an assessment on vaccines safety, or a Computer Science professor to make assessments on why there is more matter than antimatter in the Universe, a former chief of staff with ample first hand experience in military police operations may not have the most insightful takes on a war that I think it is fair to say has defied everyone's expectations... at least twice or more times!
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2 hours ago, The_Capt said:
So what is the new tank concept? Is it even a single vehicle anymore? If you pull the tank apart and disaggregate it across multiple cheap capabilities, would that work?
Exactly: networked, modular and cheap to produce. More like a team of wirelessly networked Universal Carriers than a phalanx of Big Mice with Huge Guns.
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
UGVs will be a huge part of the battlefield of the very, very near future. We're talking about a few years, not decades. People who do not understand this are either ignorant or in denial (I do not mean this in an insulting way, just being factual). Which systems doing what in what way is yet to be hammered out, but the trends are already emerging and the basics established.
Here's some videos:
I agree with that, just not convinced at all about Haldeman's "Forever Peace" scenarios being the defining way that we will see these platforms used and introduced.
And thanks for the videos, I knew about the second one (that's my Stugna on wheels reference) the first one was news to me. Looks a bit "regressive" to me.
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53 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Instead of WW1 levels of dumb massed fires, back up that infiltration with precision fires to shtomp anything that they can find with accuracy - rinse and repeat, and continue to support with deep strike on anything that even looks high value - particularly C4ISR, EW, Logistics and throw in an airfield or two for the sunbathers
So sneaky but packing a punch like 1918 stösstruppen?
Truth be told, those large armoured charges that seem to be the concept (illusion?) for much doctrine have very rarely worked IRL (Prokhorovka comes to mind) unless the defender lacked effective anti tank weapons.
As you say mech is too hot, too loud, too easy to spot. The obvious fix is to make it cooler, and stealthier. That would probably mean getting rid of the need of having a crew and elaborate armour. I don't think that Steve's scenario "overweight people fighting wars from the mall" is close at all... securing comms is not a trivial problem (if fixable at all). Droning ISIS bastards (or just poor bastards often I am afraid) is one thing, going after a nation state with significant cyber/EW/anti-satellite capabilities is another matter. I think we will see more things like a "Stugna on wheels" with the operator relatively close but out of LOF (e.g. relaying via a small UAV), and the UGV being semi autonomous to handle loss of comms situations.
Also, winning wars by 1) having the other side being the one that goes on the offensive into a KZ, and 2) making them so uncomfortable that they give up and go home, I think is both smart and progressive.
I think this thread is close to solving the Riddle of Steel, Ukraine 2022 edition.
By the way, a warm and heartfelt salute to all Ukrainian folk on this thread in this very important date!
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54 minutes ago, womble said:
So that might be more than nothing, I suppose.
There's that, and there may be a further strenghtening of the resolve to see the Russian Federation decisively defeated. Enabling more action that you can see some countries in the EU reluctant to take.
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Rape is the weaponisation of sex to objectify, humiliate and gain power. In this way has been used countless times in many wars (including wars against great evils).
To find a grown up person question the veracity of rape on the basis of the age of the victim is indicative of:
- That person is not grown up, and very naïve
- Ignorant as well of established historical facts
We are getting very close to this being triggered
https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/
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3 minutes ago, TheVulture said:
The front lines seem to be getting very confused in Kherson Oblast, both here in the south and north in the Kryvyi Rih direction
It kind of looks like an Ukrainian pincer closing on Kherson... but definitely not one of those neat "animated arrows" in the style of documentaries and "setting the scene" war movie prologues.
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22 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
WW2 is not a reference for this fight, it just leads to misconceptions.
Some points of comparison which do make sense and check out:
- [X] Importance of tightly integrated aerial observation and massed artillery fires working in near real time (something the US Army could do in 1944-45)
- [X] Extensive, deep fortifications containing efficiently numerically superior enemy (the JFO fortifications have withstood now 1 month of fires with 21st century tech and seem to be holding mostly)
- [X] Overextended mechanised forces being eventually ground to dust by local "pinprick" counterattacks (happened to the Germans all the time in 1941)
- [X] "Cheap" tank rushes do not work unless coordinated with infantry and artillery (happened to the Red Army a lot throughout the war)
- [X] Urban battles being sinkholes of time, blood and materiel (Stalingrad, Breslau, ... so many to count...)
- [X] Much vaunted militaries looting whatever to keep themselves fed
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That's very close to Kherson. I brace myself for what is going to be found there.
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1 hour ago, The Steppenwulf said:
then it begs the question why the Kremlin declared it would withdraw 48-24 hours before they did?
As has happened several times during this war, translation from Russian/Ukrainian sometimes is a bit loose. What I read they said - from a source in English and another in Spanish - is that "they would scale down significantly operations north of Kyiv".
The "Kremlin" also has declared, in no particular order and within the same time span the following: that they have "written" guarantees of Ukraine agreement on neutrality, that they have proof of Ukraine planning an attack with biological weapons, that their true objective has been always the Donbas, and that the war crimes we are all seeing documented are fake.
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40 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
One theory is some form of agreement made in Turkey to let the Russians pull out. The benefit to Ukraine is they can avoid the costly "backs to the wall" sort of fighting it would take to mop up all the Russian pockets. Lots more civilians would have died. The benefit to Russia is, of course, they get out of the pickle they were in. This theory fits all the facts quite well, so it is credible.
Personally, I think Ukraine would have better off slogging it out in this area, but then again I don't have the same information the Ukrainians do.
Another theory is as soon as Ukraine saw that Russians were withdrawing it immediately started redeploying to other sectors instead of tying up resources around Kiev. The tradeoff here is letting Russian forces escape but accelerating the redeployment of fresh forces to other sectors. This too fits the facts.
The last theory is that Ukraine wasn't in a position to immediately prevent a full scale withdrawal and therefore Russia was able to escape. This also fits the facts, so is credible.
Theory no. 1 reeks of the kind of self promoting BS that Erdogan likes to spread around. My thoughts are on 50-50 on theories no. 2 and 3. Counterstrokes on the supply line of the RF pushing out of Izyum, and Kherson I think are pretty much on the cards. Operations like that require careful husbandry of scarce resources.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
This is very interesting. I have read quite a bit of Isaev, Lopukhovsky and Zamulin, and I always wondered what was the reception of the scathing criticism you can find in their works.