How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

Two targets with one shot - from 44th arty brigade

 

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Reportedly in Izium area 95th air-assault brigade destroyed two Russian helicopters, which tried to land the troops. Targets as if were hit with ATGM Korsar. On the video is a smoke seen on the crashsite, on other video, soldier says taht two choppers shot down and they go to clean up terrain from survived Russians airbornes.

So, Russia tried to pull off a small tactical airborne assault?  Interesting.  I wonder how many of these have gone undetected or undocumented since the early days of the war when they seemed to be doing a lot of them (and generally getting wiped out).

Steve

[Lethaface]

15 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Did you see the head of the EU parliament in Kyiv yesterday or the day before? It was hurting the poor woman not to announce Ukraines membership while the battle is still raging.

I did see it. Do you have any knowledge about how the EU works?

[DesertFox]

 

 

[db_zero]

The events in Ukraine are going to add some more fuel to the fire regarding the highly controversial reorganization of the US Marine Corps. The current commandant has eliminated all tanks, reduced artillery, helicopters and fixed wing assets to focus on guided missiles, drones, long range anti-ship missiles batteries and long-range unmanned surface vessels that has sensors and weapons that allow for pinpoint bombardment. They are also buying unmanned boats loaded with Kamikaze drones.

The reason for the re-org is the likely adversary China is a Pacific oriented theater that involves vast distances and the need for light highly deployable forces. Many of the potential hot spots are small atolls and shoals. Tanks are too cumbersome and heavy to land on these atolls and the risk of losing them to handheld anti-tank weapons is too great is the argument.

Artillery is also limited by the fact many of the tiny islands are so small they can't be used from a safe distance away from enemy fire and may not be able to use indirect fire at close range. While not totally useless its argued that tanks and artillery "are of less value than the things we need the most" and with a limited budget choices have to be made.

   
This has drawn the ire of just about every past commandant and they have been engaging in a PR campaign to slow or stop the re-org and are now lobbying congress. The argument here is the force structure is too tailored for a potential fight with China and would be ineffective elsewhere. There have been arguments that eliminating tanks makes the new force structure vulnerable in a fight with a armored heavy opponent.

The events in Ukraine where light infantry armed with guided missiles are decimating tanks and IFV's, pretty much invalidates the infantry is vulnerable to armored formations even when taking into account the Russians lack of finesse.

The argument that the new force structure would not be useful in a theater like Europe is also looking sketchy. A force structure like the new Marine Corps one would be highly effective in the southern coastal region of Ukraine. Anti-ship missile batteries would make any sort of Russian amphibious invasion or ship resupply of land forces a very risky proposition. Long range unmanned surface vessels with precision guns and guided missiles and drones would also be very effective.

Norway another area the marines currently train in would be another region where the new force structure would be very effective as would Sweden and Finland if it ever came down to it.

I still believe tanks are highly effective when properly used, but they are expensive to acquire, expensive to maintain and they will definitely need APS and more APS systems need to be developed. All of this will require money, lots of it and they are not easily deployable as their weight is already approaching the limits of practicality and adding on more stuff to protect them will only add to the weight problem.

In the past few decades global populations have been trending away from rural areas into urban areas. Over 90% of global commerce moves on the sea, so it follows that urban areas located near the water is where the centers of government and economic power lie.

A light infantry centric force with precision weapons, drones, unmanned surface vessels and anti-ship missiles makes a lot of sense. He may be highly controversial but General Berger is beginning to look very visionary.

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by db_zero

[Haiduk]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So, Russia tried to pull off a small tactical airborne assault?  Interesting.  I wonder how many of these have gone undetected or undocumented since the early days of the war when they seemed to be doing a lot of them (and generally getting wiped out).

Steve

I've written several days ago that Russians conducted helicopters landing in this area (SOF of aimobile units), which even captured a village, establishing new bridgehead, but were eliminated all later.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Haiduk

[DesertFox]

Another one for the farmers...

 

 

[Vet 0369]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

130th recon battalion hit Russian BMP-3 (?) with ATGM. Big BOOM

 

Finally! A confirmation of the the explosive power of my BMP-3s while playing CMBS. Looks just like my game.

[danfrodo]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So, Russia tried to pull off a small tactical airborne assault?  Interesting.  I wonder how many of these have gone undetected or undocumented since the early days of the war when they seemed to be doing a lot of them (and generally getting wiped out).

Steve

I wonder what the russian airborne corps did to upset the Putin so much that he has so purposefully and actively been sending them to their deaths.

In general in Izium, I am hoping that the UA pullout will lead to Putin et al driving lots of forces across the river into an ambush.  Just hoping.  Easier to destroy them this way, trapped w river at back and UA holding high ground.  I can just picture Putin looking over a map, like Hitler in days of old, saying "now we've got them!  Everything attack here, right now!  the enemy is broken!  Send in airborne troops & armor immediately!"

[Bulletpoint]

3 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

I wonder what the russian airborne corps did to upset the Putin so much that he has so purposefully and actively been sending them to their deaths.

Maybe it's all part of his cunning plan? Stalin purged the officer corps so they could not conspire against him - Putin purges the entire army.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[Battlefront.com]

48 minutes ago, The Steppenwulf said:

I just don't see why the Kremlin would have made this withdrawal public knowledge without something in return - it would have otherwise been a cataclysmic own goal inviting huge military losses.

Ah, but you forget that in Russia there's nobody to challenge an official position.  Therefore, Putin can spin this any way he wants.  And so he did!  The way it was spun in Russian media is that the attack on Kiev was only to distract Ukrainian forces away from the real objective, which is to liberate the Luhansk and Donetsk territory from the Ukrainian Nazis.  Now that mission has been successfully completed, therefore Russia has no reason to keep its forces around Kiev.  Plus the withdrawal is a sign of good faith for the negotiations which are seeking to get a cease fire.

Therefore, Russia announced something positive to its people to show them how well the war is going and how generous Russia is at the peace negotiations.

Now, anybody who isn't brainwashed or ignorant of the facts knows this is all BS to the extreme.  But since Russia wasn't pitching this to informed people, that doesn't matter.  Here's how things are in the real world...

Obviously Russia intended to take over Kiev as part of its broader strategic goal of having Ukraine be a slave state to Moscow's control.  We all know that this attack failed.  Miserably.  The terror campaign against Kiev also failed to produce positive results.

This put Russia in a difficult position militarily because it had significant forces (some of its best, in fact) arrayed around Kiev because that was the big prize they were looking to secure.  Those forces were getting ground down by successful Ukrainian strikes and counter attacks.  At the same time supplying the forces there wasn't easy and if Belarus is half as unstable as we think it is supply could be suddenly cut off completely.  Ukrainian counter attacks were also looking to cut them off and starve them out.

From a military standpoint staying in positions around Kiev, even if the rest of the war was going OK, was abject stupidity.  It took the Russians a couple of weeks to admit to this, but eventually they came around to the understanding that withdrawal was the only option other than losing all the forces there.  So they came up with a cover story and did the least worst of the two options.

At the same time the rest of the war is not going well.  Russia needed whatever combat power it could scrape away from Kiev to fight elsewhere.  That, obviously, was not part of the official Russian messaging to its people

Steve

[acrashb]

4 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Plz just hit the ignore button and move on

Took me a while to find it, but I did and now my reading in this thread will be faster and considerably more pleasant.  Thanks.

Edited April 2, 2022 by acrashb

[DesertFox]

 

 

[sburke]

More sanctions fallout

Sberbank’s U.K. Unit Faces Collapse Amid Russia Sanctions (msn.com)

[Battlefront.com]

20 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I've written several days ago that Russians conducted helicopters landing in this area (SOF of aimobile units), which even captured a village, establishing new bridgehead, but were eliminated all later.

Ah!  Thanks.  I read everything you post so I must have forgotten.

My point, I think, is to express surprise that they are still doing these insertions.  Anything other than high quality troops isn't worth trying, yet even with high quality units the ending seems to be no more high quality unit.

That said, what else is Russia supposed to do with high quality troops designed for such operations?  Because Russia doesn't care about getting its people killed, I suppose they don't mind losing so many on the off chance that one of them will achieve something other than death.

Steve

[Vet 0369]

23 minutes ago, db_zero said:

The events in Ukraine are going to add some more fuel to the fire regarding the highly controversial reorganization of the US Marine Corps. The current commandant has eliminated all tanks, reduced artillery, helicopters and fixed wing assets to focus on guided missiles, drones,long range anti-ship missiles batteries and long-range unmanned surface vessels that has sensors and weapons that allow for pinpoint bombardment. They are also buying unmanned boats loaded with Kamikaze drones.

The reason for the re-org is the likely adversary China is a Pacific oriented theater that involves vast distances and the need for light highly deployable forces. Many of the potential hot spots are small atolls and shoals. Tanks are too cumbersome and heavy to land on these atolls and the risk of losing them to handheld anti-tank weapons is too great is the argument.

Artillery is also limited by the fact many of the tiny islands are so small they can't be used from a safe distance away from enemy fire and may not be able to use indirect fire at close range. While not totally useless its argued that tanks and artillery "are of less value than the things we need the most" and with a limited budget choices have to be made.

   
This has drawn the ire of just about every past commandant and they have been engaging in a PR campaign to slow or stop the re-org and are now lobbying congress. The argument here is the force structure is too tailored for a potential fight with China and would be ineffective elsewhere. There have been arguments that eliminating tanks makes the new force structure vulnerable in a fight with a armored heavy opponent.

The events in Ukraine where light infantry armed with guided missiles are decimating tanks and IFV's, pretty much invalidates the infantry is vulnerable to armored formations, even taking into account the Russians lack of finesse.

The argument that the new force structure would not be useful in a theater like Europe is also looking sketchy. A force structure like the new Marine Corps one would be highly effective in the southern coastal region of Ukraine. Anti-ship missile batteries would make any sort of Russian amphibious invasion or ship resupply of land force a very risky proposition. Long range unmanned surface vessels with precision guns and guided missiles and drones would also be very effective.

Norway another region the marines currently train in would be another region where the new force structure would be very effective as would Sweden and Finland if it ever came down to it.

I still believe tanks are highly effective when properly used, but they are expensive to acquire, expensive to maintain and they will definitely need APS and more APS systems need to be developed. All of this will require money, lots of it and they are not easily deployable as their weight is already approaching the limits of practicality and adding on more stuff to protect them will only add to the weight problem.

In the past few decades global populations have been trending away from rural areas into urban areas. Over 90% of global commerce moves on the sea, so it follows that urban areas located near the water is where the centers of government and economic power lie.

A light infantry centric force with precision weapons, drones, unmanned surface vessels and anti-ship missiles make a lot of sense. He may be highly controversial but General Berger is beginning to look very visionary.

 

You missed one of the more important changes. He has added a battalion of infantry. Also, how are “Light Infantry” being defined? Based on my service in the USMC,I honestly wouldn’t consider a Marine Platoon, Company, or Battalion to be “Light Infantry.” 

[Aragorn2002]

40 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

I did see it. Do you have any knowledge about how the EU works?

Indeed. Accepting Ukraine into the EU without huge reforms and a long process of cleansing it from all the corruption would be the end of the EU. Expecting anything else is just naive. For Zelensky it's just a means to make the EU feel guilty. Same goes for NATO. with regard to corruption the situation in Ukraine isn't much better than in Russia.  We're not waiting for another Greece disaster.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[DesertFox]

1 minute ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Indeed. Accepting Ukraine into the EU without huge reforms and a long process of cleansing it from all the corruption would be the end of the EU. Expecting anything else is just naive.

Maybe they can be in in aprox. 3 years if they weed out all of their corruption, but I doubt it will be earlier.

[mosuri]

9 hours ago, Taranis said:

A little number juggling for fun :
In 2020 :
  UKR spend 6 B $ in military. GDP = 155 B $ = 3.8 % in military

 RUS spend 67 B $ in military. GDP = 1483 B $ = 4.5 % in military (how much corrupted is a good question )

 USA spend 766 B $ in military. GDP = 20 936 B $ = 3.6 % in military

So 300 M $, it's a 5% bonus for UKR of it's military expenditure and only 0.04% of US military expenditure.

I haven't keep track of all assistance since the beginning of the invasion but I wouldn't be surprise there is a at least 50 % bonus expenditure for UKR.

source : Trading economics

 

Another nice bonus is the donations from people all over the world to the armed forces of Ukraine. I was wondering how it was going and was happy to see this update:

Nearly UAH 13.7 Billion Transferred for Needs of Military, over UAH 619 Million Remains in Special Account

If I did my currency conversion correctly 13.7 billion UAH is 460 million USD.

[danfrodo]

18 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

Wow, that is quite a haul!  Two MBTs and ~7 armored BMPs.  That's a big chunk of a BTG.  Warms my heart.  The russian losses are just incredible and it keeps going on.  Nice ambush, must've been something to see.

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Indeed. Accepting Ukraine into the EU without huge reforms and a long process of cleansing it from all the corruption would be the end of the EU. Expecting anything else is just naive. For Zelensky it's just a means to make the EU feel guilty. Same goes for NATO. with regard to corruption the situation in Ukraine isn't much better than in Russia.

Yes, I think it is important for the EU to not lower its standards out of sympathy for Ukraine's plight.  There are still significant corruption problems with countries like Bulgaria even after all these years.

Ukraine has made big improvements since 2014.  Not enough, clearly, but they still had lingering compromises with Russian money and influence.  I am hoping that this war finishes that off for good.  It should, especially because Russia is not going to have the money to spend on Ukraine as it has in the past. 

With the effective end of Russia's interference and clear reform targets from the EU, not to mention investment to help with implementation, I have high hopes that Ukraine will "get its house in order" in a fairly short period of time.

Steve

[acrashb]

10 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

with regard to corruption the situation in Ukraine isn't much better than in Russia.

I agree - mostly because transparency.org agrees.  Having said that, Ukraine has been trending up since 2014 and Zelensky, when this is over, will have tremendous political capital to spend in further reducing corruption.  The people may also support this if they understand how important it is to protect them in the near future.

And it is likely that Russia will continue as-is or trend down.  There are no effective external incentives to change (e.g., no EU membership being dangled).

And even given relatively high levels of corruption in Ukranian society, there don't seem to negative effects in the UA within an order of magnitude of the effects in the Russian army.  So something was going right (or better) within the UA.

[Lethaface]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, I think it is important for the EU to not lower its standards out of sympathy for Ukraine's plight.  There are still significant corruption problems with countries like Bulgaria even after all these years.

Indeed, not to mention the likes of Orban. Although I'm pro EU, there were quite a lot of problems which need to be sorted out pronto. I have some hopes the current situation will unite Europe and EU on the larger issues that need to be dealt with.

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ukraine has made big improvements since 2014.  Not enough, clearly, but they still had lingering compromises with Russian money and influence.  I am hoping that this war finishes that off for good.  It should, especially because Russia is not going to have the money to spend on Ukraine as it has in the past. 

With the effective end of Russia's interference and clear reform targets from the EU, not to mention investment to help with implementation, I have high hopes that Ukraine will "get its house in order" in a fairly short period of time.

Steve

I hope so too! 

[Taranis]

A local resident examines destroyed Russian tanks in the village of Dmytrivka, Ukraine, Saturday, April 2, 2022. EFREM LUKATSKY / AP

* Tank = T-72B3

[The_MonkeyKing]

what?