How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[keas66]

Amusing if true :

 

[Haiduk]

Kids play in checkpoint. Man jokingly two times incorrectly says word "palianytsia", which Russians usually can't say in right way 

 

[Haiduk]

Very good disguising of Russian SP-howitzers, but looks like it didn't help - position was abandoned. 

 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Kids play in checkpoint. Man jokingly two times incorrectly says word "palianytsia", which Russians usually can't say in right way 

 

Thank you for that description!  I saw this video a few days ago and didn't understand the humor.  Now I do

Steve

[db_zero]

The US Army is going to select a new light tank to equip their light units this Summer.

The General Dynamics Griffen2 is the only competitor left so looks like that will be the winner of contract.

[kraze]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Thank you for that description!  I saw this video a few days ago and didn't understand the humor.  Now I do

Steve

The related joke is that "we have an IFF codeword that our enemy knows but cannot use".

In fact a lot of saboteurs were caught literally like that by TD, not kidding.

Edited April 17, 2022 by kraze

[danfrodo]

25 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Amusing if true :

 

Wow, if that's real then russian corruption is beyond anything I could've imagined.  Buyers & sellers working together to  pocket some money.  Well done. 

[acrashb]

On 4/12/2022 at 11:32 AM, The_Capt said:

And here I do not disagree but the magnitude of "less-extended front", "fewer pincers" and "better rear-echelon defence" "solving a lot" is potentially enormous. Translating this into theory we are talking about force-to-space ratios in the frontages, manoeuvre restrictions we do not have a playbook for, and "better rear-echelon defence" are four words that could very well mean "redesign our entire logistics system". 

 

On 4/10/2022 at 6:40 PM, The_Capt said:

I can see Russia trying for this but again the frontages they are shooting for are simply too large.  They have walked back from 1300kms, to about 800, again the entire Western Front in WW1 was about 500-600 kms and both sides parked millions on that frontage in order to create a stalemate. 

I've been thinking about these two things and their interaction.

The first issue, which has happened often in this thread and which I’ve seen in other commentary, is comparing frontage from WW I / WW II with the frontage in this war.  The fundamental problem, which requires a paradigm shift, is that 'frontage' is a linear (one-dimensional) term.  This works when air dominance is not terribly important and ISR and related effective force projection is limited to the LOS of binoculars.  So already it works relatively less well with WW II, as air dominance was reasonably important in that conflict.

If two armies are thought of as two sheets of thin cardboard on a flat surface that interact mostly where their edges touch, then the linear metric and comparison of frontage from WW I to now works fine.

But it has never, at least since the invention of ranged weapons like throwing a rock, worked exactly that way, and while the approximation may have been fine in WW I it isn’t fine now.  

Instead of linear, one-dimensional frontage, we have three-dimensional frontage extending back as far as artillery can throw under observation. Let’s say 5km in WW I – binoculars with ideal viewing – and 20km today (unlimited spotting with drones / LEO satellites, discounting cruise and ballistic missiles since they are not really tactical weapons, and using the range of the 2S19 Msta) with a 5km set-back from the front for some reasonable safety of the artillery. If our observation platforms are also lethal and exist in quantity, then the depth gets greatly extended.

Let’s says the height in WWI would be about half a kilometer for relatively effective machine gun / small arms AA, today 4km for MANPADs (roughly double this if we include vehicle-mounted systems like the 2K22 Tunguska).
So a 10km ‘front’ in WWI has a volume of 25km^3, and today has a volume of 800km^3.  This means that for a given WWI frontage, comparisons should multiply by a factor of 32 to scale to modern, as seen in Ukraine, warfare.  

This factor is imperfect.  The volume isn’t a rectangular sweep, as the height declines with depth; the depth is variable depending on the type of artillery used, spotting conditions, and so on; modern firepower is significantly higher per soldier; and my numbers are estimates subject to disputation (especially the height of WW I).  But the overall thesis, that frontage should mean volume, and the volume of the battlespace is greatly larger than in previous wars, holds.

So the ‘frontage’ that a modern army can hold and maneuver in is much shorter for a given manpower number.
This interacts with pincers / encirclement.  If we have a straight-ish front, we have a certain volume to defend; pincers significantly increase this volume and each arm has to be wide enough to allow for logistics in the middle, like the heartwood of a tree.  Based on my numbers above, that’s 40km wide with a logistics corridor, let’s say 45km minimum on each side.  Which starts to look less like a pincer and more like moving the front forward on a 90km front.

 
Which goes back to, I think you said elsewhere, much flatter fronts advanced more slowly / simultaneously.  So blitzkrieg is dead.

I’m interested in your comments especially in two areas: a) have I just re-invented the wheel in terms of thinking more about volume and less about frontage (I hope so; I'm not ground-breakingly brilliant and surely this is an ordinary concept in military circles )?;  b) overall how does this interact with the theoretical frameworks that you use at work?

[Taranis]

 

[acrashb]

And on another note, sanctions are working:

Russia suspends production of anti-aircraft missile systems - intelligence (ukrinform.net)

 

[dan/california]

33 minutes ago, acrashb said:

And on another note, sanctions are working:

Russia suspends production of anti-aircraft missile systems - intelligence (ukrinform.net)

 

Sending the people who make your missiles to the front is a whole new level of eating your seed corn. Not only is that factory shut, they don't ever expect to reopen.

[Battlefront.com]

The report of some exchange of fire between DPR and regular Russian troops doesn't surprise me too much.  Both forces are stressed out, lack discipline, and have distinct differences in terms of why they are fighting.  Back in 2014/2015 there were instances where Russians attacked DLPR forces that weren't doing what the Kremlin wanted.  It's totally possible that a disagreement got to the point of shooting.

As for the fighting in the Kharkiv area and some parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk fronts... it seems Russia is entering a very unsettled phase of the war.

Russia has kept up the attacks all along the Ukrainian lines for any number of different reasons which aren't really relevant.  What is relevant is that each of these small attacks has resulted in significant friendly casualties without achieving much.  As I showed a bunch of pages back, the daily losses of Russian forces (and I include the DLPR forces here) equates to a BTG fully destroyed every 3-6 days.  Sometimes significantly more than that.  But the losses aren't necessarily concentrated within a single BTG.

What we're seeing is several BTGs losing a few percentage points of combat strength every day or two.  Since reserve units are very hard to come by this means that attacks in one sector of frontage are being conducted by the same units day after day.  1% loss per day means in 10 days of constant attacks the force is going to be down a cumulative 10%. 

These fruitless attacks have been going on since the start of the war, which means fairly small sectors of frontage have likely seen BTGs become combat ineffective more than once already.  Yet they don't seem to have been withdrawn from the front to rebuild, or at least not for an adequate amount of time.  Which means the replacements are being fed into the combat units  more-or-less actively engaged in combat.  This is not a sustainable practice even if the manpower is readily available and already trained, which seems not to be the case.

What does all this mean?  Not only is the offensive capacity for these units spent, but its defensive capabilities are likely also significantly degraded and in places nearly gone.  Moreover, there isn't a lot of counter attacking options for the Russians since they don't have fresh forces.  And that means that when Ukraine decides a sector is ripe for counter attack, the counter attack is likely to succeed to the point of recapturing terrain.  Russia might shove some depleted unit into the gap, but that too has a fairly rapid point of diminishing returns.

From what I see the ability for Russia to hold what it has already taken is rapidly deteriorating in places.  Ukraine likely knows where the softest spots are and that's where we're seeing counter offensive activities.  I expect we'll see a lot more of them in the next week and I expect many of them will be quite successful.

Is this the beginning stage of a collapse of significant portion of Russian held frontage?  I think so.  We'll likely know by the end of the week, if not sooner, however I expect some significant retaking of ground in Luhansk and Kharkiv areas.  Count this as a Steve Prediction™ that you guys can hold me to

Steve

[kraze]

7 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Sending the people who make your missiles to the front is a whole new level of eating your seed corn.

They send them to the front so they can try to steal ours.

[danfrodo]

Good luck w that, Putin-ites! 

If Russia were actually having successes and capturing men & equipment on the battlefield I think we'd see lots of video of the aftermath via Russian propaganda sources.  The fact that state TV doesn't have a lot of boast about says quite a bit about the reality on the fronts. 

[Battlefront.com]

48 minutes ago, Taranis said:

 

Yup, that looks correct to me.  My estimate of headcount was really quickly done so I have no problem believing his 50% estimate.  The captain does look the same too.

Steve

[Anon052]

It seems that the russians are trying to forcefully mobilise ukrainian men of captured regions into their army. I read about it first a few days ago in the melitopol region and now in the Izyum region. This is barbaric. Forcing them to fight against their own. I can't believe this will help their military it will just increase the bloodshed. Most likley they will be used as canonfooder. It will increase the psychological toll on the ukrainian defenders as well.

Its against the geneva convention article 51 too.

How desperate must they be?

 

[Huba]

7 minutes ago, Anon052 said:

It seems that the russians are trying to forcefully mobilise ukrainian men of captured regions into their army. I read about it first a few days ago in the melitopol region and now in the Izyum region. This is barbaric. Forcing them to fight against their own. I can't believe this will help their military it will just increase the bloodshed. Most likley they will be used as canonfooder. It will increase the psychological toll on the ukrainian defenders as well.

Its against the geneva convention article 51 too.

How desperate must they be?

 

If you want your officers fragged, that looks like a perfect way to achieve this. Honestly, with the level of hostility between the sides at the moment, giving guns to Ukrainian men mixed with your own units sounds mighty stupid to me. 

[womble]

15 minutes ago, Anon052 said:

It seems that the russians are trying to forcefully mobilise ukrainian men of captured regions into their army

That seems counterproductive to me. It's hard enough to train a human to unhesitatingly shoot "the enemy" rather than just making holes in the sky box. How many of the forced conscripts will be desperate enough to just chuck a grenade into the adjacent foxhole, even if it might mean fatal reprisals? With deployments as dispersed as they seem to be, it won't take much for those impressed men to sneak off one moonless night, or leave in a more emphatic fashion.

It doesn't seem to me to matter how desperate they are for manpower, these guys will subtract more combat power from any formation they're incorporated into than they will add (cos they'll add zero, and the brave souls who "mutiny"* will subtract, as will the need to assign minders to try and minimise the sabotage and fragging of their TO&E "friendlies"), so if the rumours are true, it's yet another tick in the "dumbest conduct of a war ever" checklist.

Edit: and using them as cannon fodder just adds to the stupidity quotient. Seems like a great way to persuade the Ukrainian impressees that they really have nothing to lose by going postal on their Russian erstwhile "comrades-in-arms"...

* If it can be called that when they've been illegally impressed. I'm just using the word to describe their actions "as if" they were legitimately enlisted.

Edited April 17, 2022 by womble

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

re: UGVs, especially when moving cross contry, wouldn´t an operator have to be "at the wheel" literally all the time? I mean, compared to a UAV that will fly in on a preprogrammed path and only need to be be babysitted for the important part of its mission.

[acrashb]

14 minutes ago, Huba said:

If you want your officers fragged, that looks like a perfect way to achieve this. Honestly, with the level of hostility between the sides at the moment, giving guns to Ukrainian men mixed with your own units sounds mighty stupid to me. 

The report does not say shanghaied into combat duty, just into the Russian army.  I bet they end up in logistics, e.g., taking artillery rounds out of trucks, sliding them down a hill where more of them will cross-load into other vehicles.  And other things that will free up Russian soldiers to move to the front.

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, acrashb said:

The report does not say shanghaied into combat duty, just into the Russian army.  I bet they end up in logistics, e.g., taking artillery rounds out of trucks, sliding them down a hill where more of them will cross-load into other vehicles.  And other things that will free up Russian soldiers to move to the front.

That would make more sense, agreed. Still you'd have to have them more or less at gunpoint most of the time to avoid sabotage and "unfortunate accidents". 

I recall some weeks earlier reports of civilians being pressed to build field fortifications somewhere in the south. I bet every inch was known to UA army the same day. 

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, womble said:

It's hard enough to train a human to unhesitatingly shoot "the enemy" rather than just making holes in the sky box.

In this case Russia has to train Ukrainians to unhesitatingly not shoot "the enemy" (Russians) then shoot "friendlies" (Ukrainians).  As we say here in the US... "good luck with that.  Let me know how it turns out".

If there's any truth to the report, it's more likely that they're pressing Ukrainian men into menial military labor inside of Russia.  For example, loading munition trains or fueling trucks.  That frees up Russians to go to the front.

The Germans did this in WW2 with their "Hiwi" (Hilfswilliger = willing helper) and it was of major importance.  The difference is those Fascists actually managed to get people to volunteer.  These Fascists aren't doing as good of a job.

Steve

[sburke]

10 minutes ago, acrashb said:

The report does not say shanghaied into combat duty, just into the Russian army.  I bet they end up in logistics, e.g., taking artillery rounds out of trucks, sliding them down a hill where more of them will cross-load into other vehicles.  And other things that will free up Russian soldiers to move to the front.

lol yeah I'd really want the enemy handling my logistics when it is already a weak point. Then you have to use manpower to guard them anyway. There is just no good way to spin this.  What a gawdawful excuse for an army.

[chrisl]

1 minute ago, acrashb said:

The report does not say shanghaied into combat duty, just into the Russian army.  I bet they end up in logistics, e.g., taking artillery rounds out of trucks, sliding them down a hill where more of them will cross-load into other vehicles.  And other things that will free up Russian soldiers to move to the front.

And stick a grenade in the new stack with the pin pulled and lever held down by a shell?

I’m starting to wonder if Russia went into this with their forces on the wrong side of a 2:3 or even 1:2 without realizing it.  And now they’ve suffered documented 20-25% casualties against the paper TOE, but much higher (35-40%?) against the actual manpower they had.  The understrength BTGs may have started with even less than suspected, or be more widespread.

That may not be true across the board, but could be in many BTGs.  So they’re taking weakened understrength BTGs and adding poorly supervised (because if they had enough troops to supervise effectively they probably wouldn’t be doing it in the first place) saboteurs to the support crews. 

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, __Yossarian0815[jby] said:

re: UGVs, especially when moving cross contry, wouldn´t an operator have to be "at the wheel" literally all the time? I mean, compared to a UAV that will fly in on a preprogrammed path and only need to be be babysitted for the important part of its mission.

Some UGVs have semi-autonomous driving capabilities.  The operator sets waypoints and the vehicle is capable of navigating "best path" to get there provided the path isn't inherently unworkable (oh, say like the Dniper being smack in the middle!).  One application of this is for cargo UGVs to go between a rearward supply point and forward reception area.

Some UGVs are also equipped with a "follow me" capability which allows one operator to control a train of UGVs by directing the first one and the rest dutifully mimicking its path.

There is even full autonomous UGV capabilities where the operator specifies an end point and the vehicle determines how best to get there.

These modes are optional and some UGVs have all of them.

Steve