How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

56 minutes ago, paxromana said:

New poster, but have been lurking for a while and have found this forum's posts the most useful on the 'net ... I have a background in History and knew that a lot of the stuff posted by regular news outlets was, much more often than not, complete rubbish based on an almost total lack of relevant knowledge ... but this forum has been great to read!

Welcome and it's never tiring to hear that we've got something useful going on here.  Despite what our recent troll buddy implied

56 minutes ago, paxromana said:

Two things ... 

Artillery Ammunition: There has been some mention of Ukraine having shot off a lot (perhaps most) of their Pact calibre stuff which is why it is so important that they get as many NATO compatible artillery pieces as possible ... and can therefore draw down on NATO artillery stocks. And some suggestions that Russia may be running out of some calibres themselves.

Thing is, while there have been comments about Russian shortages of 'high tech' warfighting gear and, more recently, of some artillery calibres, but I believe that there may be an underestimation of just how hard it is to ramp up the production of artillery shells.

 

Exactly this.  It's been mentioned a few times that even fairly simple things, like ammo, is difficult to ramp up quickly.  Even when there's preparations ahead of time.  When the Iraq War started in 2003 the stocks of .50cal, 20mm, and 30mm were quickly used up.  New rounds coming off the assembly lines went right onto cargo planes and were flown directly to Baghdad.  A friend who worked for one of the big producers told me about this and also that they were taking their war reserve production equipment out of mothballs.  And this was for a supposedly low intensity conflict!

This is also true for Russia's loss of tanks, AFVs, and other heavy pieces of equipment.  Let's just say that collectively they represent maybe 10 years worth of peace time production.  Even if Russia had the resources to speed up production for MULTIPLE types of equipment concurrently, how long would that take?  A year seems to be optimistic, but let's assume 1 year.  How much do they increase their production by?  Doubling of defense production across the board is unrealistic, but let's say they manage to do it.  That means they'll would be back to where they were on February 23 sometime around 2030. 

And to do this they'd probably have to increase defense spending to around 40% of pre-war GDP or something like 50-60% of sanctioned GDP.  Why?  Because not only would they be producing 2x more stuff per year than they ever have, but it would be 100% new production in most cases vs. taking something that already exists and sticking some bling on it.

Anybody here living in this NATO information bubble think Russia is capable of pulling this off?

56 minutes ago, paxromana said:

THAT wasn't the problem. The ACTUAL problem was that Soviet RR infrastructure was designed to service much larger locomotives ... so watering points (vital for steam trains) and coaling points were roughly twice as far apart as what German locomotives needed.

The rail problem is an interesting one.  In both WW2 and now cross loading from European gauge to wide gauge is very straight forward technically.  It adds some cost to shipment, but more importantly it adds time.  Time was what the Germans and Ukraine want to reduce.  The solution in both cases was, of course, to either come up with a quicker way to cross load or to rebuild the rails to accommodate narrower gauge rolling stock.  That's itself expensive and time consuming, but can be done in parallel with cross loading efforts.

There's still a lot of expensive retrofitting needed (loading platforms are designed for wider stock, switches are not as easy to reengineer as straight track, electric lines need to be repositioned if trains aren't diesel, etc.), but I think you are correct, though, that for the most part there's fewer challenges now than they were back in WW2. 

Plus, Germany was trying to reengineer the rail network while also fighting a war on all fronts and having to combat partisans.  Europe is not under attack and Ukraine is obviously not blowing up sections of track.  That changes the dynamics dramatically.

Steve

[FancyCat]

While Germany is doing gods knows what, other NATO partners are supplying artillery to Ukraine. Hopefully before winter aircraft will be supplied, (tho no indications at all this will occur) while obviously the situation is painful for Ukraine right now, Russia cannot afford to suffer losses that it cannot replace, and to be this slow on the offensive.

Russia was supposed to have used artillery to break a hole to stream armored and mechanized units into Ukraine's rear and destroy their supply lines. This should have been what occurred at the beginning of the war, that Russia is reduced to this WWI grinding mass is just pitiful.

That President Zelensky can visit a sailent while 10 Russian generals are dead so far is just damning of Russia.

I am confident NATO will continue to supply increasing and more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.

Russia has so far been unable to stem the tide of western weapons to Ukraine and with each passing week and month, they have risen in complexity and amount. (Forget Germany tho even the promised equipment is rising in technology wise) No real ability to stop the movement of equipment to Ukraine, no risk of escalation by attacking and daring NATO retaliation by attacking the airfields where the supplies land.

NATO is about to be enlarged, such that Russia will virtually face a "hostile" force that directly threatens the Northern Fleet bases and nada in terms of escalation.

If I were a cautious NATO member, worried about nuclear war, I'm seeing Russia basically conceding that the weapon shipments are not worth escalation, I'm watching Finland about to give NATO clear approaches to Russia's northern flank and Russia giving barely a peep and I'm watching Russia reduced to WWI combat grind when prior to the war, where we were dreaming of Russian tanks reaching Berlin!
If I were Scholz, I'm sweating over the fact that my "fear" of nuclear war over German tanks in Ukraine is just poof, nothing, and how to explain to a increasingly emboldened opposition and coalition my untenable positions.

[Battlefront.com]

27 minutes ago, holoween said:

Youre not looking then.

Oh, for sure I've seen plenty of pro-Russian statements about why NATO is a threat.  Easily found.  What I said I was looking for was a "properly constructed argument".  I've never seen one and I certainly have been looking for one.  What you just posted is in the standard argument that makes absolutely no sense, therefore by definition it isn't a "properly constructed argument".  Making sense is a kinda important component

27 minutes ago, holoween said:

In international relations intentions cant be known and can change so you have to base decisions on capabilities.

NATO massively outmatches russia in conventional military power so were they to decide to attack russia has little i could do except nuclear excalation. Having buffer states makes it harder for NATO offensive actions since no forward supply depos can be established early.

And we get to the primary flaw in the pro-Russian logic.  NATO is a defensive pact and as such it is structured to be defensive.  It's painful to have to make a statement like that, but this is exactly what the Russians absolutely refuse to take into consideration.  No threat to NATO, no threat from NATO.  Period.

Add to this that individual NATO members are notoriously fickle about cooperating even when their interests are directly threatened (we see this going on right now, in fact).  Unlike Russia, where one guy gets to make the call, in NATO it's a complicated mass of competing interests, points of view, and domestic realities.  There is no rational argument that can be put forward that would explain NATO proactively deciding to go to war against Russia "just because".  None.

The nuke threat is on top of all this and Europe, in particular, was ultra-paranoid about this.  Nobody, not even the US, believes that anti-missile technology is enough to neutralize this threat.  One of the reasons why is Russia has the ability to toss nukes by artillery and bombers.  No chance of defeating all those threats at one time, which means if things progressed into full nuclear war there'd be a lot of Europe made radioactive.  The Europeans knew this very well then and still do now.

27 minutes ago, holoween said:

Now you and i know that NATO has no intentions of ever attacking russia but as pointed out above that could change. Just like NATO was worried about the Warsaw pact because they did have the capability to possibly successfully invade europe even though they might never have wanted to.

Er, except the Warsaw Pact was an extension of the Soviet Union's authoritarian power structure which, inherently, had an expansionist foreign policy.  So yeah, practically speaking the Warsaw Pact was like so many other things Soviet... it had the appearance of one thing, but in reality was another.

So I will say again, pro-Russians have never made a REAL argument that explains why NATO is a threat to a peaceful Russia.  On the other hand, there is a rather obvious argument to make that NATO is a threat to a war mongering Russia.  Since Russia is, obviously, a war mongering state the threat to it posed by NATO is in fact real.  But that's not what pro-Russians argue

Steve

[danfrodo]

oh yes, the great threat of NATO attack on Russia.  We all know how absurd that is. 

1.  NATO could never agree to anything that controversial in the first place, there'd be too many very powerful members who would say "are you crazy?  no way!  we're out!"

2.  NATO is  very much a threat. -- to Russian territorial aggression.  Putin hates NATO because it puts an insurmountable boundary on his violent territorial ambitions.  Must be very frustrating for him to be so thwarted, causing lots of emotional turmoil.  Feelings of helplessness which in turn lead to rage.  I am sure his therapist is helping him work through this. 

3.  NATO is very much a threat. -- to Putin keeping Russians in the dark about how badly his kleptocracy is running Russia

By the way, what the heck is Germany up to?  Is there lots of aid not making headlines?  or are they really being this ridiculous?

[FancyCat]

I mean hell, consider two months ago Ukraine was asking for anti-ship missiles and people were fretting over sinking a Russian ship and Russian escalation and now? Nada, Ukraine's Neptunes defend Odessa and UK and US are increasingly likely to supply more anti-ship missiles to Ukraine.

We were worried about Ukraine attacking Russia on its own soil and then Ukraine conducts a dashing attack on a oil facility with helicopters and now every so often a ammo dump on Russia's side of the border blows up and nada, we barely hear about it on the news.

Caesar SPGs? Nada. U.S MLRS? Nada. Broaching armed UAVs. Nada. During the beginning of the war, we were fretting over Stingers and NLAWs in Ukrainian hands and now we are supplying Rocket, SPG, long range anti-ship missile systems. We never gave Afghanistan close to anything this advanced after 10 years of occupation and nation building (I reference Afghanistan as it's a common refrain for those opposed to arming Ukraine), and in 4 months Ukraine is getting all this.

Clearly the pattern is in the positive for Ukraine, and I think Ukraine is well aware of the pattern and I think the fact that Russia has been unwilling or unable to stem it illustrates it is the right decision to undertake.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

So I ask myself "what if the Taliban had NLAWs/Javelins, Stingers/Starstreak and UAVs all backed up with a modular cell network?  And the support of a great power(s) behind them for training, force generation and ISR?"

We concentrate forces too and our logistics lines are built on sustaining heavy mass.  I think technology may be lowering the cost of what it means to be "peer" at some levels of warfare.  Finally, unless we are talking about war in mainland NA or western Europe, we are talking interventions/crisis response wars.  We historically have been allergic to high casualties in these types of conflicts since the end of the Cold War.  A much smaller power could theoretically become a strategic peer in war simply by creating too high a cost for us to get directly involved.  The whole thing points to a re-emergence of attrition/exhaustion as a strategy...although many will argue it never really went away.

I think there are kinds of operations that are just not viable anymore. At least they are not viable with anything like the current force structure and doctrine. I would argue with 2020 hindsight, that getting out of Afghanistan was a prerequisite for success in Ukraine, because it obvious the Russians would have started supplying the Taliban with all the ATGMs and man portable SAMs they could carry. Deciding to take over a truly hostile country at this point in time requires some combination of an absolutely ridiculous number of troops, and a willingness to be as least as unpleasant as the Russians.  That is just going to require a rethink of a great many things from the grand strategy level all the way down.

[FancyCat]

52 minutes ago, holoween said:

Except the first thing he said was that it would be a problem. only later did he change that and id argue thats mostly because he cant make any credible threat to Finnland atm.

Exactly. If NATO is this enduring threat that Ukraine, whom was nowhere at all close to being allowed in NATO was attacked in a full scale war upon the justification of safeguarding Russian security, than Finland, with it's borders near Russia's major cities and Northern Fleet bases, should garner some sort of escalation, even if ultimately posturing and not real force buildup for a defense/offense of the region.

That Russia's reply is a muted "shrug" or the Russian public whom Ukraine's invasion was justified as partly avoiding NATO encirclement gives no regard to Finland joining NATO as a credible threat just tells everyone worried about Russian escalation that their reasoning was a lie.

If the Russian public, supposedly very worried about NATO expanding and invading, gives no regard to Finland joining, yes Russians may be annoyed at NATO encroaching, pissed, but this betrays that Russia actually does not fear NATO and speaks instead to Russia's fear of NATO limiting Russian interference in their backyard.

Edited June 9, 2022 by FancyCat

[womble]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Youre not looking then.

In international relations intentions cant be known and can change so you have to base decisions on capabilities.

NATO massively outmatches russia in conventional military power so were they to decide to attack russia has little i could do except nuclear excalation. Having buffer states makes it harder for NATO offensive actions since no forward supply depos can be established early.

Now you and i know that NATO has no intentions of ever attacking russia but as pointed out above that could change. Just like NATO was worried about the Warsaw pact because they did have the capability to possibly successfully invade europe even though they might never have wanted to.

Still not a valid argument, because relative military capacity isn't relevant in the final analysis. NATO doesn't have, and never has had, enough military power to subjugate Russia, because Russia is freckin' Hyooge. It no more has the power to conquer Russia militarily than Russia has the power to conquer Ukraine. Strewth, "we" couldn't even manage Afghanistan or Iraq; how are we going to fare better in The Rodina? Russian fear of NATO aggression has always been a paranoid fever dream or "demonisation of the other" for propaganda purposes, to divert the proles' attention from the failings of the ruling classes.

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

As to the topic- well you are right about morale and grudging by common soldiers. However, ISW did several times repeated Russians are still unable to employ combined warfare tactics. Ukrainian commander seem to contradict those claims- at least at some sectors (I suspect northern forests) they successfully infiltrated with SF teams;

The_Capt covered this bit very well already, but I'll simplify it... a view of a small section of front can exhibit characteristics that are not consistent with the strategic whole.  This is true in all wars, even unconventional ones.

It is also important to look at the other side's "complaints" about how the war is going from their perspective.  The Russians constantly complain about Ukrainian artillery hitting them 24/7 just as the Ukrainians are complaining about Russian artillery.  They also complain about leadership, supplies, communications, casualties, and all sorts of things that the Ukrainian grumblers complain about.  However, the complaints from the Russians seem to be far more extreme in all ways.  One unique difference is that Ukrainian complainers still want to fight and win the war against Russia.  Russian complainers, on the other hand, want to go home even if it means going to jail or having to suffer a wound.

And yet some Russian units are fighting pretty well despite all the complaining.  So again, we have to take the complaints in context and combine them with other pieces of information to get a better sense of context.

The bottom line here is that war sucks and the guys fighting it know that better than anybody.  They grumble because of it.  This is standard.  Case in point

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

And don't get me wrong, I am not in the camp of "Russian Hords of Doom". Strategically Ukraine is winning or at least not loosing. The point is that if this form of attrition warfare will last longer, Ukrainians will be exhausted too, and even thousands of new recruits will have problems mounting any noticable offensives later if their instructors will be dead.

One always has to look at both sides.  What you just said is as true, if not even more true, for the Russians.  So worst case it's a race to see which side gets exhausted first.  Given how this war has gone on so far, my money is on Russia exhausting first.  Remember, all the grumbling on the Ukrainian side is in the context of high motivation to keep the war going, all the grumbling on the Russian side is in the context of strategic demoralization.  All else being equal, my money goes on the side that has the will to win.  Especially if it's their home turf.

Steve

[Huba]

26 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

I mean hell, consider two months ago Ukraine was asking for anti-ship missiles and people were fretting over sinking a Russian ship and Russian escalation and now? Nada, Ukraine's Neptunes defend Odessa and UK and US are increasingly likely to supply more anti-ship missiles to Ukraine.

We were worried about Ukraine attacking Russia on its own soil and then Ukraine conducts a dashing attack on a oil facility with helicopters and now every so often a ammo dump on Russia's side of the border blows up and nada, we barely hear about it on the news.

Caesar SPGs? Nada. U.S MLRS? Nada. Broaching armed UAVs. Nada. During the beginning of the war, we were fretting over Stingers and NLAWs in Ukrainian hands and now we are supplying Rocket, SPG, long range anti-ship missile systems. We never gave Afghanistan close to anything this advanced after 10 years of occupation and nation building (I reference Afghanistan as it's a common refrain for those opposed to arming Ukraine), and in 4 months Ukraine is getting all this.

Clearly the pattern is in the positive for Ukraine, and I think Ukraine is well aware of the pattern and I think the fact that Russia has been unwilling or unable to stem it illustrates it is the right decision to undertake.

According to today's announcement by UA General Staff, Danish Harpoons are already deployed, and short range anti-landing craft missiles from Sweden and UK are to follow.

 

Regarding the MLRS deliveries, I was crunching numbers in my head a little bit and after doing so came to conclusion that seemingly very low number of pledged launchers is in fact quite sufficient given the ammunition supply at this point, and probably won't grow too much even with full US commitment to equipping UA with MLRS. So here goes:

First assumption is that for now, MLRS will be exclusively firing M30/31 guided rockets family. Second is that while US/ UK is willing to fully commit to supporting UA with this capability, own stocks can't be depleted too much.

Lockheed produced a total of around 60K GMLRS missiles. I recall that 20K/ year might be produced if full capacity of production lines is to be used ( working 3 shifts, "wartime footing"). I can't find the source for this number unfortunately, but let's assume this is the most that can be given to UA for year of fighting. This equals to say 1,8K missiles per month or 60/day. This in turn translates to 1 full ammo load for 4 HIMARS and 3 M270 that are on the way right now. Of course for redundancy, training, possible losses etc ideally there should be more vehicles in theater, but really not that many more is needed.

It would be for sure technically possible to have some "surge" ammo supplies for a shorter time, even 10 times what I outlined, but the above gives a ballpark of what can be expected at most I think.

Of course introducing M26 family changes the needed numbers considerably, but AFAIK it is not in the pipeline at this time. Does that make sense?

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Huba

[Aragorn2002]

40 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

While Germany is doing gods knows what, other NATO partners are supplying artillery to Ukraine. Hopefully before winter aircraft will be supplied, (tho no indications at all this will occur) while obviously the situation is painful for Ukraine right now, Russia cannot afford to suffer losses that it cannot replace, and to be this slow on the offensive.

Russia was supposed to have used artillery to break a hole to stream armored and mechanized units into Ukraine's rear and destroy their supply lines. This should have been what occurred at the beginning of the war, that Russia is reduced to this WWI grinding mass is just pitiful.

That President Zelensky can visit a sailent while 10 Russian generals are dead so far is just damning of Russia.

I am confident NATO will continue to supply increasing and more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.

Russia has so far been unable to stem the tide of western weapons to Ukraine and with each passing week and month, they have risen in complexity and amount. (Forget Germany tho even the promised equipment is rising in technology wise) No real ability to stop the movement of equipment to Ukraine, no risk of escalation by attacking and daring NATO retaliation by attacking the airfields where the supplies land.

NATO is about to be enlarged, such that Russia will virtually face a "hostile" force that directly threatens the Northern Fleet bases and nada in terms of escalation.

If I were a cautious NATO member, worried about nuclear war, I'm seeing Russia basically conceding that the weapon shipments are not worth escalation, I'm watching Finland about to give NATO clear approaches to Russia's northern flank and Russia giving barely a peep and I'm watching Russia reduced to WWI combat grind when prior to the war, where we were dreaming of Russian tanks reaching Berlin!
If I were Scholz, I'm sweating over the fact that my "fear" of nuclear war over German tanks in Ukraine is just poof, nothing, and how to explain to a increasingly emboldened opposition and coalition my untenable positions.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ein-mehr-als-bedrueckendes-schauspiel-a-e0b3da9e-0002-0001-0000-000040763997

I was reading this old Spiegel-article today and it reminded me why the Germans are cautious. They know the mood in Europe can easily turn against them if they become too powerful. Food for thought. Only German text leider...

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, womble said:

Still not a valid argument, because relative military capacity isn't relevant in the final analysis. NATO doesn't have, and never has had, enough military power to subjugate Russia, because Russia is freckin' Hyooge. It no more has the power to conquer Russia militarily than Russia has the power to conquer Ukraine. Strewth, "we" couldn't even manage Afghanistan or Iraq; how are we going to fare better in The Rodina? Russian fear of NATO aggression has always been a paranoid fever dream or "demonisation of the other" for propaganda purposes, to divert the proles' attention from the failings of the ruling classes.

 

Long ago I debated some Russian posters here in the context of the first Ukraine war back in 2014 or 2015.  One poster in particular was trying to justify the Russians creating a brand new force opposite the Baltics because NATO sent a couple thousand "tripwire" personnel into those three countries.  His argument was that NATO was a threat and so it's only logical that Russia has to beef up its defenses in the area. 

I countered this by saying something like Russia could have a single border guard named Yuri guarding the entire Baltic border and it would be just as effective as 10s of thousands of Russian forces.  Why?  Because NATO is never, ever going to invade Russia because it's suicidal to do so.  The line on the map is what matters, not how many armed guys there are on the Russian side.*

The Russian poster was, IIRC, shocked and, of course, dropped debate because he had no rational response.

Steve

*as an aside around the same time Russian special forces went over the Estonian border and kidnapped an Estonian national, thus proving (again) that if anybody needs to reinforce their borders it is the NATO countries and not Russia.

https://bnn-news.com/estonian-russian-border-guards-discuss-kidnapping-estonian-security-service-official-119010

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

So I ask myself "what if the Taliban had NLAWs/Javelins, Stingers/Starstreak and UAVs all backed up with a modular cell network?  And the support of a great power(s) behind them for training, force generation and ISR?"

I would say this "great power" behind would have serious troubles even before war starts.

The question is of course fair, but the answer lies not in military, but political terms. I don't think that any professional western military would make such mistake of epic proportions of underestimating enemy as Putin did. Even if they would invade, they would cut the country out of allies, supplies of modern weapons and secure inrormation wars first. some of them would be a problem still (like commercial drones), but there are not that many countries that can field decent ATGM's and Manpads.

 

Do really NLAW's cause so many lossess to RUS troops? Perhaps. But it may stem from Russian incompetence and lack of eqiuipment rather than ATGM's awesomeness. Also, there were several statements by Ukrainian top brass that ATGM's and drones are very helpfull, but it was artillery doing the real execution. I doubt Westerners would leave any enemy big guns in range intact before puting boots on the ground.
Add long-range artillery, situational awarness, horizontal-data sharing, airforce, airforce and airforce...and myriads other things.

Ok, I am just random historian with different specialization (antiquity) and no military service, so not even try to argue against your expertise. Only want to add a reflection (rather banal, need to admit) that militaries seriously need to rethink war in political/anthropological terms rather than strictly tactical. Western powers won almost every engagement since WWII, but lost quite many wars due to failed understanding of a country they fought in.

Perhaps what is happening in Ukraine now is very specific to this conflict only and we should not draw wider conclusions about nature of future warfare. Especially we lack proper sources and our knowledge is very fragmentary.

14 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

One always has to look at both sides.  What you just said is as true, if not even more true, for the Russians.  So worst case it's a race to see which side gets exhausted first.  Given how this war has gone on so far, my money is on Russia exhausting first.  Remember, all the grumbling on the Ukrainian side is in the context of high motivation to keep the war going, all the grumbling on the Russian side is in the context of strategic demoralization.  All else being equal, my money goes on the side that has the will to win.  Especially if it's their home turf.

Steve

Yep, the Triumph of Will. Jesus, XXI century with all technical mambo-jambo and war boils to this, like in IIIrd century BC.

If only soldiers were grumbling of course it it would be slight  problem. But High command is different matter. The Russian advantage in firepower is remendous, and (even remembering all Russian problems with mobilization and economy) it is difficult to understand how 140mln despoty like Russia could not find somewhere additional 50 or 100 k village boys to sustain offensive.

In other words- long and bloody war ahead. I just hoped the toll will close in something like thoise 50k KIA, but it doesn't seem to be the case unfortunatelly. What a mess.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Beleg85

[hcrof]

8 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Do really NLAW's cause so many lossess to RUS troops? Perhaps. But it may stem from Russian incompetence and lack of eqiuipment rather than ATGM's awesomeness. Also, there were several statements by Ukrainian top brass that ATGM's and drones are very helpfull, but it was artillery doing the real execution. I doubt Westerners would leave any enemy big guns in range intact before puting boots on the ground.

My understanding is that they were vital in the first few weeks - they were handed out like candy to the TD guys and they could effectively stop tanks with little training.

Nowadays with the Russians more cautious, I would say they are less effective but the threat remains so they know they can't just tank rush anymore. They don't need to score kills to be effective - their presence is enough to slow down enemy attacks so they can be killed by artillery.

[Calamine Waffles]

53 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So I will say again, pro-Russians have never made a REAL argument that explains why NATO is a threat to a peaceful Russia.  On the other hand, there is a rather obvious argument to make that NATO is a threat to a war mongering Russia.  Since Russia is, obviously, a war mongering state the threat to it posed by NATO is in fact real.  But that's not what pro-Russians argue

So, the thing about Russia (and by extension pro-Russia proxies) is that they like to project their own thoughts and weaknesses onto NATO and the West, that the West is no different from them. So they do genuinely believe that the West is as corrupt as Russia is and that Western governments blatantly lie all the time too. That is why they so fervently believe NATO is a Western Warsaw Pact.

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

NATO massively outmatches russia in conventional military power

Stop lying - NATO has no military strength to occupy and pacify Russia. Full stop.

NATO has no interest in fighting, occupying and pacifying Russia. Full stop.

If Russians are paranoid about NATO they should attend psychology sessions.

1 hour ago, holoween said:

so were they to decide to attack russia has little i could do except nuclear excalation.

Bingo. You just admitted that NATO cannot win conventional war with Russia because Russia will escalate it to all out Nuclear war. NATO threat is just Russian paranoid imagination.

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Having buffer states makes it harder for NATO offensive actions since no forward supply depos can be established early.

Grabbing somebody else land while killing people living there to create buffer state is a Hitler style war crime.  

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Now you and i know that NATO has no intentions of ever attacking russia but as pointed out above that could change. 

Size of Russian land and size of forces required to occupy and pacify it will not change. 

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Just like NATO was worried about the Warsaw pact because they did have the capability to possibly successfully invade europe even though they might never have wanted to.

Let me remind you that USSR was founded on idea of total western destruction. FYI that what Russians still want to do.

[danfrodo]

Wow, we even have a historian of antiquities on the page now.  Most excellent.  I do love me some antiquities, often in the form of historical fiction, but it's a great subject.

So as we look at UKR vs RU one thing to remember is that one big difference between the two is that RU's whole war is basically an effort by Putin to make sure Putin doesn't lose face.  UKR is in a fight for the survival of a nation, a people, while RU is in a fight for one psychopath (and some of his entourage).  RU propaganda puts a nationalistic spin on it but unlike UKR, one bullet in one person can change everything.  Yes, Zelensky is important, extremely so, but he's not the reason for the war.

Also, I am now of the view that Severodonetsk fight for UKR is about drawing in and destroying RU forces at minimal cost to UKR.  Does anyone have any other views on this?   Looks like UKR arty is hitting rear of RU lines, probably counterbattery.  Is UKR trying to get RU arty into good place for destroying it??  (copied pic below from dailykos who copied it from somewhere else)

 

[Calamine Waffles]

Ran out of the Relikt soft-case ERA, I guess.
 

 

[hcrof]

7 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

Ran out of the Relikt soft-case ERA, I guess.
 

 

I was going to laugh, but actually it might not be terrible armour protection? I imagine if an atgm hits at a relatively frontal angle, going through a material with lots of voids in it (i.e a box of rocks) would break the jet up a bit before it hits the real armour? I think it would be much less effective at side hits though.

 

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

I would say this "great power" behind would have serious troubles even before war starts.

Like what?  Say China quietly backs another side in a US led western intervention, how exactly are they going to be in trouble?  Russia already did this with bounties in Afghanistan and all we did was make quacking noises.  If China decides to supply and support their freedom fighters, our options beyond starting WW3 are limited.  Our options against Russia are non-existent. 

Supplying the other side is a long held tradition in "short of war" space.  Russians did it in Vietnam, we did it in Afghanistan (Round 1).  

12 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Even if they would invade, they would cut the country out of allies, supplies of modern weapons and secure inrormation wars first. some of them would be a problem still (like commercial drones), but there are not that many countries that can field decent ATGM's and Manpads.

That would be the plan, but regional containment has now raised the bill significantly.  Imagine Iraq in '03 as a proxy war.  We now have to make Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia airtight to prevent flow of outside support to the other team.  The intervention bill before casualties just went up by an order of magnitude.

Not many countries can field next-gen ATGMs and MANPADs, however primary competitors all can, and in Chinas case we already know they have been working very hard at knock offs. 

We would definitely try and establish operational pre-conditions first; however, I am not sure what that looks like.  We lost air dominance below 2000 feet in Iraq against ISIL and they were basically using commercial off the shelf stuff. Information warfare is even more tricky, hell we can't even agree as to what a legitimate military target is or is not in the information space...and that kind of thing can cripple a coalition.

10 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Do really NLAW's cause so many lossess to RUS troops?

In the opening phase of this war, based on what we have seen and heard, yes, very much.  In the first month of this war the UA did not have enough artillery to cover a 1000km+ frontage, so ATGMs were likely doing a lot of the heavy lifting.  We are definitely in an arty-duel phase now.  Regardless, next gen man portable ATGMs with ridiculous ranges and kill ratios have arrived there is enough video evidence of this in this war to prove it.

In Iraq in '05, the insurgents brought logistical resupply along the main MSR for the US to a grinding halt.  They cut the secondary routes and then IED'd US logistics until it damned near broke - it actually had to pause for a week to re-tool, which is nuts.  This war points to a whole other level of projection of friction onto an operational system.

22 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Perhaps what is happening in Ukraine now is very specific to this conflict only and we should not draw wider conclusions about nature of future warfare. Especially we lack proper sources and our knowledge is very fragmentary.

This has been brought up before.  What we are seeing in Ukraine is consistent with trends we saw back in the Donbas in 2014, in Iraq against ISIL, and in the Nagorno-Karbakh.  I am sure some phenomenon are unique to this war and we will be spending some time trying to figure that one out.  However, there has been a weird noise coming out of conventional warfare for some time now and this war has just underlined in bold some of that.  

This week I got some capstone doctrine to review and provide feedback, and right up front "we are a manoeuvre warfare, mission command based military"...and I am think..."are we now?"  "Should we be?"

[Calamine Waffles]

4 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I was going to laugh, but actually it might not be terrible armour protection? I imagine if an atgm hits at a relatively frontal angle, going through a material with lots of voids in it (i.e a box of rocks) would break the jet up a bit before it hits the real armour? I think it would be much less effective at side hits though.

I highly doubt it. Maybe for a weaker round, but something like Stugna will punch through.

[panzermartin]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

And we get to the primary flaw in the pro-Russian logic.  NATO is a defensive pact and as such it is structured to be defensive.  It's painful to have to make a statement like that, but this is exactly what the Russians absolutely refuse to take into consideration.  No threat to NATO, no threat from NATO.  Period.

I don't consider myself the most pro russian guy but I can see why Russia feels threatened. Its not irrational, lets be honest.

On paper NATO is a defensive organization but its members have conducted and have been involved in the most wars and invasions since the end of WW2. Mainly US. NATO offcially has also intervened violently, bombing in the Balkans, Libya and waged war on Afghanistan for 20 years. So not a strictly defensive pact per se. The other most important member of NATO, (once Great) Britain, has been a colonial force for centuries, occupying and looting countries at will, and only recently has withdrawn from most of its distant colonized lands. Not a great record to be honest. France is not lagging that far behind on that matter and Germany has the most dark recent past of all of them and a special wound with Russia. So, yes not that aggressive anymore, but not a great criminal record if you want them for neighbours.   

US, the flagship and mastermind of NATO,  has bypassed UN council to invade sovereign states like Iraq with false pretext of WMD and has 750 military bases around the globe, thousands of miles beyond its borders. Its military spending is 10x times more than the second on the list. An alien observer coming from space would argue that these guys with the stars and stripes are everywhere, how can they complain of expansionism of others?   Russia is not nervous of NATO but of US army presence so close to its vital routes. Imagine a US base in Sevastopol (again distance from home:  

https://www.google.com/search?q=sevastopol+distance+from+US&oq=sevastopol+distance+from+US&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.9435j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 )

completly blocking Russia way out to Bosporus and Mediterranean Sea. 

In this story Russians might seem the bad guys and we would probably not want to see them reaching the polish borders but from their POV and as an entity , they have probably sound reasons to not want NATO(US) presence that close to their home. This regardless of what we feel is moral or not.    

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by panzermartin

[SeinfeldRules]

14 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Also, I am now of the view that Severodonetsk fight for UKR is about drawing in and destroying RU forces at minimal cost to UKR.  Does anyone have any other views on this?   Looks like UKR arty is hitting rear of RU lines, probably counterbattery.  Is UKR trying to get RU arty into good place for destroying it??  (copied pic below from dailykos who copied it from somewhere else)

 

I believe that Severdonetsk is a fixing force for both sides. I doubt Russia will commit serious forces to take the city when there are much to easier ways to take the city, ie force them to withdraw by closing the supply lines. It seems the majority of Russia’s assaults occurring on the flanks of the salient support this theory. 

In regards to the picture, OPIR works both ways so that can be the actual battery locations doing the firing. Probably impossible to tell the difference with the civilian version. 

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

While Germany is doing gods knows what, other NATO partners are supplying artillery to Ukraine. Hopefully before winter aircraft will be supplied, (tho no indications at all this will occur) while obviously the situation is painful for Ukraine right now, Russia cannot afford to suffer losses that it cannot replace, and to be this slow on the offensive.

Russia was supposed to have used artillery to break a hole to stream armored and mechanized units into Ukraine's rear and destroy their supply lines. This should have been what occurred at the beginning of the war, that Russia is reduced to this WWI grinding mass is just pitiful.

That President Zelensky can visit a sailent while 10 Russian generals are dead so far is just damning of Russia.

I am confident NATO will continue to supply increasing and more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine.

Russia has so far been unable to stem the tide of western weapons to Ukraine and with each passing week and month, they have risen in complexity and amount. (Forget Germany tho even the promised equipment is rising in technology wise) No real ability to stop the movement of equipment to Ukraine, no risk of escalation by attacking and daring NATO retaliation by attacking the airfields where the supplies land.

NATO is about to be enlarged, such that Russia will virtually face a "hostile" force that directly threatens the Northern Fleet bases and nada in terms of escalation.

If I were a cautious NATO member, worried about nuclear war, I'm seeing Russia basically conceding that the weapon shipments are not worth escalation, I'm watching Finland about to give NATO clear approaches to Russia's northern flank and Russia giving barely a peep and I'm watching Russia reduced to WWI combat grind when prior to the war, where we were dreaming of Russian tanks reaching Berlin!
If I were Scholz, I'm sweating over the fact that my "fear" of nuclear war over German tanks in Ukraine is just poof, nothing, and how to explain to a increasingly emboldened opposition and coalition my untenable positions.

To say "so far no nuclear escalation has happened, so to think it can happen in the future is stupid" is unreasonable. That's just like the proverbial guy who jumps from a skyscraper and 2 floors before impact says: "Ha, so far nothing bad has happend!" Whether there is a threshold for escalation, and, if so, which, is something that probably only Putin himself knows. If at all because that implies some semblance of reasonable behaviour right up to the end.

I, for one, don't think we should let fear of that dictate what we do but it would be remiss to not at least keep in mind that the threat is real.

Re German tanks: Now you force me to defend Scholz again, I really don't like to do that. But did I miss US Abrams tanks or British Challengers being in Ukraine? At least in that regard, Germany is not the only country being on the catious side.

[Calamine Waffles]

6 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Re German tanks: Now you force me to defend Scholz again, I really don't like to do that. But did I miss US Abrams tanks or British Challengers being in Ukraine? At least in that regard, Germany is not the only country being on the catious side.

The US and Britain are backfilling for Poland at least. Not sure what Germany is doing.