Kinophile
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Posts
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Days Won
22
Posts posted by Kinophile
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6 hours ago, Bufo said:
Interesting but why go so fancy. Id expect UKR to ratchet strap an ATGM to a heavy lift drone by the spring and start popping off T90s as they leave their FOBs.
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClZEzcEgcZG/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Drone medevac is on the horizon...
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16 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Not an offensive...but a defense that will grind down Russian units faster than they can be replaced, to the degree that they cannot be rotated or such that they will be make reinforcing Kharkiv or Zaporizhzhia less likely. A corrosive defense you might say.
I think you're describing more of a stalling defense...to be corrosive in the UKR tradition (9 months makes a tradition?) I'd expect to see a higher force ratio with a greater depth of tech and metal. Bahkmut seems very much like a mutual throat-grab rather than a higher level UKR corrosive campaign - so far. They might unleash something in a week or two.
There's an idea floating (looking at you, NYT) that RUS is seeking to suck in UKR forces and weaken/prevent other UKR offensive actions. That's all well and possible, but it cuts both ways. UKR previously held the entire central portion of the frontline handily while simultaneously launching two wildly separated and successful offensives. So UKR might do better to keep holding at Bahkmut but not waste their better forces and tech in an offensive meat grinder. Hold the line, steadily HIMARS the **** out of the Wagner C&C, rebuild their expended units from Kherson/Kharkiv while corroding somewhere else - Melitopol is my preferential thinking...
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19 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Also…looks like Ukraine may have decided to break Wagner in Bakhmut:
This has been on my mind also. If UKR can squanch Wagner (who in no bloody way are all they crack themselves up to be) then RUS has a real crisis on their hands, and not just military. The political side goes off the wall.
- How will Prig "The Prig" react militarily to his up-gunned Dillinger Gang getting slobbered by HIMARS every night?
- What will he demand in the political sphere?
- How will RUS MOD react if Wagner begins to collapse, eating up resources and units?
- Does RUS even have the capacity to take over the Wagner front, if need be?
- What kind of morale hit would the RUS military suffer if Wagner is visibly defeated? What about the home front?
All that said, 2nd-string TDs plus stiffening SOFs doesn't seem to presage an offensive.
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58 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
He is still seeing this war through a western lens. He makes a lot of very good points, however, appears stuck on “winning through manoeuvre”, which we have seen little of in the prosecution of this war. A deliberate assault - frankly, I disagree with him here, as the RA proved back this spring the opposed water xing is probably harder - to break through and then exploit is employing western biased metrics.
Corrosive warfare does not do this, or at least it is not on the critical path. As we saw in quick time at Kharkiv and slower time at Kherson, the aim is to employ precision strike to erode an opponent to the point their operational system fails. This has happened three times to the RA - northern advances in Ph I, Kharkiv and Kherson. This was all done by merciless corrosion until the RA failed and was forced to withdraw, while taking casualties on high value systems they cannot replace.
South and east of Kherson will be the same story. If the UA can continue to erode RA logistics, ISR and longe range fires - with the added pressure of the weather, the RA system will likely buckle again. They can dig all the trenches they want, once the ammo, food and ability to rotate troops all cease it is simply a matter of time. Why the UA would want to risk valuable assets and people on reckless direct assaults make no sense. Infiltrate-Isolate-Eliminate-Repeat : Fog eating snow but now with winter on their side it is “fog eating Russian soldier-popsicles”.
Fundamentally the good general is describing the employment of fast-mass to beat defensive mass which is exactly what our dogma…er, “doctrine” says. The UA has been employing anti-mass far more effectively on both defence and offence - which links back to that Finnish approach post. It would appear that it is anti-mass’s time to shine
You should comment and chat through twitter or personally with him. Your take is interesting and validated with RL battlefield events, while he is more repeating How It's DoneTM as per every US FM (and his own lived and valid professional experience). Not to denigrate him but the lack of note about current UKR operational approaches vis a vis preventing an approaching deadlock/stalling is worth discussing. He seems like a reasonable and approachable fellow.
That is, unless US/CAN mil interactions are sorta like-
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Good ol Hertling gives a look over
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To summarize the winter fighting process:
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Also, time didn't trying to get sheltered and warm is time not spent facing and watching the Ukrainians.
Strong Ukrainian logistics this winter will be a long term force multiplier as the winter deepens,, with the converse true for Russia.
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38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
into the two finger texting hell all human communication is doomed to become.
Two?!!
Well lookee lookee at Mr. Fancy Pants College Boy.
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4 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Oh my that is one deep question. Been thinking about it and its not a crazy hypothesis but I am still not sure it stands up.
Military Dimension
First off there have historically been militaries that have done horrendous things we would label as war crimes and they demonstrated high levels of discipline and cohesion. Most are pre-modern era but the Japanese Army in China in the 30s springs to mind. Brutal actions from the worst parts of humanity but still highly disciplined and highly cohesive.
For most militaries whose way of way leans this way they have applied structure to their chaos. Looting, rape and civilian murder we planned phases of an operation, normally as an incentive or to allow the boys to “let off steam”. Once they got it out of their systems, order was re-established and discipline re-exerted. The primary reason for this is to keep primacy of collective interests over individual interests.
Recall that whole macro - micro discussion and orientation? It centres on the idea that organic micro-social structures are in tension with macro social structures. Well micro orientation can be a good or bad thing to military organization - eg the home fires. However it can also be toxic - individual survival calculus and interests driven by other pressures. So looting, rape and recreational murder can quickly spiral out of control and erode the larger military’s ability to sustain structure….unless it is regulated within it.
Does the Russian military do this? Very hard to tell. There appears to be some evidence of systemic brutality, no doubt; however, there is a lot of “ad hoc” looking activity as well. Troops abandoning fighting vehicles but hanging onto the washing machines is not a sign of structured brutality - more poor discipline and lack of leadership even in commission of war crimes.
So what? Well unless the RA can structure this sort of violence the corrosive effects is going to add up. Soldiers getting drunk, looting, raping and murdering is not a good thing if it occurs out of the control of the military hierarchy - crazy but true. It is a matter of time that soldiers who are living like this create sub-tribes and quickly fall apart as cohesive units. The question remains how much is under control and how much is just poor discipline and control? Very hard to tell from evidence we can see.
Social Dimension
War is a lot more than an extension of policy. It is an extension of the people who wage it on deep social - cultural, cognitive and conative - levels. So if a military is adopting a way of war that includes warcrimes in a systemic way, there is normally a level of social norms that support this. Here the evidence is a lot less definitive - I am sure someone will come along shortly and tell us that all Russians eat babies while clog dancing on puppies but internally they are pretty middle of the road as far as violent crime:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-crime-rates-by-country
These numbers do not speak to a society that, internally at least, is accepting of high levels of violence. Now this is only one indication and I am willing to bet Japanese crime rate in the 30s we’re very low - it was an orderly society. Did Japanese society endorse brutality for “others” outside of Japan - history suggests “yes”.
So What? Well if the RA is acting outside accepted Russian societal norms then it is clear it’s soldiers are on a very slippery slope away from their own people. This speaks to carcinogenic effects of internal military tribal societies that are alienated from both their own military and people - that is not good and clear evidence of structural failure.
If Russian soldiers are acting aligned with Russian accepted social norms towards war, then war crimes may very well have less of a corrosive effect from a societal point of view.
Now there have been all sorts of social media sound bites of Russian phone calls etc but these are not a real social study of Russian culture and its tolerance of brutality in war. So in the end the question is too big to answer here.
I suspect that war crimes are eroding the RA to some extent. Largely because there appears to be a lot less structure and organization in execution and more ad hoc bottom up chaos in the entire RA structure. I do not think we are even capable of objectively assessing Russian society at this point, so we can put that aside.
Finally as to RA collapse. I argue that is is happening in front of us right now. It has been collapsing since at least this summer broadly and suffered local collapses since the end of March. The evidence is pretty damning and continues to grow steadily. RA fighting capability has eroded significantly as a result, to the point most found the Kherson withdrawal somewhat surprising. The effects of war crimes and their role in that collapse is an excellent question but I suspect we will not really know for some time.
A key aspect might well be the ethnic nature of the victims. The violent armies you mention all functioned within a coherent narrative of Subjugation Of The Other, by right of the ethnic superiority of the perpetrators. Within that framework what would be considered violent, heinous crimes back home (mass rape, murder of civilians, bayoneting of babies, etc) was inherently not a crime in the warzone as the acts were committed against Others, who were by definition less human than the home nationality. Horrific acts of ultraviolence against them was thus at most a misdemeanor, on par with a traffic violation back home in punishment and opprobrium.
Russian military war crimes are not war crimes within the Russian social and official narrative because the violent acts are committed against an Other ethnicity, Ukrainians, who are subhuman and are themselves instinctively and helplessly violent. It's like beating a savage dog, not a human being.
So using war crimes as a metric against Russian Army unit cohesion is difficult without the social context of the wider narrative of who is Other (khohols), what is allowable against them (pretty much anything) and what the punishments are (negligible). How can there be a war crime against Ukrainians if non-military violence against any Ukrainian is not a crime? If beating my neighbour to a pulp is ok with everyone I know, spoken of approvingly every day on TV and dismissed by the local policeman as no more than naughtiness, then raping his daughters is not that big a deal, right?
To us the entire invasion is a crime but if it is not, if the wholesale institutional murder and violence against a clearly different ethnic group is not considered a criminal act within the Russian social narrative then how can there be any war crimes? How can there be a crime if the victim deserves it by their very existence? Adolf would be proud.
I'm not inclined to think of war crimes as degrading the cohesion of the RUA, because Russian society as a whole considers violence against Ukrainians acceptable in ways that against Russians would be utterly unacceptable. The notion of Ukrainian Otherness permeates Russian social structures from top to bottom, with the Russian army being nothing but the organized, sanctioned and overt expression of "defensive" violence against that "offensive" concept.
Part of the RUS Army's reason for existence is defending against Outsiders, against Others, so force cohesion is not affected by violence against Others in any shape or form. It's part of what the Russian army is, not even its "Way of War", but it's very nature as an expression of a fascist government. War crimes against Ukrainians are a function of that nature, that ideology, not a corrosion of the military force.
Violence against Ukrainians as the Other is the purpose of the Russian Army.
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7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Let's say 10 men are approaching the Ukrainian lines with their hands raised and no visible signs of weapons. A Ukrainian PKM gunner mows them down because, well, they haven't surrendered yet and who knows... they could be up to no good. Or as you put it "a potential threat". Not a war crime?
Didn't address because below:
Of course a crime. And you're taking the potential threat to a surface logical end (a threat is a threat is a threat) but without the nuance of this extra tense, near-close combat situation. In your example above the UKR gunner does have control - the 10 have hands up, no visible signs of weapons.
However... In the video were discussing, the guys on the ground now have a potential threat of weapons concealed beneath them, or nearby. In the instant calculation of the moment the UKR would be foolish not to consider everyone in that immediate vicinity a threat, and considering they have a wounded comrade then twitchy triggers are a given.
That might rationalize initial fires at the on the ground men, but if course not excuse anything than immediate reactive fire. Once the shooter is down all fires should stop. Anything after immediate reaction is jnto war crimes territory - the threat is gone.
Buuut as we've noted - we just have that video. There's a lot that happens outside of frame and after camera cut..
As I've said several times already, some of the prone guys getting killed as a direct result of the idiot "hero" is unfortunate, but not a war crime. Deliberately raking the whole group with machinegun fire "just in case" is a war crime. It's as simple as that.
The act of surrendering needs to be respected. Period.
Steve
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
Deliberately raking the whole group with machinegun fire "just in case" is a war crime. It's as simple as that.
The act of surrendering needs to be respected. Period.
Steve
Oh absolutely. But the situation in this video was not tied off, the UKR soldiers were not yet safe. So a group violent response to an act of "perfidy" in an extremely tense situation was inevitable. Legalities aside, that one stupid asshat put all his comrades lives at risk. Hell, the UKR on the spot don't know in that instant if the entire surrender is now a trap.
By simple brutal combat logic, to ensure they live, it's a very simple decision by the UKR soldiers - open fire now, shoot anything that moves. What other combat choice do they realistically have? It's not "just in case" , it's now "all bets are off" - the situation has flipped and we're in potential mortal danger.
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3 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Combat episode was finished as soon as the RA soldiers came out with hands up,
It clearly wasn't.
It was in the final stage, sure, possibly. But until those POWs were secured nothing was finished. That's why the UKR troops were pointing weapons at them- because risk still existed and with that stupid nutjob, QED.
Until your enemy is tied up, sitting down and possibly also blindfolded they are still a potential threat. History is replete with surrendering soldiers turning on their captors at the last second. Surrendering is dicey for both sides.
Plus, fighting an enemy as cruel, ruthless and rules-adverse as the Russian army means UKR absolutely no cannot trust them an inch.
If you mean the active combat stage had finished and surrender stage was occurring, that is too vague a transition to apply here. The situation was not fully resolved, there were still armed Russian soldiers, at least one that we see, so no, it doesn't appear that the combat stage had completed.
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And a little info on Kropyva
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Separately, Nord Stream blast site dive.
94 tonne pipe sections tossed 200m from Blast.
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I can't tell, did they even attempt fire suppression, FWIW?
Pretty chilling video.
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Another 12 ceasars.
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It's smart for the UA to not "slack off" at the Dniper. Cross the river and continue the "infiltrate, decimate"(tm) tactics. The Ivan desperately need a window to reorganize and rebuild, and with their successful evacuation theyve already begun that process. So UA needs to grab Em by the nuts and stay close, right in their face.
Don't give them breathing room.
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6 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
What are they shooting at? Infantry?
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2 minutes ago, fireship4 said:
Er, can we settle for liberation Cato?
Fiiine:
Crimea liberari debet.
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https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-results-congress-senate-house-11-12-2022/index.html
Bipartisan support or no, the facts of Democratic control of the Senate and a very slim Republican majority in the house absolutely guarantees US support and an inevitable Ukrainian victory. Even a premature death/incapacitation of Biden would do little to affect long term and sustained support.
For Biden personally, I'd say beating Trump and Putin are too massive legacies he will probably look back on with unending satisfaction.
Crimea delenda est.
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It would be essential for UKR to have even small bridgeheads across the river before RUS forces solidify their defense. Classic soviet tactic from Bagration onwards, I believe? Have something, anythingon the far side of whichever river that 1) enemy cannot ignore and 2) you can steadily reinforce and expand from.
Attacking from contested, observed and zero-d in bridgehead is still far far better than opposed amphibious attack.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by Kinophile
Ref Rep support in Congress - all the hysterical squawking by the MTGs of the world are irrelevant if their social-media oriented "ideas" don't make it through committee, or even past the initial vetting process. They can make announcements till the cows come home, all of it is just for reelection, to be "seen" as "fighting" without being able to actually fight - ie maneuver through the committee tangles, a fight which requires that one thing all extremists find difficult - compromise.
I use her as an example of an egregiously conflicted political animal who, due to her extremist positions, has not succeeded in achieving anything of note yet makes a lot of noise, while UKR support has remained steady.
There are "left wing" Democrats doing similar, she's just the most immediately recognizable.
The danger is when an MTG does get onto a committee and then, even though themselves stalled, use their position to enable a follow-on MTG 2.0.
Many people assume winning Congress means owning the legislative process - without knowing they'll need to then eat the barbed-wire burger that is committee process. For that reason I'm confident it'll take a long time (6 months) before there's a noticeable change in financial thresholds of support. Even then, there's a lot, a LOT the Biden Administration can do without Congress.