How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

He didn't see the invasion coming. I did.

Not exactly.  I saw him moving Russian flagged forces into Donbas and threatening a wider invasion if Ukraine balked at it.  This force would then have got up to no good sooner or later, which in turn would give Russia a pretext for more military action.  Which is by any definition an invasion. 

What I didn't think would happen was a fulls scale war.  It still defies logic that he did, but I think logic is sitting in a holiday dacha somewhere while irrationality is calling he shots in the Kremlin.

I'd also like to say that I never thought that a full invasion was off the table completely, no matter how much I thought Putin wouldn't do it.  Because, you know, it was a REALLY stupid ideal

Steve

[sburke]

32 minutes ago, John Kettler said:

Vet 0369, but please bear in mind doing it that way is going to entail an immense amount of reading (a task which just grew by another 33 posts) in order to get to the point that I can theoretically operate from an informed position. The downside of this is that my brain will be in overload, making it difficult to incorporate my own observations and reactions to days of events, discoveries, tech acquired, weapons expended and more. How far back from the latest post, IYO, do you suggest I go in order to follow current developments?

Regards,

John Kettler

I sympathize.  I walked outside to take a break, planted a potato vine, came back in to 30+ posts.  My suggestion would be to go to the profiles of the following and follow them.  I think that will allow you to focus more on the posts that will interest you (notice I'm not there, I try but as source I'm not really providing much )

Haiduk

Kraze

desertfox

the capt

and probably a couple more I apologize for not including - it is a quick list of suggestions.

Edited March 7, 2022 by sburke

[Aragorn2002]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Not exactly.  I saw him moving Russian flagged forces into Donbas and threatening a wider invasion if Ukraine balked at it.  This force would then have got up to no good sooner or later, which in turn would give Russia a pretext for more military action.  Which is by any definition an invasion.  What I didn't think would happen was a fulls scale war.  It still defies logic that he did, but I think logic is sitting in a holiday dacha somewhere while irrationality is calling he shots in the Kremlin.

Steve

I have no doubt you're the expert and again I hope you're right, but this guy is resourceful and his behaviour is hard to predict.

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

So you don't expect a second Afghanistan? 

Very hard to tell at this point but I agree with Steve that the Russians are running out of gas.  Barring some "miracle on the XXX" moment the Russians are bogging down and bleeding heavily right now.  I am beginning to doubt a second Afghanistan because I don't think the Russian have the horsepower to even try to control the entire country.  They might try it east of the Dnieper but even that looks out of reach.  We are 11 days in and they don't even control the Donbas.

If this drags on, and it will likely do so until there is a negotiation [aside: there is a small chance the Russian collapse completely and simply walk out but that would signal the collapse of Russia...a whole other problem].  My guess (and it is a guess) is that we could be looking at something that looked like the Former Yugoslavia, which looked more like WW1, at least until a negotiated end-state happens.

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, keas66 said:

See that's where I am not seeing a lot of info posted - How much exactly Does the Russian Army have left outside of the Ukraine and how much if any of it can be moved ? They presumably still need to maintain forces blocking NATO  , China ,  Turkey and anyone else on their Borders . How many forces do they have remaining to feed into the Ukraine Meat grinder ?

And how fast can they get them there?

[Taranis]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

I sympathize.  I walked outside to take a break, planted a potato vine, came back in to 30+ posts.  My suggestion would be to go to the prog=files of the following and follow them.  I think that will allow you to focus more on the posts that will interest you (notice I'm not there, I try but as source I'm not really providing much )

Haiduk

Kraze

desertfox

the capt

and probably a couple more I apologize for not including - it is a quick list of suggestions.

You forgot Steve ! Naughty boy, you will not have Christmas Bones next year 

[Aragorn2002]

2 minutes ago, Taranis said:

You forgot Steve ! Naughty boy, you will not have Christmas Bones next year 

Yeah, Sburke! That will earn you a vacation when Elvis reads your post.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, Taranis said:

You forgot Steve ! Naughty boy, you will not have Christmas Bones next year 

oops..... I just checked my beta tester card and it is flashing EXPIRED.

[Aragorn2002]

Just now, sburke said:

oops..... I just checked my beta tester card and it is flashing EXPIRED.

[akd]

53 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Nice one:

 

 

Looks like they tried, and failed, to get away.

 

[Battlefront.com]

Here's why a "second Afghanistan" or a Chechnya is not in the cards for Russia this time... these are all situations where the Russians took over the bulk of the geography very quickly.  They had a reason to think that they won the conflict, and so when someone challenged them they fought back because they were defending their win. The US did this in Afghanistan too and, in some ways, Iraq. 

The most striking part of this war is that Russia hasn't taken much of anything (one major city), suffered serious losses, is having difficulty sustaining operations, went in unprepared and unmotivated, and is facing extremely tough resistance the entire time from armed and civilian forces.  In no small way this means that Russia doesn't have anything yet worth fighting to keep, other than its pride.  And there's only so long pride can hold out against this sort of resistance.

Steve

[Armorgunner]

3 hours ago, Commanderski said:

Based on the way Russia is performing 200-300 Abrams would be more than enough to take care of Russia. Just add a little air support and some covering infantry and you're good to go.

Hmm I think tou will need more than that. Divide them up, on all the places the Russian advances on? There would not be more than a few, at each place. But doubble that, and add an infantery company with Javelins, and NLAWS instead of AT-4´s at each place!  The Russian "Bear" has become the "Paper Bear". So not as frightening as before. It seems Putin to, looked to much on Russia Today propaganda channel  

 

But on Russian soil maybe? Probably the motivation would be much higher, when their own towns are threatened? Maybe not with Putin as the Skipper, on the ship? But who knows? Their inferior tactic would take time to improve nevertheless!

Edited March 7, 2022 by Armorgunner

[John Kettler]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:04 AM, kraze said:

WW2 had no precision munitions and no "hearts and minds"-like doctrines.

Pilots during WW2 didn't have much say in where their dumb and completely non-aerodynamic bomb will go. It was pray and spray.

Now a pilot has to target a civilian building on purpose to hit it. Even with junky soviet munitions his plane shows him where that bomb will go on his HUD.

So comparing WW2 to modern war is wrong.

kraze,

Your point about no precision weapons in WW II is largely true, but by no means completely. RAND Corporation rated the kamikazes as precision weapons, since they could hit at least 50% of the time if left unmolested. The Germans had such precision aerial weapons as the mighty Fritz X which sank the battleship Roma and aiso severely injured British battleship HMS WARSPITE she was out of action for a year. The US Navy's television guided by radio control BAT guided bomb was a precision or near precision weapon in its own right.

And the mere fact that precision weapons are being used does not, ipso facto, prove that a deliberate attack was conducted against a civilian target. Even the fanciest weapons sometimes don't work or work too well on friendlies, never mind the enemy. During the Vietnam War, we somehow managed to fire a Shrike ARM at one of our cruisers. The missile went off just over masthead height, destroying every antenna topside and instantly defanging the ship. Weapons, even without enemy interference, can and do misguide or fail to guide. One of the things commentators have noticed is how high the failure rate is for Russian missiles, and visual evidence suggests their FAB-500 bomb has fuzing issues, too. Have seen pics for at least three duds of this type. And I've seen some arguments that the supposed Klub that hit the apartment building was actually a UA SAM. In my informed opinion, there simply wasn't enough destruction to sell that argument, absent significant deflagration. Returning to iron bombs, by far the most commonly used Russian aerial weapon is an iron bomb, and all it takes to cause one to significantly-drastically deviate from the expected ballistics is a bent fin. Precision guided munitions offer far more potential failure points, because of their complexity. If there's clear evidence (preferably evidences) of deliberate attack that's one thing, but the mere fact an air attack results in a hit, however damaging to people and structures alike on a civilian building, say, does not make a prima facie case for a war crime.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

[Commanderski]

There are at least 4 - 8 weeks of rainy/snowy/muddy weather. Without the ability to really go cross country I don't think they will be able to rally and pick up much steam.

[Aragorn2002]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Here's why a "second Afghanistan" or a Chechnya is not in the cards for Russia this time... these are all situations where the Russians took over the bulk of the geography very quickly.  They had a reason to think that they won the conflict, and so when someone challenged them they fought back because they were defending their win. The US did this in Afghanistan too and, in some ways, Iraq. 

The most striking part of this war is that Russia hasn't taken much of anything (one major city), suffered serious losses, is having difficulty sustaining operations, went in unprepared and unmotivated, and is facing extremely tough resistance the entire time from armed and civilian forces.  In no small way this means that Russia doesn't have anything yet worth fighting to keep, other than its pride.  And there's only so long pride can hold out against this sort of resistance.

Steve

And the arms deliveries of NATO are going to hurt the Russians soon, won't they? 

[Commanderski]

1 minute ago, Aragorn2002 said:

And the arms deliveries of NATO are going to hurt the Russians soon, won't they? 

Severely it looks like. That's another thing Russia didn't count on. The huge amount of support that's pouring in and quicker than it has in the past with other conflicts.

[akd]

20 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Heavy firing russian BTR. "Kharkiv direction, the armored personnel carrier of the 674 regiment of the Russian Guard is shooting"

 

Rosgvardiya regiment?

Edited March 7, 2022 by akd

[DesertFox]

Just now, dan/california said:

And how fast can they get them there?

Think in terms of weeks via rail transport rather than days. If they really have committed 100% of their invasion troops (ca. 180.000 men), if there is no 2nd wave already rolling, and intel would have told us that, I think there will be none at all, which tells me they are near finished from an operational POV. What we now see is the dying of their spearhead troops by being slowly but constantly being whittled down. No way they can win this anymore.

Additionally think about Belarus. I think the original russian plan went down the drain, when the belarus troops decided (due to whatever reason) to not invade Ukraine.

[Probus]

An interesting video about no-fly zones:

 

[Kinophile]

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Great movie!!  The brilliance was using varied English accents to represent the varied Russian accents.  But I digress!

What will collapse look like?  All military collapses have three components:

1.  establishing the preliminary elements necessary for a collapse

2.  a tipping point, which can be a singular event or a quick succession of them

3.  collapse, which can be either localized or generalized, or starts out as one and transforms into the other.  I believe the latter is likely to happen in this case, but the time lag between localized to generalized will be very quick (maybe less than a day),

#1 is already there.  I think it was there within the first 2-3 days of the war, but it took a little while longer for us to be sure that Russia didn't have a rabbit to pull out of its hat.  Even those who were sure they didn't had to at least consider it could happen.

 

They're still making progress. I don't hear about any UKR victories other than constant attrition of equipment and the few/far between local victories. RUS forces are still advancing, still outflanking/encircling UKR forces, slowly capturing cities, Kharkiv WILL fall, the south coast WILL fall, RA is still "winning". RUS has steadily added more attrition and territory each day.

Despite the blatant incompetence and stupid operational approach, the RUS FEBA units are still very much in the fight.

I see a Pyrrhic victory, short lived and possibly unsustainable, but it'll be RUS victory all the same.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Kinophile

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Commanderski said:

Severely it looks like. That's another thing Russia didn't count on. The huge amount of support that's pouring in and quicker than it has in the past with other conflicts.

It isn't just after the ballon went up. It A LOT of things started coming in between Feb 1, and the invasion. Pretty clear intel was 100% at that point that provocation wasn't an issue any more. Chinese holding the Russians back until after the olymics looms ever larger.

[riptides]

Arms delivery and Western sanctions.

With businesses pulling out of Russia, and the financial system closed off, I give the Russian people a month before they start really getting PO'd.

The economic impact of Putins war has yet to be fully realized on the average Russian.

It's a race to the bottom, militarily and financially,

 

[DesertFox]

 

 

[Commanderski]

11 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Chinese holding the Russians back until after the olymics looms ever larger.

I wonder what the Chineses threatened Putin with for him to hold off. He had to know about the weather conditions and what would happen when the ground thaws out.

[panzermartin]

I think this conflict defies somewhat the assumptions here that russians "live for war". I think war has knocked their door more times than they invited it. One thing I have understood is that they don't behave like a professional army, especially when they lack motivation. I have seen it happen in the past, even in WW2. Germans were calculating and methodical killers, russians only decided to resist when it was clear that Nazis were serious about ethnic cleansing them and replacing them as an inferior race (and no step back order was issued). But when that happened they defied death to achieve victory. I can't say I don't admire their sacrifice in WW2, the women in the frontline, the night witches squadrons, all this was of mythical scale. Unfortunately though the Ukrainian invasion will put a big stain on Russia's history... 

Edited March 7, 2022 by panzermartin