How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

9 minutes ago, Butschi said:

I guess that bit of politics doesn't really belong here but I don't think either Ukraine or Belarus should join the EU right now. Formal criteria side that isn't even their fault. With every member state still having veto power everything always boils down to the lowest common denominator and more members - obviously - makes things only more messy. Not to mention our own set of aspiring autocrats with whom we have to deal. Oh well.

Ukraines president is single most prominent heroic figure in at least 50 years. Ukraine is going to be in the EU the day the shooting stops. By acclimation, since their own votews won't let the politicians do anything else, French, German, Danish doesn't matter. They are all just thankful he can't run for their jobs

[Vacillator]

8 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

Please reference Steve’s “Vehicle Identification Chart,” Media column about 10 or 15 pages ago in this thread.

Indeed, I read that and totally agree, the media often have no idea. 

So why has the '40-mile column' not been hit, at least at the front to slow it down even more?  Or has it?  Perhaps the calculation is that it is running out of steam already anyway?

[Vet 0369]

1 hour ago, GAZ NZ said:

Watch "Russian Invasion Takes Massive Blow From Ukraines Military - Ukraine War Update" on YouTube

 

https://youtu.be/CAVXebmZUqA

Watch the video I posted above

It explains alot of things along with the general fronts  and Russian limited movement and civilian involvement 

A supply depot was 300 m from the school they hit with cluster mutions 

They obviously missed 

Russian missiles are not as accurate as American 

The situation is becoming more complex with civilians now becoming combatants and the more that do this   may give the green light to Putin to do carpet bombing 

The president asked his people to fight so the more that do they become combatants 

I'm not sure how this effects being able to attack civilians if they are armed 

It's interesting that inhabitants of one town as in the video link apparently stopping the Russian forces without force 

 

The Ukraines seem to be doing a pretty good job of accuracy with Russian munitions, or are you saying the Ukraines are using munitions made by America in weapons that were made by Russians? Also, the Russian weapons and equipment being used by the Ukraines seem to be much better quality than the stuff the Russians are using, or are they just maintained better than the Russians?

[DesertFox]

32 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

So the '40 mile long armoured column' has been on my mind for a while.  A few questions:

• Is it really armoured to a large extent?  The satellite images and some recent online talk suggest it's mainly supply?
• Has it been attacked yet?  The speed of advance suggests it might, but advancing large groups on single roads is not the easiest of propositions, so it could just be the clogged road problem we're all familiar with?
• If it hasn't been attacked, why not - is it better-protected than some of the other convoys which have been hit, or is there less opposition on that route (I wouldn't think so)?
• If it's as vulnerable as it looks, why would you send a huge very slow-moving column down a road like that - even in a game like CM it would give me nightmares?

Not that 40km convoy coming in from Belorus in direction of Kyiv. This one is north of Cherson in the south of Ukraine. Maybe propaganda. We will see...

 

 

[Phantom Captain]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

In short, the Russian performance so far has been a fustercluck.  This is the consensus of every professional military analyst out there.  While I have seen some quibbling about this or that detail, the overwhelming weight of evidence is that Russia thought they could just walk in and take Ukraine.  Not in weeks, in days. 

To me, this is not a surprise that the war for Russia isn't going well.  I've been predicting this sort of result from an outright war for the last few years, and I am technically not a professional analyst (though... I am paid by governments for my work on this topic... so, am I?  That's a weird thought!).  What has surprised me, though, is how much I overestimated Russia's capabilities and underestimated how dramatically Ukraine could take advantage of those failings.

There's a ton more to say on this topic, of course, but I think the short cut is to read some other opinions offline from here.  This is a very good source with very succinct reports produced each day (in pairs):

https://www.understandingwar.org/

Steve

To put this back into CMBS context for a minute...  I have to say I am laughing now as how so many fanboys wanted to scream American bias at you and complained forever ad nauseum on how underpowered Russia was as represented, how great their armor is, how modern and top notch their army is, how they would be so capable standing up against NATO forces... Fix or do somefink! 

Well....it seems they are vastly over-represented in the game now eh? CM made me think the Russians were going to be way more powerful than they are showing themselves to be.  I'm glad they aren't and I guess this is the very definition of "paper-tiger" maybe "pixel tiger" in our case.  CM also made me think the Ukrainians would hold out much longer than the experts gave them credit for. I'm glad this has been the case.  

It's kinda crazy that, in a way, we all have been fighting this war on the ground for years now...

I feel like I could almost do a better job with one of these Task Groups than the actual Russian commanders are doing.  Thanks for that Steve!  Ha!

Edited March 1, 2022 by Phantom Captain

[TheVulture]

7 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

To put this back into CMBS context for a minute...  I have to say I am laughing now as how so many fanboys wanted to scream American bias at you and complained forever ad nauseum on how underpowered Russia was as represented, how great their armor is, how modern and top notch their army is, how they would be so capable standing up against NATO forces... Fix or do somefink! 

I vaguely remember one of the Russian posters (arguing that Russian forces weren't involved in Donetsk / Luhanks in 2014) saying that you'd be able to spot real Russian forces on the attack because the first thing that would happen is they'd used some magic device to drain all the enemy batteries and power sources in a 5 km radius of all power, and then blah blah blah.

I think, in retrospect, he may have had an exaggerated idea of the Russian's army's technological capacities.

[domfluff]

4 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

To put this back into CMBS context for a minute...  I have to say I am laughing now as how so many fanboys wanted to scream American bias at you and complained forever ad nauseum on how underpowered Russia was as represented, how great their armor is, how modern and top notch their army is, how they would be so capable standing up against NATO forces... Fix or do somefink! 

Agreed, but I don't think that's remotely surprising.
 

Quote

Well....it seems they are vastly over-represented in the game now eh? CM made me think the Russians were going to be way more powerful than they are showing themselves to be.  I'm glad they aren't and I guess this is the very definition of "paper-tiger" maybe "pixel tiger" in our case. 

Hmmm. I'd give that one about twelve months to bed in. Clearly something has gone wrong here, but precisely why, and to what extent isn't yet clear. It's certainly possible to speculate on possible reasons, but only some of those reasons might be relevant or systemic.
 

Quote

CM also made me think the Ukrainians would hold out much longer than the experts gave them credit for. I'm glad this has been the case.  

The Ukranian army of 2022 is not the same army as the one of 2014. I do think there's a good argument that CMBS may have over-represented that army. CMBS is set in 2017, but certainly not the same 2017 as in reality, and a lot was learnt very quickly.

[DesertFox]

1 minute ago, TheVulture said:

because the first thing that would happen is they'd used some magic device to drain all the enemy batteries and power sources in a 5 km radius of all power,

Ahh, the infamous russian flux-compensator developed in the 50s, which generates a pocket sized black hole?

[LongLeftFlank]

Best not to get too complacent in spite of the ineptitude.

The RA has occupied Kherson, encircled Mariupol and look set to ring Kharkov. Kiev is still being flanked. How long can these cities' defenders hold out with large civilian populations caught in the crossfire?

Once the Russians dig in, they become a lot less vulnerable.

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

In short, the Russian performance so far has been a fustercluck.  This is the consensus of every professional military analyst out there.  While I have seen some quibbling about this or that detail, the overwhelming weight of evidence is that Russia thought they could just walk in and take Ukraine.  Not in weeks, in days. 

To me, this is not a surprise that the war for Russia isn't going well.  I've been predicting this sort of result from an outright war for the last few years, and I am technically not a professional analyst (though... I am paid by governments for my work on this topic... so, am I?  That's a weird thought!).  What has surprised me, though, is how much I overestimated Russia's capabilities and underestimated how dramatically Ukraine could take advantage of those failings.

There's a ton more to say on this topic, of course, but I think the short cut is to read some other opinions offline from here.  This is a very good source with very succinct reports produced each day (in pairs):

https://www.understandingwar.org/

Steve

I am speculating here based on the tiniest slivers of information, but I think the some combination of the Poles, and the CIA, have been helping the Ukrainians get ready for this for a LONG time. I have a lot of almost completely speculative thoughts the Poles have done even more than that.  The truly remarkable part is that they kept the Ukrainians from tipping their hand. I mean Steve saw it, but he is better than half the worlds intelligence agencies, More like 3/4s actually

[billbindc]

9 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Best not to get too complacent in spite of the ineptitude.

The RA has occupied Kherson, encircled Mariupol and look set to ring Kharkov. Kiev is still being flanked. How long can these cities' defenders hold out with large civilian populations caught in the crossfire?

Once the Russians dig in, they become a lot less vulnerable.

 

They still have to be fed and resupplied. The smaller cities may not be a good harbinger for the big ones. Expect Putin to want to close this out in a month at most. Sly didn't work. Next frightfulness. Then, he's in an insurgency...with a running down army, sanctions and internal pressures. It's going to be nasty but I'm not sure I'd want to be him given the options.

[LongLeftFlank]

Well, this VDV unit for one uses proper tactical column spacing.

(Ha, others in the thread noticed that too!)

...As others here have observed, we aren't seeing the entire picture here and there are unquestionably RA units that are highly capable and lethal.

"I am the eye in the sky, looking at youuuuu...."

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Vet 0369]

12 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

To put this back into CMBS context for a minute...  I have to say I am laughing now as how so many fanboys wanted to scream American bias at you and complained forever ad nauseum on how underpowered Russia was as represented, how great their armor is, how modern and top notch their army is, how they would be so capable standing up against NATO forces... Fix or do somefink! 

Well....it seems they are vastly over-represented in the game now eh? CM made me think the Russians were going to be way more powerful than they are showing themselves to be.  I'm glad they aren't and I guess this is the very definition of "paper-tiger" maybe "pixel tiger" in our case.  CM also made me think the Ukrainians would hold out much longer than the experts gave them credit for. I'm glad this has been the case.  

It's kinda crazy that, in a way, we all have been fighting this war on the ground for years now...

I feel like I could almost do a better job with one of these Task Groups than the actual Russian commanders are doing.  Thanks for that Steve!  Ha!

I don’t necessarily agree with this in total. CMBS takes place what, seven years ago? At that time the UKR military still consisted of older Soviet equipment and training, both of which were said to be inferior to the new, more superior equipment and training of the Russian military. Since that time, the Ukraine military has received what we would consider superior training and maintenance of equipment BECAUSE of the Russian invasion of Crimea. That drove the Ukraine to allow training from the West, and ensured better maintenance practices regardless of the bureaucratic corruption that seems to be endemic in the post-Soviet satellite countries. Russia, on the other hand, continued and expanded on the endemic corruption that would have earned a bullet to the back of the head under the Soviets (since the corrupted wern’t part of the Politburo). 

[BeondTheGrave]

27 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Best not to get too complacent in spite of the ineptitude.

The RA has occupied Kherson, encircled Mariupol and look set to ring Kharkov. Kiev is still being flanked. How long can these cities' defenders hold out with large civilian populations caught in the crossfire?

Once the Russians dig in, they become a lot less vulnerable.

 

US seems to agree with you there. Ultimately thats probably the correct assessment, though timeline could be sooner or later (4 weeks, maybe 2, maybe 10) depending on battlefield breaks. But all Russia has to do is mobilize more of its military districts and it will double the attacking force. Russia is a bear. It wont kill you with tricky poisons, or a special attack, or some quick and surgical bite. If the first bite doenst get you, it will crush you under paw and squeeze the life out of you. 

I've said it up thread (a while upthread at this point) but it bears repeating. The short victory phase is over. Were in phase 2, the siege. Ukraine will lose this phase of the war if Russia is allowed to complete it. It will be long, it will be bloody on both sides, and it will be messy. Putin will not come out of this looking like the judo master. He has probably broken Russia's great power status. But none of that matters if your sheltering in Kyiv. The only hope is that NATO and the US can somehow fundamentally change the dynamic of this conflict to force a withdraw OR someone from inside the palace changes it for us. Phase 3, if it comes, will be the insurgency phase and will be a constant and unending nightmare for Russia. Probably an insurgency on the scale of the Second World War. The difference is I 100% believe the west will flood Ukraine with arms, maintaining a very high intensity and lethality of conflict. 

Personally I dont think that assassination should be the tool in the arsenal of a democracy. Democracies shouldn't target individuals. But if there was a time for the west to pull out a targeted operation, now would be one. Then again a solution like that would open up the very real risk of a civil war in a nuclear armed state. Also not a positive outcome. 

Regarding CMBS, if Russia pushes this to phase 3 I think the tune will be very different. The Russian army is going to come out looking a lot better if it wins, because failures can be blamed on the 'soft' side of the military. Personnel, doctrine, operational concept, soft factors like radio management, leadership. CM is fundamentally based on tactical sized units, fighting based on a rigid interpretation of TOEs, with a perfect understanding of doctrine and a high quality of execution. All thats to say, is the problem that the T-72B3 is a bad tank or it was used improperly? Is it that it was driven poorly or that it couldn't hold up at all? CMBS already reflects this lethality and TBH if you employed your battalions like the Russians seem to be, I bet you could reproduce a lot of these actions. Technical data will surely (hopefully) change some values though and give us a much better and more accurate simulation, but I suspect we wont see a huge revision in how Russian equipment is judged. After all its been the assumption since the 1940s that the basic Russian soldier was poorly trained, led, motivated, and fed.  

Edited March 2, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[dan/california]

I don't think the Russians can keep this up for six more days, much less weeks. There is a point of epic failure that is just unrecoverable. And high level AA assets being abandoned in a field to be set on fire by peasants with a can of gas and a match is pretty close to that point. 

[DesertFox]

Let´s hope it is true:

 

 

[LongLeftFlank]

25 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Russia is a bear. It wont kill you with tricky poisons, or a special attack, or some quick and surgical bite. If the first bite doenst get you, it will crush you under paw and squeeze the life out of you. 

 

I agree with much of your post, but I think the "Great Bear" bit of national mythology has passed its sell by date, with the exception of the (unusable) legacy nuclear weapons force. 

And I don't honestly know how much 'squeezing' power is really left in the "Red Army" once you expend the VDV and a couple of the 'court divisions.'  Its total establishment is only what, about 1.5 million (all arms)?

Russia is an aging society of about 120 million souls, with a growing proportion of non-Slavs, increasingly urban and jaded, and disinclined to pursue a military career to get off the farm.

Economically, Russia is a Rust Belt has-been industrial power whose only prospering industries are around resource extraction and export. Much of the techno-intelligentsia (Jews, especially) which allowed the old USSR to industrialize, beat Hitler and become a superpower has emigrated. I mean no disrespect to my Great Russian friends, but this brain drain matters.

Were it a matter of defending the Rodina from an actual (vs. notional) foreign invader, no doubt the Russian boys of today would prove every bit as hardy, stubborn and cunning as ever. But now, being told to shoot, bombard and starve their cousins, who are mainly just like them? 

"F*** your mother" seems the most likely response, and a lot sooner than years from now.

Edited March 2, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[chris talpas]

An interesting panel discussion on the current Russian Military Campaign in Ukraine put on by Center for Strategic & International Studies:

I thought it had a lot of good analysis and interchange between the panel.  The panel itself was pretty impressive.

Chris

[sburke]

7 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I don't think the Russians can keep this up for six more days, much less weeks. There is a point of epic failure that is just unrecoverable. And high level AA assets being abandoned in a field to be set on fire by peasants with a can of gas and a match is pretty close to that point. 

yeah that assessment of decades is just foolish.  This is not ending in a Russia victory and Russia cannot afford the drain of months much less years.  Putin put his own nuts in this vice and he keeps tightening the screws.  A Grozny type war in Ukraine would undermine everything he has said and cost too much loss in blood and treasure for the Russian people to accept.  

[Rake]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

At least they are consistent

My point here is that anytime you see a poll number in the US that is over about 70%, you should view it as "near unanimous agreement by people who aren't morons".

Steve

I was just going to give this a "Like", but I guess the forum boss doesn't need those.

I've been glued to this thread since Thursday...  I think the boss might notice soon  

[LongLeftFlank]

Meanwhile, the Ukis are fully mobilizing as a society, and getting to work....

 

[danfrodo]

Let's be clear about where this is probably going.  If nothing 'breaks', Putin will surround and pound those cities.  he will 'win the war'.  Then he'll have eternal insurgency where he murders & starves Ukrainians like it's the 1930s. 

But there's equally good chance that the Russian side 'breaks' -- meaning the forces just refuse to push the fight, up to and including mutiny.  Or there's a coup.  But without that break, it's very very bad for Ukraine. 

Of course, Aragorn & I want to see NATO coming over the hill like the Rohirrim in Lord of the Rings #2 and change the whole equation.  Even NATO air strikes would be crippling to the Russians since the mud keeps them roadbound.  And let's all pray for rain!  Forecast is still above freezing every day for next week, though some of it sunny. 

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, sburke said:

yeah that assessment of decades is just foolish.  This is not ending in a Russia victory and Russia cannot afford the drain of months much less years.  Putin put his own nuts in this vice and he keeps tightening the screws.  A Grozny type war in Ukraine would undermine everything he has said and cost too much loss in blood and treasure for the Russian people to accept.  

The Russians have never tried this somewhere the other side had near infinite supply of top grade missiles. It increases their casualty rates by orders of magnitude, and then in creases them again when their infantry just won't get out their tracks and soldier like they mean it. I am sure they have SOME functional units. If they had enough of them they would be in Kyiv, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. 

[Vet 0369]

30 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

 

Personally I dont think that assassination should be the tool in the arsenal of a democracy. Democracies shouldn't target individuals. But if there was a time for the west to pull out a targeted operation, now would be one. Then again a solution like that would open up the very real risk of a civil war in a nuclear armed state. Also not a positive outcome. 

 

The USA doesn’t think so either. In 1976, US president Ford signed an Executive Order (EO) prohibiting assassinating any Head of State. That EO, or a later enhanced EO has been signed by every U.S. President since then. That philosophy is one of the major differences between the USA and Russia. If you want to see the actual EOs, just search the web, and you’ll find the number of the EO, and a brief description.

[dan/california]

10 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Meanwhile, the Ukis are fully mobilizing as a society, and getting to work....

 

I mean how in the BLEEP do abandon a functional sam system with missiles in the tubes. It is incomprehensible for anything you can call an army with a straight face.

Edited March 2, 2022 by dan/california