How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

[BeondTheGrave]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Days 1, 11, and 18 were big missile days, suggesting those were supposed to be the big pushes against Ukrainian defenses? Does this line up with other things people saw? 3/7 feels like a million years ago now lol. 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:

well I guess I am a bit disappointed. I think it would be important to have clear rules on what is allowed or not allowed in this discussion so that it does not degenerate into a free for all. I thought we were trying to keep this as an objective discussion of the war and strategy by both sides and not trying to drag domestic politics into it.

You are the one dragging domestic politics into this.  What I see is someone questioning the bias and integrity of a source of information.  Is it not valid to point to a source's questionable integrity and/or bias in an intellectual discussion?  Or do you think that just because you feel someone is beyond reproach that everybody else must do the same?

3 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:

What col. Macgregor as said in various interviews, basically that the U.S. has no vital security interest in Ukraine is an opinion held by a lot of people, both democrats and republicans. You can agree or disagree, but that does not mean he should be painted as a Putin stooge or as U.S. Democrats have been saying that there is a "Putin wing of the GOP", which basically means anyone who does not think we should back Ukraine 110%.

also copying @BFCElvis, as moderator of the thread.

I am very surprised I have to point out the difference between someone holding a contrary position and someone who willfully, and repeatedly, becomes a part of a totalitarian regime's propaganda organs.

I could hold the same exact positions that Macgregor does, but I would NEVER EVER allow myself to be used by the Russian propaganda machine to spread my point of view.  And why not?  First, because it raises legitimate questions about my integrity since the Russians are well known for paying people to do this sort of work.  Second, because Russia is hostile to my country and to those my country is allied to.  Why on Earth would I want to aid and abet a mass murdering state by voluntarily going onto their media under their conditions to help promote their agenda?

Anybody that voluntarily puts themselves into a position such as Macgegor has deserves the scrutiny of his integrity that follows.

Sorry Sgt. Joch, you appear to be blinded by your own political bias here.

Steve

[db_zero]

14 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Days 1, 11, and 18 were big missile days, suggesting those were supposed to be the big pushes against Ukrainian defenses? Does this line up with other things people saw? 3/7 feels like a million years ago now lol. 

Do we know the breakdown of what platform fired these missiles. Air or ground based?

Edited March 18, 2022 by db_zero

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Taranis said:

 

Very useful!  I think he's got it pretty much right, though we've seen some examples of symbols being used outside of their normal range.  The chances are those are from forces that were committed (active or as a reserve) to a different sector of front and were shifted without repainting their symbols.  There was also quite a lot of "V" to the east of Kiev from what I remember, which again could be the result of forces being shifted from one sector to another.

I found the observation of the O being painted on roofs to be particularly interest.  It seems dumb to me as a vehicle is more likely to get hit by friendly ground fire than friendly air fire, especially given how lame the Russian air support has been.  It also seems to be rather dumb to have that sort of inconsistency as it means a neighboring Z or V unit might mistake no symbol as meaning it's a Ukrainian vehicle.

Steve

[Phantom Captain]

I am curious, if anyone knows, how are Russian artillery shells delivered or supplied?  And how big of a logistical problem that might be. seeing what we are seeing?

I guess what I am asking is how much artillery ammo do they have on hand and at what point will it run out or become to difficult to supply?  

Does one truck hold enough ammo to keep a battery going for a day?  Two days?  How much ammo has been expended and what kind of space does that take up?  I'm just trying to get my head around how much longer a siege artillery mentality can be sustained.  

I would think the Russians would have boatloads of this stuff stockpiled but again, seeing what we are seeing about everything else, maybe corruption has eaten away all that as well.

[sburke]

Odd....

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly disappeared mid-speech during a Russian state television broadcast of an event to mark the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea on Friday.

Putin was delivering a speech at Moscow's packed Luzhniki stadium to an audience of thousands, where he began hailing what he described as Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, before the camera cut to a crowd waving Russian flags and a concert performance.

No explanation was given for cutting away from Putin's speech.

[Vacillator]

7 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

I am curious, if anyone knows, how are Russian artillery shells delivered or supplied?

The twitter threads in Haiduk's post below has a lot of answers to your questions as far as the famous 40-mile convoy is concerned (needs a bit of twitter-trudging though):

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Good thread why Ukraine didn't destroy Russian 40-miles supply convoy in first days of invasion and why this turned out as strategical victory

 

 

[DesertFox]

Another Airborne Colonel

 

 

[BeondTheGrave]

5 minutes ago, sburke said:

Odd....

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly disappeared mid-speech during a Russian state television broadcast of an event to mark the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea on Friday.

Putin was delivering a speech at Moscow's packed Luzhniki stadium to an audience of thousands, where he began hailing what he described as Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, before the camera cut to a crowd waving Russian flags and a concert performance.

No explanation was given for cutting away from Putin's speech.

 

Believe of this what you will, Russian sources are of course notoriously unreliable. 

[Phantom Captain]

2 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

The twitter threads in Haiduk's post below has a lot of answers to your questions as far as the famous 40-mile convoy is concerned (needs a bit of twitter-trudging though):

I did see that and that's what actually brough up my questions.  That thread seemed to be saying the convoy was more food, fuel, medical supplies etc.  

[Kinophile]

41 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

For me, the important data points are the "heavy" missile days - not because of the higher use but because each time there's less of it. There's a steady decline from D1 onwards, yet 1)air space is still contested, 2) ground war increased in intensity (naturally), 3) the invasion quickly ground to a crawl, 4) UKR military infrastructure is still functional.

It's now commonly assumed RUS did not account for a war longer than a week. Indeed, I wonder if their missile manufacturing infrastructure can stockpile at a quick enough rate - it seems not.

Raw reading of this graph suggests that they are doing tactical stockpiling - accumulating enough units for a heavy day, then build another stockpile for another heavy day in about 5-6 days - because that's only how quickly they can transport and replenish their strategic stocks. Their replenishment rate is massively behind their use rate and I doubt they can physically ramp up production any quicker. Certainly not now with Sanctions hitting everything.

So now the war is entering it's next most critical phase, where RUS air will be absolutely vital for success in attack or surgical retreat and yet - they will have less and less missiles available, they won't be able to stockpile and theyll be reduced to penny-packeting, opportunistic strikes - just pin pricks, operationally.

If the RUS AF does not have the weapons to overwatch the ground forces then lack of UA Air is not that bad. If the ****ers have no/few missiles to drop, then what use are they?

The ground units will cotton to this really fast (supposedly lack of air support is a common gripe) to the further erosion of morale and willingness to stand in place.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Also do we really need to worship all our sources as heroes? Just because Col M served once and said some things people like doesn't mean his word is inviolate forever. Just because someone published a book you like doesn't meant this time theyre right by default. Just because a guy on twitter says one thing you like doesn't make it a personal attack if someone else disagrees. I dont like a lot of the things I read, and if I didn't complain I'd hardly be a Grognard now would I?  Judge somebody by their words and ideas on a case by case basis. Does what they say pass the smell test? Does it fit into the other information youre reading? Is this person mainstream on this issue or are they are bucking the orthodox, if so why? Is it to be contrarian, or because theyre crazy, or dumb, or are they on to something truly different? You can even apply the same test to me! Im an asshole and surely most of the dumb things I say will wither under a critical gaze, but better to be critical than to accept the things I say whole cloth. After all I could be a crazyperson. 

Spot on. 

Callling Macgregor's integrity into question based on the quality of his statements is legitimate in an intellectual debate.  Defending Macgregor's comments by saying "he's well respected" without also countering the challenges themselves is meaningless.  Defending Macgregor's comments by painting the criticism of them as part of some sort of political bias is, at best, disingenuous.  Attacking the critics of Macgregor, personally, instead of debating the merits of the criticism itself, is the opposite of an intellectual debate.

Macgregor is on the record as pushing a point of view that seems to be completely divorced from reality.  What it is not divorced from is his POLITICALLY charged positions on what the world order should be like.  In other words, his wartime views seem to be an attempt to remain consistent with his pre-war assessments of the situation despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately, a person's choices of who to associate with makes it fair game to question the integrity of someone.  Political bias need not be a part of that questioning.  As I stated in my previous post, someone who VOLUNTARILY makes himself a part of a totalitarian state's propaganda machine should automatically have his integrity questioned.  Especially when said totalitarian state has a track record of spreading money around to buy opinions that support its positions.

As I said, respect is something that has to be earned and it must be constantly reevaluated in light of new information and reinforced or withdrawn if warranted.  I had a lot of respect for Putin's cunning, for example, but I have withdrawn it because he made one of the most colossal strategic blunders of all time.  Whatever mojo Putin had has been lost.  This is not because of some political bias of mine, but because my evaluation of Putin's prowess as a leader has been updated based on current conditions. 

Steve

[OldSarge]

Below is an article by Alex Vershinin from November 2021 discussing the limits of Russian logistics, looks like it seems to match what we're seeing

 

Sorry, this is a duplicate post.  Looks like the link was posted earlier.

 

Quote

The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps. To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades. To gain familiarity with Russian logistic requirements and lift resources, a useful starting point is the Russian combined arms army. They all have different force structures, but on paper, each combined army is assigned a material-technical support brigade. Each material-technical support brigade has two truck battalions with a total of 150 general cargo trucks with 50 trailers and 260 specialized trucks per brigade. The Russian army makes heavy use of tube and rocket artillery fire, and rocket ammunition is very bulky. Although each army is different, there are usually 56 to 90 multiple launch rocket system launchers in an army. Replenishing each launcher takes up the entire bed of the truck. If the combined arms army fired a single volley, it would require 56 to 90 trucks just to replenish rocket ammunition. That is about a half of a dry cargo truck force in the material-technical support brigade just to replace one volley of rockets. There is also between six to nine tube artillery battalions, nine air defense artillery battalions, 12 mechanized and recon battalions, three to five tank battalions, mortars, anti-tank missiles, and small arms ammunition — not to mention, food, engineering, medical supplies, and so on. Those requirements are harder to estimate, but the potential resupply requirements are substantial. The Russian army force needs a lot of trucks just for ammunition and dry cargo replenishment.

 

https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/

Edited March 18, 2022 by OldSarge
Different quote

[Vacillator]

13 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

I did see that and that's what actually brough up my questions.  That thread seemed to be saying the convoy was more food, fuel, medical supplies etc.  

This bit includes details of ammo, plus fuel and food if you scroll down a bit:

 

[kraze]

21 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Another Airborne Colonel

 

 

I was always wondering how those russian inbreds even get that many medals since they never took part in any real battles, mostly just one sided massacres of civilians.

What military achievements can russian officers even boast about with those? Is it like... a medal for destroying a hospital or a medal for killing 100 children?

Since when facing a real army that happens. Will he get another 10 medals for getting eliminated?

Edited March 18, 2022 by kraze

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, BeondTheGrave said:

He refers to the history of Brandenburg, trying to make the point that Brandenburg was forced to chose between becoming a naval power and becoming a land power. This is part of his larger argument that, for reasons of court politics, Russia failed to develop a clear focus in land power primacy, and so this explains why it is today struggling. He argues that Prussia abandoned its naval power colonial aspirations in the 18th century to become a "land power max" country. ...

I want to thank you for taking the time to write all that out in response to LongLeftFlank's request for more details as to your opinions.  I found it very informative and a great example of the diverse knowledge that we have here on this Forum.  It even drug up some knowledge I long forgot from my studies of the rise of Prussia and Bismark's unification of Germany from my school days (which is a few decades longer ago than I want to admit to!)

 

One thing you pointed to that really applies to what we're seeing now is the "prestige" value that Stalin and later Soviet rulers put in having a massive naval presence despite not really needing one.  Not to mention the long standing argument that in the event of war the Baltic and Black Sea fleets would be less useful than land or air based systems.  Nuclear armed submarines, on the other hand, are a different thing altogether.

In the 2000s Putin had to confront the aging and decrepit state of the inherited Soviet navy, both surface and submarine.  Logically, it would have made more sense to focus on less expensive capabilities that would also be more nimble and capable, though of course limited in terms of scope of operations.  But doing so would have had the same ill effects on the perception of Russian strength as developing a more realistic strategy for ground and air forces.  So, he did the same thing... pour a bunch of money into the navy without getting much value out of it other than perception.

Putin's obsession with perception over real capabilities worked great until he picked a fight that exposed the sham for the whole world to see.

Steve

[kraze]

29 minutes ago, sburke said:

Odd....

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly disappeared mid-speech during a Russian state television broadcast of an event to mark the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea on Friday.

Putin was delivering a speech at Moscow's packed Luzhniki stadium to an audience of thousands, where he began hailing what he described as Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, before the camera cut to a crowd waving Russian flags and a concert performance.

No explanation was given for cutting away from Putin's speech.

Misses key context.

Putin was talking - then the video insta-skipped to a pro-war singer.

Should probably replace those laserdisc players in their propaganda towers with something more modern. 

In all seriousness though - no live broadcasts in Russia.

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, kraze said:

I was always wondering how those russian inbreds even get that many medals since they never took part in any real battles, mostly just one sided massacres of civilians.

What military achievements can russian officers even boast about with those? Is it like... a medal for destroying a hospital or a medal for killing 100 children?

Since when facing a real army that happens.

I'm going to politely ask you (again) to reign in some of your rhetoric.  Using the term "inbred" has a lot of baggage with it that isn't needed here.  Tossing language like that into your posts only distracts from your message, which is actually a good one and completely valid to bring up.

To make my point very clear, here's the only edit I would make to improve your post:

"I was always wondering how those russian even get that many medals since they never took part in any real battles, mostly just one sided massacres of civilians.

What military achievements can russian officers even boast about with those? Is it like... a medal for destroying a hospital or a medal for killing 100 children?

Since when facing a real army that happens."

Note that all I did was removed a single word, yet the tone of your point remains intact.

Steve

[Chibot Mk IX]

7 hours ago, TheVulture said:

Low speed can be a problem for some systems. There is a real world anti-missile tactic of pilots called "going in to the notch" or "notching a missile", which basically involves turning to move at 90 degrees to the incoming missile and descending. This doesn't work against IR tracking missiles, but can be effective against radar tracked ones.

The reason this works (when it does) is because radar needs to filter out all of the crap in its field of view to decide which bit is the plane. One component of this is "Doppler filtering". This uses the Doppler effect, which is sensitive to the component of the objects speed along the line of sight. The idea is that all of the ground clutter (which is at a variety of distances, and so hard to filter on that basis) is all moving at the same speed relative to the plane (i.e. the ground is stationary). So everything that is moving at the same speed as the ground is filtered out, which in theory just leaves you the fast moving aircraft.

Except if the aircraft happens to be flying exactly across your line of sight, with no speed (relative to the ground) towards or away from you, when it also has the same Doppler speed as the background and gets filtered out, which makes it vanish as far as the tracking is concerned.

The reason to descend while doing this is so that the missile tracking you is above you, so that you are in front of the ground from its point of view. If you are above the missile, then the background to your aircraft is the sky, and that's not giving any Doppler return so the aircraft sticks out like a sore thumb. Obviously ground based radar isn't going to be too affected by this - all the aircraft are above it.

A lot of modern missiles use radar within the missile for the final approach to target - they may be guided by the launching aircraft or ground station for most of the flight, but often the missile's radar takes over for the last few seconds, during which Doppler filtering can cause it to lose its tracking.

So its certainly plausible that a slow moving drone could get itself lost in the Doppler filtering for radar tracked missiles, depending on the nature of the attacking missile system. Missiles that gain altitude to take advantage of the reduced drag to increase speed and range will end up above the drone and if the have terminal self-guidance they could lose the drone in the background. But its going to do depend a lot on the nature of the tracking and the missile flight profile.

That's a very good analysis. I'd like to add one more comment, the major issue for SAM vs slow UAV thing is the detection and tracking (due to Doppler effects and radar return signal filter out). If the searching radar is lucking enough to detect the slow flying UAV then it is very unlikely the Fire Control Radar (FCR) which working at higher frequency will miss those flying objects.  Most of the UAV do not have a RWR radar warning receiver, the UAV operator is unlikely to detect a missile launch , making a UAV's missile defense maneuver (notching) is impossible. 

Above is the Pantsir's searching radar's spec, it detects targets with radial speed from 30 m/s to 1000 m/s. It definitely has trouble to detect some of those small and slow UAVs

 

Also, majority of the Soviet/Russian built Surface to Air Missiles works with Semi-Active Radar Homing (SARH) guidance. Only S-400 system has one type of ARH missile? 

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by Chibot Mk IX

[Chibot Mk IX]

A little OT,

Most of the member here are professional in land warfare, it is highly recommend to take a look at a DCS guidance on basic air battle

https://www.mudspike.com/dcs-f-15c-combat-guide-for-beginners/

In the middle of the article , the author presented a very good explanation on notching and doppler effect

[Combatintman]

25 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

I am curious, if anyone knows, how are Russian artillery shells delivered or supplied?  And how big of a logistical problem that might be. seeing what we are seeing?

I guess what I am asking is how much artillery ammo do they have on hand and at what point will it run out or become to difficult to supply?  

Does one truck hold enough ammo to keep a battery going for a day?  Two days?  How much ammo has been expended and what kind of space does that take up?  I'm just trying to get my head around how much longer a siege artillery mentality can be sustained.  

I would think the Russians would have boatloads of this stuff stockpiled but again, seeing what we are seeing about everything else, maybe corruption has eaten away all that as well.

I don't know the answer to the whole question but if we go back to the Soviet era regimental artillery battalions and divisional artillery regiments.  Each battalion essentially had one truck allocated per firing system plus a couple spare.

2S1 Battalion had 6 x 2S1 and 6 x trucks (Ural-375) in each battery for a total of 18 x 2S1 and 18 x trucks.  There were another two on top of that for a total of 20 trucks (not counting small trucks like Gaz-66s, maintenance and POL trucks).

2S3 Battalion figures are the same 6 x 2S3 per battery and 6 x trucks for that same total of 18 x 2S3 and 18 x trucks plus two 'spare.'

BM21 Battalion figures are 6 x BM-21 per battery and 6 x trucks (bored yet  ) 18 x BM-21 in the battalion and (slight difference here) 36 x trucks in the battalion.  The extra 18 trucks, which is suspiciously similar to the number of launchers sit in the service battery, which the gun/howitzer battalions didn't have.

Taking a divisional artillery regiment alone then of 2 x 2S3 battalions and 1 x BM-21 battalion you are looking at 72 x trucks allocated for ammunition resupply.

For simplicity I have not counted the 36 trucks in the Regimental MT company because I don't know whether they would have been allocated to ammunition  resupply or not.

Now I have no idea how much 122mm or 152mm a Ural-375 can carry but there will be a gunner out there who can give some sort of answer.  I would hazard a minimum of two reloads and of course each 2S1 and 2S3 would have had a turret load of some description.  I think I'm on safer ground by saying that you'd get one BM-21 reload only on a Ural-375 and that seems to explain the presence of the service battery in that battalion to provide a second reload plus of course those that are already in the tube. 

Of course this is not the Soviet Army any more but the principle will be the same at the divisional level and below so one gun = 1 truck and 1 rocket launcher = two trucks for the big bangy bullety whizzbangy carrying malarkey.

 

[Combatintman]

@kraze - five medals isn't 'that many medals' however ...

And I never shot anybody ... just got shot at a bit and blown up once.

[DesertFox]

Demothed and straight from the storage arsenal...

 

 

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

Another Airborne Colonel

 

 

Hip, hip...