zinz

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eus-defence-strategy-needs-include-ukraine-von-der-leyen-says-2023-11-30/ Doesn't sound like Ukraine will be left alone by the EU. Sure there are some individuals like Orban that try to prevent that. But overall the behemoth EU is hard to stop when it is put in motion. Would more military help be great? Of course. But besides the military help all the money for keeping Ukraine a functioning country is not to be underestimated.

Well that graph is only half of the picture. A lot of goods were before the sanctions first sold to Russia and then on to countries like Kyrgyzstan. So the direct trade between Germany and Kyrgyzstan was expected to rise anyways even with perfect sanctions. How much this effect or circumventing sanctions or totally unrelated effects change this singular data point is without extra data complete guess work and not enough to draw any conclusions out of.

https://nitter.net/bayraktar_1love/status/1726981722254811490 Not only Ukraine is doing military celebrations under enemy fire.

https://mastodon.social/@noelreports@mstdn.social/111448923363031114 German Defense Minister Pistorius announced a new €1.3 billion aid package to Ukraine at a joint briefing with the Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov. 4 IRIS-T AD systems (most likely full batteries) 20.000 155-mm shells anti-tank mines surveillance drones and detection systems other weapons

https://youtu.be/dcsf5yuEHDY?si=gb-6j3eUT155DsAi Drones dropping tm62 mines as bombs

https://mastodon.social/@ChrisO_wiki/111345893030339729 About current Russian recruitment practices

https://nitter.net/GloOouD/status/1718321869089092003#m Interesting details about the dinipro river crossing

Well but migrants and Muslim minorities are not a great source of disposable people. It's to argue that on average both groups are less invested in Ruskih Mir. I bet that most migrants will have dual citizenship. So pressing them into service will have negative with their original countries. Russias influence in central Asia is already declining. And you only need a few in their home country to make the headlines to seriously damage relations and future worker migrations. We have already had some shootings on training grounds last year by ethnic minorities after the mobilization when those were pressed into the service and didn't come willingly. Don't forget either with the prisoners or was not only the stick to get them signed up but also the carrot of being free after 6 months. Most complaints you see are not why are we fighting this senseless war, but why are we not treated fairly. (Lack of training, lack of promised compensation, etc. ). So what is on offer for the migrants besides the stick? Russia can barely keep their ethnic Russians in the fight with barrier troops, torture prisons and whatever else they can do that no one leaves. At least my understanding of the social deal that is going on inside Russia is, that you get paid handsomely if you go to fight. At least for the low income people. Mix in the fatalism of many Russian males that they will dye young anyways and it seems like right now Russia can recruit enough guys to keep it's manpower up. This does come with some downsides though. This redistributed money has to come from somewhere. The middle class is mostly gone. Many moved outside of Russia last year. Over time these redistributions will eat into the pockets of the oligarchs. So they might at some point have enough of Putin and get rid of him to continue robbing the poor. On the other hand if the Russian regime fails to hold up its end of the bargain with the compensations for those dying at the front this might spark civil unrest. Also the usage of convicts was not free in political cost. The carrot of getting out of prison and being a free man was a necessary part of the whole endeavor. But the cost of all the rapes and murders will accumulate only now. Sure you can suppress all the reporting on those incidents but that takes time and resources away from things that the Russian regime would much rather like to do. About the specific situation in Avdiivka: Compared to Bachmut last year Russia is using and loosing a lot of vehicles. This might be a relevant positive point from the western countries that want to see Russias military potential diminished long term. Of this will turn into a collapse or a controlled withdrawal or a stand by Ukraine is still very much up in the air. That depends on how much Russia is willing to commit. Also with for Russia much more limited resources like plains or artillery.

Option 4 would be that Putin and therefore all the lower levels need good news from the front. In Russia just defending in an offensive war doesn't cut it.

The point I was thinking of an interesting development would be dive bombing of fix winged drones. That tactic was already quite precise in WW2. With image recognition the dropping part could be largely automated. That should increase range or payload a lot and reduce the cost significantly when the delivery vehicle comes back for reuse. I am surprised I haven't seen any videos with that tactic yet.

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

Don't get the wrong conclusions from this statistics. There is no reason to believe drones are not effectively destroying infantry. What you mostly see is what systems can be successfully engaged and how many are in striking range. Do you remember in the first months when HIMARS was introduced? They were not targeting single artilleries. So you would conclude that HIMARS is not effective against artillery? Those statistics show a combination of target availability, target selection priority and effectiveness of the system. And yes tanks are dead. On this battlefield the need for heavy direct fire systems is gone. Tanks where meant to fight other tanks. But now they are mostly fighting to survive like the battleships.

How likely do you guys think that Gripens will come to Ukraine? My gut feeling says they are coming quite soon.

Not really surprising. I am very certain they have exact location of every dish connected to the Starlink network. So you know when one is moving out from say Odessa over the sea towards Crimea. Yes Musk can track in real time any military asset that is currently using Starlink.

Anyone knows if that is a legitimate source?

https://nafo.uk/@hanse_mina/111050653175033289 Those decoys look really well made. And as we know that Russians are incentiviced to report successful destructions of equipment it will be really interesting to find out after the war how effective those decoys are.

https://masto.ai/@ragnarbjartur/111023006687873004 Highest losses of artillery reported by Ukraine sofar. 215 in the last 7 days. I would love to know the composition of those losses. But D30 close to the front line will get shredded much faster than self propelled artilleries. Since the dailykos article another 1400 artillery pieces are declared as destroyed. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/6/2179504/-Ukraine-Update-Russia-doe Reported artillery losses remain incredible high since the start of the Ukrainian offensive. https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/dfbcec47-7b01-400e-ab21-de8eb98c8f3a/page/p_puy9yu3a6c?s=iQsXRj4QRj0

If we take June 4th as the start of the counter offensive russia has lost 452 artillery pieces as reported by the Ukraine armed forces. Even if it is only half that number this is very unsustainable for russia. https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/dfbcec47-7b01-400e-ab21-de8eb98c8f3a/page/p_puy9yu3a6c?s=q6WS0kQJzRg Looking at the whole year the artillery destruction began at the beginning of May

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-16-june-2023-not-an-inch Tom Cooper is giving his opinion on those counterattacks. In his views it is to buy time for more trained mobiks that are at least capable enough to hold the line. In the end it will not prevent Russia from losing this war, but it gives those people in power more time to stay in power. And that is all that matters for them. Sadly with the attritional nature of the current battles lots of lives are lost on both sides.

Correct. But in the post I responded to you were arguing about individual crews manning the systems. But it is unlikely that in this "mirror" match up individual crews are making most of the difference in performance you can see. That was the point I was trying to make. Also go back to last fall. The interception rates of the Russian missile attacks were much worse than now. Like the Russians developed better technics to intercept at least some GLMRS. The mirror concept holds up for some of the used equipment but neither for what the opposite party is using offensively and not for the whole integrated air defense system. Comparing systems directly when they are taken out of context of the overall situation is not too meaningful.

Sure, but I understood the question to be about ground based systems. Not airplanes. And those are doing their job after the chaotic opening of the war.

Well it's mostly a question of integration. https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-air-war-assault-mode-part-8c2 Tom Coopers current mini series should answer those questions. Short summary: no one wants to turn on their radar as that means you are seen and can be killed. On the other hand you really want to turn on your radar to do your job of detection and destroying targets. It's very similar in my mind with sonar and submarine warfare. Running around blind but with a flashlight. If you turn on the flashlight you will see a little bit but everyone sees you. So in the end it's mostly a game of deception, and making the most out of the available information. And Russia has successfully denied most of the airspace over the front to Ukraine.

Increase of reportedly destroyed Russian artillery since the beginning of May. Compare that with the counteroffensive last year.

As everyone is looking forward to UGVs I am not so convinced. They have one unsolved problem and that is mobility. You have all seen the rubble, the mud, the pure chaos that makes any movement complicated. What size of platform do you guys have in mind? The weasel was mentioned. That is not a small vehicle. 3-4 tons. 1.9m wide about 4m long. Yes that is big enough to drive over a trench or through mud and rubble. Anything smaller will get bogged down in a real combat zone real fast. What could be implemented easily is a remote control option to drive around the next corner to do some shooting without risking the operators life. For a vehicle of this size how do you move the operators around? With another vehicle? On foot? How the UVGs runs over your own guys because the operator was not looking at the screen for a few seconds? Small ones for an MG I have not seen any design that is truly mobile and doesn't get stuck at the next obstacle. I mean there has been research on this topic for a century on remote controlled vehicles. But sofar we are not much closer to a reliable solution than the Germans with their Goliath. Another thing not to underestimate is maintenance and repairs. Especially in a war zone. The jammed gun will not fix itself. The stone stuck in the track will not remove itself. The dirt at your sensors will stay there until they get removed. No we don't have robots for those tasks. Controlling a vehicle remotely is solved. Having it mobile and keeping it in operating condition is not solved. Also those systems are sitting ducks for kamikaze drones. Land and air are two completely different domains with very different engineering challenges.

Do you know about the Birthday paradox? With spaceX and other future satellite constellations the number of satellites in orbit is already a magnitude higher than a couple of years ago. The current situation is much worse to consider a kinetic take down of satellites than a few years ago. The Chinese anti sattelite test in 2007 is still a big problem for all space activity. It knocked out another satellite. 1/3 of all debris pieces tracked to keep the ISS safe originated in this singular event.