How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

19 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 Russia couldn't get a new plant up for thermal imagers built in two years before the sanctions, now it isn't clear they can do it at all. 

Since you mentioned TI-systems. Up until recently they got them from the french company Thales. See pic in thread below.

 

 

[DesertFox]

Walking Dead with rubber boots?

 

 

[dan/california]

You can't tell it from their battlefield performance. Maybe that is the first thing they sell? Or it isn't particularly tolerant of poor maintenance?

18 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Since you mentioned TI-systems. Up until recently they got them from the french company Thales. See pic in thread below.

 

 

 

[Machor]

Claimed to be more Ukrainian marines surrendering in Mariupol. I'm guessing they put up a defense in small pockets, and are having to surrender as they run out of ammo and supplies:

 

[DesertFox]

3 minutes ago, dan/california said:

You can't tell it from their battlefield performance. Maybe that is the first thing they sell? Or it isn't particularly tolerant of poor maintenance?

Since Thales also supplies the UK Challengers with TI-Systems and the T-90S for export, my bet is on either maintenance issues or Iwan sold Vlad a few units from his tank regiment for 3 bottles of vodka.

Thales UK supplying new TI camera for Challenger 2 tanks (janes.com)

INDIA TO BUY TI SYSTEMS (battle-updates.com)

T-90S Main Battle Tank (MBT), Russia (army-technology.com)

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, womble said:

Not when it needs materiel that simply isn't available to the economy in question. One does not simply build a fab and start churning out silicon.

Womble is on to something.  A silicon fab is an insanely expensive and complex system with bunches of multi-million dollar machines that aren't made on some filthy factory floor in some cheap labor factory.  These machines are super precision and are only made in a few countries by a relatively small number of companies.  The processes are very very sensitive to dust particles, temperature, humidity, vibration.  Some processes are done in inert gas environment.  and those fancy missiles aint gonna hit nuthin without some fancy silicon chips that don't grown on trees.  I've only gone in the fab at my workplace a few times, but it's a huge hassle of prep to suit up for a clean room environment.

So Russia needs chips, like everyone else, and can't just turn the ability on the way it could change kentucky fried chicken to Vlad's Chicken Palace.

[DesertFox]

16 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Womble is on to something.  A silicon fab is an insanely expensive and complex system with bunches of multi-million dollar machines that aren't made on some filthy factory floor in some cheap labor factory. 

Yea, and if you have to build a new fab from scratch it takes about 4 years until it starts producing stuff.

Intel made the decision to build a new fab in Magdeburg/Germany to cover the european market. Start of building the fab is 2023 and they are looking forward to have it ready for production in 2027. The invest in building the fab is about 17 Mrd. EUROs!

Milliarden-Investition: Intel baut Chipfabrik in Magdeburg | tagesschau.de

Intel set to build a new €17 billion chip manufacturing hub in Germany as it pours money into Europe | Euronews

Edited April 8, 2022 by DesertFox

[dan/california]

https://cryocooler.org/resources/Documents/C20/063.pdf

Spec sheet for the cooling system on one of Thales thermal imaging systems. I learned some things I didn't know. Definitely ways to mess that up, although they don't give in depth maintenance info on this page. However the words helium and seal appear in the same sentence, which seems to involve a vast space for things to go wrong. If I was Thales I would take down the web page bragging about being used on the T-90.

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

the words helium and seal appear in the same sentence, which seems to involve a vast space for things to go wrong

too funny

[akd]

T-80BVs rolling through Luhansk:

 

[chuckdyke]

Four Objectives. Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa and Mariupol. None taken two still contested hard to agree to a cease fire. Even the average CM player can see that. 

[asurob]

Torture chambers.  Mass rape.  Genocide.  Threatening their neighbors.  More and more I have to admit this old sailor from the cold war is coming around to the fact that maybe we need to call Ivan's bluff and enter this.  I know it means world war and further the threat of Nuclear war.  I lived through that era and spent 5 years on an aircraft carrier preparing for it and am well versed that there are no winners in that.  But at some point the red line has to get crossed and the world has to say no more.  When the Soviet Union fell I had honestly hoped in the modern world we had seen all the evil that humans could preperatrate on one another, but the reports coming out of "occupied" Ukraine the last couple days have brought me to tears and filled me with so much anger I can hardly control myself.  If I was younger Id already be there doing something carrying the wounded and help the civilians (as I was no soldier) but god damn how much more can we see before we raise our fists?

There has to be more we can do.

[DesertFox]

8 minutes ago, akd said:

T-80BVs rolling through Luhansk:

2nd T-80 is sporting the Guards symbol. Do we have any idea which unit this might be?

[dan/california]

Well, I finally got put in twitter time out for what I said about this.

I honestly think I wan't being harsh ENOUGH! 

[LongLeftFlank]

I would hazard a guess that US and British special operators have been there for weeks already, live testing out various electric warfare and antidrone countermeasures they've been refining at least since ISIS began using drones in Mosul. And coordinating with the local lads who are gonna do the actual killing.... 

Much of which can be operated remotely from Nellis AFB or RAF Menwith Hill, btw.  The 'air traffic control' concept Steve @Battlefront.com was referring to a few hundred pages back.

I don't send you to kill, I send you to be invisible!

....So that the already stumbling colossus (h/t Glantz) is shorn of all comms on day 2 of its offensive, its drones simply falling out of the sky and its older generation radios squelched or spoofed. Fuel trucks sent to the wrong town, MLRS told to churn up empty fields. 

Forward combat elements (you know, like those hastily formed VDV and spetsnaz hunter killer teams trying to beat the UA at its own game) exposed, blind, cut off. Hunted animals....

Shorn of its commanders too, maybe.  Like ULTRA but where the typewriters blow up, spectacularly!

Hey Dmitro, when I tell you, arm and fire this missile over that way!  Trust me, you'll like it bro!

While TikTok warlord Kadyrov picks up his iphone only to vanish in a big pudgy pink mist....

Edited April 9, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Fenris]

Re the Bushmasters coming from AU - I think 3 left yesterday, total of 20 to be sent. Two will be field ambulance config.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Fenris

[akd]

Fascinating story:

Quote

The first time some Russian officials were told that their country might be seriously intending to act against Ukraine was when they heard it from the director of the CIA, one official says.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61044063

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Kinophile said:

But ref the difficulty of making modern weapons in non-wartime economies, vs WW2 weapons in fully mobilized societies, there's no real equivalence, I feel.

Even so, I think a modern economy spun up to full wartime mobilization could produce modern gear at a crazy rate, far outstripping the WW2 pace.

Ack, how many times can we go over this?  No, no, and NO!  This is just total fantasy.   Didn't the supply chain disruption we are still experiencing teach you nothing?  Seriously, this keeps coming up by various people, keeps getting stomped on hard by reality, and yet it keeps coming back.

I am going to try, again, to kill this zombie

The stuff that makes up modern battlefield weaponry, vehicles, electronics, etc. is often made from exotic materials from all over the globe and made into things by highly specialized companies that do nothing but that.  You can not "spin up" something when you have no place to start from.

Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, have been technology poor.  They not only lack the end products they need, but the machines/processes to build them, plus the machines/processes that are needed to build the things that build the stuff even if they had the refined raw materials from domestic sources. They simply do not have the investments in place and their best minds have been fleeing in greater numbers every year.

Look at the embargo of various food products in 2014.  Cheese, for example.  You'd think that they would have had decent cheese before then, but they didn't.  And when the embargo hit they had to make their own.  They already had cows, creameries, and packaging facilities.  Yet their cheese industry took YEARS to get up to something less than awful.  Here's an article from 2016 that emphasizes how much corruption and criminality affects even something as simple as domestic cheese production:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/07/22/warning-this-is-not-cheese-in-russia-watch-what-you-eat-a54689

Why is such a basic thing so difficult to do in Russia?  Well, when this is your country's culture of quality control and responsibility...

Well documented scandal in March of 2014.

Now picture this sort of thing with a far worse economy and far greater stress trying to do things it has not ever been able to do at all.  It's just NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.  Not overnight, not even in several years.  Won't happen because it is physically impossible to happen.

And this isn't just to bust on Russia.  US car manufacturers had to shut down entire factories, paying workers to sit home, because a tiny little chip or two made in ROK, China, or Taiwan didn't show up on time.  You can't just turn around and produce chips out of thin air.  As I said earlier, the US would have not much better luck producing it's primary weapons without chips and parts from other countries, and unlike Russia it does have the theoretical ingredients to do so.

Steve

[akd]

Hmm…

 

[Kinophile]

@Battlefront.com by that point I was thinking of western economy spun up into full mobilization, with enough friendly countries that the REMs are available.

Absolutely not the Case for Putler's Kingdom.

[akd]

The liberation of Nova Basan:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a39651567/nova-basan-ukraine-military-photos/

[chrisl]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And this isn't just to bust on Russia.  US car manufacturers had to shut down entire factories, paying workers to sit home, because a tiny little chip or two made in ROK, China, or Taiwan didn't show up on time.  You can't just turn around and produce chips out of thin air.  As I said earlier, the US would have not much better luck producing it's primary weapons without chips and parts from other countries, and unlike Russia it does have the theoretical ingredients to do so.

Russia has essentially no semiconductor industry of its own.  Virtually every semiconductor they use comes from somewhere else.  The US still produces something like half the semiconductors used in the world, and we suffered during the chip shortage - largely because US production tends to be the more expensive, higher profit chips and many of the lower margin chips get produced overseas.  And many of the machines used for semiconductor production depend on export-restricted US technologies, so even if Russia had the money to build a few semiconductor fabs, they can't get the lithography machines needed to make anything remotely modern.  

And aside from being necessary for computation, you have to have fab capabilities to make image sensing chips (both visible and IR).  Russia is so far behind in image sensors that they were still using satellites that dropped film capsules until around 2015.  They're capable of putting spy satellites into space, but they don't have the technology to make modern spy satellites.

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

@Battlefront.com by that point I was thinking of western economy spun up into full mobilization, with enough friendly countries that the REMs are available.

Absolutely not the Case for Putler's Kingdom.

By that point the war would have been over for a year or more.  You go to war with what you have.  If that's not enough, the war ends.  The only reason why the US was able to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq is that neither opposing force was capable of causing material damage faster than it could be replaced.  If the US had suffered the same % of total inventory within 6 weeks as Russia just did, the wars would have been over for political reasons as much as military capacity reasons.  Russia can delay the political component for a while, but not the military.

Steve

[dan/california]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

By that point the war would have been over for a year or more.  You go to war with what you have.  If that's not enough, the war ends.  The only reason why the US was able to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq is that neither opposing force was capable of causing material damage faster than it could be replaced.  If the US had suffered the same % of total inventory within 6 weeks as Russia just did, the wars would have been over for political reasons as much as military capacity reasons.  Russia can delay the political component for a while, but not the military.

Steve

Putin's rolling atrocity has also proved that U.S. war stocks are not nearly big enough for a worst case scenario.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Russia has essentially no semiconductor industry of its own.  Virtually every semiconductor they use comes from somewhere else.  The US still produces something like half the semiconductors used in the world, and we suffered during the chip shortage - largely because US production tends to be the more expensive, higher profit chips and many of the lower margin chips get produced overseas.  And many of the machines used for semiconductor production depend on export-restricted US technologies, so even if Russia had the money to build a few semiconductor fabs, they can't get the lithography machines needed to make anything remotely modern.  

And aside from being necessary for computation, you have to have fab capabilities to make image sensing chips (both visible and IR).  Russia is so far behind in image sensors that they were still using satellites that dropped film capsules until around 2015.  They're capable of putting spy satellites into space, but they don't have the technology to make modern spy satellites.

Yup.  It's not like you can fire up a lathe or end mill and crank out thermal imaging arrays

Here's another analogy that might help people fathom the difference between now and WW2...

Resistance organizations in occupied Europe were provided with technical drawings from the UK for making Sten guns.  Given a fairly basic amount of machinery, some steel, and know how they could be made right under the noses of the Germans.  Here is an example made by the Polish Resistance:

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/polish-resistance-sten-copy/

The Sten was the primary SMG for the British and Commonwealth forces, yet it could also be made in a dank basement by some determined patriots.  That is the level of technology we're talking about for WW2.

Now picture the Ukrainian resistance trying to make an AK or AR in the same way.  Much tougher.  Far grater number of parts, far more need for precision, and a much wider array of machinery needed.  Could it be done?  Given enough time, sure.  But on the same scale as WW2?  No way.

And forget about making an ACOG to go with it

Steve