[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

29 minutes ago, JonS said:

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above:

How quickly can a target be identified and located?

It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, the or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to recalibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.

The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.

Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.

There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.

None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.

How quickly can that be sent to a firing  battery?

This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a pre-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.

None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?

Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.

Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.

Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummelling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.

At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or planes that’s about to buzz overhead.

Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How well surveyed is the gun position?

This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.

So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.

How well known are the current met conditions?

Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.

You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.

Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.

Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.

 

 

So, that’s all accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, products of fuel burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.

Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependant on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.

Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.

 

 

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like they were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.

Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be over your heads rather than the bad guys. A good FO would know those considerations, and choose a fuze accordingly.

 

Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing that he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

Thanks @JonS! 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

Here you go

 

 

Hah! 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

The 7 decade old American volunteer in Ukraine was ambushed, finally. 

https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/2022/12/17/we-are-too-old-and-mean-to-die-this-way/

Got out, no fatalities at least. Very clean and clear description. Very detailed too.

The speed and accuracy of the UKR arty response is very intriguing. My amatuer instinct says 777s? Esp with the economical aspect of it - 2 x impact rounds to stir them up and break them out of cover, followed by 1 x airburst to cheesegrater them as they try to escape.

No hollywood spray n pray with the arty here. Sounds like the hostiles were about max 25m away, if the airburst was close enough to do damage to his own unit.

Also interesting how the RUS were specifically not spetsnaz, and seemed to know what they were doing. The lack of a flank attack on the Ukraine recon patrol to seal the trap implies some caution on the Ivans part, which ironically cost them everything.

What could they have been? Airborne? Maybe the guy cant say because that would then infer which sector he's in.

Also interesting how he seems to be the effective XO/2inC of the group, not just a specialist, valued older guy. By his account he naturally stepped into command, organized the mop up then stepped forward once the impact site was secured. Then lead the whole patrol (I think its a 6 man team?) back to base over 2 days.

[The Spoken War]

Update - gear has arrived...

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

47 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, and there's documentation of US forces (and others, IIRC) doing this in WW2.  Ukraine is also doing some of it in this war.  Murz clearly stated that it is in the Russian manuals and traditionally crews are trained to do it.  His point is that it's not supposed to be used as the routine form of artillery support for a bunch of reasons.  The most important is one we talked about many pages back... wear and tear on the barrels.  Tank barrels are not designed for prolonged rapid firing shells.  They will wear out and when that happens... no more tank at the front.  Do that enough and suddenly the force is without artillery and tanks.

Steve

A nice example of how I imagine the effects of "corrosive warfare" doesnt stop at the items destroyed, and continues on to indirectly affect the enemy military systems and tactics.

• The HIMARs destruction of RUS artillery logistics reduces RUS artillery RoF (1st order corrosive effect)
• The only other tubes available are tank tubes, soooo
• A Tank becomes used as artillery (2nd order corrosive effect - tanks that could be used as tanks instead used as arty)
• Tank now firing more often than tanks usually do = rapidly increased barrel wear and usage of tank HE shells (3rd order CE)
• Tank finally gets reassigned back to direct support role, but barrel is now shot out so now less accurate (4th order CE).
• Tank is targeted by ATGM, sees and shoots but misses, doesnt kill the ATGM crew, so tank dies. (final effect)

This is where enemy action forces a cascade of damage that goes from externally forced (the HIMARS strikes) to internally sustained and maintained along a path of military necessity, because indirect fires are required, so something must shoot.

Ref Italy, my personal  impression is that it wasnt a "lack" of Allied artillery that drove the use of tanks, it was usually  the hilariously height-scaled terrain in many mountain areas. Sometimes Allied artillery couldn't angle enough to accurately fire over particular ridges. Also, putting a tank on an opposing ridge was often faster, more accurate and if lucky, higher than the opposing positions.

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

2.  His main blame for the lack of artillery is ammunition shortages.  He pointed to something we've been noticing since last Spring, which is hundreds of shell craters in empty fields with NO signs of Ukrainians anywhere.  We've talked about how this came about and Murz mentions it too.  Basically, officers issuing orders so they can check off boxes for other officers.  Effectiveness is never the point.  So the Russians have blown through massive amounts of irreplaceable ammo for nothing.  Then, on top of that, they "gave" the Ukrainians large amounts of ammo in Izyum and other places when they retreated.  That was a funny comment   He didn't emphasize all the ammo blown up by HIMARS and other strikes, but obviously that's in the mix too.

I'd say this is the source of those daily ISW comments about "routine shelling along the entire front"!

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

3 hours ago, Huba said:

There's nothing to geolocate there - the video is edited from separate shots of him in the cabin, and views of the ground. Not on one you can see Shoigu AND anything going on outside the cabin. This video is as fake as it can get.

That's my point,  geolocate the flight,  prove its not at the front. I'm 100% in agreement it's assembled footage from different cameras on different days/flights. The "stock"  footage of the "front"  might  be geo-datable to a much earlier date,  where the  ground filmed is now different in appearance and has been for a time. 

Essentially were talking degrees of and sources of how the fake video was constructed. 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

12 hours ago, billbindc said:

Of course not. Not a single shell hole.

Exactly.  I wonder if anyone has geo located this flight yet... 

[Artillery Bombardment in CMBS]

Thank you for weighing in! 

Very informative and clear posts, thank you.

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

5 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Further comments about video above with a shelling of Wagner-troops on former UKR rectangular position near Ozarianivka

It's a position named "Basin" - this was abandoned small water reservoir. 

As told one UKR soldier after the position was heavy shelled and enemy suffered losses, the unit of some brigade tried to assault this position on 15th Dec, but assault failed - soldier told Wagners have here advantage in modern radios, drones w/thermals, NV sights and thermals (this correlates with Russian talks on LostArmor, that since October Wagner units became to get big number of modern equipments - digital radios, drones, thermal sights, takmed kits etc)

But on 17th Dec next assault, conducted by 46th air-assault brigade was successfull and position was recaptured with big losses for Wagners. Today a video is appeared from there (unblured corpses present)

Next, this soldier told Russians now are attacking through the dam over the canal, not counting with losses and as if only for one day they lost there about 100 KIA/WIA

 

What did the 46th do differently? Better recon, equipment, fires support,, leadership? 

How well equipped are the 46th in comparison to Wagner? 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

It's IE,  so a pallet of buckets of salt, but...

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/tank-like-drones-to-battle-russia

 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

Something going on with the Kerch? Or is it bad weather screwing with repairs and limiting traffic on a damaged spans? 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

There were some newly formed Reserve units that didn't get to the front until Kherson and Kharkiv, but I'm not sure any pre-war units were pulled out of the fight to be built into something different.

Steve

Yes, I believe that's only happening now, in parts. Until Kherson ended it was reinforce in place. 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

Think I'm gonna give y'all a breather for the rest of the day...

Besides, I've got some of my birthday cake to finish off! Strawberry &  Cream meringue FTW

 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

1 minute ago, Seminole said:

I guess you're not going to acknowledge the neocons in Obama and Biden's administration.

Sure thing, let's see what the press says about CNAS:

The Center for a New American Security has long pushed Democrats to embrace war and militarism—and it’s poised to play an influential role in a future Democratic administration.
BRANKO MARCETIC OCTOBER 7, 2019

If you liked Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, you can keep it. 

That’s the message many Democratic voters are receiving this election, as they prepare to pick a contender from the gradually winnowing field of candidates to take on Donald Trump in 2020. And the reason is the continuing influence of a think-tank called the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

The influence of CNAS on the 2020 election, at this point, is being channeled through the campaign of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who has drawn heavily from its ranks to fill her line-up of foreign policy advisors. But given its status as the go-to fountainhead of Democratic foreign policy ideas, there is every chance its alumni could be part of another future Democratic administration.

Founded on the eve of what was thought to almost certainly be a coming Clinton presidency over a decade ago, CNAS has left its fingerprints all over the past ten years of Democratic foreign policy. With its bipartisan make-up and centrist approach, the think tank has served as a crucial wellspring for conventional foreign policy thinking that has shaped the actions and ideas of both the Obama administration and Clinton’s 2016 run.

Even as the American public has slowly turned against endless war, CNAS’ prescriptions have stayed soothingly familiar: Stay the course in ongoing wars, step up efforts to counter Russia, China and other adversaries, and dig deeper into the conflicts the United States has so far only dipped a toe into.

So, can you point out how this rebranding effort distinguishes them from the neocons?  I'm having trouble finding it myself.

Ths fighting over think tanks stuff isn't really helping... (says the guy who took far too long to shut up about Cixin v Iain M.  Banks). 

But still,  it's like arguing about particularly ugly dogs...

Republican Think Tanks etc:

VS Democrat:

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

4 minutes ago, billbindc said:

But with a logistical cost that Ukraine may have not been able to bear without damaging other aspects of its warfighting capability. Also...isn't this the forum that's been pretty clear on the idea that the tank is not what it was on the modern battlefield? And doesn't Ukraine have *more* tanks now of Russian vintage than it did at the start? Why the fetish for Leopards that won't materially change the war? What am I missing? 

Hey up, I'm not on Tank Is Dead bandwagon! Don't tar me with that cat hair covered brush! 

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

27 minutes ago, sburke said:

I'm telling your wife.  She very definitely stated that you were to only espouse positions she had declared cleared.

...Behind every Great Man is a woman - rolling her eyes... "

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

8 minutes ago, Splinty said:

I just watched David Letterman's interview with President Zelensky on Netflix. It's quite good.

Yah pretty blunt.

Have any of our Ukrainian friends seen it? In amongst the rolling blackouts, stupid russian invasion and whatnot....

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

26 minutes ago, Seminole said:

How many miles was Victoria Nuland from 'the Obama administration's foreign policy apparatus in 2014'?

(pro tip: she was handing out cookies and money in Ukraine)

What does Victoria Nuland have to do with PNAC?

Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, is a historian, foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder in 1998 of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

The PNAC crowd follows power, not party.

Indeed, the likelihood of a neocon/Democrat reunion long predates Trump. Back in the summer of 2014 — almost a year before Trump announced his intent to run for president — longtime neocon-watcher Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in the New York Times, predicted that “the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.”

Noting the Democratic Party’s decades-long embrace of the Cold War belligerence that neocons love most — from Truman and JFK to LBJ and Scoop Jackson — Heilbrunn documented the prominent neocons who, throughout Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, were heaping praise on her and moving to align with her. Heilbrunn explained the natural ideological affinity between neocons and establishment Democrats: “And the thing is, these neocons have a point,” he wrote. “Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.”

One finds evidence of this alliance long before the emergence of Trump. Victoria Nuland, for instance, served as one of Dick Cheney’s top foreign policy advisers during the Bush years. Married to one of the most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, Nuland then seamlessly shifted into the Obama State Department and then became a top foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign.

As anti-war sentiment grew among some GOP precincts — as evidenced by the success of the Ron Paul candidacies of 2008 and 2012, and then Trump’s early posturing as an opponent of U.S. interventions — neocons started to conclude that their agenda, which never changed, would be better advanced by realignment back into the Democratic Party. Writing in The Nation in early 2016, Matt Duss detailed how the neocon mentality was losing traction within the GOP, and predicted:

Yet another possibility is that the neocons will start to migrate back to the Democratic Party, which they exited in the 1970s in response to Vietnam-inspired anti-interventionism. That’s what earned their faction the “neo” prefix in the first place. As Nation contributor James Carden recently observed, there are signs that prominent neocons have started gravitating toward Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But the question is, Now that the neocons has been revealed as having no real grassroots to deliver, and that their actual constituency consists almost entirely of a handful of donors subsidizing a few dozen think tankers, journalists, and letterheads, why would Democrats want them back?

The answer to that question — “why would Democrats want them back?” — is clear: because, as this new group demonstrates, Democrats find large amounts of common cause with neocons when it comes to foreign policy.

Neeaaah US Thinktanks & Politics...always makes me want to wash my eyes afterwards...

 

 

with acid.

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

And this is good, too:
https://www.economist.com/syrsky-interview

Paywalled ;/

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

14 minutes ago, holoween said:

Ive given you the time i was trained on the leo2 by the german army condensed to actual training on the tank. So no youre not going to stand up a brigade from scratch in a few weeks but thats a matter of the command structure not the equipment. A platoon you can make function by the time the training on the equipment is done. add a few more weeks per company and you have a fairly powerful unit you can slot into existing structures.

I'm no soldier but it sounds wayyy more complex and time consuming that that, to slot Leo2s into Ukrainian mech forces...

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

33 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

I'm talking about your assertion that Ukraine could not maintain and launch these warheads. In your opinion, hacking into the security system of these warheads is an impossible task?

I think you're nitpicking here. Any mechanical/digital system can be circumvented given time and/or money, so of course any security measures could, eventually with great cost, be nullified. The technical ability of Ukrainian engineers and scientists is well documented and accepted, they're clever and resourceful gits so I'm certain they could have done something eventually.

That wasn't the issue, it was the nasty warhead material itself. Ukraine had specialists sure, but it didn't have the comprehensive and integrated industrial, research and development architecture to maintain the warheads it had, keep their own country safe from accidents or make new ones, or store/get rid of the old material. Dismantling the damn things is insanely risky as it is.

Plus Chernobyl gave everyone the willies and if I remember correctly from my reading ( a long time ago), the fact of already having one nuclear accident to clean up helped with the argument against holding onto a decaying stockpile of actual warheads. Plus, lets face it - the corruption at the time was nutso, so holding onto extremely dangerous weapons-grade material was just inviting trouble down the line.

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

1 hour ago, NamEndedAllen said:

But really, we ought not to need Daddy and his threat of the strap.

But... what if we like the strap?

 

 

_giggity

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

48 minutes ago, JonS said:

Certifying 16th Air Assault Bde took the British Army about 18 months from formation, IIRC, and all /they/ had to do was successfully apply gravity then walk around a bit.

And that was with fully trained and manned component battalions, and it's 'only' a bde. Certifying a div takes much longer.

Also, teaching a crew within an existing organization will natrually be reasonably short. Standing up an entire Leo2 div with all supporting trains is a different beast, I'd wager...

[How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?]

12 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Changing the topic from the strategic to the tactical, what is the general opinion on Ukraine's ability to conduct a proper offensive this winter?

From my limited perspective, it seems to me that the previous territory gains were mostly caused by the Russians retreating - sometimes badly - rather than Ukraine pushing them back.

A good place to start is Perun on youtube.

I'd posit its already in motion around Kremina-Svatove, plus long-range/SOF ****ery has already begun in Zaporizhia,.

Plus, it was the Ukrainian pushing that caused those retreats, no? Not just on the ground but the HIMARS et al having great fun with Ivan's logisitics/corruption train. HIMARS is now even more expanded, UKR field artillery is making superb use of 777s and they seem to have rebuilt and expanded their indigenous ballistic/cruise missile industry. NATO/EU has already provided sufficient winter gear and there is steady supply of NATO trained reinforcements. Theres a decent IFC/AFV pool, that certainly needs more western vehicles, but its still a properly mechanised and winter-ready force.

So, long answer short - 

Yes.