How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[keas66]

8 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

Chieftain's dropping some logic bombs in this one.

I get his points about this may not be the end of  tanks  and IFV's if used correctly ( not like the Russians ) but I think he is being a little too even / a little too blind to the level of  destruction going on and the efforts being put in to track  Russian versus Ukrainian Losses  .  Accounts/Counters like Oryx are seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping count of actual identified WRECKS - not just  videos of  things hitting vehicles . I guess we'll see just how right the Chieftains pessimism is  - I think he's wrong myself to take this approach .

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, keas66 said:

I get his points about this may not be the end of  tanks  and IFV's if used correctly ( not like the Russians ) but I think he is being a little too even / a little too blind to the level of  destruction going on and the efforts being put in to track  Russian versus Ukrainian Losses  .  Accounts/Counters like Oryx are seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping count of actual identified WRECKS - not just  videos of  things hitting vehicles . I guess we'll see just how right the Chieftains pessimism is  - I think he's wrong myself to take this approach .

At some point I'm going to write an article about this for you guys.  I've got some thoughts on the matter

Steve

[Machor]

15 hours ago, Haiduk said:

I thinks this is captured stuff of our Territorial defense.

Makhno would be proud.  And the guy sitting on it is apparently armed with a Mosin, so full-on time travel.

[Phantom Captain]

@Battlefront.com  Steve, so all the goings on just got me thinking in terms of CM.  With all the sanctions and companies pulling out of Russia and breaking ties, does this, you know, allow you to take over the rights to a certain CM:A game?  Like, could you move to immediately annex it back into the CM family??  

Edited March 24, 2022 by Phantom Captain

[sburke]

Just now, Phantom Captain said:

@Battlefront.com  Steve, so all the goings on just got me thinking in terms of CM.  With all the sanctions and companies pulling out of Russian and breaking ties, does this, you know, allow you to take over the rights to a certain CM:A game?  Like, could you move to immediately annex it back into the CM family??  

well considering Russia has taken the position they will not respect IP.... that sounds like a dynamite question!

[Machor]

15 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Before a war we had about 15 % of women personnel. They can serve on combat duties including command, except comamnd duties in air-assault troops and special forces. 

And this is faithfully reflected in CMBS, if you check out the (last) names of Ukrainian soldiers.  Another accurate portrayal is Russian soldiers having names of ethnic minorities.

The only point where this aspect of the game departs realism is there are many Russians with the names of Russian literary icons, which are quite rare names irl. Though, this is only extra amusement for me: Nothing like a Tolstoy taking out an Abrams or Bradley. 

[Machor]

15 hours ago, Haiduk said:

They tell about artillery strike, but this is Russains soldiers, not Ukrainain. They also say the tank crews abandoned own vehciles during the shelling, so "alas", no casualties. 

Thank you. I thought the voices were Ukrainians calling Russians profanities for destroying the tanks, but upon listening to them again, I now realize they're Russian soldiers calling the Ukrainian tank crews profanities. With that misunderstanding cleared out, I now understand the part I wasn't getting: 'BK' must refer to 'boevoi komplekt'.

This is now yet another example we have of a tank completely destroyed by artillery.

[Machor]

14 hours ago, Lethaface said:

Now that's some sick **** that beard guy. Talking about nuking Warsaw like it's a mundane, look what I can do, thing.

The great irony is that Russia's greatest warmonger, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has been missing all this as he has been on a ventilator for Covid.

 

[db_zero]

I agree tanks aren’t dead, nor IFVs. What will replace them that will provide infantry protection from artillery?

Aside from the mentioned Russian poor coordination, and combined arms, it’s also been mentioned that nobody really knows who in charge? It’s like 3 separate armies on 3 separate fronts doing their own thing and neither is coordinating with the Air Force which itself is off doing its own thing.

The switchblade drone has a range of 6 miles. The Javelins range is 3 miles. The small Switchblade has a 40mm grenade charge. Who wins that duel? 
 

The Merkava was and may still have a mortar on it. No reason why you couldn’t mount a Switchblade or 2 on a tank or IFV to hunt down ATGM operators.

Another huge weakness that I haven’t heard much regarding the Russians is piss poor reconnaissance of the battlefield something the US and Western armies excel at. 
 

Many of the ATGM and tank hunting infantry operating at will with little or no interference from Russian forces would face a much different opposition from well trained forces that conduct proper reconnaissance and use indirect fire, snipers and other means to suppress and kill tank hunting infantry.

It only takes killing some before word gets around and effectness drops.

Unlike the Russians the US/Western armies have good secure comms, JTACs, FACs (another aspect that seems to be absent in the Russian military) and ability to call down quick and effective fire from things like mortars, Paladins, MLRS, attack helicopters, drones and aircraft, before even sending vehicles into ATGM kill zones.

Edited March 24, 2022 by db_zero

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, Machor said:

The great irony is that Russia's greatest warmonger, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has been missing all this as he has been on a ventilator for Covid.

 

 

i almost hope he gets off the ventilator alive just so he find out how well it worked out, ALMOST.

[Machor]

11 hours ago, DesertFox said:

@Haiduk: Can you give us an idea what we see here? The first 2 vids in this thread. Thanks!

 

 

I believe Haiduk missed this: I am seeing Ukrainians very aggressively confronting Russian soldiers; singing the Ukrainian national anthem at their face; and eventually someone sprays one of the Russian soldiers in the face with something corrosive.

[Machor]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

 

i almost hope he gets off the ventilator alive just so he find out how well it worked out, ALMOST.

Nah; unless there's regime change in Russia, he'll always be loaded and drooling away on TV even if the entire Russian army is wiped out. (Hint: You cannot open a vodka factory in Russia without paying him and his party their share.)

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, keas66 said:

I get his points about this may not be the end of  tanks  and IFV's if used correctly ( not like the Russians ) but I think he is being a little too even / a little too blind to the level of  destruction going on and the efforts being put in to track  Russian versus Ukrainian Losses  .  Accounts/Counters like Oryx are seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping count of actual identified WRECKS - not just  videos of  things hitting vehicles . I guess we'll see just how right the Chieftains pessimism is  - I think he's wrong myself to take this approach .

Ah so a guy with a bookshelf of tank books and tank models thinks “tanks are fine”…not exactly surprising.  This is starting with a conclusion and going from there, a lot of bias from that start state.  “Not enough information to draw a conclusion, so the one I started with is safe”, is a conclusion.

I am not sure what is going on beyond there is something going on.  I get not being able to draw firm conclusions but this whole war has defied a lot of conventional logic.  Some of it is Russia performance but that under-assesses the performance of the UA.

For example, most Russian tanks on Oryx have been abandoned (and some towed), so one could argue that had nothing to do with smart ATGMs or UAVs.  However, if this occurred because Russian logistics were cut to pieces, by ATGMs and UAVs, the implication is that something is going on with logistics security.  A T90 is just as much a paperweight as an M1A2 if they are out of gas so, no “the tanks are not fine” if we now need to rethink our logistics concepts.

In short, something has occurred that impacted the entire Russian system causing it to fail in its objectives, stall, and now starting to fallback.  How much if that is Russian incompetence, and how much is being forced upon them by the UA methods and equipment is a really big unknown.  The role and value of the entire MBT capability is in question at the moment, at least until we can figure out what happened.  Same can be asked of fast air and mech infantry as well.  

The worst way to go into trying to understand impacts and implications when encountering a disruptive event is with pre-set conclusions.  This is a serious problem for military developers as one has to switch to inductive logic, something militaries are not really good at.  We start with a framework “a real war needs tanks to work”, make an observation “tanks did not work for Russia” and deduce “this is not a real war”.   Inductive logic builds a framework based on observation, the framework becomes negotiable and starts with “What the hell just happened?”

[Machor]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russia has been completely cut off from replacements for some of the food items.  I suspect the closer a store is to a border the more affected it will be as I'm sure they have a higher percentage of cross border products than, say, a supermarket in Tashkent.

 

You know, at this rate, a supermarket in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) will have more foreign products than any in Russia. 

[Machor]

3 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Krasukha-4 is a dire threat to Bayraktar TB2. Armenia lost nine TB2s to this system in a week!

Did you intend to write 'Azerbaijan'?

[The_Capt]

19 minutes ago, db_zero said:

The switchblade drone has a range of 6 miles. The Javelins range is 3 miles. The small Switchblade has a 40mm grenade charge. Who wins that duel?

The Switchblade 600 carries the same warhead as the Javelin and has a range of 80 miles.  There is no “business as usual” with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

 

[db_zero]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The Switchblade 600 carries the same warhead as the Javelin and has a range of 80 miles.  There is no “business as usual” with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

 

Correct I was referring to the smaller version…

Besides the lack of secure coms does anyone know if a Russian LT actually has the authority to call indirect fire? Not that it matters as it seems like they would need the cell phone number of the artillery crew…

Once again the complete incompetence and ineptitude of the Russian operation is simply beyond comprehension.

I don’t think anyone had any idea of just how bad it would be.

The question now is will the Russians learn and correct their mistakes and with sanctions can they?

Or will they just rely on brute force and nukes in the future.

 

[Cobetco]

Tanks maybe going the way of the battleship, but that doesn't mean AFV's are going away. things are just going to have to change to adapt to this new environment, I suspect things like Japanese type 16 are going to looked at by many nations very closely in the coming years. or who knows, some defense contractor will solve the issue with lazers or something.

[chuckdyke]

7 minutes ago, Cobetco said:

Tanks maybe going the way of the battleship,

Tanks will evolve a lot more. Present Abrams is a completely different vehicle than a M4 Sherman from WW2. Ok both have tracks and a turret. Now it can sense the shot of a sniper from a high-rise building. Future tanks will engage far from beyond the horizon. 

[BlackMoria]

Ah, we may yet have see the development of the Bolo.  Unleash the Dynachrome brigade !   <Channeling Keith Laumer>

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The worst way to go into trying to understand impacts and implications when encountering a disruptive event is with pre-set conclusions.

Ya think?

Cobetco's comments about battleships is right on target.  Someone who said that WARSHIPS were going to go away with the advent of submarines, aircraft, and eventually anti-ship missiles would be wrong.  But someone who predicted that certain classes of ships, such as battleships, would be retired and others, like destroyers, would not gain new capabilities would be wrong.

For the "tanks won't change" folks out there, I have one word for you... UGV.  OK, it's three words put into one.  You caught me

Unnamed Ground Vehicles are the wave of the future of ground warfare.  They can offer more punch, more survivability, more deployment options, and smaller size all for less money.  Further, they provide for many other benefits already seen with UAVs.

We're not even that far away from self-guided UGVs.  The Mars Perseverance Rover, Tesla, and various defense contractors are all working on this stuff at a feverish pace.  Once it is even remotely practical, it will find its way onto the battlefield in some way soon after.

Steve

[Vergeltungswaffe]

I mentioned it back in the General Discussion in February, but Bolo's are coming.

[MikeyD]

Everyone gasped when the Marines abandoned their tanks. And not long ago Britain was toying with the idea of abandoning its tank fleet, too, though that idea's apparently been discarded with the appearance of Challenger 3. That gives an indication that people in high places have been pondering the fate of the tank in a modern high threat battlespace. Its telling that Ukrainian tanks have finally made an appearance in phase 2 of the battle.

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The Switchblade 600 carries the same warhead as the Javelin and has a range of 80 miles.  There is no “business as usual” with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

 

Javelin is at least 4km, no? Even up to 5km?

[CAZmaj]

6 hours ago, John Kettler said:

DesertFox,

Will it arrive gift wrapped with a thank you note from Zelensky for all the goodies the US has provided, or did we have to pay for it so Ukraine can buy even more items it needs on the open market? To be clear, we're getting the C3ISR processing part only, the command van, but not the combined jamming and receiving portion. Krasukha-4 is a dire threat to Bayraktar TB2. Armenia lost nine TB2s to this system in a week!
 

Regards,

John Kettler

Armenia???