How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[akd]

Possible indication of how stretched Russian forces are:

 

[Doc844]

I'm so sorry bit in my defense it's not MRE's its rabbit.

[sburke]

24 minutes ago, John Kettler said:

sburke,

How about being grateful your memory is in great shape and that you don't have to deal daily with a grab bag of deficits from a TBI sustained over 7.5 years ago?

Regards,

John Kettler

Thing is you read that post and responded in a timely manner.  Clearly it isn't beyond your capability to do so for others.  That is all we ask.  It isn't to pile on and give you a hard time.  Just asking you alter how you look at material and how you process and respond.  I had posted previously some suggestions for you to try and assist with that, but you seem to have chosen to ignore.

[chuckdyke]

Assessment from some Indian Generals. It makes sense and they are pretty professional and in my view underrated. 

 

[John Kettler]

The Polish Piorun MANPADS is in-theater in Ukraine and has reportedly already downed a Russian Su-25. If done with a single missile, that's truly impressive considering an Su-25 survived a direct hit from a Buk on one of its engines in the Georgian War and still made it back to base. The short video below is a quick comparison between the Stinger and Piorun. The latter has a considerably shorter range but a higher ceiling and a warhead of twice the weight of the Stinger's, but it has to score a direct hit, since it has no proximity fuze. The ones Poland has sent come with a TWS instead of a regular optical sight.
 

And if you've wondered how a Russian tank can wind up upside down, here's an explanation not requiring a crack FX team.

 

[Doc844]

With all these command and control centres and high ranking commanders getting taken out I'm starting to suspect that NATO/US are ELINT snooping and sending the co-ordinates to the Ukrainians.  I cant believe that the Ukranians have either A, the assets to do this or B, blind luck taking out so many in a short space of time, to much of a coincidence for me.

[John Kettler]

5 minutes ago, sburke said:

Thing is you read that post and responded in a timely manner.  Clearly it isn't beyond your capability to do so for others.  That is all we ask.  It isn't to pile on and give you a hard time.  Just asking you alter how you look at material and how you process and respond.  I had posted previously some suggestions for you to try and assist with that, but you seem to have chosen to ignore.

sburke,

Sometimes I can recall a thing I read long ago, and other times I can't recall in which of, say, a dozen tabs I looked at within the last hour I saw something important. There are times when it's completely lost from memory in a horrifying 30 seconds. Brother George has seen just this happen to me with an extremely simple rule mechanic for a WW II skirmish game. For someone who used to be a walking threat encyclopedia with a cavernous highly accurate memory, this is immensely frustrating. Am trying to be responsive to suggestions, but they have to deal with the same memory problems, too! What I'm trying to do now is get the freshest info possible and/or provide supplementary material, such as the Stinger/Piorun comparison video.

Regards,

John Kettler

[danfrodo]

GODDAMMIT SBURKE STFU!  yes, Kettler double posts.  he is older and in ill health.  WTF is your excuse for posting about every double post he does?  Do you see how that immediately doubles the wasted space?  then kettler responds, tripling the pointlessness.   Do you not have a the ability to ignore or skim past something you've already see?  Jeebus, get a f-ing grip.  (And then I respond here, adding to the wasted space ) 

How about if someone double posts we all just ignore because we've already seen it?  Instead of adding more useless BS to what is otherwise the best source of UKR war info around.  And remember that folks are in different time zones and might have 5 pages to skim through from the night before.  So folks might miss stuff.

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

GODDAMMIT SBURKE STFU!  yes, Kettler double posts.  he is older and in ill health.  WTF is your excuse for posting about every double post he does? 

actually I don't.  The frequency of his double posts is what is filling this thread, not the responses asking him to refrain. I'm not the only one asking and I even provided him a suggestion on forum tools he could use to help which he doesn't seem to want to use.

[John Kettler]

2 minutes ago, Doc844 said:

With all these command and control centres and high ranking commanders getting taken out I'm starting to suspect that NATO/US are ELINT snooping and sending the co-ordinates to the Ukrainians.  I cant believe that the Ukranians have either A, the assets to do this or B, blind luck taking out so many in a short space of time, to much of a coincidence for me.

Doc844,

In some ways, Ukraine has practically become a temporary Sixth Eye in the super tight FIVE EYES (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ), with privileged access to Ukraine related ELINT shared among them, together with anything relevant obtained from pro-Ukraine countries in the area, none of which want a visit from the Bear. Ukraine  is operating sophisticated comms and ISR provided by the US.  It's been reported the US has recon sat teams in Poland, so would imagine that Ukrainian authorities are getting some sort of help on that end, too, whether IMINT INTSUMs alone or reduced res imagery and IMINT INTSUMs as well I couldn't say. And there is now a tremendous amount of commercial military grade recon sat imagery available, too.  It helps greatly, too, that the weather has been clear, for it makes it very hard to hide anything of consequence from overhead detection, targeting and destruction. The US has provided this sort of intelligence support before, such as it did to the UK during the Falklands War, though UK is a FIVE EYES member, but remember, that's for ELINT. In the Falklands, the British maps dated back to the 1800s, so it was US IMINT, not just of the Falklands, but the sea around it and the Argentine naval and air bases, that was crucial.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Fenris]

34 minutes ago, Doc844 said:

With all these command and control centres and high ranking commanders getting taken out I'm starting to suspect that NATO/US are ELINT snooping and sending the co-ordinates to the Ukrainians.  I cant believe that the Ukranians have either A, the assets to do this or B, blind luck taking out so many in a short space of time, to much of a coincidence for me.

Yes, I wouldn't be surprised at there being sharing of intel but that's not a given.  There have been some comments going around that there's been a general failure of the new Russian secure comms system and they've had to resort to other means of communication,  ie open radio channels and civilian mobile SIMs, which the UKR can listen in on and geo-locate.

Edited March 13, 2022 by Fenris

[The Steppenwulf]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

Assessment from some Indian Generals. It makes sense and they are pretty professional and in my view underrated. 

 

Underrated? Personally I found some of what they had to say was guff! Just a few notable examples of crap (by no means exhaustive) that stood out for me:-

• "Intelligence" was actually either non existent or fatally flawed - this partly explains why the Russians have ended up running such a bad campaign from the off.  Lots of examples! 
•  I haven't observed an "initial recon in force" - from the off, the aim was to seize airfields with elite forces (which failed), and simultaneously assault along lines of attack with low quality troops, expecting that might be all that was needed for a quick and easy occupation of territory. Overall it looked unsophisticated compared to the pre planning and implementation of either of the Iraq campaigns, which are hallmarks in all respects here.   
• "Well supplied forces" - Russians have been vastly under supplied. there's plenty of evidence of this! 
• "Airforce involvement is low because Russia doesn't want to damage too much infrastructure" - huge, huge lol on that one!
• "Winter campaign chosen wisely to prevent potential allies intervening" - No one is intervening in UKR (regrettably) for "escalatory reasons". It's more likely Putin attacked at the end of Feb to take advantage of what appeared to him to be a narrowing window of opportunity, it was a simple "now or never" moment in his risk board-game world perspective. 
• Ethnic Russians make up 17% of pop, not 30% - these guys are NOT even in command of basic facts. 
  
  
  I could go on...but no, this is a very unimpressive analysis in my view
   

Edited March 13, 2022 by The Steppenwulf

[Fenris]

Saw this the other day, gave me a chuckle

 

[John Kettler]

Here is some additional information I didn't have before. Piorun is also called GROM-M and is entirely produced in Poland by MESKO from Polish components. It has head-on engagement capability like the Stinger  (so conceivably downed that Mi-24 we sam take a MANPADS SAM in the face) robust IRCCM (to defeat flares and on-board jammers, such as that fitted to the Mi-24), can engage low-flying aircraft as fast as Mach 1.16, to a range of 6.5 kms and a ceiling of 3.95 kms, which rather redefines low-flying, doesn't it?

This article not only addresses the Piorun MANPADS, but a whole range of potential Polish contributions, including the useful fact that Poland still operates 122 mm and 152 mm tube artillery. 

https://clarion.causeaction.com/2022/02/04/poland-is-sending-missiles-drones-and-thousands-of-artillery-rounds-to-ukraine/

This article shows what the Polish procurement (for both missiles and launchers) was for the Piorun, for which the completion of the original buy is this year. Unless the Polish government has cranked up production since, this defines the absolute limits of what Poland can give.

https://clarion.causeaction.com/2022/02/04/poland-is-sending-missiles-drones-and-thousands-of-artillery-rounds-to-ukraine/

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 13, 2022 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

1 hour ago, Fenris said:

Yes, I wouldn't be surprised at there being sharing of intel but that's not a given.  There have been some comments going around that there's been a general failure of the new Russian secure comms system and they've had to resort to other means of communication,  ie open radio channels and civilian mobile SIMs, which the UKR can listen in on and geo-locate.

Fenris,

That never hurts, either, and is another Russian comms disaster, though so far on a much smaller manpower scale.

https://www.unknownsoldierspodcast.com/post/august-29-1914-the-battle-of-tannenberg

Ukraine is uniquely positioned to provide priceless intel to FIVE EYES, NATO, SEATO and who knows who else. How priceless? Fully functioning Russian homeland version IFF, the latest cryptographic equipment, homeland model tactical SAMs, model AD CPs and something most people have never heard of but are potential war-winners--WRFs (War Reserve Frequencies). These we learned about during the Cold WAr in the most shocking way possible short of taking heavy casualties from them. WRFs are special frequencies only employed in wartime and never used otherwise outside of a RF secure lab or range. When we technically exploited Viktor Belenko's MiG-25 we discovered, to our horror, it had frequencies not in our electronic threat catalogues on our B-52s and other aircraft, so wouldn't have been recognized as a threat and jammed if detected. Had World War III ever broken out, our computer controlled jammers wouldn't have worked, and our planes would've been butchered. Now, let me give you some idea how sensitive the Russians are about their IFF. When Belenko defected in that MiG, the Russians contacted Japan through a back channel and said, in a nutshell, "Look, we don't care about the plane, but if you so much as unscrew the lid on our IFF system, we'll know, and we'll nuke your country." Save for the IFF system, the plane was completely dismantled and meticulously gone through. It was ultimately sent back to the SU in six enormous shipping crates. Got this directly from a Hughes colleague who had a sponsor in the CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research and was our back channel to the real Soviet threat data, not the watered down understated stuff in our weapon system contracts. Met his sponsor in person at CIA HQ Langley when he was there for a briefing I unfortunately didn't get to attend. But the. consolation prize was glorious, because he had a full day of briefings the next day, so I was able to take an entire workday exploring the Smithsonian and other museums and galleries on the Washington Mall.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 13, 2022 by John Kettler

[Heirloom_Tomato]

34 minutes ago, Fenris said:

Saw this the other day, gave me a chuckle

 

Anyone still think convoy road marches in CM are unrealistic? I know I have seen that start stop tank dance more than once in my games.

[keas66]

One question I would have in light  of the apparent appalling state of the Russian Army ...is how much do the NATO  aligned intelligence services know ? How  has this been kept a secret  ? . Are there other branches of the Russian Federation  Armed Forces in the same state - "faking" it .  Exactly how functional are those nuclear assets they keep threatening the West with ?

[dan/california]

Really the game is batting a thousand on every single issue except the pretense that Russia has a functioning military, and they sort of had to fudge that to make a playable game.

[dan/california]

 

52 minutes ago, keas66 said:

One question I would have in light  of the apparent appalling state of the Russian Army ...is how much do the NATO  aligned intelligence services know ? How  has this been kept a secret  ? . Are there other branches of the Russian Federation  Armed Forces in the same state - "faking" it .  Exactly how functional are those nuclear assets they keep threatening the West with ?

A big part of it is intelligence services have a hard telling when an Army/country is lying to itself. Or if the leader is lying to absolutely everybody. So say, for instance,  some three letter agency of the U.S. government has broken in the STAVKA email system and is reading all the readiness reports and battle plans. It is really hard to tell that these are wrong because the lying originates at the very lowest levels and and just percolates all the way up. No intelligence agent thinks the way to make his career is recruiting corporals at a motor pool in some might well be nameless base on the far side of the Urals. I think they new the readiness reports, and the plans were optimistic, but they just couldn't comprehend that it was fiction from top to bottom, and no one including Putin, new it.  The people who new the most were the ones stealing the money, which is an obvious and effective incentive to just lie harder.

Some of the other aspects of this particular pointless criminal slaughter, and even more relevant to Saddam Hussein in the Second Gulf War, is that the leader is lying to absolutely everybody. The U.S.thought Saddam had WMD because almost all of the Iraqi military and government apparatus thought Saddam had WMD. Most of of them were as surprised as we were when it wasn't true. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by dan/california
spelling

[John Kettler]

1 hour ago, keas66 said:

One question I would have in light  of the apparent appalling state of the Russian Army ...is how much do the NATO  aligned intelligence services know ? How  has this been kept a secret  ? . Are there other branches of the Russian Federation  Armed Forces in the same state - "faking" it .  Exactly how functional are those nuclear assets they keep threatening the West with ?

keas69,

How much does NATO intelligence know about what? Faking it was de rigeur in the Soviet military long before the Russian military came to be. When the US got inspectors into Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were shocked to discover how low the true Soviet readiness rate was, for they found silos flooded to uselessness, and in some cases, missiles that clearly hadn't been maintained. Had World War III begun, the Soviet leadership would've been astounded and enraged at how few weapons actually launched. The more modern Russian weaponry in the ICBM department is largely solid fueled, which both reduces maintenance and greatly enhances safety. To give you some idea how dangerous liquid fueled missiles can be, the US Air Force lost a Titan missile in a stupendous explosion so powerful it blew the 50 ton sliding concrete lid clear off the silo. The cause? A dropped socket which hit the silo wall on the way down, ricocheted of the wall and pierced the missile's integral fuel tank, I believe. A liquid fueled missile is essentially a glorified balloon. The Russians lost the submarine K19 to what we determined was a failed attempt to launch--against Pearl Harbor!--a SS-N-4 IRBM, which was liquid fueled as well.

Mobile ICBMs SS-24, SS-25 and especially the practically brand new TOPOL-M are real and extremely credible threats. Back during the Cold War I saw a German analyis of what one SS-18 MIRVed (10 warheads) heavy ICBM could do, which was basically obliterate the FRG, and even a single MIRVed SS-20 IRBM (3 warheads) could deliver immense devastation.  It's worth noting that the key original reason for the B-2 was precisely to search for, locate and attack what we called SRTs (Strategic Relocatable Targets), which consisted of both rail and ground mobile ICBMs and mobile SCPs (Strategic Command Posts).

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 13, 2022 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

3 hours ago, akd said:

Possible indication of how stretched Russian forces are:

 

akd,

News we can definitely use!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, danfrodo said:

GODDAMMIT SBURKE STFU!  yes, Kettler double posts.  he is older and in ill health.  WTF is your excuse for posting about every double post he does?  Do you see how that immediately doubles the wasted space?  then kettler responds, tripling the pointlessness.   Do you not have a the ability to ignore or skim past something you've already see?  Jeebus, get a f-ing grip.  (And then I respond here, adding to the wasted space ) 

Do you need a time out?  Because it seems to me that you need to step away from this if you feel this was an appropriate post.

3 hours ago, danfrodo said:

How about if someone double posts we all just ignore because we've already seen it?  Instead of adding more useless BS to what is otherwise the best source of UKR war info around.  And remember that folks are in different time zones and might have 5 pages to skim through from the night before.  So folks might miss stuff.

In a long, fast running thread it is the obligation of people to either keep up and make informed decisions about what they post *or* to respond to respond to posts that are active.  Otherwise the thread will get bogged down and become utterly useless.  Especially when people are posting stuff that is obviously from DAYS ago.  It should be assumed that if something is that old it's already been covered here and moved on from.

So yes, people do need to be reminded when they repeatedly repost the same materials over and over again.  Doing it once or twice is not a problem, doing it regularly indicates a judgement problem. 

Steve

[LukeFF]

4 hours ago, John Kettler said:

sburke,

How about being grateful your memory is in great shape and that you don't have to deal daily with a grab bag of deficits from a TBI sustained over 7.5 years ago?

Regards,

John Kettler

John, start using some logic and make the reasonable conclusion that something like this that was originally posted 10 days ago has already been discussed here. 

[LukeFF]

4 hours ago, John Kettler said:

On a separate note, Ukrainian SO made a visit to Irpin. This was where, it turns out, those 4 x BMD-2 and and at least one tank, all in V markings, were videoed in an intersection. Didn't post it because there were dead Russians on the deck of the one in the foreground.
 

Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ

 

@CalibreObscura

· 3h

#Ukraine: "The Craftsman with his tools"- A UA SOF fighter with expended NLAW used to destroy a Russian BMD-4 in Irpin.

Also old news and posted / discussed pages back.

[Battlefront.com]

Pretty informative look at the slat armor on the roofs of T-72s: