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BletchleyGeek

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  1. Like
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from Beleg85 in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    So there seems to be quite a few arguments and facts that suggest that, in all likelihood, those green "death rays" were some kind of BS. Or the RU Nats conducting some rite to call Yog Soggot from the Dark Beyond the Stars.
    Meanwhile, commercial satellites provide plenty of intel for the OSINT community:
     
  2. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Grigb in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Just in case - extended clip of that UKR attack on hammers with better quality and no music (infantry dismounting at 2:20).
    Cannot resist posting this:
  3. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from ibncalb in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Let's imagine for a second that video games were a thing in 1935, all other things remained equal in the world, technologically and politically. What would a CM-like game covering a hypothetic World War II look like:
    - Tanks would have multiple turrets and guns
    - Infantry platoons would be like those of the Italian Army 
    - Cavalry would be a thing
    - It would have an amazing model for fortifications
    - Uniforms would come in bright colors
    - Etc.
  4. Like
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from Raptor341 in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Let's imagine for a second that video games were a thing in 1935, all other things remained equal in the world, technologically and politically. What would a CM-like game covering a hypothetic World War II look like:
    - Tanks would have multiple turrets and guns
    - Infantry platoons would be like those of the Italian Army 
    - Cavalry would be a thing
    - It would have an amazing model for fortifications
    - Uniforms would come in bright colors
    - Etc.
  5. Thanks
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Grossman in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Nova Khakova is critical for the water supply to the Crimea. There is no doubt in my mind it will not be taken lightly. It is pivotal to Putin's invasion and control of Crimea.
    I found an old clipping, dated Feb 27-22.  Events are proving out the legend
    https://www.orissapost.com/amateur-historian-putin-has-forgotten-that-the-best-soviet-soldiers-were-ukrainian-during-ww-ii/
  6. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from The_MonkeyKing in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    So there seems to be quite a few arguments and facts that suggest that, in all likelihood, those green "death rays" were some kind of BS. Or the RU Nats conducting some rite to call Yog Soggot from the Dark Beyond the Stars.
    Meanwhile, commercial satellites provide plenty of intel for the OSINT community:
     
  7. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Zeleban in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Russians also have their superheroes😁
  8. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Pete Wenman in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Some interesting thoughts from Tom Cooper on the nature of the ground war.
    Full article here https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-4-october-2022-kherson-da84b46d8131
    It's a lengthy read, but well worth the effort given previous conversations here 
    Quote to whet the appetite
    P
  9. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Taranis in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    @Homo_Ferricus

    He had also insisted on the fact that the HIMARS and their use against the ammo dumps would be absolutely useless, that it was not a gamechanger and that it was a waste. Since then, although the Russian artillery is still present, their infinite amount of ammunition seems to have eroded and is no longer really capable of stopping the Russian attacks. Conversely, this is what our forum has clearly demonstrated. Since that and other Western shipments, the Ukrainians have taken over. So ultimately, isn't it a gamechanger? (although as in all things, everything is more complex and the HIMARS alone have not reversed the situation but in my opinion have greatly contributed).
    Regarding this channel, there are good and less good. The good thing is that he can help us see things differently because he thinks of things that I would not necessarily have thought of on the economic level, for example. I am more informed about military things than economics and he brings me subjects that I had not noticed with my narrow-mindedness based only on military news. His remarks should therefore not be taken as facts but as subjects for further reflection. As MonkeyKing says, he is super pessimistic with the West and conversely rather over optimistic for the Russians. He said that "the Russians would always have enormous amounts of artillery ammunition, an infinite supply of tanks (12,000 tanks etc, without taking into account that a good part are no longer in good condition or old models) and that their economy is doing wonderfully while Ukraine is at the bottom of the abyss and Europe is on the verge of destruction". While the latest information seems to indicate that Russians suffer much more economically than we think.
    In my humble opinion, this chain remains interesting to help us get out of our echo chamber but it remains necessary as in all things to cross sources. And keep in mind he says a certain amount of BS and don't take it all for the truth. A channel like Reporting From Ukraine or the one made by a pilot whose name I can't remember are good complements, although the former is very biased on the Ukrainian side. They have the advantage of being short and of completing the War in Ukraine channel well if you have little time to follow the news and multiply your sources.
    Another solution, although there is not always everything, is to consult the site https://liveuamap.com/ which gives good information (multiplications of sources;))
    Sorry for the big block
  10. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to NamEndedAllen in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Perhaps in politics and war not everything is always quite so simple. Trump’s signal of withdrawal and other such past precedents were certainly not universally applauded as wise strategy. But there it was, handed to an incoming President with a clock of a few months ticking away. One should never forget that management focus in any organization, large or small is a scarce resource. Among the various scenarios bandied about, a not unreasonable one is a mixture of a bad hand deprioritized and handed to the quick and dirty “it’s going to be a mess but you guys are stuck with it” C or D or worse team. Because a storm is coming, NATO is in shambles, we have a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands, and an economy that is once again teetering (except for the stock market!). The military is worn by decades in a no-win not a war again nation building futile exercise. And Europe is a greater strategic and national interest than that Graveyard of Empires. So that’s our immediate priority focus overseas. Tough decisions, never guaranteed to be right until the dust settles. Pretty clear the new USA Admin was repairing European relations and sharing intelligence well ahead of the storm of the century in Europe. And it looks as if Afghanistan was viewed as a write off - just as the in the previous Administration. It is an ugly ugly world. We end up grabbing our Bright Moments when and how we can.  
     
    I must say how good and pleasant it is to see the USA unequivocally backing the good guys.
     
     
  11. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Grossman in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Biden was criticised heavily for the sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan, end of August 2021, last year. It could have been done better, agreed, but the theory I have is that the US had very early intel that the Russians were going to invade Ukraine. In the US book this was home turf, as compared to Afghanistan, and the US didn't want to be "deployed" in 2 conflicts at the same time. Hence the immediate pull out in Afghanistan. Biden never said why it was done, but then he wouldn't. 
  12. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to The_MonkeyKing in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Pulls out conclusion out of his hat based on very little. Example in the spring concluded that Germany and France are going to let up on their support based on body language in a photoshoot. And oh god the economic analysis. If he is right the western economy will fail and the main economic models don't work.
    Especially in his strategic level commentary, but also in tactical level he makes a lot of baseless conclusions. Resent example concluding Harkiv attack run out of steam weeks ago and Kherson op failed already many many times.
    He shows the front rumors well, but any analysis or future predictions are just wild, and made with such confidence.
    Also again the world economic predictions. Oh, god
  13. Like
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from The Steppenwulf in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    That's honestly a rather strange analysis Steve.
    All the - I'd say - "solid success" stories are to no small part a result of their integration into the Common Market and etc. provided by the European Union. I think that this thread has gone in quite a few orbits around how wrong/right was the Ostpolitik that the EU implemented to integrate, in some sense, the Russian Federation. Something that if anything, after recent events, seems to me way, way far removed from what will be possible in the near future.
    Vietnam as you say is an interesting case study where making amends on past misguided, ideologically-driven political-military interventions and the existence of a common enemy/rival (China, which let's remember, invaded Vietnam too, in an example of "big fish eats eat small fish" international relations) has certainly resulted in a non-alignment and economical partnership that has greatly benefited Vietnam. Still, I would say that nobody would say that Vietnam is a democratic country, and questioning the Party line in any way - even if you happen to be a double citizen from a Western country - gets you thrown into a dank dungeon in Hanoi.
    South Korea wasn't occupied, but I think it is fair to say that it is sovereignty was kind of "closely monitored" for decades, until the corrupt military dictatorship there collapsed in the late 1980s. So not really a beacon of freedom and liberty because of good relations with the West, but rather in spite of. Hence the rather - at times - dubitative approach of South Korea to jump ship with the USA and Japan (with whom South Korea still has some beef to cut).
    Can't say much about Mongolia, to be honest.
    And regarding Serbia... not only was bombed by NATO (and the aerial campaign of 1999 is matter of great debate how effective was at actually destroying the Serbian army capabilities) but the West changed de facto the recognised international borders and still has, what I can't help describing as a garrison on Kosovo. The process of integration with European Union requires nation states to trade off sovereignty for prosperity (and I would argue future liberty and freedom too, thinking that also Spain and Greece had military dictatorships in place which were great friends of the USA, at least after 1956 in the Spanish case).
    Another interesting case study is Iraq (or Afghanisthan)... probably as providing a counterexample to the kind of political-diplomatic engineering that I was referring to in my post.
  14. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Thomm in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Level 1:
    Enforce no-fly zone over Ukraine. Provide as many advanced ground-based air and missile defense assets as possible. Level 2:
    Air campaign against Russian ground forces in Ukraine Level 3:
    Air campaign against Russian aviation and navy.
  15. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Taranis in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    "Ukrainian soldiers at the recently retaken railway station in Kupiansk Vuzlovyi, in the Kharkiv region, on October 2, 2022. YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP"
  16. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to JonS in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    True, except that aiui the burst barrel was on a UKR Krab?
  17. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Kinophile in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Exactly.  As Furiousa says in Mad Max, when Max wants to wait and surrender to Immortan Joe:
    "You're relying on the gratitude of a very bad man. "
     
  18. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to The_Capt in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Just to chime in on this, I think we are suffering from “other shoe-itis” in the west on this war.  We have spent over 6 months now waiting for the “other shoe to drop”, and frankly I do not think Russia has any shoes left.
    We have discussed the nuclear card at length - I still think it is a possibility but still remote.  Most likely a demonstration in an empty field p, if at all.
    Unconventionally, the cyber-information warfare apocalypse never showed up - I think we way overestimated Russian capability here, at least in a traditional warfare sense.
    Conventionally the term used is “trained effective strength”.  This is manpower that can integrate into an operational system at equal or better quality.  The major problem with the 300k conscript push is that is will lower the overall quality of the RA operational system — which was not in great shape after Phases I and II.  The Russians are clearly going for mass, likely because it was the only thing that came close to working in the Donbas.  I suspect they, and we, are about to get a further lesson on the utility of dumb mass in modern warfare.  
    The UA has gotten past the “throw anyone at the problem” and are in fact the side that is actually being deliberate in operations.  They have the initiative and are biting and slicing while the RA bleeds out, as they have pretty much done this entire war.
    Nothing in the Russian defence looks deliberate at this point.  I see no Putin-line, nor is the UA giving them time to build one.  Big defensive belts take months and years to build, time the RA does not have.  And they also likely do not have the expertise at this point either as they have been killing off a lot of their highly trained and ready troops.
    So I expect the UA will continue it campaign of slow and methodical corrosive warfare until the RA collapses (again)…rinse and repeat until one hits the border.   
  19. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Taranis in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    "During Vladimir Putin's annexation speech, in Luhansk, Ukraine, September 30, 2022. AP"
    *They don't seem very numerous for people who voted more than 90% to join Russia.
  20. Thanks
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Pete Wenman in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    pretty raw stuff
    https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/2022/09/30/its-a-slaughter/
    blog post from here
     
  21. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Taranis in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Vladimir Putin criticizes the United States
    He seems to imply that he never considered nuclearizing a foreign country. As if the Russians would ever do that. Seems the US calls about nuclear threats must have had their effect.
  22. Like
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from Lethaface in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
    The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
    Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).
  23. Like
    BletchleyGeek got a reaction from LongLeftFlank in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    @LongLeftFlank was wondering whether the Lyman Pocket was going to play out like Falaise or Korsun... Looks like it is going to be a mixture of both. From @The_MonkeyKing map the last kilometre or so into Zarichne is down hill and observed probably from Ukrainian positions on higher ground either side... Yuck.
     
  24. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Pete Wenman in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    Question not specifically for @Grigb @Haiduk @akd but you guys might have a better feel for it
    When reading 503rd Guard MMR, (or what ever other units referenced) do we have a feel for how many boots on the ground this really is. We know its certainly not at full strength, but what does a Regiment mean in this context, 1, 2 or 3 BTG ? It would be nice to strip away the "looks good on paper" and get to the reality of what shape these units are currently in.

     
    Tom Cooper suggests the following units in the Lyman are
    Russians in Lyman: gauging by reports from the social media, the group of forces encircled there is controlled by the 20th Combined Arms Army. At the first look, one might say, 'ah, VSRF'. That's wrong. The troops there are including:
    - Bars-13
    - Bars-16 (also known as 'Kuban' unit; this unit used to have 1,000 combatants; about 400 are inside Lyman)
    - 208th 'Cossack' Motor Rifle Regiment (LPR)
    - 503rd GMRR/19th MRD seems to be holding the way in/out
    It is possible that the 204th Motor Rifle Regiment is around, too. That said, what's left of the 144th MRD is outside the pocket: this is on the northern side of it, in the Borova area.
    Re. BARS: this is a Russian abbreviation for 'Special Combat Army Reserve' (full designation is actually BARS-2021). This was a program to mobilise 100,000 volunteers from former veterans of the VSRF for a 3-years contract. If the Rosgvardia is 'Putin's Pasdaran', BARS is something like 'Putin's Republican Guards': they're drafted from the Russian Cossack Association, handsomely paid (US$3,500 a month, plus allowances and awards), highly motivated, and well-equipped.
    Other known BARS units are battalion-sized, and, when fully mobilised, about 1,000-strong. Nearly all are meanwhile deployed in Ukraine. The few others I've heard about so far are:
    - Shironin Battalion (from Kirov)
    - Bars-14 (I know this is one of units the ZSU considers 'criminals' and is taking no POWs from)
    - Bars-15 (also known as 'Piatnashka'; receiving same treatment like -14)
    - Bars-18 (ditto)
    For involved ZSU units, the following can be assessed:
    Kupyansk
    - 92nd Mech
    - 3rd Tank
    - Kraken SF (battalion)
    - possibly a battalion of the 80th Motor
    Oskil
    - 1st 'Ivan Bohun' Special Purpose Brigade (est. 4 Mar 22; including troops from 19 countries; has 6 battalions)
    - 25th Airborne
    - 66th Mech (persistently ignored by Ukrainian social media, but reported often by the Russians)
    - 17th Tank
    - 4th NG Brigade
    - Azov SF (battalion)
    Lyman
    - 4th Tank
    - 79th Airborne
    - 81st Airborne
    Siversk
    - 80th Airborne
    - 114 TD
    - 115 TD
    Bakhmut is defended by
    - 58 Motor
    - 72nd Mech
    - 93rd Airborne
    - 28th Artillery
    - at least a brigade (in total) of the TD, but I'm not sure what units are involved.
    Additional units 'detected', but not localised, yet known as involved 'somewhere in northern Donbass' are:
    - 1st Tank
     
  25. Upvote
    BletchleyGeek reacted to Zeleban in How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?   
    RU recruits are preparing for the parade in captured Kyiv
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