How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chris talpas]

Very good synopsis of the situation and larger geopolitical analysis.  A particular highlight is the eirily prescient comments of Oleksiy Arestovych given in an interview several years ago predicting this war.  Highly recommend a view.

 

[John Kettler]

On 3/18/2022 at 6:04 PM, Haiduk said:

Russians hit with a missile (unclear which type) barracks of 79th air-assault brigade in Mykolaiv. Foreign journalists claim about at least 40 dead.

There is many critic that unit commanders continue to deploy own personnel in the military unit buildings, which can be potential targets. In this case missile (or missules) were launched from Kherson vicinity and hadn't time to sound the alarm. IN previous days this caused heavy casualtied, like in Okhtyrka two weeks ago, when after Russian strike on buildings of engineer unit 70 servicemen were killed.

As stupid and uncaring for their men these commanders are, maybe leave them in the barracks and disperse the troops?! Throwing away highly trained troops for such useless reasons should be criminal if not already.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, akd said:

Sweet.

You heartless bastard.  Think of all the Ukrainian farmers who are going to be denied a second income because of this.

Steve

[Kinophile]

@chris talpas Not exactly eerie...you're on a forum for a game that predicted almost this exact situation eight years ago!

Of course, it predicted a war run by scarily competent Russians, not hand-to-ass-to-mouth political hack military wannabes.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Kinophile

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, akd said:

Rob Lee is continuing to catalog Russian death / burial notices. Bias towards VDV / Spetsnaz, officers / NCOs, two weeks ago or more.  Wonder what’s happening with the dead conscripts / contract enlisted in all the regular formations? Those death notices getting “delayed”?

https://mobile.twitter.com/RALee85

22nd Spetsnaz Brigade has already made a memorial. Me thinks they should have left more space at the bottom.

Nah, they left plenty of space.  This fits nicely:

"Stone 1 of 10"

I looked over Rob Lee's site and wow... that's a lot of confirmed junior officers.  Not that I'm surprised, because the number of instances where platoon and company sized formations were wiped out in one spot pretty much ensures there was at least one or two officers present.

Steve

[John Kettler]

On 3/18/2022 at 10:00 PM, BletchleyGeek said:

Maybe he's a psychopath and doesn't give a damn about his legacy or anything or anyone else. Then we're already royally screwed guys, and we should all check out the NUKEMAP app to see where we should be relocating. Unless someone produces a time machine from their garage (John Kettler?) and goes pays a visit to Harry S. Truman to convince him to forget about the work at Lost Alamos, and give the go-ahead for Operation Olympic.

Let me consider another counterfactual, and a more serious one. Let's go back to 1938. And now let's imagine that the French and British tell Mr. Hitler to sod off, and he goes and launches a "special operation" on Czechoslovakia. Without straining credibility, let's consider that the 1938 Wehrmacht gets hopelessly bogged down trying to break through the Czech fortifications at the border (which were quite serious). Let's imagine those Panzer I and Panzer II being taken out by the same anti-tank rifles and guns from Brno that then armed the Nazi war machine early in World War 2. Would have the Third Reich then "escalated" and launched an attack on Poland (or France)? Nope. Can Czechoslovakia counterattack and go all the way to Berlin to force a German surrender? Nope.

BletchleyGeek,

BletchleyGeek,

Am afraid I lack the skill sets, tools, materials and, oh yes, a viable design! AS foryour Panzer attack counterfactuals, suggest you revisit Guderian's Panzer Leader, in the parts where he talks about the huge looses to breakdown incurred during the Anschluss and the near catastrophic ones taking Czechoslovakia. Had there been effective resistance, I deem your counterfactual to be entirely reasonable.

Regards,

JOhn Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

From today's ISW report:

Quote

The Ukrainian General Staff continued to warn on March 20-21 that Russia seeks to bring Belarus into the war. The Ukrainian General Staff reported at midnight local time on March 20 that “there is a high probability” of Russian provocations against Belarus to bring Belarus into the war in Ukraine and create a new axis of advance into western Ukraine.[1] Belarus evacuated its embassy in Kyiv to Moldova on March 19 in response to what it claimed were “unbearable working conditions.”[2] The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) also reported on March 21 that it detained a Belarusian spy who was examining Ukrainian deployments and equipment in Volyn Oblast.[3] Belarusian social media users additionally observed Belarusian military equipment in Rechista (in the Brest region), 7km from the Ukrainian border, on March 21.[4] The Kremlin likely seeks to bring Belarus into the war in Ukraine to reinforce Russian forces, but Belarusian President Lukashenko likely continues to resist Russian pressure. A new Russian or Belarusian axis of advance into Western Ukraine would be unlikely to succeed. Russian and Belarusian forces would face staunch Ukrainian resistance and similar, if not greater, morale and logistics issues to Russian forces elsewhere.

This is just a summary of various reports we've been seeing about the possibility of Belarus coming into the war.

Not that we need more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is, but yet we have more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is

At present Ukraine has to keep significant forces arrayed in depth along the Belorussian border to ensure it can adequately defend against an attack.  The most likely outcome of an attack would be an instant collapse of the attacking forces.  Complete and utter route.  Then what?  Probably an attempt at revolution by at least some portion of the Belorussian armed forces (think Romania 1989) or a total revolt.  Then what?  Russia loses its base of operations against Kiev and the Ukrainian forces tied up further west can then move east to clear out Kiev of whatever pockets of resistance remain.  I suspect most will surrender instead of trying to fight their way through Belarus or fighting to the death.

So, Mr. Putin... go ahead and push Belarus into invasion.  I dare you.  I double dare you.

Steve

P.S.  the ISW report also repeated reports of Russia rushing very low readiness, poor quality units into Ukraine to make up for losses.

[John Kettler]

On 3/18/2022 at 11:48 PM, danfrodo said:

While this information is still anecdotal, it does add to the growing list of anecdotes that support what  US and NATO officials are describing as the "BFC Steve" scenario.  This scenario is considered by senior diplomatic and defense officials as being, using technical language,  "really fricking great".

danfrodo,

Can't tell whether you're being playful or serious with with your "BFC Steve" scenario reference. Given Steve's clearly both mainstream military and spook contacts, and BFC has a) done work for several militaries,)  b) has had discussions with them ref future work, it's not at all unreasonable such a thing could be said. In fact, given how savvy he (not to mention his formidable academic and personal background) is, it's entirely possible his posts on the various Modern Warfare CM Forums may well be routinely and closely read. Say this from direct experience when one of my sources not that many years ago showed he knew my military aerospace work, going clear back to the first classified memo (which he clearly had read and talked about) I wrote at Hughes in 1978 and continuing thereafter, thereafter being decades after I left military aerospace but was still writing about military and spook stuff. The military and spook communities are always looking for smart people who can help them with their work, and it doesn't necessarily take recruiting people to obtain real value from what they put out there, whether in open source or in classified channels. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[danfrodo]

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

From today's ISW report:

This is just a summary of various reports we've been seeing about the possibility of Belarus coming into the war.

Not that we need more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is, but yet we have more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is

At present Ukraine has to keep significant forces arrayed in depth along the Belorussian border to ensure it can adequately defend against an attack.  The most likely outcome of an attack would be an instant collapse of the attacking forces.  Complete and utter route.  Then what?  Probably an attempt at revolution by at least some portion of the Belorussian armed forces (think Romania 1989) or a total revolt.  Then what?  Russia loses its base of operations against Kiev and the Ukrainian forces tied up further west can then move east to clear out Kiev of whatever pockets of resistance remain.  I suspect most will surrender instead of trying to fight their way through Belarus or fighting to the death.

So, Mr. Putin... go ahead and push Belarus into invasion.  I dare you.  I double dare you.

Steve

P.S.  the ISW report also repeated reports of Russia rushing very low readiness, poor quality units into Ukraine to make up for losses.

There was post the other day also pointing out that Belarus attack's most likely outcome would be to overthrow Lukashenko.  I sure hope this plays out this way. 

And sending poor quality, low morale/motivation troops against the UKR troops that are (as my daughter would say) hella-motiviated?  Wow, that could lead to some serious problems for RU.  We all saw those pics here earlier showing Russian replacements w WW2 helmets and ancient weapons.  They'll get slaughtered.  And how will they make all those terrible Russian WW2 movies if all the prop helmets and uniforms are buried in UKR.

[John Kettler]

On 3/19/2022 at 12:13 AM, dan/california said:

I have no clue how many they were making before, but at best you can triple it by adding shifts. You would be looking at several months even in a panic program though to do more than that. You just don't set up a new aerospace production line on a whim. That is before we discuss whatever little special bits just got sanctioned. The Chinese might be willing to help, but that is just more time to reverse engineer whatever little odd bits they were buying from Germany. Not just the odd bits that go in the missile, but the tooling to make the missile. The sporting goods companies that sold out in a week at the beginning of the pandemic are only NOW getting new production lines up. If you want a nice new mountain bike at the moment most companies are quoting a six month delay, full price, take it or leave it. 

dan/california,

Having recently watched a most edifying Russian TV show shot at the Splav complex, am in something of a position to comment usefully. To begin with, the rockets for Grad, Uragan and Smerch are all Splav products. Unless the production rate was deliberately slowed down when the show was shot, will tell you that the pace was more akin to meticulously hand building say, Manton dueling pistols in London in the 1700s than it was to modern war production, let alone WW II. Based on what I saw, going to 3 shifts/day won't make much difference, because there is so little being produced to begin with. When the baseline production rate is practically zero, trebling it doesn't increase that figure much. The pace there verges on glacial generally. Based on what I saw, don't know how they can fell domestic contracts, much less vital foreign sales.

Regards,

John Kettler

[dan/california]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

From today's ISW report:

This is just a summary of various reports we've been seeing about the possibility of Belarus coming into the war.

Not that we need more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is, but yet we have more evidence of how stupid and desperate Putin is

At present Ukraine has to keep significant forces arrayed in depth along the Belorussian border to ensure it can adequately defend against an attack.  The most likely outcome of an attack would be an instant collapse of the attacking forces.  Complete and utter route.  Then what?  Probably an attempt at revolution by at least some portion of the Belorussian armed forces (think Romania 1989) or a total revolt.  Then what?  Russia loses its base of operations against Kiev and the Ukrainian forces tied up further west can then move east to clear out Kiev of whatever pockets of resistance remain.  I suspect most will surrender instead of trying to fight their way through Belarus or fighting to the death.

So, Mr. Putin... go ahead and push Belarus into invasion.  I dare you.  I double dare you.

Steve

P.S.  the ISW report also repeated reports of Russia rushing very low readiness, poor quality units into Ukraine to make up for losses.

Rebellion/insurrection/coup in Belarus THE way to end this quickly, and with minimum casualties. If Belarossian military just thoroughly wrecked the railway system and the ran for the Polish border for asylum/surrender the Russians would be bleeped beyond all recognition. It would be a total logistical collapse. Lukashenko getting the full Mussolini treatment would be a nice bonus. Truly large amounts of money, effort, and extravagant promises to the critical players need to devoted to this.

[dan/california]

And flipping Belarus to the West would be an utterly un-spinnable loss for Putin. 

[John Kettler]

On 3/19/2022 at 12:33 AM, dan/california said:

Can you imagine the inspections Xi has ordered? The entire Chinese military is going to spend the next six months losing their minds from audit, after inspection, after readiness review. I wonder if we will ever know how many senior people come to bad ends when whole warehouses of stuff turn out not to exist.

dan/california,

The way to tell is to keep a close eye on transfers into the reportedly purged units, by name, rank, branch and specialties. Another telltale is the sudden promotion of junior officers within a given unit to higher command slots. Should this occur, and with no reassignment or retirement announcement, then... Don't know how the Chinese do it, but in the Soviet Army, presumably also in the Russian Army, real rank wasn't/isn't defined by insignia but by position, with the expected rank eventually catching up with the position. Just look at how low level some of the officers commanding SU divisions were during the GPW. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[dan/california]

He is 100% on board with Steve, and the Captain.

[Machor]

10 hours ago, DesertFox said:

To Berlin ???

 

 

Reposting this Russian Kool-Aid TV footage for context - can be understood without knowing Russian. This is what happens if you switch from "war is the continuation of policy through other means" to 'war is sexy':

 

[Machor]

2 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Vet 0369,

Am surprised at this, for unless a visual is somehow obtained, the RCS on the Raven has to be of the order of less than .01 sq m, likely more like .001 As it happens, that .01 is the number for a Tomahawk nose on. This leaves me wondering how the Tunguska is finding your Ravens. Also, there is a key fact regarding the design requirement for the Tunguska, in terms of the target. Prepare to be shocked, for it's that plane you see, a 1950s vintage Hawker Hunter F6, top speed at altitude M 0.96.

As first designed, Tunguska was a guns only weapon system. The SAM was added later to hit attack helicopters which popped up to shoot ATGMs fromn outside gun range. Given the sum total of these realities, how is it the Tunguska is eating up your microscopic in cross section vs that Hawker Hunter F6 and below radar Vmin RQ-11? Since I'm working from first principles and a fair amount of real world AD system knowledge, yet coming up bust, would love for someone to explain to me how a Tunguska can do this? If we were talking Pantsir-S1, would be more inclined to believe this, because one of the weapons the Pantsir-Sa was required to defeat was the US HARM, a vastly smaller and many times faster target than that ancient British bird above. This is because Pantsir-S1 was designed to protect strategic SAM sites (S-300) against standoff attacks by ARMs, standoff missiles and guided bombs. It's wheeled because Tunguska couldn't keep up with the wheeled and rapidly displacing S-300 system.  The design story of Tunguska and Pantsir-S1 are both on the excellent ausairpower site.

Regards,

John Kettler
 

Russian Tunguskas have thermals; can't they just engage drones optically?

[sburke]

Pentagon Downplays Reports of Russian Generals’ Battlefield Killings (msn.com)

while their assessment may be true in terms of differing role, it doesn't take away from the fact that the top command level is getting decapitated.

[John Kettler]

On 3/19/2022 at 12:50 AM, Machor said:

On a lighter note... Can we have tankriders in CMBS? Oh wait! 

 

Machor,

Bet that guy was glad he had his helmet and body armor on. This clip was like watching the Keystone Cops. AS for tank riders, the video shows why they are termed tank descents. That one was abrupt!

Regards,

John Kettler

[THH149]

15 hours ago, akd said:

The partially detached Sport Life gym created an overhang parking / loading area, and it looks like this building was targeted directly. Probably some equipment was parked there

I saw RF drone footage of a MLRS firing at Rf positions then driving across the city to this Sport Life gym and reverse in. The RF knew what was there and bombed it in the same drone footage YT upload. The explosion seems aimed to flatten the gym and the ground floor adjacent.

Not sure if the rest of the building was flattened as well but the gym doesnt exist anymore.

Good RF use of drones and a precision strike, I guess.

[John Kettler]

In looking at this fascinating discussion of how many trucks in artillery units and what the implications are of convoys stuck and ammo trucks destroyed, it occurred to me there may be some resources we're neglecting. I refer to something I used to have called  (spelling bad) Spravochnik Ofitsera (Officer's Handbook), which was a small manual of things officers needed to know, including such things as building field fortifications. Have to believe there is something similar for artillery officers, and it doubtless contains a wealth of useful to us information. It would also be good to have logistics manuals, artillery norms, BK (Unit of fire) figures by artillery type. Would think that if nothing else, we ought to be able to get this info for the late Cold War Red Army (which already had things like KItolov, Krasnopol and Uragan in service) and see what the planning factors were for ammo expenditure. Would suggest looking at the GPW numbers, but feel the changes have been significant enough. that this might cause confusion rather than enlightenment. This is because artillery quantity is drastically lower, delivery accuracy far greater, reach simply astounding and terminal effects unimaginable by GPW standards.

Here's a quick look at max onboard rounds for SPHs and SPGs. Guided projectiles take up more room than standard projectiles, but there tend to be relatively few aboard, either that or, say, a battery specializes in their use and has heavy loads of them. 2S43 may or may not be in service yet.

Ammo loads onboard

Msta-S     50 rounds

2S43        30 rounds     

2S1           40 rounds if no amphibious ops needed; but 30 if must swim

2S3          40 rounds

2S3M2     46 rounds

2S7            4 rounds. (4 more on dedicated support vehicle)

2S4           40 rounds (but only 20 if RAP) 


Regards,

John Kettler

             


        





 

[THH149]

3 hours ago, John Kettler said:

"BFC Steve" scenario

Is that the first modern "no tank used" offensive? 

I can see the advantages in the scenario about using infantry team (trosstruppen of WW1 come to mind if I add responsive arty) closely connected to fast response mobile artillery, and I guess the AT defense on tank warfare in this era make them redundant. But once the front line disappears, how does one exploit that, and how does one counter defensive drones and arty etc etc. 

[John Kettler]

On 3/19/2022 at 4:13 AM, panzermartin said:

Russian media states they used the Mach 10 missile for the first time in Ukraine. Looks like a very expensive weapon meant to counter NATO warships, why use against a warehouse 

panzermartin,

Believe the answer is sixfold: 1) combat test, 2) may be immune to all UKR SAMs, including S-300 series, 3) important target, 4) powerful 500 kg unitary warhead, 5) 2000 km range, and 6) missiles available, as opposed, to, say, badly depleted Kalibr stocks. The six listed are all valid military resons, but there are also such things as morale effects on both sides, demonstration of military potency and superiority of Russian arms in high tech warfare, negation of several reported shootdowns of Russian missiles, pressure on UKR government, pressure on NATO, US, etc., intimidation and resultant leverage. 

Let me also provide a Cold War perspective on hypersonic weapons. Per the CIA briefing at the Soviet Threat Technology Conference in 1985, the Soviets had seven (7) hypersonic wind tunnels; the US had one (1). As I said before I worked on NASP(National AeroSpace Plane, SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) and held all the security tickets to the program aspects. Part of what NASP involved were what we called NDVs (NASP Derived Vehicles), which were hypersonic craft without the ability to enter space. If you look at, say, an overhead plot of an S-300 defended zone vs a B-1B, the sites are set up in such a way that any aircraft attempting to get through will be in at least one, maybe several sites', coverage. As penetrator speed increases, the engagement zone shrinks. Go fast enough, and the once formidable S-300 coverage is now a collection of point defense systems, leaving gigantic holes through which to penetrate the strategic SAM defenses. Our hypothetical is now reality, and the Ukrainians are essentially operating, absent some sort of massive improvements I know nothing about, their best SAM systems as de facto point defenses. And Buk is even worse because it's got far less capable sensors, a shorter range missile, and I believe it's slower, too.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by John Kettler

[kraze]

9 hours ago, danfrodo said:

how many AFVs can RU possibly have left?? 

USSR made thousands of those. And russia made sure to pressure countries into giving those to them.

But it doesn't matter. What matters is how many operators proficient enough to ride those they have left.

Considering that most capable ones have already turned into the sunflower fertilizer.

[John Kettler]

On 3/19/2022 at 7:37 AM, Haiduk said:

Despite Iskanders can have decoys, theses missiles can be intercepted. Parts of 9M723 missile, one of three, shot down yesterday in Vinnytsia oblast

Haiduk,

Intercepted with what, please? Having worked on hypersonic weapons myself and seen in analyses what that blazing speed does to missile engagement zones (S-300s reduced to point defenses), am intensely curious as to how the Ukrainians pulled this off. The only weapon I can imagine the Ukrainians might have that could deal with Iskander as I understand its capabilities is what we called SA-12b/GLADIATOR, which we assessed as having marginal capability against a Poseidon RV, which most definitely wasn't a MARV, but from a MIRVed SLBM. Any idea what the Mach number was on the Iskander MARV when intercepted?

Regards,

John Kettler

[kraze]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Also ironical that Rinat Akhmetov was instrumental in keeping Mariupol part of Ukraine in 2014 when he organized the workers of said plant to beat up the Russian "tourists" that were trying to overthrow Ukrainian authority.  He is also rumored to have helped fund the original Azov Battalion.  He was also a big supporter of Yanukovych and rumored to have been exploring a coup against Zelensky in 2021.

There was advantages to keeping his assets in Ukraine at the time because, well, Putin has a habit of taking things when he feels like it.  Remaining in Ukraine meant Putin couldn't get his hands on it.  Akhmetov is not anybody's friend, that's for sure.

Steve

Akhmetov, much like most other Ukrainian oligarchs, was never pro-russian, he was pro-himself.

It's just that the West is anti-corruption and russia is corruption itself - so keeping Ukraine under russian influence meant that any oligarch has the freedom to do as he pleases.

Naturally when russian threat started to quickly outweigh the threat of EU - Akhmetov put on blue-yellow colors.