Carolus
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Posts
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Posts posted by Carolus
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36 minutes ago, Hapless said:
I don't think a flechette round is going to do anything that your basic 5.56/7.62 isn't- the problem looks more like drones are very difficult to hit, rather than current ammunition doesn't do enough damage.
It's got me wondering though- how big do jammers need to be to be effective? Could you stick one inside a 40mm grenade with a parachute and bloop them off into the sky a la instant EW barrage balloons?
What about a magazine fed AGL with 40mm HEAB in combination with new nifty sights for range acquisition?
https://soldiersystems.net/2023/03/01/enforce-tac-23-rheinmetall-squad-support-weapon-40/
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21 minutes ago, Lieutenant Ash said:
Just spotted this, might be relevant to the drone discussion.
5.56 and 7.62 are too small for explosive or airburst bullets, but what would a flechette bullet do to a drone? It was in development during the Vietnam era.
Or maybe these modern dumdum rounds which splitter on impact??
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8 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:
If the drone was submersible, you could do a very neat trick and go full Shamu and have it jump out of the water. Imagine having a Sea Baby jump on top of your VLS as it pops up from 50m down.
Jump up?
I assume the problem with submersible drones is signal range under water. It would need a snorkle with an antenna.
But I am also sure I remember reading that one thing ships really don't like is an explosion underneath the keel.
If you can go below water with 100kg of explosives, don't jump. Just hit it from below.
Unless you rocket jump over the safety net of a bridge, of course.
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6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Back in the day when a group might manage to spend years getting the resources together to maybe launch one attack with a half dozen drones is long behind us. Any one of us is just one Amazon delivery away from having that capability.
Steve
2031: Jef Bezos declares himself absolute sovereign of the territory conquered by his private army while a drone swarm forming his gigantic floating head in the sky announces his laws and wishes to a confused population.
Did I spoil the next CM title? CM:Amazon Rising?
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1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
And that is why I was very careful not to use world "new".
In past posts I have quoted that article extensively.
For the end result now and this year, doesn't matter whether the equipment is "refurbished". Then when we zoom out to strategic level and long term planning it does matter because the stockpiles are going to run dry in the coming years.
I am personally not very concerned about these numbers, because this is not a war of vehicles.
Does this mean pressure on Ukrainians? Does it mean death and suffering? Yes.
But we have a "Coalition for Drones" program going in Europe that aims to provide a million drones to Ukraine in 2024. We have a Czech 155mm shell initiative that is going to provide 500.000 shells to Ukraine this year, Chinese cotton notwithstanding. Rheinmetall is gearing up to outproduce the entire USA with 155mm shells.
Ukraine itself has produced 200.000 drones this year already and will produce more than a million if they just keep production rates at current levels.
Okay, only 1 per 7 drone attacks is successful on average.
What are 5000 Russian vehicles filled with contractniki and conscriptniki going to do when the we have a ratio of 1 tracked / wheeled vehicle per 20 drones with Ukrainian production alone, and 1 : 40 if the EU drones coalition keeps its promise?
1:40 and each single one is a potential kill at a range of 3 to 5 kms?
Denial for ground warfare is only beginning to ramp up.
And as @Letter from Prague said, we don't even know what damage strategic bombing will do to Russia over the course of the year, because that will not get better for Russia either.
Ukraine only needs to turtle under the PATRIOT shield and keep its will to fight.
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24 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
The number of systems held in storage means that while Russia can maintain a consistent output through 2024, it will begin to find that vehicles require deeper refurbishment through 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stocks.
Russia's war is largely dependent on reserves, both the vast soviet arsenals of iron and rust, and on financial reserves which prop up the economy as a whole.
I am petty sure that trying to avoid thinking about the question "what happens when we run out?" is one of the major reasons for vodka consumption in the regime's ranks.
The West has to keep Ukraine breathing until 2026.
Isn't it interesting how Western development and Russian development is diametrically opposed?
By the time the Russians run dry, the European defense industry will only just have started to rock and roll.
The question is how to bridge the time until then.
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Claims to show moment of impact against the "Sergei Kotov" patrol vessel.
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First German FPV drone for military purposes, delivieries will go to Ukraine. Called "tank destroyer" Maus.
We will see if it will turn out to be over-engineered and unnecessarily maintenance intensive.
But the manufacturer claims to have been in communication with Ukrainian soldiers during the design process.
Released features:
- Weaponry: modular via "clamp-on" system
- Effective range (combat): 5-7 km (3-4 miles)
- Effective range (recon): 12-17km (7-10 miles)
- Max. flight time: 25 min
- vertical speed: 17,5-22.0 m/s
- Weight (empty): 700g
- Max. total weight: 6,5kg
- Frame: Donaustahl-M-V1 (inspired by "De Havilland DH.98")
- Max. speed: 140 km/h (86mi/h)based on 10.000mAh battery.
Seems like a speedy but low-range drone. Maybe it will have good electro-magnetic shielding? I would hope so.
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Regarding Poland and imports from Belarussia
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
I mean these are fair points, and I am not in the "Yay us!" camp. But frankly it is a small miracle that anything happened at all. The West was woefully unprepared for this entire thing, and that is on us.
As for Ukraine. Well if we are dolling out harsh but fair truths, they definitely could have been better prepared as well. If I were living next door to Russia, I would make damned sure I had security guarantees that matter (oh wait, I do and we did). I would also be working very hard, like Finland and Sweden just did, to make sure if I needed a quick entry into the western fold that I was ready for that. Corruption and dithering happened inside the Ukraine government as well.
I think that no one on this side of this war was truly ready for what actually happened. The West rallied and frankly pulled off the impossible, as did Ukraine - how quickly we forget the miracles of Mar '22. I do not think it is fair to flush all that down the toilet now with revisionist history and hysteria.
The West continues to support Ukraine. Billions in aid are still moving. The US is putting on a shameful display of just how fragile its democracy is right now, and ignorant power hungry politicians are exploiting it for personal gain. But I remain confident that 1) Ukraine will adapt. They are leading modern warfare right now and learning incredibly fast, 2) The US and West will eventually get there - democracy does suck at times, but it is the best we have, and 3) Russian decline is occurring as a direct result of #1 and #2. Their ability to be a threat is declining in the conventional space.
Hopefully this is a "darkest before dawn" situation and not the abyss that some insist it has become.
I don't disagree with any of that. The post I responded to seemed a bit more negative or one-sided to me. This post however I would totally agree with.
Let me say where I came from in the initial post: The West has done a lot, really a lot, but also the West would betray its own identity if it had not.
That's why I don't like when things are expressed in the vein of "oh why is it now the West's duty to help every war, silly Ukrainians? We dont have to give you a penny if we don't want to!"
I dont see that this way, because that is a big part of what makes us us, of what shapes our understanding of "mission", insofar we still have a sense of "mission" in the West.
Turning away from Ukraine would not be a betrayal of Ukraine necessarily, it would be a betrayal of ourselves and our political and ideological foundations and would weaken us in the long-term.
That is not spoken out of a pure sense of stars-and-stripes idealism. I believe this has practical political ramifications, globally, of where the planet and humanity will be headed geopolitically in this century, which the West, despite diminishing demographic and economic importance, will take a role in shaping.
So I say: We did a lot, we could do better, and it is not pure generosity to do something, but it is beneficial in more ways than one to ourselves, it just also happens to be beneficial to Ukraine.
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
I take the middle ground. I think what the West has done thus far has been huge. Biggest investment NATO countries have made in a non-member state since its foundation. It is also was highly effective. Ukraine would arguably have been overrun in 2022 without this support.
This should not be dismissed or belittled. It was strategically important to Ukraine and, therefore, the West.
I wished to express a middle ground. Maybe it did not come across?
I did not mention specific weapon systems or numbers for a reason, since one can get lost in the details of what made sense when.
And what the West sent has been very important and also significant in terms of amount.
But I also sincerely believe that certain ways the support was handled can only be described as short-sighted, weak and even counter the West's own interests (for the 3 reasons stated in my previous post).
At the moment the West seems purely reactive rather than pro-active. Which means when politicians decide to allow Ukrainians to put their apparently ungrateful and uneducated hands on another piece of Western equipment, it takes months of training.
Training for certain systems could have begun much earlier - even if supply might only come later, in reaction to developments which Western politicians set as their red line.
The communication strategy is abysmal. Half the Western world doesn't even realise we have been locked into a wrestling match through a multi-pronged non-conventional attack by a force which utterly despises our core values and our way to live, which would order the killing of millions of Western citizens in a heartbeat and without any remorse if it seemed expedient to its interests.
We are witnessing Fall Gelb and French politicians are openly telling French people that the first villages being overrun by Germans is fake news, and besides have you seen the German tanks yourself with your own eyes? If not, you are a warmonger, and it is best to vote for the pro-German politican during the French election happening next week.
These are serious and unconventional, partly unprecedented problems. Irrational, even.
Still, I acknowledge that a lot has happened and many positive developments have taken place, from supplied military goods over economic sanctions to increased military production. That was really great. But while I don't want to downplay it, a lot of it seems to have been incredibly hotch-potched, foot-dragging and improvised, which makes me worry.
Ukraine cannot subsist based on the idealism of the Skandinavian and the Baltic countries alone.
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27 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
FFS, this is just an extension of "it is all the West's fault", a modern Ukrainian "stab in the back" myth in the making. Could support have been better coordinated? Could it have been better overall...definitely. But the poor weak West managed to send in over support greater than the entire Ukrainian pre-war GDP...but that clearly was weak tea.
I respectfully disagree.
Defeating the invasion of Ukraine is related to Western interests and the West is not pursuing its own interests due to a mixture of
1) lack of will
2) lack of skill (military, intelligence and political savy)
3) political corruption
This is not the fault of Ukraine, and it is very fair that Ukraine feels disappointed by its weak allies and the weak support in an existential war - not only existential for Ukraine, but existential for certain principles the West has built.
It may hurt to admit, especially if one was part of the Western military complex, but the West is not bringing its best.
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11 minutes ago, Kraft said:
Making artillery production dependent on China, thats a very big brain move.
To be fair, the West has a history of many many big brain moves for the last decades.
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1 hour ago, Zeleban said:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/29/7444412/
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/29/7444429/
Ukrainian journalists conducted an investigation on the border between Poland and Belarus and found that Poland is increasing trade with Belarus (and therefore with Russia). While the border with Ukraine plans to completely close
That's a wee bit misleading.
QuoteThe volume of Poland's imports from Russia and Belarus is significantly lower than its imports from Ukraine. Last year, Ukraine sold US$1.3 billion worth of agricultural products to Poland, while Russia and Belarus sold US$117 million and US$55 million, respectively,"
[...]
Poland will "thoroughly" analyse the aftermath of Latvia's decision to ban imports of Russian food products and does not rule out that it will take appropriate steps.
Imports from Belarus and Russia are tiny, and limited to non-sanctioned food stuffs. And there might be a ban on that as well if they follow Latvia's footsteps.
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It is important to be skeptical of Ukrainian numbers, but I would be curious why now, specifically, these announcements are made (and from official Ukrainian accounts).
Is it to improve morale after the continued Kab and Fab bombardment?
Curious.
Usually Ukraine stayed somewhat conservative when it comes to "special assets" (ships, airframes) or provides footage.
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1 hour ago, Grigb said:
It seems you are not.
Well, would you say how you interpret it?
QuoteSo, the ultimate decision rests with the heads of state. We have Orban, we have Scholtz and possibly few others (Austrian). Can NATO overcome their opinion?
Austria is not a NATO member.
But yes. Ultimately it comes down to the heads of state of the member states at a given time.
Member states are also free to support each other without NATO article 5.
But I am also sure that these heads of state would realise what the consequences would be if they individually decided to not follow a NATO call.
It's the risk we have discussed regarding the US elections and Trump. Even if a country does follow an article 5 invocation, it may still just "sit it out" if the government takes no steps.
But it would be a huge, global diplomatic shake-up.
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46 minutes ago, Grigb said:
So, for Germany US is not truly ally. Good that we are all on the same page.
...you have heard of a small event called "Iraq War" during which Germany, France etc. did not participate?
Your input for this thread is truly invaluable, but I am afraid when it comes to this sub-conversation on international law, there must have been some misunderstanding between what you read how it works and how it actually works. Because I simply don't recognize what you say in the treaties nor in how it was applied in the past.
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37 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
What if, for example, Germany, despite legal norms, still refused to participate in the NATO war (after all, no one wants to be drawn into a third world war)? Is there a mechanism for enforcement to comply with the requirements of these legal norms? After all, we all know that any law must have a mechanism of enforcement. Otherwise, it’s just an ordinary declaration that is not binding.
It's not a law, it's an international treaty. These are two legally distinct things.
And the norm is simply that a country must want to participate in international law and behaving in an orderly and reliable manner, or deal with the diplomatic consequences of not doing so.
Theoretically the other countries might decide to sanction that country in some way, but enforcement on an international scale is inherently difficult. Individual persons are subject to the authority of a state because the state owns the monopoly of violent enforcement (as an ultimate end) and the inherent massive power difference between state and indiviudal makes this enforcement easy and reliable, but states see themselves as ultimately sovereign actors on the same legal level, and much depends on their individual status versus each other.
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35 minutes ago, Grigb said:
So, if an unknown submarine (from RU) torpedoes US boat in Pacific Ocean will Germany gets involved or (given RU denial and US unwillingness to disclose intelligence sources publicly) just say it was probably China, so not our problem?
... are you aware of how article 5 works?
When invoked, the NATO countries meet for a decision on whether article 5 was invoked for a good reason by a country based on available intelligence.
It's not a criminal court case in which guilt has to be proven "beyond reasonable doubt", so the standard of evidence is lower.
But article 5 is not an automatism. And whichever head of government convenes for that meeting is aware of the gravity of what will be decided together.
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6 minutes ago, Grigb said:
What you're saying is that the German government values legal justifications over alliances. And it begs the question: what if the German government finds a legal justification not to respect Article 5?
.... article 5 is a legal clause.
Yes, there is also a lot of symbolism attached to it and for good reason.
But it is ultimately a legal procedure which requires legal justification to invoke. A legal procedure which all nations of the treaty agreed to follow as per its carefully worded letter.
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4 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
This is everything we need to know about Western unity
Western boots on the ground in Ukraine is incredibly unlikely at the moment. If it happened it would be well discussed in advantage, and in that case, every Western nation would know its exact role and the extent of the involvement of any partner, e.g. France and UK would know 100% that Germany provides logistical support or AWACS but no combat troops if such a plan was reached (which I cannot ever see happening). That's not disunity, but planning.
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15 minutes ago, Butschi said:
I'm no expert but if a NATO member sends soldiers outside of NATO territory to participate in a war and then gets targeted by the other party, why should that trigger article 5? If the US defends Taiwan and China strikes the US, would that trigger article 5?
I think he meant an attack on the mainland (in retaliation), not the local forces.
Otherwise, your assumption is fully correct.
As per international law it is legal for any nation to join a war on the defensive side in an illegal invasion. But it is the decision of that specific country (unless they have an offensive alliance, but I think that's basically unheard of nowadays, or basically illegal) and as a voluntary war party, its defensive alliances would not be triggered.
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There is an online rumor that Igor "Strelkov" Girkin was found dead in his cell.
Hanged.
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Okay, I fully admit this is completely conspiracy theory level territory but..
Wasn't there an incident between the Russian airforce and NATO planes over the Black Sea recently?
What if - and no, I don't belive thst myself, but I want to mention it for the pure fun - what if this was a British or American message to tell Russia "Our stealth planes are actually stealth planes, Vladimir. Now please call your dogs back a bit."
Sniping a Russian AWACS to emphasize the message. Leaving everyone in the public wondering if it was Ukraine or FF incident. The perfect crime.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
At that point it simply comes down to who has more production lines and the resources to feed them as swarm is pushing against swarm to reach the other side's power plants or other strategic nodes which disrupt output.