ikalugin

Well, you can't have those assets before you win the budget war if you know what I mean. I always wondered - how does National Guard (of the US) deal with it's aircraft? Maybe a similar set up would be possible for the Army?

Airport is by definition the sum of all it's elements. When talking about capturing it, it provides a false impression to the people who did not follow the situation closely. The reason why "holding new terminal" and "holding the airport" terms are related is because the new terminal is the primary point that loyalists manage to hold, capturing it would essentially give the separatists overall control of the airport. The airport area is (was) by it's nature contested, from what I remember it was not clearly market as Ukrainian on the demarkation maps.

I think a clarification is in order: Both sides control parts of the airfield. Thus the impression that the Ukrainian loyalists control the entire airfield is wrong. According to the joint Russia-Ukraine team regulating the ceasefire, both sides are responsible for violating it: http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/135211 Hence blaming the separatists exclusively for cease fire violations is again faulty. If you are interested I could look for more statistics on that topic from that source. I would also note that the recent events (the Ukrainian Armed Forces operations around the Donetsk airfield) show poor coordination between the various CTO Forces' groupings, an example would be the refusal of volunteer units to attack with the Army units.

The quick glance shows that the datalink is intended to send the information from the missile to the shooter (for post strike damage assessment), but not from the shooter to the missile (for re-targeting).

Ok, on the overall operational-strategic concept. As I have said earlier the objectives of Russian Armed Forces in that operation would be: - destroying the Ukrainian Armed Forces/CTO Forces east of Dnepr. - securing the pro Russian territories. - doing so ASAP. The overall idea I have is that the Russian Armed Forces would be advancing on 4 different operational-strategic axis at the same time. Those would be: - Kursk-Kiev decoy attack to draw final Ukrainian reserves elsewhere. - Belgorod-Kharkov-Dnepropetrovsk to secure Dnepr crossings and isolate the CTO Forces from the north. - Dzhankoi-Zaporozhie to secure Dnepr crossings and isolate the CTO forces from the west. - Crimea-Kherson-Odessa to secure those territories and cut of any possibility of supplies/reinforcements by sea. I assume initial airborne landings/air lifts/special forces attacks/amphib landings on those points: - Kiev, Borispol airfield (special forces company-battalion sized force). - Kiev, Zhulyany airfield (VDV BTG with special forces support). - Zaporozhie (VDV BTG with special forces support). - Dnepropetrovsk (VDV BTG with special forces support). - Odessa/Nikolaev (the Naval Infantry BDe goes there). Attack on the first axis is conducted primarily by a mechanized grouping, with objective of making a lot of noise, but it doesn't have to reach Kiev, just threaten it. That grouping also poses as if the second axis grouping has Kiev in mind and not the CTO Forces, thus providing a degree of doubt as to where that force is going. Attack on the second axis is conducted primarily by a mechanized grouping, with air assaults to secure it's flanks on primary road crossings/chocke points. Those air assault groupings are later reinforced by the AT/engineer blocking detachments. Originally those security forces operate on the internal ring of the encirclement (precluding immediate breakout of the CTO Forces out of their area of operations), then shift to the external ring of encirclement while the 2nd and 3rd groupings reduce the CTO Forces as to preclude the external attempts to aid the CTO Forces should they come to be (which they won't in my opinion as those troops would be pre occupied else where). Attack on the third axis is conducted in a similar fashion to that of the 2nd grouping, only that the economy of forces troops are later directed to reinforces the bridgeheads and to provide security for the 4th grouping. Attack on the 4th axis is conducted by Naval Infantry troops with light mechanized support from the VDV and possibly some minor key armoured support (by a tnk BTG for example) and seeks to secure the bridgeheads at Kherson and to secure Odessa/Nikolaev region. During the 2nd operational phase the bulk of Russian Forces would be reducing those of the CTO Forces, which would be operating in an encircled position. As far as I know those troops are primarily supplied from outside of that region and are not known to have extensive reserves of munitions/supplies in their immediate area (in fact Russian Armed Forces would be probably sitting on their munitions/supplies).

Well you do get Ukrainian Su25s, so to an extend Blue Force has a CAS capability.

John, MRLs would be one of the primary targets for: - Recon/strike and recon/fire complexes. - Forward detachments. As special forces on foot may not be exactly mobile enough to follow the all terrain MRL batteries. (they may still conduct ambushes and what not). If we expect that the Ukrainian units are forward fixed and bypassed (via injection of the afore mentioned Forward detachments) then the rear area stuff (such as the MRLs or long range artillery pieces) would be under a very serious threat from those detachments, especially considering how those are able to over power the security details of those rear area groupings (which would be probably not as simple for lightly armed SFs). While the insurgency (supported or not) is a possible dimension to the occupation phase, it appears that Ukrainian population in the region is fairly passive (a small proportion of population actually joined either side with arms), even considering the current informational mobilisation for the war. Certainly they lack the blood vengence mind set the people of Caucasus exhibit, nor do they have a tight clan based system. I think that should the local security forces come from the local population (trained and equipped by Russia) and should other such reasonable policies be followed - the area should be fairly calm. Morever, if there is no immediate risk of escalation/war continuation, I would move the front line forces back to Russia, possibly with creating a number of military bases with minimal Russian presence in them, with the ex separatist forces (probably with the influx of ex Ukrainian citizens from Crimea, ex Berkut people and so on) providing security against external and internal foes. Considering that the Ukrainian Armed Forces and CTO Forces are assumed to be defeated mostly east of Dnepr those security forces would deal mostly with the internal security stuff, which they should have sufficient strength to do (especially if trained and equipped properly). That all would happen after the mobile phase and is not quite a part of the scenario I am working on, so I am not sure if I should really focus on that (even though I guess it could be an interesting area to mine for more missions).

I should double check this, but I think that the equipment in regular vehicles just tells you about the presense of the chemical agents, not the specific type. To know the specific type you need specialist equipment like the test kit.

If A10C flies low (like it is meant to) and not at medium altitudes (like 8th does a lot of the time now adays), it should be okay.

Well you could thank the USAF.

Are you sure, anywhere I could read on this capability?

Which chart do you refer to?

Does JASSM bring in the datalink to allow re-targeting? (I forgot) Otherwise it is not really useful against anything mobile. New HARM brings in the new seeker, that improves the performance against the target that has just stopped radiating and moved away.

John, Rezun is a very, very, very bad source on anything Soviet. Any notion you took from his works requires to be severely re evaluated. The Soviet training/tactical concept is a complex matter to discuss, and if you wish we could do that else where. In general I think that your views are heavily stereotyped and do not reflect the Soviet realities. Sadly the -better- (ie less stereotyped) materials that were meant to come out in the early 90s largely failed to do so, and even the ones that did (like the British manual I have) were not entirely accurate. Arabs never utilised proper Soviet tactics, the Israel-Arab experience is not indicative of the Soviet performance in WP/NATO conflict type scenario.

I think the simplified version of this (I did not yet look into the National Guard properly, so this is subject to further research) is: - there are various volunteer type formations. - there were the regular National Guard regiments/battalions which came from the old Internal troops (if not structure wise, then manpower pool wise). - there is a new brigade? brigades? that were formed during this conflict to better suit the needs of Ukraine in it.

The new National Guard brigade, for example the one currently stationed in Mariople. Also, Azov now is a regiment I heard.

Even the newly formed National Guard brigades? While I don't challenge the notion that the core of National Guard did come from the Interior troops, I think it is safe to say that expensive expansion/reorganisation has been conducted thus it is not correct to say (in my opinion) that they have the exactly the same structure.

I am aware of 1 burned out tank (crew escaped prior to it) and 2 damaged. True, crews were as green as they get, the tanks were without their HMGs b/c those are stored separately (and the tanks came from storage).

Partially this is true, however a number of new volunteer units operate within the National Guard structure.

They had MG ammo, they did not have the HMGs installed. This video shows the combat:

Err I always thought that only 3 tanks participated in the attack, one was knocked out, no crewmen died. Moldovans used both ATGs and ATGMs.

ESM would be confused by the false emitters (Gazetchik and the like), ground mapping radar would be defeated via the use of ground based jammers, decoy sites and hard kill measures (such as direct attacks against those assets). IR is very dependent on weather conditions and is not a useful long range tool, otherwise the aircraft would have to enter SHORAD ranges. Dummy sites would still be valid even with IR/visual ID at most conditions, as they replicate the relevant IR signatures. They would, because decoy sites would emulate the full spectrum of the real site signatures (IR, radar and radio emition wise), considering that the overall performance of the recon/intel assets would be degraded (by hard kill attacks, comm and radar jamming), it would operate under the fog of war, thus precluding the useful historic analasys and allowing the dummy sites to retain their usefullness. F22A and F35A/B stealth is commonly defeated by the high power X-band and mobile long wavelength radars (and other means), thus they do not present the "magic silver bullet" solution. New weapons (such as the new HARM variants) while being potent, do not solve the under lying issues (such as the decoy sites, recon/intel asset disruption and changing positions after engaging). SDB type weapons are slow to arrive and are fairly simple for the CPGM systems to defeat. So over all I do not see how the Blue force would be capable of getting the decisive air superiority over the battle field (in the short term scenario anyway). In general the issue here (I think) is that you project the current and future capabilities of the Blue force against the past experience with the Red force, which is not really relevant, as not only is the Red force modern/extensive (something that US or anyone for that matter did not meet in the recent experience) but competent (again, that is a rare quality to find in an enemy those days).

Steve, - I don't touch Ground Forces deployment in the north, north-west, far east or abroad. - I have 2 VDV brigades plus an army grouping from the Central MD in reserve (those are combat capable troops only). - I have all reserve units in reserve, or for rapid redeployment of the troops from other theatres (this is practised every so often on the lines of US REFORGER of cold war years). As to the Southern MD - there is no reason to keep large forces there (except reinforcing Internal Troops presence and leaving the troops that are stationed in near abroad), with exception of maybe moving some of the strategic reserve forces into it, so that they are closer to the theatre of actions - Ukraine.

ATGs, ATGMs, mine laying units would form blocking detachments, providing flank security and economy of force missions.

Considering that there is only one AD system on map with a radar on it (tunguska, though I could be wrong), I doubt that dedicated SEAD assets would be within the game scope. Nothing precludes you from sending your CAS planes to engage SHORAD sites though.