How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[CAZmaj]

Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles

https://realcontextnews.com/ukraine-will-easily-or-destroy-or-sideline-russias-navy-with-game-changing-anti-ship-missiles/

[chuckdyke]

They vacated the Kiev area, and it almost looks too good to be true. The nightmare would be a nuke on Kiev just to destroy the economy. Don't think for one second that Putin has one µg of humanity left in him. This war will end when somebody pushes him in the gutter like they did with Gadhafi. 

[sross112]

15 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles

https://realcontextnews.com/ukraine-will-easily-or-destroy-or-sideline-russias-navy-with-game-changing-anti-ship-missiles/

I admitted quite a bit earlier in this thread that I know very little about modern navies and modern naval combat. This article pretty much says that 72 harpoons is enough to wipe all the RuN ships off the Black Sea. To those that know how the missile defenses on ships work and have knowledge of the Russian systems, is that enough? I've always heard that the Aegis system could track and engage multiple targets, do the RuN ships have comparable systems? If 72 isn't enough, what would it take?

Thanks.

[LukeFF]

@Battlefront.com, I wouldn't spend too much of your time debating Erwin. It's like talking to a wall. 

[Kinophile]

38 minutes ago, sross112 said:

So round one is pretty much called in the favor of Ukraine unless something that truly amazes all of us happens and everyone is wrong. How it exactly plays out we still aren't sure. Does the RA make a Zitadel lunge on a Wacht Am Rhein budget and then the remnants get slowly pushed out of Ukraine? Does the RA decide it would be fruitless to waste more manpower and machines and switch over to the defensive and get ground to nothing? Do they decide that it is lost for now and fight a tentative delaying action and get slowly pushed out while trying to bleed the UA as much as possible?

Once they are pushed out I don't see the UA pursuing them into Russia. That just turns the tables, gives up their strengths and hands the advantage to the RA. So a stalemate/self-imposed DMZ goes into effect with most everything pulled out of arty range along the frontier, probably for both sides as it makes no sense to let the other side pound on you incessantly. 

So how does Russia do a round two? The war won't end until both sides agree that it is over and again the Ukraine is not going to invade and conquer Russia. So a stalemate at the border.

The UA will benefit from western support in continued equipment and help, the RA is pretty much on it's own. I could see a limited amount of new techy stuff from China but I don't think the Russians will have the money to buy very much and the Chinese won't probably want to sell them a whole lot with the world opinions as they are. But we can assume that there will be some of that.

It has been pointed out that Russia doesn't currently have and won't be able to conjure the ability to produce high tech weaponry due to sanctions. So no chance of them coming back with a fleet of T-14's and Terminators covered by all sorts of other sophisticated stuff. What options would they have?

What if they go low tech? The economy won't support huge expenditures for fancy stuff, but Putin can spin the situation any way he wants. Rally the motherland for war with the nazis. Go back more in line with the Soviet system and seize the arms industry "for the people". Pull those thousands of tanks out of storage and start refurbishing everything. Conscript in a couple million troops. They have the low tech ability to produce the rifles, grenades, bombs, ordnance and all the other pre-microchip stuff. 

Again, they can wait the two or three years or whatever it takes before initiating round 2. It doesn't have to be right away and well, it can't be right away. Build up a powerful 1985-1990ish force with traditional concept for the RA that quantity has a quality of it's own. In the meantime they get to purge the officer corps and have time to get commanders and troops into the right positions and trained up to an adequate level to conduct old soviet doctrine attacks.

Then when they deem themselves ready they can kick it off. Phase one to the Dnepr, phase two to a Zymotir/Odessa line, phase three the rest. 

How does Ukraine defeat that? I know the occupation will be long and bloody but under the Soviet era regime that Putin has instituted the Soviet era repression tactics come back too. So no uprising in the motherland would be tolerated and definitely nothing in occupied territories. Iron curtain goes back up on the borders and the insurgency would only last so long. Might cost the RA a million men, but I bet Putin is willing to pay that sort of a price.

Thoughts?

Interesting.

One quibble - I'd call this invasion Round 2, as it is. Donbass was Round 1.

You mention Soviet Doctrine, as in that's the DNA if the Russian Army. But that's an old mentality, rotting in place with the BTG concept. The UA is a newer army and within 6 months it'll be even more cohesive, integrated to NATO and greatly up-gunned.

Russ will simply have new/rebuilt formations with the same ORBAT and doctrine that got them trashed in the first place, now facing the same foe who is still very pissed, very dangerous and very smart.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Kinophile

[Battlefront.com]

I haven't seen any corroboration of this yet, but we all know it is bound to happen.  Russia is making refusal to go to Ukraine a crime (presumably if otherwise have the right not to):

 

[sross112]

3 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Interesting.

One quibble - I'd call this invasion Round 2, as it is. Donbass was Round 1.

You mention Soviet Doctrine, as in that's the DNA if the Russian Army. But that's an old mentality, rotting in place with the BTG concept. The UA is a newer army and within 6 months it'll be even more cohesive, integrated to NATO and greatly up-gunned.

Russ will simply have new/rebuilt formations with the same ORBAT and doctrine that got them trashed in the first place, now facing the same foe who is still very pissed, very dangerous and very smart.

Ok, I concede to round 3.  

Actually I was thinking of cold war army force structures. Learn from this and go back to what worked for them with structures and doctrine. I actually think their older models were more flexible and useful compared to the BTG model. The BTG was formed due to a lack of manpower and trying to make the most with what they had. In my scenario they can scrap that and conscript a large enough number that they can revert back to earlier structures.

[Battlefront.com]

Russian bridging equipment didn't quite get the job done.  V mark puts this somewhere west of Kiev unless it was recently relocated without redoing its tactical markings.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

@Battlefront.com, I wouldn't spend too much of your time debating Erwin. It's like talking to a wall. 

Not much time spent on that.  Rolls right off the finger tips these days

Based on his reluctance to engage in debate thus far I'm not expecting much out of it.  However, it still helps to sharpen my own thinking.  Plus, someone just starting in on this thread from the most recent postings might get something out of it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

52 minutes ago, sross112 said:

So how does Russia do a round THREE? The war won't end until both sides agree that it is over and again the Ukraine is not going to invade and conquer Russia. So a stalemate at the border.

Updated to reflect Round 3

I'm not sure that it does.  I expect that if Putin retains control of his arse in Moscow that the border will become similar to the two Koreas.  Putin will never renounce his territorial claims in Ukraine, especially if the Donbas is retaken (not sure if that will happen, certainly not Crimea in this scenario).  And FORGET about admitting to a war of aggression, war crimes, etc. Therefore, I don't see much more than an armistice limited to not shooting at each other (much) coming out of Round 2.

What then?  Well, again presuming that Putin is still the man in charge, I think he'll seek to rebuild his parade army and claim that this time he's built it to last.  I don't expect much shooting on the demarcation line because Ukraine is going to respond and so not much point in that like there was between Rounds 1 and 2 when Russia wasn't overtly weak.

Putin will have to focus more attention on the crumbling of his nation state than his military.  Things are not going to be good for a long while.  Russia has long term options available to create a subsistence level economy if Putin can "convince" the oligarchs to steal less than they are used to.  But subsistence level is about all they can hope for.

I am doubtful that Putin will live long enough to see Round 3 even if he manages to hang onto power in 2022.  He's nearly 70 and Russians don't tend to live much beyond that either due to poor health care (obviously not an issue for Putin) or because of "heart attacks" and "accidents".

I'm not sure if Putin's successor will have the same obsession with Ukraine that Putin does.  If not, then there will be some moves to normalize relations.

Steve

[amadeupname]

So when are the modules coming out now? I imagine if we put all the bull **** in this thread and translated it into cm code we'd be on engine 17 by now.

Edited April 13, 2022 by amadeupname

[G.I. Joe]

36 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I admitted quite a bit earlier in this thread that I know very little about modern navies and modern naval combat. This article pretty much says that 72 harpoons is enough to wipe all the RuN ships off the Black Sea. To those that know how the missile defenses on ships work and have knowledge of the Russian systems, is that enough? I've always heard that the Aegis system could track and engage multiple targets, do the RuN ships have comparable systems? If 72 isn't enough, what would it take?

Thanks.

I'm sure there are people here who know more about these things than I do, but the short answer is that the anti-missile defences on the Slava, Krivak II and Admiral Grigorovich (Krivak IV) class ships in the Black Sea Fleet are quite capable, but not comparable to AEGIS (highly integrated computerized fire control with a phased-array radar). I'd say 72 Harpoons probably could destroy the main striking power of the Black Sea Fleet but would hesitate to suggest that they inevitably would.

Thinking back to my days of playing Harpoon Classic, I'd guess an attacker would probably allocate 10-20 for the Slava (which would probably take at least 2-3 hits to sink), 5-10 per Krivak IV and 5 per Krivak II (one hit would probably at least disable a frigate), but none of that is based on any actual doctrine or calculation and it may all be overkill. The high end of those numbers doesn't leave much throw weight for taking on patrol boats and amphibs, but it does suggest that the article's claims are credible.

More to the point, it raises the prospect of the Black Sea Fleet being taken out of play by the deterrent value of the Harpoons. Warships are very hard to replace (probably all but impossible for Russia under the current sanctions) and the Russian Navy might be feeling risk averse after watching the land war.

[amadeupname]

cool. but when's more content coming out? My wallet is ready to buy.

[Requiem762]

I too am interested in the future of combat mission content. There has been a lot of totally baseless speculation that hasnt done much to actually assess the situation on the ground or the future of the game.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2022 by Requiem762

[Taranis]

West of Kharkiv (northern pincer)

[amadeupname]

On 4/10/2022 at 7:34 PM, Rice said:

Imagine if CM got as much dev time as this thread

most intelligent thing I've read in this thread. 

I've also taken the liberty of forwarding this over to the GRU as proof their psyop campaign is working. 

[kraze]

10 hours ago, panzermartin said:

Given the bad state of Ukraine army in 2014 and the defeat in Donbas I wonder why Putin didn't attempt to reach Kiev back then. He would have an almost certain victory compared to a much more aware and better equipped UAF of today. Is his army in better state now? I doubt much has changed. Maybe the US administration back then (Hilary and Co) would be a lot more aggressive in response and he feared that. 

Because there was no defeat in Donbas. Russians paid dearly for every meter of the ground to a point they had no way to proceed much further.

Donbas was as much of improvisation to them as it is to us - russians were planning an invasion to occupy whole country in 2015, due to inevitably falsified elections by Yanukovich and protests that would follow but Maidan forced their hand earlier, when they weren't ready enough.

The goal of Russia is always one and the same - complete and total destruction of Ukraine.

If they could they would.

After all it took 8 years of preparations to launch this attack with that very same goal - and yet here we are.

Edited April 13, 2022 by kraze

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Updated to reflect Round 3

I'm not sure that it does.  I expect that if Putin retains control of his arse in Moscow that the border will become similar to the two Koreas.  Putin will never renounce his territorial claims in Ukraine, especially if the Donbas is retaken (not sure if that will happen, certainly not Crimea in this scenario).  And FORGET about admitting to a war of aggression, war crimes, etc. Therefore, I don't see much more than an armistice limited to not shooting at each other (much) coming out of Round 2.

What then?  Well, again presuming that Putin is still the man in charge, I think he'll seek to rebuild his parade army and claim that this time he's built it to last.  I don't expect much shooting on the demarcation line because Ukraine is going to respond and so not much point in that like there was between Rounds 1 and 2 when Russia wasn't overtly weak.

Putin will have to focus more attention on the crumbling of his nation state than his military.  Things are not going to be good for a long while.  Russia has long term options available to create a subsistence level economy if Putin can "convince" the oligarchs to steal less than they are used to.  But subsistence level is about all they can hope for.

I am doubtful that Putin will live long enough to see Round 3 even if he manages to hang onto power in 2022.  He's nearly 70 and Russians don't tend to live much beyond that either due to poor health care (obviously not an issue for Putin) or because of "heart attacks" and "accidents".

I'm not sure if Putin's successor will have the same obsession with Ukraine that Putin does.  If not, then there will be some moves to normalize relations.

Steve

Regardless of how Putin departs, the next guy will have a 25% of GDP incentive to at least convincingly lie that he gloriously happy that Ukraine is member of the EU and NATO. if lying convincingly puts the next war of for twenty years, who knows what will be different.

[Taranis]

First apparition of MILAN :

 

"France does not detail the equipment it is sending to Ukraine, but yesterday Jean-Dominique Merchet, a journalist specializing in defense issues for the L'Opinion site, wrote that "France has delivered at least three types of missiles light. Old Milan anti-tank systems (French-German manufacture) and Javelins, more recent machines acquired in the United States during the war in Afghanistan and stored since then. Mistral Very Short Range Anti-Aircraft Missiles (SATCP) were also provided. We do not know the volume of these deliveries, but it is probably not very high, given the low ammunition stocks of the French army, pointed out by a recent parliamentary report. He adds that “The supply of its weapon systems was accompanied by the training of Ukrainian military personnel called upon to implement them. This took place before the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.

The MilitaryLeak site writes that these are a few dozen Milan systems and recalls that Italy has also supplied Ukraine with a modernized version of this missile."

For information, recently France had an ammunition stocks scandal but I don't really want detailed it now due to the conflict.

[dan/california]

33 minutes ago, Requiem762 said:

I too am interested in the future of combat mission content. There has been a lot of totally baseless speculation that hasnt done much to actually assess the situation on the ground or the future of the game.

 

 

 

36 minutes ago, amadeupname said:

cool. but when's more content coming out? My wallet is ready to buy.

 

40 minutes ago, amadeupname said:

So when are the modules coming out now? I imagine if we put all the bull **** in this thread and translated it into cm code we'd be on engine 17 by now.

Every major military in the world is reevaluating its procurement plans for the next twenty years, and in one of histories odder accidents our little hobby has suddenly become very important part helping them decide how to do that. If Steve has a tenth of the military contracts I think he has, or is in the process of getting, it is an outright miracle that he TALKS to us. When the war in Ukraine dies down enough that it doesn't look utterly immoral to release a game based on it, or another one, actually. Maybe we will get some benefit from all that Pentagon development money.

[Taranis]

 

Izium bridghead area

[amadeupname]

19 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

 

Every major military in the world is reevaluating its procurement plans for the next twenty years, and in one of histories odder accidents our little hobby has suddenly become very important part helping them decide how to do that. If Steve has a tenth of the military contracts I think he has, or is in the process of getting, it is an outright miracle that he TALKS to us. When the war in Ukraine dies down enough that it doesn't look utterly immoral to release a game based on it, or another one, actually. Maybe we will get some benefit from all that Pentagon development money.

I appreciate his input. He was right in the fact that he called this war a decade ago, and I think that makes him worth listening to to some extent. Also he makes my favorite game. I'm literally on here begging to give his company my money.

I can understand not wanting to release the BS module in light of current events. But what does the war in Ukraine have to do with the Soviet Union? The country doesn't exist. So I'm curious as to why has all of the work stopped on Red Thunder and Cold War? When's the module coming out for Final Blitzkrieg?

Edited April 13, 2022 by amadeupname

[G.I. Joe]

8 minutes ago, amadeupname said:

I appreciate his input. He was right in the fact that he called this war a decade ago, and I think that makes him worth listening to to some extent. 

I can understand not wanting to release the BS module in light of current events. But what does the war in Ukraine have to do with the Soviet Union? The country doesn't exist. So I'm curious as to why has all of the work stopped on the Red Thunder and Cold War? When's the module coming out for Final Blitzkrieg?

Rough guess from a n00b in this community: as @dan/california alluded to, Battlefront has contracts from actual militaries, and those probably just ramped up a little bit in recent weeks. I would hazard a guess that a professional simulation tool for the Pentagon or another NATO or SEATO Ministry of Defence might just take priority over a World War II game for us history nerds...

Edited April 13, 2022 by G.I. Joe

[Taranis]

SAM Pantsyr and S-300 filmed in Ivanivka of Luhansk region (russian controled area)

[Peregrine]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russian bridging equipment didn't quite get the job done.  V mark puts this somewhere west of Kiev unless it was recently relocated without redoing its tactical markings.

Steve

It's anti-tractor defense. You stick your tank in the mud then surround it with a large moat.