How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

11 minutes ago, The Steppenwulf said:

 +1  An Englishman firmly agreeing with a Scot!

Da fu'...!?

Next thing, you'll be giving them their own parliament and control over budgetary affairs pertinent to Scottish needs! A slippery slope, Sir, a verrrry slippery slope!  

Wot, wot.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Kinophile

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, akd said:

Destroyed T-72B3M in Mariupol:

Geolocated it to here (recognize the blue and yellow building in the background as the regional intensive care hospital said to have been seized by Russia):

47.10804° N, 37.50898° E

So what's the situation in Mariupol, I wonder?  They are cut off from supplies? but maybe are capturing some?  how long can they hold out?

[Machor]

Peskov is saying the same thing as the WOTR article I linked to on the previous page (Plus we get more of the 'Ukraine is Anti-Russia', which I take is derived from the 'Anti-Christ'):

 

[DesertFox]

Ship Artillery...

 

 

[womble]

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Back to the Russian T-90 production halting rumors.  Well, I for one think it's true.

Even before the war started there was solid reporting that Russian defense industries were having production difficulties due to sanctions and COVID disruptions.  Considering how much disruption there was in the much better resourced Western countries over the past two years, it's really not all that hard to imagine.

Look at what happened to Ford in the US.  They had to shut down and furlough several factories several times simply because they couldn't get a computer chip needed for (IIRC) the ignition system.  This happened in all kinds of factors for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because of the concept of "just in time" inventory management.

Now take that reality and add to it a sudden cessation of exporting all kinds of critical components that the Russians used to import because they lack domestic capacity.  This could be as high tech as a chip needed for the gunnery system, could be as low tech as vulcanized rubber part.  The problem complex assemblies face is that a shortage of ANY ONE OF THESE THINGS has the potential to shut down production until the part (or a substitute) is available.

And who here thinks that Russian tank production is more robust, more nimble, and more prepared for disruption than the company that invented assembly line vehicle production?  Anybody?  No, I thought not

So yeah, I totally buy it that Russian tank production has ground to a halt.  I also buy into the idea that a lot of defense related production has ground to a halt.

Steve

I work in heavy machinery assembly. We have had all kinds of troubles getting Engine Control Modules and other microprocessor-based components for our various products. At one point, they were coming in via suitcase-full because the logistics chain was so stretched for them that we couldn't get enough to maintain greater than half volume production rates, even flying them as excess baggage on passenger flights. At another point, we had no ECMs at all for several days.

And that's just ECMs. Supply of everything has been problematic at some point over the last year, from plastic components to bent metal. Fortunately, we're operating in a well-connected first rank country with good international relations, so the shortages have been temporary (if somewhat recurrent wrt semiconductor product). Such stoppages could easily be indefinite in Russia-under-sanctions.

[Vet 0369]

3 hours ago, LukeFF said:

"Ukraine" not "The Ukraine"  

Thank you for the edit. I didn’t realize that it stopped being referred to as “The Ukraine” in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Obviously, 40 plus years of correctly calling it “The Ukraine” is a difficult habit to break, especially for someone my age.

[BletchleyGeek]

3 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Orville Peck (masked musician) who no one knows who he actually is. 

ROFL

[Splinty]

3 hours ago, White2Golf said:

+1k to this.  Doing anything in MOPP 4 is just freaking nuts.  M1 turret is already cramped, now do the things in MOPP 4.   UGH!

Try a Bradley turret.

You guys had a living room to our closet!

[DesertFox]

As for the T-90 plant. I am pretty sure they wont get any french thermal sights anymore. 

Quote

Russia coped with mass production of uncooled matrix microbolometrical receivers only last year, they had been bought from France before. Russian tanks T-90, including export ones, were equipped with heat-vision devices produced by Thales. Their licensed production was set up at the Vologda optical mechanics factory.

T-90 Tanks to Get MCT-Matrix Heat-Vision Sight (mil.today)

Edited March 22, 2022 by DesertFox

[Vet 0369]

3 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Is that TheCapt in the picture?  I thought he was like the Lone Ranger or Orville Peck (masked musician) who no one knows who he actually is. 

I would assume it is one of three men; Bill H., The_Capt, or Steve. I’m leaning to either Bill H., or Steve  since I get the impression that The_Capt is a serving Officer where the beard would violate uniform regulations. Nothing more than an impression though, so it could be any one of the three.

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

That and putting NATO forces into eastern Ukraine would risk Putin doing something like shelling them anyway and then saying "well, that's what you get!" and now the ball is in NATO's court.  What to do?  Air strikes on Russian soil?  Oh boy would that be asking for WW3 with the full backing of the Russian populace too.

Guys, you really have to think through these things before drawing conclusions.  Why do you think Putin has gotten away with so much for so long?  Because challenging him has presented difficult, often messy, choices which ran the risk of things being worse off in the end.

Of course those of us who have been saying NATO, EU, US, etc. needed to do more to challenge Putin earlier have a point, but we're only now being proven right because of how things played out.  We could have been wrong.

Steve

Wouldn't necessarily have to be eastern Ukraine but I digress.
I'm in the camp that if/given that 'we' (seem to) care about Ukraine, we should/could have done more to challenge Putinnot to take the step. Although it's difficult to define 'we', it should be the 154 countries in the UN condemning the invasion after the fact. 
I'm reminded a bit of the 'polder' model we have in NL. While seeking compromises is good for many situations, one of the consequences is that **** really has to hit the fan before 'everybody' agrees something significant needs to be done about basically anything.
After the 1953 stormflooding causing thousands of deaths, it was clear something needed to be done and we built the 'delta works'. Without such a disaster happening, politicians seem to be reluctant to take drastic measure and rather manage the joint status quo, passing any difficult decisions over to the next installment/generation.

But I agree, the current dimension we live in for sure isn't the only one thinkable a while back. We/I/anyone sure could have been wrong! 

 

[Lethaface]

2 hours ago, akd said:

Are they speaking Chechen or Arabic?

Apart from the universal religious chants most of the chatter didn't seem Arabic to me (and although I don't really speak it, I've heard plenty of Arabic day to day chatter).

[Vet 0369]

3 hours ago, akd said:

Not sure what is going on here:

Arabs (Syrians?) fighting for Ukraine?

Definitely not Russians or Ukrainians. Possibly Chechens fighting for Ukraine. I have to say that RPG gunner has brass ones. Too bad his ammo humper didn’t, and he had to keep running back to reload.    I have to say, the ammo humper was probably the smarter of the two. I’d hazard a guess based on his staying somewhat under cover that this was an actual firefight.

[keas66]

Maybe the Belorussians think they are reincarnation of the 6th Panzer Division and are going to  reenact an attempt at Operation Winter Storm  to relieve the Irpin Pocket ? 

I'd be super nervous if I was those Belorussians . I seriously doubt they have a command staff like that of Raus  - and I'm pretty sure there are Ukrainians waiting for them behind every tree with an NLAW/Javelin/Pazerfaust-3/RPG-4

 

 

[panzermartin]

1 hour ago, akd said:

A nuke would solve that?

Of course not. But if they fall down they might try to take us with them. At least this is what Hitler had in mind.

[Commanderski]

8 minutes ago, keas66 said:

I'm pretty sure there are Ukrainians waiting for them behind every tree with an NLAW/Javelin/Pazerfaust-3/RPG-4

and of course a couple of Ukrainian tractors...

[Vet 0369]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Remember Wali?

 

 

Why is he being referred to as “infamous?” That’s usually reserved for bad guys. The attack on Pearl Harbor was “infamous.” We usually refer to good guys as “famous.”

[BletchleyGeek]

7 hours ago, Haiduk said:

UKR artillery strikes at the targets in the forsets

 

Ah, now that I have recovered from busting a gut after that post re: Orville Peck secret identity....

Great stream of (mostly) curated picks from social media. My favourite today is this one by @Haiduk. I find remarkable how good UKR is at using conventional artillery as a stand in for eye wateringly expensive PGM. It looks to me that since UKR had to rebuild its military from scratch, had an opportunity to adopt new ideas and technologies dealing with little or no institutional inertia.

I wonder what the process is for those arty strikes, maybe something like this?

1. Drone controller has UAV loitering on suspected area of RF activity.

2. Controller spots location of RF assets, then registers the location by taking snapshots of target from several points and angles (see this for instance https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926580518308641)

3. Photos, along with camera parameters and geo location info forwarded to fires coordination center. Firing solution calculated automatically and fire task assigned to friendly asset.

4. Fire task executed, drone controller reports damage assessment.

An iteration over the above wouldn't take very long at all, the most finicky part being that of maneuvering the UAV to take the measurements you need for registration.  And that could be automated too (the controller activates the "registration" behaviour and that's it).

The workflow above could be implemented with very few fancy equipment/algorithms, you just need good software and network engineers using pretty mundane hardware.

--------------

On another topic, I am glad to see tactical psychology being used... the most efficient way to defeat an adversary is to destroy its will to fight. So far UKR has been fighting smart, they just need to keep doing so!

Edited March 22, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[danfrodo]

38 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Maybe the Belorussians think they are reincarnation of the 6th Panzer Division and are going to  reenact an attempt at Operation Winter Storm  to relieve the Irpin Pocket ? 

I'd be super nervous if I was those Belorussians . I seriously doubt they have a command staff like that of Raus  - and I'm pretty sure there are Ukrainians waiting for them behind every tree with an NLAW/Javelin/Pazerfaust-3/RPG-4

 

 

where on the border are they? 

[panzermartin]

1 hour ago, womble said:

They "lost" Ukraine when they invaded and annexed in 2014. Chucking nukes around isn't a good way to go about persuading people that you're fit to be readmitted to the community of nations. Quite the opposite, in fact; they'd lose what "friends" remain to them. That last would probably be true in the case of a WMD attack on a population centre, too.

I don't see how Russia and current administration will ever restore relations with the West after all this mess. After some point they may not care at all. Now most of the media depicts them as orcs, hitlerisks, institutions boycott swan lake or Dostoyevski and so on. Imagine after some more months of shelling Ukrainian cities... They are down the road of no return. I don't think any other nation has done more harm to itself with a single military action in human history, and it seems it was due to tragic miscalculations. 

Besides Ukraine, I'm actually very sorry about Russia too. My father was a kid under the Nazi occupation of Athens, the famine killed hundreds of thousand people here, and his only hope was listening with a forbidden set, to BBC radio Moscow. The victories of the red army and liberation marked his life, and he was the one that made me a WW2 buff.  He introduced me to the series, "unknown war" with Burt Lancaster, that was a brilliant doc on the eastern front, and I got hooked. I grew up with an admiration for the sacrifice of russian (and all Soviet people) ,(despite my nick ) This war has put a big stain on Russia, that perhaps is not what it's people, rich culture and achievements like sending first man in space, really deserved. 

[keas66]

2 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

where on the border are they? 

South of  Brest I had heard - probably to far away from Kyiv  to really help to be honest  . I think the initial deployment looked to aimed at Lviv . But worth keeping an eye on .

[sburke]

6 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

I don't see how Russia and current administration will ever restore relations with the West after all this mess. After some point they may not care at all. Now most of the media depicts them as orcs, hitlerisks, institutions boycott swan lake or Dostoyevski and so on. Imagine after some more months of shelling Ukrainian cities... They are down the road of no return. I don't think any other nation has done more harm to itself with a single military action in human history, and it seems it was due to tragic miscalculations. 

Besides Ukraine, I'm actually very sorry about Russia too. My father was a kid under the Nazi occupation of Athens, the famine killed hundreds of thousand people here, and his only hope was listening with a forbidden set, to BBC radio Moscow. The victories of the red army and liberation marked his life, and he was the one that made me a WW2 buff.  He introduced me to the series, "unknown war" with Burt Lancaster, that was a brilliant doc on the eastern front, and I got hooked. I grew up with an admiration for the sacrifice of russian (and all Soviet people) ,(despite my nick ) This war has put a big stain on Russia, that perhaps is not what it's people, rich culture and achievements like sending first man in space, really deserved. 

It is just ironic that Putin who wanted to restore what he saw as the glory days of the USSR has turned Russia into a pariah and for him even worse - a meme.

[Phantom Captain]

10 minutes ago, keas66 said:

South of  Brest I had heard - probably to far away from Kyiv  to really help to be honest  . I think the initial deployment looked to aimed at Lviv . But worth keeping an eye on .

I am very curious to how many Polish troops are on the border just south of the Belarus/Ukraine line?  

Edited March 22, 2022 by Phantom Captain

[danfrodo]

please please please take a wrong right turn and enter Poland.  please please please.  That would be very short fight.  Poland is ready and able.

[The Steppenwulf]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I saw the original question and figured someone already posted a good answer.  Not surprised to find it was The_Capt

I studied the category of wounded over the course of the last 100 years quite a while ago.  The rule of "thirds" for WW2 WIA is the starting point for me.  A reminder to folks that "out of the war permanently" ranges from debilitating wounds to dying from wounds after evacuation from the battlefield.  In very desperate circumstances some portion of that group might find their way back into the fight, such as with the Volkssturm, but generally not.

Korea saw a significant reduction in the permanent loss category and an increase in the amount of WIA in the mid and short term out of action categories.  Vietnam accelerated it even more.  Aircraft and better organized medical services are credited with this.  More recent times it's shifted even more.  In Afghanistan and Iraq a soldier could be wounded and in less than 24 hours be at a facility in Germany or even the US.  Incredible.

Oh, but that definitely doesn't apply to Russia.  Not even close.

First of all, to get better results you have to have good systems in place.  Based on Russia's planning and assumptions, even if they had such capacity in theory, for sure it isn't operating in practice.  And it's pretty clear that every other "Russia should have" is a "Russia doesn't have" situation, so why would expensive and technically difficult medical treatment logistics be an outlier?  If anything, it's probably worse than some of their other failings.

This means Russia's WIA situation is probably akin to WW2, if not worse.  That means a lot of guys in the light and medium term wounded category get bumped to the next worst condition due to infection, inattentive care, and/or unavailable care.

If we take 10,000 KIA this means roughly 30,000 to 40,000 WIA.  I'd guess that fully 50% of the WIA will not be returning to service and another 25% unlikely to recover sufficiently to get back into service before the war is over.  Which means Ukraine has probably removed upwards around 32,000 - 40,000 Russian soldiers from the war so far.  That's about 10,000 a week!

Steve

In addition Putin will not want to see large scale casualty evacuations back to mother Russia. The true scale of the losses and resistance that troops are facing will quickly reach the escape velocity of the Kremlin's information control. Sound familiar? These are the exact circumstances that weighed in on US public opinion against the war in Vietnam in the late 60's onwards. But in this case, the Kremlin is lying wholesale about what the army is enduring - multiplying the shock factor when reality is finally exposed.