How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Combatintman]

8 minutes ago, billbindc said:

It's hard not to get the impression that the lack of preparation and slapdash nature of the bridging operation must at least in part be due to the fact that the Russian commanders are trying to operate in the knowledge that their moves are effectively transparent to the enemy give or take 12 hours. Drones are just the beginning. Commercial satellites alone would be bad enough but it's clear Ukraine is getting the fully panoply of American earth bound and space borne ISR. So sure...inept...but also probably conducted under the feverish knowledge that the rounds are going to start dropping any second.

As @The_Captpointed out - a half-decent crossing involves securing a sufficiently large area of the hostile bank before getting everything out of the toy box.  With UAVs in play and (quick a Google search using the hated term drone  ranges) a medium commercial UAV has a range of about 3-5km.  That; therefore, ought to be your basic start point planning figure for your bridgehead.  In the case of the ... ahem ... partially successful attempt that has cropped up, that would look like this.

[Suleyman]

Some of the tanks seem to be able to be recovered, but 90% of the IFVs and APCs are completely destroyed. Very incompetent to say the least. That offensive in that crossing is done, you got to pull that unit out from the front lines now.

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, billbindc said:

It's hard not to get the impression that the lack of preparation and slapdash nature of the bridging operation must at least in part be due to the fact that the Russian commanders are trying to operate in the knowledge that their moves are effectively transparent to the enemy give or take 12 hours. Drones are just the beginning. Commercial satellites alone would be bad enough but it's clear Ukraine is getting the fully panoply of American earth bound and space borne ISR. So sure...inept...but also probably conducted under the feverish knowledge that the rounds are going to start dropping any second.

Yes, for sure pretty much any nation on Earth would have a huge amount of difficulty operating in this ISR and precision environment with the current friendly counter capabilities available to them.  So I think it is not fair to knock Russia for the same sorts of problems a US force (the Gold Standard for most) would face in a similar environment.

However, there are so many shades of incompetency here that... well... I would *not* expect from a US force.  Here's a few off the top of my head:

1. less chance they would have tried a river crossing without adequate engineering equipment in place to do it right.  Commanders would be more apt to delay the start of the operation until there was a higher degree of confidence it would succeed.
2. the US would be doing much of this at night so when the defender got its act together there would already be a significant problem on their side of the river.
3. the crossing would have been done in phases, including pushing a large amount of infantry over ahead of the operation.  Sure, you lose the element of surprise if you do this, but...
4. it seems the Russians did not fully game out what "no surprise" meant and how they could have altered their plans to increase the chance of success by removing restrictions imposed by doctrinal requirements for "surprise"
5. there should have been no more than one vehicle crossing the bridge at a time and crossing halted the second any vehicle got tripped up for whatever reason. 
6. the staging area for vehicles waiting to cross should have been KMs to the rear so that the force wouldn't get smashed by the expected artillery strikes on the bridge area itself.  In fact, nothing should be in the immediate bridgehead area that wasn't essential for facilitating the crossing.
7. infantry should have cleared an area for all the crossing vehicles to move to that was both safe from immediate contact with the enemy and far enough away from the bridge that they wouldn't get nailed by attacks on it.
8. I'm not sure what the US leadership would have done if they couldn't have a viable backup bridging site put into play at the same time, but it should have set off alarm bells that putting all their eggs in one very obvious basket was likely to result in failure.

Again, just some thoughts off the top of my head what the Russians theoretically could have done differently that a US force likely would have shown signs of doing.  The point being that Russia took a bad situation and pretty much left it as found, whereas the US force would have tried mightily to change the dynamics.  Or as we are fond of saying "shape the battlespace".

Steve

[akd]

Claim here that an attempt was made to put up another bridge to evacuate trapped units this afternoon, but also defeated:

Says most casualties in the crossing attempt are from the 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade.

Edited May 12, 2022 by akd

[LongLeftFlank]

Don't know how recent this is, but 79th AAB are the stalwart and seasoned defenders of the north face of the Sloviansk complex, including Lyman.  Check out the terrain. Also, note mine roller.

 

No traktor for Ivan! (also leaked beta video of CM3 engine, with beta sountrack)

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Centurian52]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yeah, every passing day it's getting harder and harder to steer clear of simply concluding "Russia sucks at war". 

That much seems clear. But it has been pointed out to me that improvement is practically inevitable. If enough people get killed, and you fire enough generals, eventually someone is going to figure out what they are doing. It seems that every war in which someone demonstrates total incompetence at the beginning sees them gradually figuring out. The British in the 2nd Boer war, the Soviets in the Winter War, the Soviets in WW2, everyone in WW1. The Russians still have a lot to of learning to do, but they are already performing much better than they were back in February.

So I think their competence will only grow with time. But that probably won't be enough to help them. Their strategic situation is only getting worse with time, and it may already be insurmountable.

[sburke]

4 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

That much seems clear. But it has been pointed out to me that improvement is practically inevitable. If enough people get killed, and you fire enough generals, eventually someone is going to figure out they need to get rid of Putin.

that is their starting point.

Edited May 12, 2022 by sburke

[Suleyman]

It's the fact that as Steve pointed out, their staging area was literally right next to the pontoon. They don't know how to disperse their units to avoid heavy strikes like what happened. They would have been better off just sending mechanized units to float across and set up over there and then at night lay out the crossings for the tanks and non amphibious vehicles. 

I seen a video of a recent strike on a Ukrainian pontoon west of Izium, however they did it the right way, there was no vehicles lost during that crossing it was completely empty.

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, akd said:

Claim here that an attempt was made to put up another bridge to evacuate trapped units this morning, but also defeated:

And another problem with this whole thing... if you know they tried once in one place, stopped trying there, you can be sure they are going to try somewhere close by and soon.  Not difficult to find with drones when you know where to look.

BTW, look at the steepness of the banks.  I think that is the sort of thing that they were fighting against with the original crossing.  There are two "summer camp" facilities along that stretch of the river and one of them was the site of their first attempt.  The second one is further downstream, but didn't look like it had good approach possibilities on the near side.

Steve

[Harmon Rabb]

Anyone here heard anything about this? The last time people on Twitter started talking the possibility of the Admiral Makarov taking a hit while in the Black Sea, it turned out to be false.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Harmon Rabb

[Der Zeitgeist]

With Sweden & Finland soon to be in NATO, something just occured to me: We can build Boomer Bastions in the Bothnian sea (BBB). 

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Suleyman said:

It's the fact that as Steve pointed out, their staging area was literally right next to the pontoon. They don't know how to disperse their units to avoid heavy strikes like what happened. They would have been better off just sending mechanized units to float across and set up over there and then at night lay out the crossings for the tanks and non amphibious vehicles. 

I seen a video of a recent strike on a Ukrainian pontoon west of Izium, however they did it the right way, there was no vehicles lost during that crossing it was completely empty.

Actually, I think most of those vehicles were actively attempting to cross, were destroyed, then towed to where we see them now.

What this indicates is that they tried to cross in continuous columns.  This is not necessarily a bad idea as it means you get a LOT more stuff over a LOT quicker, but you have to be pretty sure that you're not about to get hit with artillery.  This gets back to Russia not operating as if Ukraine knew where they were and would plaster them with artillery.

If they had crossed the way they should have, there would only be maybe 3-6 wrecks in total, not 70.

Steve

[akd]

8 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Anyone here heard anything about this? The last time people on Twitter started talking the possibility of the Admiral Grigorovich taking a hit while in the Black Sea, it turned out to be false.

The official claims include “+1 warship / boat,” but there are also rumors this might have been another landing craft. Note: there was never any claim in the official Ukrainian mil stats about the Admiral Makarov.

Edited May 12, 2022 by akd

[Huba]

 

[dan/california]

18 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, for sure pretty much any nation on Earth would have a huge amount of difficulty operating in this ISR and precision environment with the current friendly counter capabilities available to them.  So I think it is not fair to knock Russia for the same sorts of problems a US force (the Gold Standard for most) would face in a similar environment.

However, there are so many shades of incompetency here that... well... I would *not* expect from a US force.  Here's a few off the top of my head:

1. less chance they would have tried a river crossing without adequate engineering equipment in place to do it right.  Commanders would be more apt to delay the start of the operation until there was a higher degree of confidence it would succeed.
2. the US would be doing much of this at night so when the defender got its act together there would already be a significant problem on their side of the river.
3. the crossing would have been done in phases, including pushing a large amount of infantry over ahead of the operation.  Sure, you lose the element of surprise if you do this, but...
4. it seems the Russians did not fully game out what "no surprise" meant and how they could have altered their plans to increase the chance of success by removing restrictions imposed by doctrinal requirements for "surprise"
5. there should have been no more than one vehicle crossing the bridge at a time and crossing halted the second any vehicle got tripped up for whatever reason. 
6. the staging area for vehicles waiting to cross should have been KMs to the rear so that the force wouldn't get smashed by the expected artillery strikes on the bridge area itself.  In fact, nothing should be in the immediate bridgehead area that wasn't essential for facilitating the crossing.
7. infantry should have cleared an area for all the crossing vehicles to move to that was both safe from immediate contact with the enemy and far enough away from the bridge that they wouldn't get nailed by attacks on it.
8. I'm not sure what the US leadership would have done if they couldn't have a viable backup bridging site put into play at the same time, but it should have set off alarm bells that putting all their eggs in one very obvious basket was likely to result in failure.

Again, just some thoughts off the top of my head what the Russians theoretically could have done differently that a US force likely would have shown signs of doing.  The point being that Russia took a bad situation and pretty much left it as found, whereas the US force would have tried mightily to change the dynamics.  Or as we are fond of saying "shape the battlespace".

Steve

The next test will be if the Ukrainians can manage any of the several river crossing they need to conduct to kick the Russians out. If the Ukr pulls off a couple of successful ones it will imply that it is still possible to do against less than brilliant opposition. If they can't, and they very well might not even try, then the importance of rivers going forward increases dramatically. Also how much of this same analysis applies to amphibious assaults with a relatively small number of suitable landing spots. Are we just looking at a large swing back towards defense being easier and offense action being  much, much harder?

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, the 73 identified wrecks is not all that is likely there to count.  I'd bet at least a half 6-12 are under the muddy waters.

Steve

[mosuri]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

LOL, barely visible on that black line....  Before / After

 

That by the way is one of the absolutely best infographics ever. The whole campaign in a single image.

[Combatintman]

11 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And another problem with this whole thing... if you know they tried once in one place, stopped trying there, you can be sure they are going to try somewhere close by and soon.  Not difficult to find with drones when you know where to look.

BTW, look at the steepness of the banks.  I think that is the sort of thing that they were fighting against with the original crossing.  There are two "summer camp" facilities along that stretch of the river and one of them was the site of their first attempt.  The second one is further downstream, but didn't look like it had good approach possibilities on the near side.

Steve

Not if they don't have the assets - a fair few bits of PMP bridging (a divisional and above asset) are already gone in three attempts to cross, according to Google Earth mensuration, a 60m gap which therefore = 180m worth of PMP.  An old school Soviet Division had enough PMP to cross a 191m gap at Class 20 rating (so forget about getting your tanks across).  Time to rustle up another divisional set of bridging.

[LongLeftFlank]

29 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

That much seems clear. But it has been pointed out to me that improvement is practically inevitable. If enough people get killed, and you fire enough generals, eventually someone is going to figure out what they are doing. It seems that every war in which someone demonstrates total incompetence at the beginning sees them gradually figuring out. The British in the 2nd Boer war, the Soviets in the Winter War, the Soviets in WW2, everyone in WW1. The Russians still have a lot to of learning to do, but they are already performing much better than they were back in February.

So I think their competence will only grow with time. But that probably won't be enough to help them. Their strategic situation is only getting worse with time, and it may already be insurmountable.

Given your handle, I imagine this should resonate:

P. We will accept battle?
C. Certainly, why not?
P. We are outnumbered three to one, and five to one on horse. What uninjured men you have are scared and hungry and desperate.
C. That is the advantage we must press home.
P. I was not aware that irony had military usage.
C. We must win or die. Pompey's men have other options.

Your point is well taken, and many of us here have been watching closely for signs of improvement, even in ancient tactical fundamentals like ambush and entrenchment.

Having a back against the wall makes a difference. Russians aren't defending the Rodina, and they know it. So evolution for them is not yet less dangerous than disobeying orders.

[mosuri]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I would love to copy-replace Finland and Karelia above. Long live the Greater Finnic Elvish Uralia! Linux Imperium!

From a Finn whose grandparents farmed on the Karelian Isthmus, no thanks. Land touched by Russians' inverse Midas touch likely isn't worth having, unless you're prepared to put millions after millions on getting it back to shape.

What might be interesting from an economic point of view would be to get Petsamo area back -- given the global warming, a port in the Arctic can be a good thing to have in the future.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Not if they don't have the assets - a fair few bits of PMP bridging (a divisional and above asset) are already gone in three attempts to cross, according to Google Earth mensuration, a 60m gap which therefore = 180m worth of PMP.  An old school Soviet Division had enough PMP to cross a 191m gap at Class 20 rating (so forget about getting your tanks across).  Time to rustle up another divisional set of bridging.

Point taken!  To rephrase, if I were the defender I would presume they'd try again and therefore as an attacker I'd presume the defender would be looking for me.

Based on the PMPs at the two sites they do seem to have had enough to bridge the river twice.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking this...

They should have had at least two bridging locations planned.  They should have started by using a swimming location to get some heavy stuff over, but for the most part put a lot of infantry ashore on the other side.  Any concentrations of enemy to be dealt with with specifically assigned artillery and air (which theoretically Russia could commit).  I'd also be interdicting the heck out of the defender's local LOCs.

After expanding an infantry bridgehead out far enough to create enough space to operate in and to push the enemy beyond easy drone range, then and only then would I put in my two bridges.  And I'd do it simultaneously and at night as much as possible.  Even using artificial light would be better than doing it in broad daylight.  Smoke and other things that were mentioned by the Ukrainian engineer would need to be going non-stop during the daylight.

Once the bridges were in place I'd have put no more than 2 vehicles on the bridge at any one time.  The ingress vehicles would be sent one at a time and egress would be dispersed far and wide to join the infantry.  If a vehicle came to a stop at any time the entire operation would halt in place.  I would not let them bunch up.

The bridgehead would need to expand and keep moving so it couldn't be smashed with artillery.

In the event both bridges were trashed, then I would just have my cut off forces sit in place and try to resupply them across the river by boat at night.  That could be done for quite a while in order to buy time to figure out how to evacuate them.  I would not try to rebridge in the same spot any time soon.

I'm not saying I think this would work, but it would have had a lot better chance than than what the Russians obviously did!

Steve

[Lethaface]

On 5/11/2022 at 6:43 AM, kraze said:

Yes. Our grandfathers also did horrible things, incl. against their very own here. Which I also mentioned. Ukrainian SSR was a DPR project that became "legit".

And that's a trauma Ukraine still deals with, but our people are more willing to accept this truth now, even though it is incredibly hard to stomach for many.

Thanks for your response. I think it's fair to say that developments in Ukraine will eventually lead to 'healing', maybe not in a similar way compared to Germany post WW2, but conceptually with the same end result.
Many other other (Western) countries are undergoing a similar process, for example in NL the history of the 'special operations' in Indonesia.

In turn imo this also offers a theoretical perspective for the same process in Russia, although it will require a different (form) of government.

[danfrodo]

19 minutes ago, mosuri said:

That by the way is one of the absolutely best infographics ever. The whole campaign in a single image.

Yes, but could've done this in powerpoint w just 10 slides and a bunch of bullet points.  Each bullet point revealed one at a time, 3 per slide, and read verbatim by the presenter.  Now doesn't that make a lot more sense?   Don't we all learn more when people read their slides out loud to us?

So RU making some big pushes today, w their rapidly dwindling forces.  I get that they want to secure territory that would be hard for UKR to retake.  But UKR probably wouldn't frontally assault these areas anyway. They work to cut the LOCs choosing less well defended areas to attack -- like they are doing now.  So hopefully this all just puts more RU assets in what will later be a pocket, or at least a supply-starved area that simply can't hold out under pressure.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

73 vehicles, Jesus.

 

If they keep trying, eventually they’ll just be able to drive across on the wrecks.

Edited May 12, 2022 by chrisl
Spelling

[Gary R Lukas]

On 5/9/2022 at 4:11 AM, G.I. Joe said:

Does anyone recognize the combats this guy is wearing? The fabric pattern looks exactly like 1980s vintage U.S. Woodland BDU to me, but the cut of the tunic does not look like U.S. Army issue...

I'm going to look but the jacket isn't US Military, and on the trousers the cargo pockets seem to be placed a little bit too low