How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[akd]

Of course it is not possible.  Some misguided call to “send more Stingers” when more S-300 is what is needed for these.

Some footage of a DPR T-72 fighting in Mariupol.  Interesting to note that the bottom escape hatch is kept open while in firing position:

Death notice for a “Colonel” of the 6th Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division, but I wonder if actually a Lt. Col. since it says he was a battalion commander:

Was he already on the list? If so, confirmation.

Edited March 19, 2022 by akd

[sburke]

4 minutes ago, akd said:

Of course it is not possible.  Some misguided call to “send more Stingers” when more S-300 is what is needed for these.

Some footage a DPR T-72 fighting Mariupol.  Interesting to note that the bottom escape hatch is kept open while in firing position:

Death notice for a “Colonel” of the 6th Tank Regiment, but I wonder if actually a Lt. Col. since it says he was a battalion commander:

Was he already on the list? If so, confirmation.

yes, but at that time unit was unknown

[kraze]

10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

It is definitely going that way, sad to say.

But I'm also hoping that there are enough ethnic Russians fighting for the UA, so that the wannabe ethnic cleansers (which sadly may include some folks on here ) don't get to have their day, a la Croatia's savage retaliatory expulsion of Serbs (and Bosniaks) from the.... wait for it... Krajina region.

There is no future for Ukraine as an 'ethnic state' along the lines of the Baltics. Too many groups have crisscrossed, colonised and intermarried in that territory for too long. Federalism and (hopefully) stronger links to Central Europe, plus better government at home, must be the future; the alternative is disintegration and impoverishment, except perhaps in the Galicia zone and Odessa (?)

Thoughts, anyone else?

Ukraine has no "ethnic exclusivity" BS that Russia stands on. But our extreme tolerance and forgiveness for all the evils russians did to us is what led us to this.

And it can be resolved strictly politically:

The way it should go is hopefully either forbidding everyone with a russian passport to enter Ukraine for at least next 5 years after the victory or selling them visas for a few thousand dollars, kind of a "reparation tax" to enter.

It will be a good start. All that russians have destroyed with their support for war or silence will be expensive to rebuild.

Lives they destroyed can never be rebuilt though.

[Armorgunner]

13 minutes ago, akd said:

Of course it is not possible.  Some misguided call to “send more Stingers” when more S-300 is what is needed for these.

Some footage of a DPR T-72 fighting in Mariupol.  Interesting to note that the bottom escape hatch is kept open while in firing position:

Death notice for a “Colonel” of the 6th Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division, but I wonder if actually a Lt. Col. since it says he was a battalion commander:

Was he already on the list? If so, confirmation.

Now they get some S-300 from Slovakia though. And Germany, and the Netherlands. Redeploys Patriots to Slovakia

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/dutch-germans-send-3-patriot-missile-defence-systems-slovakia-2022-03-18/

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovakia-says-willing-provide-ukraine-s-300s-if-nato-fills-gap-2022-03-17/

[c3k]

3 hours ago, Kinophile said:

I'm absolutely fascinated by just how many missiles have been intercepted. It's incredible. 

Modern air defense certainly includes anti-missile defense.

It's a little "cleaner" when looking at navies. What kind of defenses can the defending ship/flotilla/fleet put up? How many incoming missiles can they engage simultaneously, at what ranges, bearing, etc. That drives the number of missiles that will be launched to attack them. Unless your mission is just to deplete their defenses for the next attacker...

For ground-based air defense, the mission is similar. It is harder to do, due to the dispersed nature of SAMs. (Or, at least, how they should be dispersed, and mobile.) It's harder to get the early warning, etc., as opposed to a ship with everything located on that same platform.

But, yes, I am also impressed with how many incoming missiles the Ukrainian defenses have been able to intercept.

[The_MonkeyKing]

10 minutes ago, Armorgunner said:

Now they get some S-300 from Slovakia though. And Germany, and the Netherlands. Redeploys Patriots to Slovakia

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/dutch-germans-send-3-patriot-missile-defence-systems-slovakia-2022-03-18/

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovakia-says-willing-provide-ukraine-s-300s-if-nato-fills-gap-2022-03-17/

The main question is do they actually want these systems for themselves or are allied based systems enough?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:

I need to stress this, because its a part that has been left out of so many of the narratives around this which just focus on the US v. Russia dimensions of this. 

Poland, the Baltics, Romania and southern Europe, they saw all this coming.

Yup, and if you've ever had a discussion with someone taking the Russian point of view they can't come up with an alternative as to why all the former Soviet dominated spaces in Eastern Europe beat down the doors of NATO to get accepted.  Or why they have been some of the most consistent nations to fulfill their 2% obligations.  Or why every time Russia voluntarily sought to raise tensions with his neighbors that these countries requested more NATO forces be sent to their territory to ward off Russian aggression.

Part of the reason why Russians can't grasp this concept is that they STILL believe that countries like Poland and the Baltics yearn for the old Soviet Days just like they do.  They STILL don't understand how *HATED* they are by those countries.  And why is that?  Because Russians are not educated about the sins of the Soviet Union or even the prior bad relations with this part of the world.  So to get them to understand why Poland of the 1990s wanted to become a member of NATO you have to start from scratch.  That make any discussion of today's events far more problematic.

3 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:

This story is inconvenient for Putin, he cant say in a packed soccer stadium "The choices of my government scared Eastern Europe into finding security with the US" so instead he hangs everything on a promise of dubious sincerity that was never backed up by serious action.  

Yup.  Well, when you don't have much of a legitimate argument to make, guess what?  You make up an argument to legitimize.  Putin knows it's all BS because he of all people knows that the NATO expansion thwarted his plans for reestablishing the Soviet Union's prior boundaries.

And then there's the whole Budapest Agreement that is so thoroughly never mentioned...

Steve

[Armorgunner]

34 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

The main question is do they actually want these systems for themselves or are allied based systems enough?

I think they want them. They have S-300 already, so they have trained personel. If you send Patriot, they need 6 months of training. Time they dont have!

 

I belive, they are for the moment, only interested in easy to use systems. Or more advanced systems they are already using. Like S-300, Mig-29, Su-27, and so on

Edited March 19, 2022 by Armorgunner

[sburke]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

But hey, been a lot of crazy-dumb goings on the Russian side in this one, so I guess we cannot totally  rule out option B.

Nothing says we are just fighting a limited 'special operation" against a few Nazis like launching the most advanced expensive weapon you have.

I wonder how they spin the deaths of so many generals when they are saying they have lost less than 500 men so far.

[The_MonkeyKing]

6 minutes ago, Armorgunner said:

I think they want them. They have S-300 already, so they have trained personel. If you send Patriot, they need 6 months of training. Time they dont have!

 

I belive, they are for the moment, only interested in easy to use systems. Or more advanced systems they are already using. Like S-300, Mig-29, Su-27, and so on

That is too bad. I don't think anybody is going to be giving away Patriot systems... And they are not going to be buying them anytime soon. 

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, akd said:

Death notice for a “Colonel” of the 6th Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division, but I wonder if actually a Lt. Col. since it says he was a battalion commander:

No, on the screen he is named "the colonel of Guard". I doubt why in this case he is battalion commander only. Either mistake, or misinformation for less resonance

Edited March 19, 2022 by Haiduk

[Armorgunner]

15 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

That is too bad. I don't think anybody is going to be giving away Patriot systems... And they are not going to be buying them anytime soon. 

They could not use them anyway, in the near future. It takes sevral months to educate personel, on such advanced systems. On S-300, they have trained personel. 

 

Sweden had Patriot crews in the US, for a long time. Before going back, and train the rest of the crews. Now we are operational since late 2021.

Edited March 19, 2022 by Armorgunner

[akd]

Claimed to be a behind-the-lines op to destroy rail line supplying Russian forces near Kharkiv:

 

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, akd said:

Claimed to be a behind-the-lines op to destroy rail line supplying Russian forces near Kharkiv:

 

Didn't we have some expert way back outline how the Russian plan of attack as all a clever ploy to use railways?  So here is the problem with using railways for operational logistics.  And that wipe out of the Russian airbase near Kherson the reason air basing is also a "challenging" idea.

 

[womble]

1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

That is too bad. I don't think anybody is going to be giving away Patriot systems... And they are not going to be buying them anytime soon. 

I reckon that if some UKR AD wonks had been on joint exercises and had a good go at using Patriot, so they could use them in "anger" effectively, some free Patriots would already be in their hands. That they are "only" getting S-300 (rather than both) suggests they can't use them, to me.

5 minutes ago, sburke said:

Nothing says we are just fighting a limited 'special operation" against a few Nazis like launching the most advanced expensive weapon you have.

I think dragging all the qualified warm bodies you think you can spare (and then some) from across your "empire" to throw them into the meatgrinder says the same thing, at least as eloquently.

7 minutes ago, sburke said:

I wonder how they spin the deaths of so many generals when they are saying they have lost less than 500 men so far.

"Heroes of the Russian People, valiantly leading their glorious troops into hand-to-hand combat with the perfidious Ukrainian drug-crazed Nazi oppressors." Makes nearly as much sense as the probable truth, after all.

[womble]

8 minutes ago, akd said:

Claimed to be a behind-the-lines op to destroy rail line supplying Russian forces near Kharkiv:

 

That looks like a good op, to me. Looks like it moved the bridge abutment rather than either just dropping the span (quickly replaced) or even scattering the whole thing (which would make rebuilding easier than having to tear out the entire structure first).

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I think the term "sharp smart mass" may best describe what the UA has managed to do.  They have highlighted a method, again that we will be studying for years, that looks like a digital jump but is in fact been on a long journey since about 1991. I mean the fact that we have Haiduk, in Kyiv right now, able to push us information directly from the field through social media, is mind blowing. 

A large force that is for the most part road bound and suffering from communications, organizational, and morale problems while operating on hostile terrain is pretty much a textbook best case scenario for a lighter armed defender.

My theory is that Ukraine has decentralized it's combined arms in such a way that they can still support each other without having to bunch up into more-or-less traditional forces.  For example, a platoon's worth of light infantry being able to harness heavy artillery based on its own recon work.  Or knowing when it makes sense to risk moving tanks into an area to support infantry instead of having them committed on speculation that's where they are needed.

This sort of organizational shift to a bottom up vs. top down system requires a lot of things for it to work:

• really good communications
• sufficient morale to handle isolation from larger forces
• junior leadership that is capable of initiative while at the same time operating within a "bigger picture"
• mid to senior leadership that has faith in its local leadership
• a means of supply that is as equally nimble as the fighting elements
• weaponry that allows a small light force to "punch above its weight" so that they can shape their battlespace successfully without having to wait for heavier assets to keep momentum or counter unexpected threats
• a mindset that fosters a more "hit and run" attitude than "fight and hold"

Undoubtedly there's more, but those things came to me pretty easily.

On top of all the above, the Russians need to play to the strengths of this concept and find it difficult to exploit the weaknesses.  So far, overall, Russia seems to be obliging.

The primary weakness of the Ukrainian strategy is that if Russia can mass enough forces in a particular area long enough AND maintain fighting cohesion, they can overwhelm the Ukrainians by sheer numbers.

So far Russia hasn't had much overall success countering the Ukrainians because its forces are spread too thin to achieve the sort of local mass that is needed to completely blow out the Ukrainian defenders in any one spot at any one time.  The closest we've seen to this so far is what's going on in Mariupol.  And that is a fairly special case as Russia had the eastern side since 2014 and the southern side is water.  Meaning, the war started out with the city 1/2 surrounded.  It is also the furthest point from Ukraine's center mass.  There is no practical reason why Russia won't eventually take the city.

Steve

[The_MonkeyKing]

5 minutes ago, womble said:

I reckon that if some UKR AD wonks had been on joint exercises and had a good go at using Patriot, so they could use them in "anger" effectively, some free Patriots would already be in their hands. That they are "only" getting S-300 (rather than both) suggests they can't use them, to me.

I was talking about the patriot systems that the countries gifting the S300 want as replacement for their gifts.

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Didn't we have some expert way back outline how the Russian plan of attack as all a clever ploy to use railways?  So here is the problem with using railways for operational logistics.  And that wipe out of the Russian airbase near Kherson the reason air basing is also a "challenging" idea.

 

Yes, there was an analysis of Russian operational strikes that showed they pretty well matched the rail network.  It was then speculated that this was how Russia planned to supply it's forces as they advanced further west.  Which once again indicates the flawed assumptions made by Russia about the level of resistance.  Because blowing up rail lines is easy stuff.  Blowing rail bridges, like in this video, isn't that much harder from a practical standpoint.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I'm noticing a pattern with Russia's release of drone footage.  Check this one out:

Anybody else notice that the released footage generally starts by showing something very detailed, but when the explosions happen the viewpoint is so far away it is impossible to judge the effectiveness of the attack?  Contrast this with Ukrainian footage that is so up-close that we can see individual soldiers when the strike hits.

As you see Russian drone footage pay attention to this and see if it is indeed a widespread thing or just coincidence that the handful we've seen are similar in this way.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, akd said:

Death notice for a “Colonel” of the 6th Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division, but I wonder if actually a Lt. Col. since it says he was a battalion commander:

Shoulder rank is that of a full Colonel, so maybe they got his command wrong?

Steve

[Ts4EVER]

11 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

Anybody else notice that the released footage generally starts by showing something very detailed, but when the explosions happen the viewpoint is so far away it is impossible to judge the effectiveness of the attack?  Contrast this with Ukrainian footage that is so up-close that we can see individual soldiers when the strike hits.

 

Obviously that is because the Russians are not nasty nazis and don't want to make "war porn"... either that or they suck at hitting, I guess.

[Battlefront.com]

Ukraine General Staff just released this video with a cryptic caption:

https://fb.watch/bRP3gl284r/

Твій настрій, коли навів артилерію на склад з боєкомплектом російських нелюдів і спостерігаєш за тим, як окупанти горять разом зі своїм БК. Сили спеціальних операцій ЗС України працюють творчо!

Your mood when you brought artillery to a warehouse with ammunition of russian non-humans and you watch the occupiers burn together with their ammunition. The Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are working creatively! Work for you! Let's win together! Працюють для вас! Разом переможемо!

It looks like Ukrainian Special Forces hit some major Russian ammo staging area on Ukrainian soil.

Steve

 

[Homo_Ferricus]

Liveumap has been painting a lot of areas, namely in the south of the country and north of Luhansk with solid red. I've noticed a LOT less footage of supply convoy ambush aftermath and destroyed trucks in the OSINT sphere. Wondering a few things:

• DLNR and Russian auxiliaries mobilized to guard supply routes--is this having an effect on Ukrainian capacity to disrupt Russian supply convoys?
• Drones/helicopters increasingly tasked with supply route patrols?
• Has there been a UA military/govt directive to avoid publicizing supply convoy attacks for OPSEC or other reasons?
• Is public/TD resolve to launch effective rear-echelon attacks starting to wane, as Russian rear security slowly improves and war-weariness begins to set in?

@Haiduk Wonder if you have any answers to some of these points. Of course would be greatly appreciated as has all your input thus far.

[Battlefront.com]

Fairly lengthy article from Radio Free Europe, complete with on-the-ground reporting, of Russian casualties moving through Belarus:

https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-morgues-russian-soldiers/31760144.html?fbclid=IwAR0fJup5am2uHO6K2v7iknokZOiSkSzc6F22-5uWhbOXAwZhlId3wXLW_Uw

According to a source working at the main hospital they have already loaded 2500 Russian dead onto special trains headed to Russia.  The trains were reported on by several sources more than a week or even two ago.

Taking the number at face value, we have to keep in mind that this only represents the KIA from the operations around Kiev, it does not include all the dead left on the battlefield (or scattered, as it might be), or those who die from their wounds later.  And it might be that this is not the only facility that is handling dead coming out of the Kiev operations, though it probably is.

Steve