How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[White2Golf]

51 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Things we seem to learned beyond all doubt in this war, tanks can't charge effective ATGMs being employed by competent and unsuppressed troops, it is literally suicide.

Has this even happened?   Have we seen a properly supported and coordinated mechanized attack by RA forces?  Or is it been just mobs of troops running down the road and shooting sometimes?  Its entirely possible this has happened, but I do not recall seeing anything like that.  Not even "after" videos of vehicles damaged/destroyed in what would have been a combat formation.  (Wedge, V, Line, Echelon, etc...)

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, panzermartin said:

On the army effectiveness. I'm not sure a US force like in 2003 Iraq, would have captured Kharkov, Kiev or Odessa etc in less than a month, facing urban warfare and the same determined UKR defenders.

It wouldn't have done all that much better in the end, I agree, but I do think a US force would be able to take over all of eastern Ukraine within a month with another week or maybe two to establish air supremacy and degrade various other defensive capabilities.

If that had happened, maybe the Russian's presumption of surrender would have happened without the need to do urban warfare?  Or maybe certain cities would surrender?

The problem with this analogy is that the will to fight Russians is rooted in the knowledge of what a Russian occupation would be like and what the long term aims of Russia are.  The US concept of nation building, though extremely flawed and riddled with hypocrisy, isn't the same sort of threat.  So it's really not a comparable situation.

52 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And then we will get into the parochial hand wringing that always comes with this much like how the Cavalry went from "decisive shock action" to "tip of the spear recon in force" to "hauling wagon/ logistics" to "expensive heritage pieces" in a couple centuries.  It will be a highly negotiated transition is my point. 

I'm glad you brought this up. 

There's been all kinds of things throughout the history of warfare that people of the day said would never change.  Anybody see much evidence that the stunning successes of the long bow or pike still being around these days?  How about trebuchets or catapults?  Yes, there some analogs to these things on the battlefield today, but the weapons themselves and the tactics that went with them are GONE. 

This is my primary point about the MBT.  The thing that makes the MBT important is the role it fills on the battlefield.  If something else can fulfill the same role in a way that is overall viewed as "better" then that's the direction militaries will take.  The sling changed to bow changed to primitive firearms changed to rifled firearms changed to... well, you get my drift that the ability to project harm from a single person to someone else has remained over thousands of years, but the means of achieving it changes quite regularly.  Why should super expensive, difficult to field, awful to support, and yet highly vulnerable to vastly cheaper counter weapons stick around forever?

Steve

[Kraft]

Map of Russian MoD, probably dated pre-counter offensive.

I expected more lunacy given their ridiculous fatality figures, but maybe someone adviced them that geolocating is a thing and they didn't bother faking the "gains" made in 4 weeks of pointless bloodshet.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Just now, holoween said:

Also drones only really have a capability advantedge over manned systems in staying power. An apache can do everything an attack drone can except stay over the battlefield for 24 hours. A drone can also be risked more but a drone shot down is still a weapons system out of action even if it doesnt cost a soldiers life.

A Bayraktar tb2 costs from $1-2 million, and AH-64 costs over $30 million... for the cost, they UAVs give a much better bang for the buck.

[womble]

8 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Drones and wing-ding ECMs and mutually supporting, emotionally reconciled, kum-by-yah integrated digital systems with overtly tactically sensitive AI are all very fine - but if theres a naughty boy hold up in a house a dang 50mm ain't gonna cut it.

Gimme a 120 one-shot and move on to the next threat. And ain't no vehicle gonna carry that barrel better than a tank.

Assault gun. Why stop at 120mm? Put a big-ole six-incher in a casemate, if all you want is some hurt brought to a fortification... The current tank gun is a dual purpose weapon that absolutley "has" to be able to defeat its peers' armour. If you've got missiles/suicide drones to do that with, you don't need hypervelocity tungsten...

[White2Golf]

25 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Two issue going forward with APS going forward. Does it simply cost two much to deploy at scale? And can the radar be jammed, and or itself be used to guide a missile to the tank.

I know there are fun power supply issues putting APS on some existing vehicles.  That is not a secret.  

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, holoween said:

I think itw quite indicative that the massive supply collumn north west of kiev never got attacked with drones even though it should have been an easy target. So at least the ukrainians are still keeping out of aa coverage with their drones and i dont see why this should be any different for any other nation.

Also drones only really have a capability advantedge over manned systems in staying power. An apache can do everything an attack drone can except stay over the battlefield for 24 hours. A drone can also be risked more but a drone shot down is still a weapons system out of action even if it doesnt cost a soldiers life.

But it was by the TB2 - I swear there was video, hell the damn thing hit a train.  And, more importantly ISR on that column.  why the UA did not crush that thing remains a bit of a mystery but the obvious reason is that they did not feel they had to based on frozen feet and abandoned vehicles.   

The advantages of unmanned systems are a lot more than endurance by a wide margin:

- Unit Cost - including up front and lifetime maint.

- User Training

- Logistical Tail

- Losing Cost in terms of not losing a very expensive crew

- Profile - they are much smaller and harder to find than an Apache

- Ubiquity-ocity - All the above lead to a lot more of them per sq km than AH.

Their major weaknesses are payload, speed, survivability (if you can hit them).  But they have a lot of offsets for these most of it being in overall scale of use.

[Battlefront.com]

39 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I don't know much about it but I'm sure several of you do. What effects would EMP have against the drones operating in theater? How about the proposed UGVs? Is it easy/hard/impossible to insulate against it? What about for the control stations and communication between control and vehicle? I'm more of a wood/metal guy, that electricity stuff is dark magic to me so even the simplest explanation will educate me. Thanks.

There are theories about having "micro EMPs" that can be used to pop something specific.  For example, a UAV could fly over an enemy EW vehicle and try to fry it.  The problem with this theory is EMPs take a ton of energy and any good EW system should be hardened against it anyway.

Steve

[Phantom Captain]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

This is my primary point about the MBT.  The thing that makes the MBT important is the role it fills on the battlefield.  If something else can fulfill the same role in a way that is overall viewed as "better" then that's the direction militaries will take.  The sling changed to bow changed to primitive firearms changed to rifled firearms changed to... well, you get my drift that the ability to project harm from a single person to someone else has remained over thousands of years, but the means of achieving it changes quite regularly.  Why should super expensive, difficult to field, awful to support, and yet highly vulnerable to vastly cheaper counter weapons stick around forever?

Steve

George Carlin really put it best in the most succinct way:

He said, "Just the fact that a flamethrower exists means that at sometime, somewhere, some person said to themselves; You know I really would like to set those people over there on fire, but they are just too far away."

Necessity is the mother of invention, always.

[sburke]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And then there is the harsh realities we are seeing in Ukraine, right now.  I don't need to hit your fancy whizz bang tank with the Xmas tree-light defensive system, I just need to hit enough boring old trucks/re-fuelers until the M1000 super MBT runs out of gas, ammo or both.  So now the problem is not simply area defence of my F ech, it the 100kms of LOC behind it, especially when the range of some of these system are capable of hitting at those ranges. 

Nah, you just order from Amazon and let them deliver via drone!

[Haiduk]

Brief news from our twitetrs and media:

- Reportedly whole Mykolaiv oblast liberated from Russians. Ukarinan troops also liberated the second settlement in Kherson oblast - Novovorontsovka village on the administrative boundary of Kherson and Dnipro oblasts. There are clashes for libaration of Stanislav and Blahodatne villages of Kherson oblast

 - Ukrainain troops are fighting for liberation of Trostianets town in Sumy oblast 

- Russian troops bypassed Izium town from SW side and crosses Siverskyi Donets river through pontoons. Their main part of forces was hit by artilelry fire and partilly destroyed near Topolske village (5km south from Izium). Now fighting is ongoing to throw down them to the river from their bridghead

- Kyiv direction: Russians activated warfare, they launched shellings and attack on Makariv town and forced our troop to withdraw from there, but Russians couldn't hold a ground and now Makariv is "gray zone". Also Russians shelled our troops in Irpin' and Liutizh NW and N from Kyiv and try to advance in Irpin' (they still control about 20% of the town)

- Zaporizhzhia oblast: Malynivka village liberated (12 km east from Huliaypole town - the center of defense on Zaporizhzhia direction)  

Edited March 25, 2022 by Haiduk

[Falaise]

the FSB got their hands on plans that the AU used to crush the Russian army, they are actively looking for their author....
I have an idea but I won't say anything !!!
You will excuse a little humor in this thread,
It's just to say thank you to the speakers, I think that in a few years this could be used for a historical study to analyze how the new media have modified the perception of a war

[sburke]

25 minutes ago, akd said:

@sburke

On the list already?

 

 

 

Nope.  I assume this is a Colonel?

[kraze]

34 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Kraze, I've just watched the documentary 'Winter on Fire, Ukraine's fight for freedom'. Were these Berkut bastards ever punished for their crimes or did they escape to Russia and are they now part of that army of scum?

Very few that didn't escape were arrested but later were exchanged for our POWs.

Most of the escapees are now serving in russian OMON

[sburke]

54 minutes ago, Probus said:

@sburke, Do you have a link to your list of officers? I bet it is more accurate than CNN.

Nah I just keeping posting here as we get more info

And for today -

MG Andrey Kolesnikov, Russia’s 29th Combined Arms Army commander
Andrei Sukhovetsky, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army
Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, First Deputy Commander Of The 41st Army
Major-general Oleg Mitiayev, commander of 150th motor-rifle division
General-Lieutenant Andrey Mordvichev commander 8th CAA 
Major-General Tushaev (Chechen)
LTG Yakov Rezantsev, Russia’s 49th CAA commander, in Chornobaivka near Kherson. not yet confirmed

Guards Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky commander of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment 
Colonel Yuryi Agarkov, the commander of 33rd motor-rifle regiment (Kamyshyn, Volgograd oblast) of 20th Guard motor-rifle division
Colonel Alexander Vladimirovich Zakharov, 6th tank regiment commander
Colonel Sergei Porokhnya commander of the 12th separate guards engineering brigade
Colonel Sergey Sukharev, commander of 331st Guards Airborne Regiment (of the 98th VDV Division)
Colonel Igor Nikolaev Commander of 252nd Motor Rifle Regiment, the 3rd Motor Rifle Division.
Colonel Alexei Sharov, commander of the 810th Marine Brigade
Colonel Sergey Savvateeyev, Deputy commander of Rosgvardia SOBR
Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko, the chief of engineer troops of Western Miliatary District.
Commander of the 45th Engineering Regiment a part of the 1st Guards Tank Army
Captain of 1st rank (=colonel) Andrei Paliy Deputy of Black Sea Fleet commander
Colonel Ruslan Rudnev was a Su-25 attack aircraft pilot based in the Far East. He was killed in Ukraine and buried on March 1
Colonel? Denis Shishov, the commander of the 11th Air Assault Brigade

Lt Colonel Denis Glebov, Deputy Commander of the 11th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade
Lt Colonel Dmitry Safronov, Commander of the 61st Separate Marine Brigade
Lt.colonel Alexei Khasanov, deputy commander of 31st Fighter aviation regiment
Lt Colonel Mikhail Orchikov was deputy commander of a motor-rifle brigade 19th motor-rifle division
Lt.colonel Alexandr Pazynich, the regimental comamnder deputy for human resourses of 14th Guard Fighter Aviation Regiment
Lt.colonel Renat Gaisin
Lt.colonel Ilya Piatkin, 38 years  SOBR
Lt.colonel Roman Ryabov, 50 years  SOBR
Lt.colonel (likely) Mikhail Rodionov, 46 years   SOBR
Lt.colonel, Ruslan Gashiyatullin, but only motor-rifle battalion commander. Odd.
According to Russian media, he lived in Dagestan, so probably he is from 136th Guard motor-rifle brigade of 58th CAA.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexey Khasanov, a Su-30SM fighter pilot killed in Ukraine on March 5
    
Guards Major Burlakov Andrei Petrovich, Deputy Chief of Intelligence Staff - Chief of Intelligence Regiment
Major Sergey Krylov deputy battalion commander from the VDV's 331st Airborne Regiment
Major Alexey Osokin, the commander of the VDV's 31st Air Assault Brigade's 1st battalion
Major Ruslan Petrukhin deputy battalion commander in the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade
Major Dmitry Toptun motorized rifle battalion commander 488th Motor Rifle Regiment, 144th Guards Motor Rifle Division
Major Oleg Patskalev, deputy battalion commander, 331st Guards Airborne Regiment, 98th Guards Airborne Division.
Major Viktor Maksimchuk possible deputy commander of a motorized rifle regiment or battalion commander
Major Alexandr Lyubanov. VDV.

Deputy mayor Alexandr Fiodorov 103 missile brigade (Iskander-M) that Russian Iskander unit met with our SOF...

Captured
Lieutenant Colonel Maxim Kryshtop: Deputy Commander of the 47th Aviation Regiment 
Lt. Colonel Astrakhov Dmitry Mikhailovich:from SOBR
Lt.colonel Alexandr Koshel Claimed he is the chief of PsyOps counteraction group of 58th CAA His documents says he is mayor, serving in m/u 21250 - 212th Training center of tank troops (Siberian Military district). He can be promoted to lt.colonel and appointed lately on the duty of PsyOps in 58th CAA and hadn't time to change own military ID.   

Sacked
General Roman Gavrilov of Rosgvardia
General Vladislav Ershov, commander of 6th Army

Fragging incidents - okay maybe just a rumor but a fun one!
37th Guards Separate Motor Rifle Brigade commander Col. Yuri Medvedev, hospitalized in Belarus after being intentionally run over by one of his own soldiers

Captain Andrey Paliy
Captain Alexey Glushchak

 

[Hapless]

Don't think this has been linked yet. Couple of guys in a civilian vehicle, a drone and a radio:

[sross112]

The CAPT brought up a good point about the drones and having to cover LOC's. We have been talking about the MBT's and IFV's, but they have changed the game for everything really. Look at how much arty has suffered because of them and I'd even say AA assets. So when we are looking at the UGV/UAV game won't the best target be the control centers? How do you see the centers? I understand the pilots for some of the US drones flying around the world are actually within the US so will all of these vehicles be piloted the same way or will there be a hierarchy of command posts (plt/co/bn/etc) in the forward battle area. 

Also, does anti-satellite become crucial? If that is the medium for control and you take out those then the whole fleet becomes a mass of lawn ornaments.

[BeondTheGrave]

17 minutes ago, womble said:

Assault gun. Why stop at 120mm? Put a big-ole six-incher in a casemate, if all you want is some hurt brought to a fortification... The current tank gun is a dual purpose weapon that absolutley "has" to be able to defeat its peers' armour. If you've got missiles/suicide drones to do that with, you don't need hypervelocity tungsten...

The other question here, why do you need a 120mm at all? What is the mission that needs to be accomplished? If your problem is "**** that room and everyone in it" does it matter how, exactly, you accomplish it? There have been a lot of interesting developments in terms of radio triggered munition fired from shoulder launched rockets or even out of an autocannon which could clear a room through a window a mile away. If, rather, you dont want the room to exist at all I'm not sure why a hellfire cant do the same thing? And if you dont want the entire building to exist? A JDAM, dropped from drone or aircraft, would do the job even better than our 120mm platform. 

Modern tanks arn't designed for infantry support. Nobody sat around the table in the XM1 era and said 'how can we make this the system the world's best infantry support vehicle?' Trust me. I've read the documents. First concern, by far, was how to make the XM1 into a Soviet can opener. During the GWOT and past the M1, like a lot of US hardware, has been adapted to fit into multiple roles. And of course as everyone rightly points out, one system can accomplish many missions. BUT! My point here is, if you free yourself from the need to peel open Soviet/Russian armor, those jobs can be accomplished just as well other ways. This is the true value of drone/PGM warfare, and IMO we are on the brink of a tremendous period of systems evolution and proliferation.

I would compare today to the mid-1920s when automotive technology got to a point where the wild ideas of men like JFC were not quite as unrealistic as they had been right after WWI. Technology has begun to meet theory, and much like in the interwar period I think were about to see monomission platforms proliferate in the US and elsewhere as people experiment with the best ways to do old jobs. And in the process theyll realize that actually the new battlefield needs weapons to solve all kinds of jobs. The MBT isn't about to go away and, if I had to guess, well get at least one more 'classic' MBT generation from the west. But the near term future for UGVs, like UAVs and USVs, is going to be to operate in tandem with conventional forces. You might get the Leopard 3, but also all kinds of teeming support vehicles. Imagine networking your MBT platoon in with a UGV scout platoon. Forget ATGMs. Put two M2s on a 2 cylinder, give it treads and a ****load of cameras and radio sniffers, and then throw it out 1000m in front of your advancing Leos. This platform alone could automate ground recognizance and intelligence gathering. Combine with UAVs you could easily do, with ten guys and a bunch of drones, more than what an entire scout platoon would risk life and limb to do in the 1970s. Take another situation, imagine youre in a MOUT environment. Badman is in a room with an LMG and you want to make badman go boom without having to risk your guys. 1970s solution would be to either A) call in air support and erase the entire block or B ) get into some infantry fight with the guy and hope you dont get shot up. But what if you could pull up a VW bug with an armored plate and twin Bushmasters and just obliterate that one room. Or call in the location and a TOW drone emplaced on a hill two km away engages the target without your team ever having exposed itself. Or even an unmanned MGS platform with concrete defeating munitions to do the same job. 

The tank is the product of over a hundred years worth of systems evolution. Its battlefield role is heavily contextual to the 20th century battlefield. Its three functions are currently so wound up it can seem like the tank just has one job. It doesn't. And as drone proliferate we will, IMO, see the begin to unravel the MBT's role (as with so many other 'integrated' systems) and replace them with more modern solutions. Like with the English Longbow, there is no intrinsic value to the MBT. It is only valuable for the mission it can do. If the same mission can be done more cheaply, with a higher ratio of success, or with fewer human risk factors, there is no reason to cling to an outmoded technology. Like I said, I think there will be MBTs most of the rest of my life. But I think we can all see whats coming, and thats a predominantly unmanned battlefield. 

[akd]

32 minutes ago, sburke said:

Nope.  I assume this is a Colonel?

Yes, and with “wound to the head” I think we can assume he is out of the war for good.

[Pelican Pal]

RE: Drones

The discussions seems to be about how to use existing systems to counter new systems. And while I do think that will happen (ai controlled 20mm cannon with ai controlled shells?). A seemingly good solution would be to produce large numbers of small anti-drone drones. Something like the Switchblade has to carry a warhead big enough to kill tanks, but a drone that can kill a Switchblade can be quite a bit smaller and presumably cheaper (per unit cost).

You have your artillery battery setup for a fire mission and alongside it is a armored truck filled with small drones that will defend against larger drones. The "Switchblade" esque drone needs to be able to fly ~20 miles to find the target and then carry a sufficiently large warhead to kill the target. Whereas the defensive drone needs to be able to fly ~2 mile and be nasty enough to kill the Switchblade.

You could theoretically have some sort of drone CAP.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Pelican Pal

[Haiduk]

Zaporizhzhia direction. Captured Russian BTR-82A and T-72B mod.1989 or B3 probbaly in liberated Malynivka village. The tractor is present too )

.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

It is not a question of "can't or can" it is a question of comparative "can".  Is it easier for a UAV/UGS to find their targets, be they kinetic or ISR?  Or is it easier for C-UAV/UGV systems to find their targets?  Right now the former is proving more true than the latter.

We should not, and there is growing evidence that we cannot, simply wish away the realities of unmanned systems on the battlefield, or that they are here to stay.  I get the sense from some corners - and here I am talking military professionals- that they want to sweep the UAVs from the field in a "real war" so we can all go back to normal business.  The alarming trend in all of our observations, at least since 2014, is than we cannot.

Finally technology trends are on the side of unmanned systems.  More miniaturization, greater processing power, smaller better cameras, longer and lighter battery life leading to increased endurance, more potent explosives technology meaning higher lethality in smaller packages and, the big one...decreasing comparative costs per unit. Everything that is giving one a slimmer, better cellphone is driving unmanned systems farther and faster.   

And ignoring the above facts is a GREAT way to lose the next war the way the Russians are losing this one, which is to say badly. Comparative cost are everything pretty much, not just the cost at the end of the assembly line but the cost of the logistical tale associated with a given unit. It gets tricky fast when MBTs can be killed by man portable systems that cost a fiftieth of what the tank did.

[MikeyD]

Quote

The other question here, why do you need a 120mm at all? 

This is a problem that the US army has been struggling with for decades. The Pentagon wanted some direct fire close infantry support but 'committee-think' kept ratcheting-up the requirements. Instead of a simple low pressure 90mm HE chucker they got Stryker MGS with a high pressure 105mm tank gun... firing low pressure squash head rounds. Its 10x times more complex than it needed to be and is widely considered a design failure.

[Haiduk]

Mayor-general Dmytro Marchenko. The chief of Mykolaiv oblast defense.

The writing on the car "Russian military ship - go f..ck!"

Edited March 25, 2022 by Haiduk

[panzermartin]

56 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It wouldn't have done all that much better in the end, I agree, but I do think a US force would be able to take over all of eastern Ukraine within a month with another week or maybe two to establish air supremacy and degrade various other defensive capabilities.

If that had happened, maybe the Russian's presumption of surrender would have happened without the need to do urban warfare?  Or maybe certain cities would surrender?

The problem with this analogy is that the will to fight Russians is rooted in the knowledge of what a Russian occupation would be like and what the long term aims of Russia are.  The US concept of nation building, though extremely flawed and riddled with hypocrisy, isn't the same sort of threat.  So it's really not a comparable situation.

Yes good points, definitely not a fully comparable analogy, when outside the battlefield scope... More of a CM "what if", like revisiting the same mission with different units.