How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

UKR troops ambushed Russian convoy (on the second photo at least KAMAZ and some armor seen on the background)  and captured MTU-90 bridge layer. Jusdging of the writing "For Okhtyrka" on the vehicle, made by our soldiers, this is Sumy oblast around this town

MTU-90 is adopted in 1997. It maintains a passage of 24 m length for vehicles up to 50 tons of weight

Edited March 13, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Soldier on the video says it was direct hit of artillery shell in BMP-3. There was IFV - became a model kit for assembling %) 

CM model of artillery effect on vehicles should be upgraded ) 

 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Haiduk

[sburke]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

If the UKR light infantry are only conducting delay actions until the UA feels it can do a heavy decisive battle, I am left wondering if they still need to?  If one can attrit 20% of an opponents combat power through hybrid tactics then the only reason to create heavy mass would be at exactly the right place and time to very loudly demonstrate a collapse of the Russian military at an operational level.  I suspect this will evolve in the course of the fight but the UA does itself no favors by forming mass like it did back in 2014 and essentially play the "Russian game".  The UA has invented a new game, one they are very good at.  

Let me start by saying I am not a trained military strategist.  I am an armchair warrior/historian who's experience is all from gaming.  In other words, I know ****e.

That being said I think there is more here than what you have noted regarding a change in warfare.  I think much of what you have noted for the Ukrainians only works for the home team.  One example is Ukrainian use of facebook to involve their whole population in the ISR game.  I believe there was at least one example the UKR posted of a strike accomplished via info gained from one such facebook post. The proliferation of mobile communication devices with geo location to the entire population and the ability to harness that is something I think the UKR is learning to use that is new on the battlefield.  In a sense it is that big data/machine learning buzz word applied to the battlefield.

There has been some conjecture on these pages about how the UKR is managing to hit so much of Russia's command structure.  I think there is some observer bias built in there.  We have seen some examples but nothing that tells me the UKR is doing something that uniformly effective or that heavily relies on Western Intel.  Not that I don't think they are getting that, but it is just as believable to me that some UKR teenager took a pic of some Russians on their phone and loaded them up to that facebook page and UKR intel spotted it and said - huh so that's where those guys were 30 minutes ago.  They then pass that back to some group tasked with targeting orders and either field it to a drone, a Spec OPs unit or a local commander that has some teams in the field.  Add to that Russian comms suck and they are frequently communicating in the open.

Going back to that Vietnam analogy. You still have that scenario of an invading army facing a hostile population.  Now however that hostile population has the means to communicate in near real time to a central military organization that has the means to convert that info to effective battlefield decisions with military hardware that dovetails in capability.  The old OODA loop has been magnified with additional intel sources and weapons.

For an invader some of that still works, but minus a thousand eyes and ears.

[Homo_Ferricus]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

Relevant to both the general state of the war, and the ongoing discussion on tactics and force types. Can the Ukrainians make them bleed enough to hurt when they go static?

 

I'm shocked everyone here takes the UA MoD for their word. Propaganda of course goes both ways, especially during a time of existential war. Ukrainians have every reason to doll up these numbers by a factor of 5. There is obviously combat still happening, my read of this was that MoD realized as this conflict seems to keep rolling they can't just add another 1,000 deaths a day lest the absurdity of the numbers becomes too obvious... I think the other day there was a number from US DoD that estimated Ru deaths at 3k. My personal estimate is between 2-3k.

[kraze]

Just now, Homo_Ferricus said:

I'm shocked everyone here takes the UA MoD for their word. Propaganda of course goes both ways, especially during a time of existential war. Ukrainians have every reason to doll up these numbers by a factor of 5. There is obviously combat still happening, my read of this was that MoD realized as this conflict seems to keep rolling they can't just add another 1,000 deaths a day lest the absurdity of the numbers becomes too obvious... I think the other day there was a number from US DoD that estimated Ru deaths at 3k. My personal estimate is between 2-3k.

Latest US DoD estimate is 5k-6k dead

Ukrainian estimate is 12k casualties.

Meaning US numbers are much higher than ours

 

[Haiduk]

3 minutes ago, sburke said:

Not that I don't think they are getting that, but it is just as believable to me that some UKR teenager took a pic of some Russians on their phone and loaded them up to that facebook page and UKR intel spotted it and said - huh so that's where those guys were 30 minutes ago.

This can work during column passes or until Russians completely keep the ground and rarely works in enemy's rear on occupied territories. In Kyiv oblast occupied villages you CAN'T go out from your house if Russians stay there. You have a risk to be shot out immediately. In occupied villages Russians often take away the phones from a locals. Not only for security reasons, but just because they want to rob. But even if you was a lucky and kept your phone, you should be real partisan to walk in unknown place to search Russian troops. If some in the forest Russian command center of SAM battery are deployed, you can't walk there and make a shot for FB. Command centers are guarded. You even can't transmit your picture if you will lucky to sneak and make a shot, because often GSM netwok is jammed. 

So, uncovering of command centers is a work of our SIGINT, recons and SOFs. Civilians via FB make great work too, but to say all recon work is making farmers with the phones is deeply mistakingly. 

[Maquisard manqué]

I think there's a lot of observer bias in general. Maybe it's factored in by those with intelligence experience but I feel like I'm only seeing the super-salient bits that make up the possible "edge" of the real shape of what's going on, rather than the centre or actual contents of the shape. I am not used to consuming propaganda (or at least a different flavour of it) so what is coming out of Ukraine feels uncertain. Fog of War you might say.

My thoughts are with all Ukrainians. I hate that their world is being shredded. I simply cannot comprehend what this trauma is like.

I do also have compassion for the Russian conscripts, if i'm honest. They're only kids. Pawns thrown into the grinder.

 

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, sburke said:

That being said I think there is more here than what you have noted regarding a change in warfare.

Well I am a trained military strategist and all I can say is we are at the tip of what could be a very deep iceberg - that, and most trained military strategist have no real idea what is happening in this war either. 

Your home team/social media observations are valid and another sign the Russians did not set pre-conditions.  I did a post awhile back on the vertical dimension of this war for the Ukrainians which very much captures a lot of this.  The question for all militaries is "how do we do this in the away game?" and "how do we protect it in the home game?"...or simply "how do we establish information superiority?"  [aside: think how weird this would get in a civil war].

So this is the concept of self-synchronization - distributed groups able to synchronize and organize organically outside of a C2 framework.  I think we are seeing a lot of this right now and the question is really how to box it up and employ it anywhere while denying the same to an opponent?

For an invading force, this gets into field networks based on a lot of different communications systems designed to weather denial.  You cannot depend on local support, so you turn that off and then have a networked system that allows your own forces to self-synchronize in motion.  In the home game, we have no doctrine to describe what is happening here - basically crowd sourcing ISR, but it is happening.

This speaks back to my original point that I am not sure the Ukrainians need a lot of concentrated mass outside of the urban environments a this point, it may be counter-productive. Unless they can really manage the time and place as a crushing blow to the Russians at an operational level.

24 minutes ago, sburke said:

The old OODA loop has been magnified with additional intel sources and weapons.

I think at a strategic and operational level the Ukrainians are getting a lot of outside ISR support, it is one of the few things the west can do inside the Ukraine right now.  But how that picture is meeting the publicly generated one is also going to be very interesting as I am sure there needs to be a level of deconfliction occurring as the UA does not control the public system and mis/dis information will no doubt be fed into it as well.

As to the famous OODA loop, I am not sure to be honest.  I am not sure the speed of that loop matters as much as the quality of it.  I can see the Russians making bad decisions faster while the UA is making better ones slower.   

Edited March 13, 2022 by The_Capt

[keas66]

8 minutes ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

I'm shocked everyone here takes the UA MoD for their word. Propaganda of course goes both ways, especially during a time of existential war. Ukrainians have every reason to doll up these numbers by a factor of 5. There is obviously combat still happening, my read of this was that MoD realized as this conflict seems to keep rolling they can't just add another 1,000 deaths a day lest the absurdity of the numbers becomes too obvious... I think the other day there was a number from US DoD that estimated Ru deaths at 3k. My personal estimate is between 2-3k.

Oh - what makes you an expert pray tell ?

[kraze]

7 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:

 

I do also have compassion for the Russian conscripts, if i'm honest. They're only kids. Pawns thrown into the grinder.

 

That's a big mistake. Don't fall for that kind of propaganda about "conscripts".

Those "kids" murder, rob and rape no different from "non-kids".

They can choose to riot, they can choose to surrender, they can choose to go to jail, they can choose to cut their trigger finger off.

Instead they choose to kill innocent people.

Edited March 13, 2022 by kraze

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

This can work during column passes or until Russians completely keep the ground and rarely works in enemy's rear on occupied territories. In Kyiv oblast occupied villages you CAN'T go out from your house if Russians stay there. You have a risk to be shot out immediately. In occupied villages Russians often take away the phones from a locals. Not only for security reasons, but just because they want to rob. But even if you was a lucky and kept your phone, you should be real partisan to walk in unknown place to search Russian troops. If some in the forest Russian command center of SAM battery are deployed, you can't walk there and make a shot for FB. Command centers are guarded. You even can't transmit your picture if you will lucky to sneak and make a shot, because often GSM netwok is jammed. 

So, uncovering of command centers is a work of our SIGINT, recons and SOFs. Civilians via FB make great work too, but to say all recon work is making farmers with the phones is deeply mistakingly. 

@Haiduk Do we have any indications the Russians are actually conducting this door-to-door control in occupied regions effectively?  This is straight out of the playbook but I have not seen a lot to indicate the Russians have been able to organized an effective counter-resistance security effort anywhere.  I mean searching every house for a phone, or trying to DF locate is a lot of work and labor intensive, and next to impossible.  Have they even managed to knock out cell towers in the areas they "control".    For that matter has EM jamming been seen as effective?

[Maquisard manqué]

Just now, kraze said:

That's a big mistake. Don't fall for that kind of propaganda about "conscripts".

Those "kids" murder, rob and rape no different from "non-kids".

They can choose to riot, they can choose to go to jail, they can choose to cut their trigger finger off.

Instead they choose to kill.

I don't think it's so simple. They've been brought up in a jar (you might even call it a psychotic one) - what better do they know? I can totally see why you're short on compassion for them, but they are no more than a product of their environment.

You know, there was some talk of Orcs earlier in the thread. It struck in my mind that Tolkien regreted writing them so one-dimensionaly evil.

But as i said, i can't actually put myself in your shoes right now. Clean hummanist hands are easier to maintain from distance.

[BFCElvis]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

Gents, I wanted to take a second to thank you guys. This forum has turned out to be extremely informative. I'm an old grognard from the dosomefink days who hadn't been on this site for years and it's turned out to be one of the better places to get unregurgitated info. Elvis, thanks for luring me back and thanks to everyone else for the cornucopia of excellent information. Slava Ukrainyi, etc and so forth.

When I saw what this thread was shaping into I thought of you. Glad that you're back.

[Haiduk]

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Do we have any indications the Russians are actually conducting this door-to-door control in occupied regions effectively?  This is straight out of the playbook but I have not seen a lot to indicate the Russians have been able to organized an effective counter-resistance security effort anywhere

This is not door-to-door control. This is door-to-door robbing. This happened in occupied Hostomel, Bucha, Irpin', Borodianka, Ivankiv. Russians burst in the appartments and houses, rob the phones, but mostly a food. They terrorized citizens, beat the men and sometime shot them - to the death or just make wounds. There were several rapes. Citizens, evacuated from these towns in last days via "green corridors" tell horrible things. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:

I think there's a lot of observer bias in general. Maybe it's factored in by those with intelligence experience but I feel like I'm only seeing the super-salient bits that make up the possible "edge" of the real shape of what's going on, rather than the centre or actual contents of the shape. I am not used to consuming propaganda (or at least a different flavour of it) so what is coming out of Ukraine feels uncertain. Fog of War you might say

Definitely fuzzy pictures but I am getting more confident by the day on some things:

- Russian forces have stalled operationally.  Will they get it back? Dunno

- Operational pre-conditions were not met in air, info or logistics.  Russians are likely trying for some of these but have little to show for it so far. 

- By all metrics and analysis the Russians have lost a significant amount of men and material.  Further the nature of those losses point to system failures in the Russian C2 and logistical system.

- The Ukrainians have exploited all three of those points above and continue to a level that is starting to lead to some questioning some of our fundamental theories of how war is supposed to work.  Early days but we will see.

A lot of these observations are not based, at least on my end, on what I am seeing through the heavily filtered lenses, it is what I am not seeing.  Or still seeing that should not be there.  These negatives tell as much as the positives on social media.

[Homo_Ferricus]

11 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Oh - what makes you an expert pray tell ?

I'd love to tell you it was my scouring of OSINT with a fine comb and my genius military mind... really it's interpolating data from the different sources that are reporting on casualties. Russia is most encouraged to minimize their reported losses, Ukraine most encouraged to maximize them. Take interests and competencies into consideration from other reporting parties, apply some of that OSINT and a little bit of personal intuition based on experience and knowledge. Keep in mind I speak Russian and have access to Russian-speaking sources.

[The_Capt]

Just now, Haiduk said:

This is not door-to-door control. This is door-to-door robbing. This happened in occupied Hostomel, Bucha, Irpin', Borodianka, Ivankiv. Russians burst in the appartments and houses, rob the phones, but mostly a food. They terrorized citizens, beat the men and sometime shot them - to the death or just make wounds. Citizens, evacuated from these towns in last days via "green corridors" tell horrible things. 

So first, that is horrible and constitutes a warcrime reckoning. 

Second, it is the single worst way to try and manage local security when occupying another nation.  For every home invaded and people hurt  or killed, you make dedicated resistance go deeper and meaner.  Russian patrols start go go missing and sentries found dead.

Third, it is patchwork at best.  So I suspect that locals in these "red zones" still have the means to communicate.  Question is, do they have the ways.  Not sure if that Starlink thing every amounted to anything but unless the Russians have finally gripped the communications networks in controlled areas they are literally shooting themselves in the face.

Fourth, this control is porous, there is simply not enough Russian manpower to control this amount of area.  So farmers have cellhones, they definitely have reason to use them, the only question left is can they.  Regardless your original point that finding Russian command centers is very likely a level up from the local support networks...enter western ISR support here as well.

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

I'd love to tell you it was my scouring of OSINT with a fine comb and my genius military mind... really it's interpolating data from the different sources that are reporting on casualties. Russia is most encouraged to minimize their reported losses, Ukraine most encouraged to maximize them. Take interests and competencies into consideration from other reporting parties, apply some of that OSINT and a little bit of personal intuition based on experience and knowledge. Keep in mind I speak Russian and have access to Russian-speaking sources.

I am so disappointed.  I was really hoping for the genius military mind.  Could really use one to interpret the sheer amount of info.  

Kidding aside I think you make a mistake in assuming anyone is taking UKR MoD at their word.  Haiduk has repeatedly cautioned against info not being confirmed.  I will admit to wanting things to be a lot rosier for the UKR military than they are, but I know I have that bias so I rely on others that I think are significantly more level headed and/or informed.

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So first, that is horrible and constitutes a warcrime reckoning. 

Second, it is the single worst way to try and manage local security when occupying another nation.  For every home invaded and people hurt  or killed, you make dedicated resistance go deeper and meaner.  Russian patrols start go go missing and sentries found dead.

Third, it is patchwork at best.  So I suspect that locals in these "red zones" still have the means to communicate.  Question is, do they have the ways.  Not sure if that Starlink thing every amounted to anything but unless the Russians have finally gripped the communications networks in controlled areas they are literally shooting themselves in the face.

Fourth, this control is porous, there is simply not enough Russian manpower to control this amount of area.  So farmers have cellhones, they definitely have reason to use them, the only question left is can they.  Regardless your original point that finding Russian command centers is very likely a level up from the local support networks...enter western ISR support here as well.

Also if we recall that FSB unit reporting the commanders death had to resort to a civilian phone.  If Russia shuts down the network it is just making their units even more blind unless they manage to fix their own internal network.

[kraze]

6 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:

I don't think it's so simple. They've been brought up in a jar (you might even call it a psychotic one) - what better do they know? I can totally see why you're short on compassion for them, but they are no more than a product of their environment.

You know, there was some talk of Orcs earlier in the thread. It struck in my mind that Tolkien regreted writing them so one-dimensionaly evil.

But as i said, i can't actually put myself in your shoes right now. Clean hummanist hands are easier to maintain from distance.

There never was any jar. They always had access to the internet and information, as well as communications with people from any country in the world.

But better yet - communications with Ukrainians who can also speak their language.

So it has nothing to do with any kind of propaganda and isolation.

They are coming here purely by choice.

It's just that a civilized, western mind cannot comprehend how violence and hatred can exist as a cause, not consequence.

[keas66]

13 minutes ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

I'd love to tell you it was my scouring of OSINT with a fine comb and my genius military mind... really it's interpolating data from the different sources that are reporting on casualties. Russia is most encouraged to minimize their reported losses, Ukraine most encouraged to maximize them. Take interests and competencies into consideration from other reporting parties, apply some of that OSINT and a little bit of personal intuition based on experience and knowledge. Keep in mind I speak Russian and have access to Russian-speaking sources.

Are there any Russian Sources of information which are not simply repeating  Kremlin Propaganda ? Can you list them ? Maybe of use for other Russia Speakers on the Forums to  review and confirm the usefulness  or not .

[sburke]

Just now, kraze said:

There never was any jar. They always had access to the internet and information, as well as communications with people from any country in the world.

But better yet - communications with Ukrainians who can also speak their language.

So it has nothing to do with any kind of propaganda and isolation.

They are coming here purely by choice.

It's just that a civilized, western mind cannot comprehend how violence and hatred can exist as a cause, not consequence.

As much as I sympathize with UKR I agree with @Maquisard manqué  It isn''t so simple.  Using my home country as an example, we all have access to the same info.  However you still end up with a spectrum of views that is all over the place and in many cases extremely all over the place.  Then you add the bubbles we create for ourselves in social media and it accelerates.  That is without a government driven narrative that has control of most of the media sources.  Saying people have access and should know better.. well that hasn't worked so well in our response to the pandemic much less human enemies.

I see those pics of the attack on that hospital in Mariupol and part of me wants to see Ukraine doing mass trials of Russian prisoners for war crimes right now.  That however is an emotional response that would be counter to Ukraine's war effort and counter productive.

[DesertFox]

AT-Mine effect:

 

 

[kraze]

14 minutes ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

I'd love to tell you it was my scouring of OSINT with a fine comb and my genius military mind... really it's interpolating data from the different sources that are reporting on casualties. Russia is most encouraged to minimize their reported losses, Ukraine most encouraged to maximize them. Take interests and competencies into consideration from other reporting parties, apply some of that OSINT and a little bit of personal intuition based on experience and knowledge. Keep in mind I speak Russian and have access to Russian-speaking sources.

And yet Ukrainians aren't maximizing anything.

OSINT efforts calculated more than 1100 destroyed vehicles based just on photo/video evidence (meaning there are times more than that)

If you calculate losses just based on that - it easily adds up to 12k casualties at the least.

Press is uneducated in milspeak and think "casualty" means death. But we in CM community certainly know what it means.

Being that average dead/wounded ratio is 1:3 - US numbers are the same at the least and considerably higher at the most.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ukraine-russia-death-toll-invasion/

[sburke]

1 minute ago, DesertFox said:

AT-Mine effect:

 

 

I'll bet that pissed off the tractor brigade.