Saberwander

They claimed to have destroyed it a few days ago. I guess this is a new claim? Quite likely it's just propaganda. Smart thing to do for Ukraine is to keep the system hidden away as the pure existence of a S-300 system makes Russian air operations riskier and less likely. Shooting down couple of planes but losing S-300 is not worth it.
That would be my first move but there are always the dams. Destroying dams is probably not on the table. I would still go for all the other bridges and especially other railways infrastructure further west. 
 
Btw Russia seems to be backpedaling on demands. Their initial demands were maximalist, denazification and demilitarization with annexation of eastern Ukraine, then they moved to "we just want to liberate DNR and LNR". The latest claim is that they only want to destroy nationalist battalions and that they are close to the end of the operation. To me it sounds like they will claim victory after they conquer Mariupol and "destroy" Azov battalion there. Looks to be a weak position. 

Like Napoleon on the night before Waterloo, Putin thought he had a 90% chance of winning.
But the dice rolled badly.
--
The rest is history. Or will be for a long time.
 
 

One main difference between the 73' Sinai Front and Donbas is that Egyptians lacked any strategic depth east of the Suez Canal, which forced them into a more or less static battle against Israelis. Ukrainians could fall back 50 km on the way of armored pincers and still not have their main forces in ATO surrounded.

I can see this being great ground for a Russian offensive in say late June. The current weather forecast though it isn't going to dry out enough to mechanized operations fun for at least a month. Do we have any feel for the Ukrainians' ability to induce localized flooding in some convenient spots?

Ok, so apologize for what will be a longish post, even for me.  So welcome to The Capt's terrain analysis for the possible upcoming fight between Izyum and Donetsk.  Basically I wanted to get a view of the terrain this next major fight is squaring  off over and try and pull some deductions from that.  
So here is what I did.  I booked an MS Flight Simulator (MSFS) flight from Donetsk to Kharkiv roughly along this google maps line:

For reference you can see the ISW map of where this next great Russian offensive is spooling up:

They buried Donetsk under the legend but this is the area of concern.  So I did not use live weather as it is pissing rain there right now and based on what I am seeing it is a big reason the Russian have not started anything.  I flew at 1000 feet up but employed the drone feature to get down and grab a birds eye view.  Overall I would summarize the terrain in military terms as such:
On the 8th day, while recovering from a hangover God looked upon the earth and said to himself "You know these shaved apes are going to go at each other the second I turn my back so I may as well make it interesting.  Let there be tank country!"



These shots are just south - southwest of Izyum.  So on the surface you can immediately see a lot of room for manoeuvre tailor made for armored warfare.  I mean I can see frontages of kms just aching for big ol tank formations to come charging through with all sorts of room for bypassing, flanking and all that good stuff.  But then go a bit deeper:

So if you take a look at that last one, check out the VFR map in the upper right.  There are a lot of water features distributed all over this area and in the spring they are going to be deep and muddy.  Little lakes and rivers just about everywhere that amphib IFVs can probably bounce but tanks, arty and logistics are going to have trouble with.  So what?  Target the engineering stuff with all them fancy switchblades, then arty, then C2...we will get to logistics.  Next how about all them rectangles:
 Yep, a lot of these little and big squares all over the place...damn Ukrainian real estate laws.  For armored warfare these are going to be a problem.  Easy button answer...arty them all!  Well no one on earth has enough arty for that as these things are everywhere.  Each one a short range tank hunting dream, with ready made tractor trails to boot off on once you have fired off a couple NLAWS and are falling back to the next one to re-set.  These thing will soak up attacking infantry to sweep and will slow things down a lot.  Oh wait there is more:
These are not CM3 previews (but we can dream) but in MSFS you can drop right down to eye-level and wow.  First off this area is not flat. "Undulating" is the term we would use, with lots of small hills and ridges, all of which give some sightlines we normally only see in a desert.  So if I had a smart, fire and forget ATGM system with a listed range of 4.0km and was trying to sell it, these are the marketing shots I would take.  I found these everywhere along the route but more so towards the south end of the likely Russian advance (or North from Donetsk but that is all trench country from the last war, so not likely). 
Ok so what? 
- First off if this thing goes off it will be a conventional battle for the history books.  I mean the next one with this sort of potential is likely Armageddon itself.  We have a near perfect storm of mass meets mass forming up.  The collision on this has potential to be heard around the world. 
- Second, this will be a major exam for conventional armored warfare.  "End of Tanks: No They Are Not" may very well be settled in this one.  You cannot really find much better terrain for armored warfare on one hand.  While on the other, this is also excellent terrain for an mobile defence.  The Russians should be able to create a break out with overwhelming mass here, if they play it right.  While at the same time between prepared defenses and a combination of short and very long sightlines the Ukrainian defence should be able to stop them cold - that is an epic collision in the making. 
- Third, so much of this will hinge on C4ISR it is looking more like an aerial dogfight than a traditional land-battle.   The side that can see first at the tactical level will likely hit and win first.  We should see more exchanges like were seen in the Nagorno-Karabahk which were very long range and then working in for the dirty work.  
- Fourth, the Russian offence is going to have to evolve.  They cannot bring their last fight to this one.  They will need to rethink C4ISR collection and sharing, logistical planning - pushing a lot more forward faster, and targeting.  The UA can keep doing what it was to be honest but it had better have made use of this pregnant pause to put in a lot of AT minefields that tie those water obstacles and rectangles together, they had the time and I can only hope they have the resources; this country is set up for nightmare defensive belts.
- Fifth, this will also be an exam for artillery, ATGMs, self-loitering and unmanned systems.  This will show what they can really do together, primarily in the defense but let's not forget the offence as well.  There are sightlines that can make full use of the ranges these systems can come bring to bear.  Honestly if I were the UA, I would stick with hybrid at the front end, and then wait for my moment for a conventional c-attack because it could be a bone crusher.  Given enough gas, a UA formation could drive right into the Russian rear areas and cry-freakin-havok back there looking at this terrain.
- Sixth, the awkward conversation about airpower.  This is perfect CAS country, the Russian's need it, the UA needs to deny it. With full on air superiority this country would be a challenge for an attacker, without it we could be looking at a nightmare. 
Finally, I would close by saying that I also get the sense that this is perfect terrain for an operational trap - it is what I would do.  

#1 - Resist Russian main axis of advance...but just enough to attrit but give them hope.  I would use obstacles to keep them on those axis and help channel them to what they want.

#2 - Oh look at how happy they Russian are, they have their great pincer BUT do not give them time for reorientation or to dig in, or they could use this country against you.
#3- Bil Hardenberger.  That old bastard has snap the jaws closed on me more times than I care to remember.  This country is made for a conventional c-attack to cut that corridor up and off.#4 - Feeding time.
This terrain supports this and the Russians have given the UA a lot of time to set it up.  Higher risk but the payoff is intense. 
Just spit-balling here and I have every confidence they UA commanders on the ground have a grip on this but for a defender that 1) knows what they are doing, 2) are well resourced and 3) have the time to prepare, this could make for a textbook defence that could be turned into something else.

Yes I agree, I was partially joking because we are so spoiled with the non stop feed of battle footage.

There may be more to it. I’m not the expert on the subject but I follow it a bit as I’m an investor in many markets.
Wheat is sold in the futures markets and and supply disruptions causes prices to increase and that’s the issue. Many people are living day to day and can barely get by so any increase in prices means they can’t afford it or have to get by on less.
Also the price of fertilizer has gone through the roof and farmers will have to pass the cost down to consumers. Farmers in some areas may plant less due to the sharp increase in fertilizer costs. The war has caused a disruption to the supply of potash.
India may have a great harvest but will they be able to get the wheat to where it’s needed? The whole supply chain and shipping issues may come into play.
There is also some concerns about the ability of FCI to store all the excess wheat.

I think I am going to take an MS Flight Simulator spin over the area,  maybe take some screenshots.  

Lets break out the champagne!

I'm with SBurke on this.  A 3 day campaign was the only planning, supplemented nicely by a coup.  And so before the world could even begin to talk about sanctions this would be a fait accompli.  for example, Germany would not be shamed into support for something which the world had no real agency (not to pick on Germany here, just an example of how hard it would be to get voters to accept inflation, shortages, over something that was over already).  Plus Putin's general belief that the weak, dithering west would fold.  That appears to be the thinking, at least to me.
Instead, Ukraine fought and all of Sauron's plans have turned against him, in incredible ways.  To the point where Putin now feels so in danger he's jailing everyone in sight.

This is the typical story, and is wildly innacurate. It's an "enhanced radiation weapon". The idea behind it is that the enhanced radiation will penetrate the thick armor of tanks, and yes, kill or incapacitate the crew. However, they are STILL nuclear weapons, with massive blast effects. The "neutron bombs" planned were about the same power as normal thermal fission weapons of the time. They just cause LESS destruction than a comparable thermal fission weapon of the same size, but LESS is a very nebulous term when you are talking about multiple KT range nuclear weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 10-20KT weapons. A neutron weapon would cause maybe 30%-50% the blast yield of those. Dwell on that nugget for a while.
There is no leave the cities and towns intact unless the weapons are detonated in the middle of nowhere. 
Another point is that gamma rays are like extremely high energy X-rays. Neutrons are bullets. AND they activate elements making them radioactive. Steel and it's constituent alloys, for example (Iron, cobalt, manganese). They then become radioactive with varying half lives depending on isotopes. The Cobalt used in hardened steels is the most concern because of its 5.27 year half life. Most of the others are in the neighborhood of an hour to 6 weeks or so. 
Since there is blast there is also downwind fallout. Prevailing weather I believe, is not favorable to the Russians for fallout (but do they even care, really?)
Anyway, the whole neutron bomb leaving the infrastructure intact stuff is a wild exaggeration.

Dave

All good points however in this war we have seen Russians make breakthroughs, they drove from Belarus to western Kyiv and from Belgorod to eastern Kyiv. However it did them no good, they were unable to destroy troops that the "broke through" and in the end were forced to retreat. These types of breakthroughs need immense numbers and an enemy whos morale has been shattered. Ukrainians defending their country against war criminals will have high morale regardless (especially today when they see they can fight with Russia on equal terms).
This is why I do not think that tactical nuke would severely change the outcome of the battle in the east. Even if Russians resort to it, they can make a breakthrough and then due to vast distances and hostile population end up in a new Kyiv situation, being over extended with no prospects. 
Tactical nuke could however be used to force a surrender. I really do not know what would Zelensky do if Russia went full nuts and started dropping nukes and threatening more. It would make Russia a pariah state but would Ukraine surrender? 

I think it was a Buratino. Regardless, I think that most soldiers understand that the weapons they get are not infinite in numbers and that they'd rather have a NLAW on them when a Russian tank is driving toward them than to use it to film a video for TikTok. Stugna-P video also shows that Ukraine seems to have dedicated ATGM crews that have the best equipment and that those soldiers are quite professional in choosing their target. 
 
Hopefully Moskva news is true. I'd love to see a big loss like that. If the strike happened it means that Ukraine is starting to feel confident about their defense of Odesa. My theory was that Ukraine held back the Neptunes (kept them hidden) in order to make amphibious landing incredibly risky. Could be the reason why Russia navy did not do their "thunder run to Kyiv" by landing in Odesa early in the war. Will be fascinating to hear more about this when info becomes available.

Indeed, didn't this bulls--t get squashed in the first 100 pages of this thread?  "West is responsible for the war because it made Russia feel sad".  Which is ridiculous, because the only thing keeping the baltic states free is their NATO membership.  What a clown.  Like saying Greece was responsible for Hitler's invasion because it had the temerity to beat the Italian invasion.

No longer credible. At all.
 

On the first, as is often the case this doesn't need to be either/or, it can be some where in between, and I think your word "problematic" gets at that.  The Russian economy is being cratered; so has the North Korean one been for some time and they still maintain a large (although likely ineffective) armed forces.  But I agree that the RA will not be the same after this.
On the second, the chart and information you presented are persuasive - and my thanks for putting it forward.  I'll be using some of this to inform my corporate leadership about the advisability of re-entering the Russian market post-war - we drew down our limited business there shortly after it started.
This was directed to panzermartin - and I agree. Russia has been forming a narrative to justify aggression and has been fairly successful in using this to instill doubt in NATO societies - partly because, like every good lie there was a glimmer of truth in the sense that the West as a whole had become somewhat triumphalist with the collapse of the USSR.  The ISW has a tidy diagram, below, and an excellent article on this.
Narrative:

As I've said before, reviewing twenty years of Putin's statements leads me to believe that we could not have prevented both Russian expansion and war - it was one or the other.  Had we conceded the narrative, Russia would have created buffer zones and then adjusted the narrative to expand from there.
The way out?  Russia could have reformed its society and joined NATO.  But that ship has sailed.

 

US officials are meeting with defense industry leaders to discuss long range plans to produce more weapons. 
 
Supply chain issues and lack of skilled labor will also be discussed. 
 
Zelinsky asked for 2000 Javelin’s a week and based on estimates of inventory and production times it looks like 2000 a month isn’t going to happen.
I’ve seen a few videos where about every other soldier had an AT weapon and I’ve heard estimates of the AT weapon to soldier ratio that sounded crazy. 
 

There's another factor as well. With Europe FINALLY re-arming itself and doing what it should have done a long time ago for it's own defence (hopefully against an impoverished and weakened, but no doubt still dangerous Russia), the US can continue to concentrate more on the Chinese. Personally I not only would like to see Europe stronger, but I would also like to see the US, our only reliable ally, to remain world power number 1. In the past month we once more have been reminded how small the number of countries is that really value freedom and democracy. 

In celebration of the 500th visually confirmed Russian MBT going *pop* in Ukraine *(or being damaged, abandoned, captured) 
I have a nice calculator to share with which you can predict Russia running out of Tanks assuming an endless stream of conscripts.
Features include a nice graph and some funky sliders like
Adjustment for losses data
Predicted future war intensity
Russian tanks at start of war
Russian tanks in storage
Usable tanks in storage
 

Baltic will soon be a NATO lake, and it looks like the Black Sea will follow, to a degree determined by the outcome of this war. No friendly shores for Russian ships on both those seas, apart from their own.

Gents any chance of keeping the thread on track?
Ukraine...

We call them assessments in the trade and yes it is possible to achieve surprise.  There will always be gaps in coverage and there is the issue of sorting out the wheat from the chaff and then getting that recognized picture to the people who need the information.  Additionally the vehicles do not necessarily have to start moving to be able to work out the Courses of Action available.  It is fairly easy to narrow down the courses of action using processes such Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) and once you narrow those down, you can task your ISR to look into areas where they might travel and when they might travel through their areas.  Ideally you cover areas where the enemy has to make a decision, called a Decision Point in the trade and if you get it right, you end up well ahead of the enemy's' Decision-Action cycle which allows you to trigger counter actions or strikes as necessary.

I'm tempted to revisit the Russo-Japanese War - hopefully not going too much OT - not least because @Kinophile has also been musing about it, and @LongLeftFlank has posted the racist cartoons that preceded the Russian defeat. Certainly, the fact that Russia provoked that war with nothing but racist hubris, and got dealt a decisive defeat that lead to quasi-regime change, invites comparisons with the current situation in Ukraine. However, that leads us to the teleiosis [I canz use big wordz] of the Russian defeat: Tsushima. What I find most fascinating about Tsushima isn't the fact that an early industrial fleet got obliterated after sailing halfway through the globe, but that the 2nd Pacific Squadron was ordered to sail forth from Madagascar AFTER Port Arthur had already fallen: They were supposed to sail to Vladivostok and continue the fight against the Japanese from there, but... If you've played Norm Koger's Distant Guns, you'll know that this was a hopeless strategy. The Russian leadership at the time gambled away their nation's decades-long gains in becoming a naval power for a face-saving operation that would not have brought back Port Arthur, and Russia gave up its international status as a naval power after Tsushima.
TL;DR: Russians are bad losers, even if they like to recast this in their movies as being 'hard learners' *cough* The Barber of Siberia *cough*. It's one thing that the forum and a host of experts have concluded that Russia has been defeated in Ukraine; it's another thing when Russians themselves will be able to acknowledge that.

Thank you for the article. Hertling is quite interesting to read on Twitter as well.
This made me realize that Russia did not go after the infrastructure. I could understand not bombing the bridges when they expected to roll onto Maidan and hold a victory parade on Day 3 but why are they not destroying all the bridges over Dnieper? Why are Ukrainian railways mostly functional across Ukraine? They retreated from the north, there is no real need for them to keep those bridges functional (and other bridges over Dnieper to the south).
Surely it can't be that they are "saving" the infrastructure as they expect to occupy it? Is it just being unable to target it without losing many aircraft?
By focusing on destroying bridges across Dnieper and/or adjacent areas they could make Ukrainian supply that much harder. The fact that Russians seem unable or unwilling to do that shows another issue in their war plan. They are just not fighting this in a way that can achieve victory.

And another thing 🙂
If BTGs are short on manpower vs TOE, you can't short a tank crew without taking a tank of action. You CAN however, reduce the size of infantry squads being carried and nominally still have X number of infantry squads, carried by the TOE number vehicles.
Another check the box for ineffective infantry. 
Dave