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The_MonkeyKing

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Posts posted by The_MonkeyKing

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Huba said:

    So I just watched the weekly analysis by PL OSINT guy/ journalist Wolski, whom I often quote here. Unfortunately Youtube does not translate his videos, so I'll summarize it in few points (his opinions, not mine):

    - frontline is static everywhere, and it's likely it will remain so

    - RU forces in Kherson, Zaporozhya and Crimea are way too strong for UA to take on directly

    - for the time being we won't see much more than is already happening. UA doesn't have the forces yet to really beat Russian head on.

    - The whole talk about offensive is politically motivated ( Zenelsky and his ppl pushing UA General Staff for some victory, as was the case in Severodonetsk "counterattack"). Zaluzny does some posturing and local pushes but is too smart to allow using up his reserves (yet at least), so he balances the political requests with military reality and will be defending mostly.

    - The real success of Kherson offensive is that bulk of RU forces sits there idly, practially abandoning any serious attempt at offensive in Donbas

    I don't feel I know enough about the status of the opposing forces to really accept (or seriously question) this predictions. Apart from this equation, it is not clear to me to which degree UA is actually able to isolate right bank Kherson. RU seems to be thinking that they will do with ferries only apparently - we will see if they are right.

    If I was to guess what is going to happen I'd say that UA will be upping the pressure on RU units in left bank Kherson, but won't commit to anything serious for quite some time. Conservation of forces and building up the reserves is the name of the game for the time being, as time still is on UA side. As for attacks elsewhere, I'd say UA will strike if opportunity presents itself, without taking any big risks.

    Edit:

    Oh, and one more RUMINT/ idea from Wolski: According to him, US delivered some Su-27s used for OPFOR by US Air Force. These perhaps might have been rigged to fire HARMs. I personally don't find it likely, but idea of delivering the planes themselves is interesting.

    similar conclusions from a Finnish retired officer following the war: https://www.facebook.com/taktiikkajermut (translate works)

    "
    I'm attaching my little reflection on shifting the focus of Russian forces from Donbas to the south in the direction of Kherson and Zaporizhia and why!

    My reflection starts from the fact that there have been no signs of Ukraine's machinated takeover of the south in the last two months or so, e.g. in the use of a modern western artillery weapon. The cutting of innumerable ammunition depots and the Dnieper bridges has raised the spirits of so many.

    WHAT HAS THE USE OF THE NEW ARTILLERY LEAD TO?

    Of course, the Russian military command is a learning organization. Material stocks have now been distributed in the occupied territories to population centers, schools and administrative buildings, even to the nuclear power plant.

    The rivers are still crossed with an endless supply of pontoons, which were used during the Cold War to prepare for an attack up to the English Channel along the Warsaw Pact from East Germany, Belarus, Ukraine and Romania. So there is enough equipment.

    WHY RUSSIA HAS NOW GROWN ITS POWER SOUTH

    Increasing Russia's forces may have other significance than the (non-existent) major attack from Ukraine! The non-existence is also indicated by the fact that the Russian media and war blocs have not had much to say about it for more than a month.

    The concentration of Russian forces almost corresponds to the forces concentrated in the capture of Kiev in the 1st phase of the war or the operation to capture Donbas at the beginning of the 2nd phase, and now we are going with a similar concentration of forces in the Kherson-Zaporizhzian directions!

    Could it be that Russia is now taking advantage of Ukraine's inability to equip new mechanized brigades with armored vehicles in the southern direction? Of course, Ukraine has enough willing crew for a million-strong army, but where are the Western wagons staying, why and where!

    Maybe right now, before the rasputitsa, the Russians could strike in the south and that's why the concentration of troops!
    "
    image.thumb.png.38ce3923708b5f8e68939dcd349419e4.png

    0

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

    No offense to the French, but when it comes to engineering there are the Germans :D  Check out the time lapse at the end.

    However, this thing can only do something like 150m maximum and, like I was saying about the Russian capacity, it would be easily taken out of the war because.  Germany supposedly has 30 in service which is a total capacity of about 400m of bridging total.

    Steve

    I raise you Chinese: https://youtu.be/dzzD-cQRpl0

    1

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

    I wonder if Biden would be OK with sending this type of aircraft to Ukraine without fear of Russian reprisals? 😒

    How many Ukrainians have private pilot licenses?

    SOCOM Orders Cropduster Attack Planes from L3Harris Technologies
    https://www.defenseone.com/business/2022/08/socom-orders-cropduster-attack-planes-l3harris-technologies/375234/

    haha, if the Ukrainians turn down the A-10 they will defiantly not be interested in these.

    Incorporating a new air platform is such a big undertaking tying up a lot of resources they won't take it without significant gains. And the low bar seems to be F-16 modern variants.

    0

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

    So I have been thinking about the fundamental measure in warfare.  In physics we have the meter, the second and the gram - all framed by the speed of light in a vacuum.  Within information theory the famous “bit”.  Chemistry has the “degree”.  In economics we have the mighty $.  Almost every field of study can be boiled down to a few fundamental units.

    So what is the fundamental unit of warfare?  And I have not found it yet.  First response is “body count”, or a death…easy.  Problem is that as a unit it does not track. The body count does not directly correlate to the course or outcome in too many cases.  We have had wars of extermination in which body count did become the basic unit, such as the Mongol invasions. 

    However, we have had wars with millions of dead, like WW1, but it was not those deaths that determined who won or lost.  WW1 ended due to economic exhaustion, to which loss of human capital was a factor but not the deciding factor.  We have also had endless wars where the body count did not seem to matter, like Vietnam or Afghanistan.

    Further we have had wars that were decisively determined with very low body counts, such as the Falklands.

    So “killing” appears as a means or way, not an end.  It can give an indication but is not determinative.  If war is a collision of certainty, then it follows that the fundamental unit is a measure of that collision.  Will has to be central to that but Will is an incredibly complex and squishy concept with a lot of layers.  I have played with the idea of a “wit” as placeholder but have not got a bead on what it actually looks like or how to measure it.

    Regardless, the biggest problem with “a kill” as the fundamental unit is what does one do when it does not work?  Easy answer is “more killing” up and including “all of them” but we all know that extermination not only has blowback in the community of humanity, it deeply affects internally.  

    Killing does affect collective will but it is not a direct relationship, unless you completely remove that collective - and even here it might not work as the “idea” of the will of an exterminated collective can outlive the people who came up with it…like Christianity.

     

    I think here it is useful to go to Clausewitz. 

    ‘War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale… an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will,’ directed by political motives and morality. (Clausewitz 1940: Book I, Ch. I)

    "Clausewitz: War as Politics by other Means | Online Library of Liberty" https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/clausewitz-war-as-politics-by-other-means

    0

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Grigb said:

    If I remember properly there should be around 13% of safety margin (not more). Unless for bridges they mandated better safety margin.

    and lets also remember what causes bridges to be closed and almost rebuild. 

    One crack in a right spot is enough. literal multiple missile strikes will do as well...

     

    1

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted · Edited by The_MonkeyKing

    Even though beam bridges (that Antonovsky Bridge is) are not as obvious as other types like cantilever Bridges there are very certain ways the forces applied to the bridge are meant to be directed. This means slapping a engineering bridge on top of the hole doesn't solve much.

    relevant vid: https://youtu.be/l-_TKh-qZmQ
    image.png.277b205379eb48c74e9583de5a5c5f30.png

    If you cut this bride in two from the middle you are going to have to replace the entire span. (that is 50m in this case) But you have to damage the supporting structures or "beams" (already seen in some photos). Hitting the supports would be the most effective, not sure if that is possible with HIMARS. (small and under the bridge)

    Engineering bridge would have to be put over like in the photo under. Ukrainians could just hit the engineering bride or the spans on both sides of it. I am not even sure if there is bridging equipment that can do this.
    image.thumb.png.1bee3e8f8f6ee8d36763d76b316e686e.png

     

    These types of bridges are more forgiving than many other types. The spans are somewhat separate from each other. 

    Lets remember the saying:
    “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
    meaning there is probably not very much extra spec on that bridge to take missile strikes...

     

    4

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    10 minutes ago, Huba said:

    And here's a damage assessment video.I guess they could still put an assault bridge on top of the destroyed section and drive through it (for a brief moment until UA gets the memo and HIMARSes it again):

     

    If you would ask structural engineer how much you can put weight on that bridge... Nope, that is a hard hard thing to answer. Russians are now asking these questions. 

    Structure can stand on its own but it is a whole different story when you start adding weight that it has to support on top of its own mass.

    Any engineering bridge would also add even more weight. Also doesn't help if you cover the holes but the "back of the bridge" will break if you put example 10tons on that 50m stretch...

    0

    How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

    in Combat Mission Black Sea

    Posted

    14 minutes ago, dan/california said:

     

    Does someone have a ground launched one besides the Israelis? or is this a subtle way of saying that Ukraine is getting a NATO aircraft of some description. 

     

    Just look at the French sales of Exocet and all the ungodly things they were jerry-rigged to..
    image.png.1a12d4892cfa8d9f1e576d3875b17d59.png

    doesn't necessarily mean much in terms of platforms.

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