How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

Incredible.

Haiduk's in for a hell of a surprise when he gets back on his pc...

FUNDED!

$1500 to get him a new laptop. Amazing. Thank you, everyone who donated.

 

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And it is likely to get worse.  Someone is going to figure out how to make a cheap UGV with a shaped charge that can scuttle out of the brush - think minefield with legs.  The scary reality is that miniaturization and IT are combining to make long range lethality much cheaper and our counters/defence are still pointed a the wrong targets.

Weirdly in this war it looks like defensive warfare is gaining primacy - which isn't supposed to be what happens, or maybe we just missed the fact that ISR and not Strike was going to be the determining factor.

https://www.army.mil/article/249549/army_to_field_laser_equipped_stryker_prototypes_in_fy_2022

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/06/07/nato-gears-up-to-launch-new-air-defense-programs-in-2023/

The Pentagon seems to have gotten the memo that this is a real problem, all sorts of programs underway. 

Lasers are by far the best method if they can get it to really work. Much longer range, and no short term logistics requirements except fuel for the vehicle. Gun based systems are clearly needed but a drone can spot at ranges longer than a gun based system can reach, spot well enough anyway. 

 

They will probably have to be pared with something like this to defeat swarms of loitering munitions

It is going to be a whole military specialty, maybe one of the two or three most important ones.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by dan/california

[dan/california]

She lays out my view of Scholz rather well.

 

If Steve were to drop a bone or three about the next game, Or even just release a tiny update for Black Sea that gave Ukr forces Javelins and NLAWS without torturing the editor to death we might have something to talk about besides EU politics, just saying.

[Calamine Waffles]

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And it is likely to get worse.  Someone is going to figure out how to make a cheap UGV with a shaped charge that can scuttle out of the brush - think minefield with legs.  The scary reality is that miniaturization and IT are combining to make long range lethality much cheaper and our counters/defence are still pointed a the wrong targets.

Weirdly in this war it looks like defensive warfare is gaining primacy - which isn't supposed to be what happens, or maybe we just missed the fact that ISR and not Strike was going to be the determining factor.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[Huba]

And for something more cheerful, I saw below reported by a few sources that were right the first time UA made a push in Kherson:

 

[danfrodo]

20 minutes ago, Huba said:

And for something more cheerful, I saw below reported by a few sources that were right the first time UA made a push in Kherson:

 

Interesting.  Pressure multiple points and see what breaks.  Much less risk since not massing forces.  Hopefully some sectors will break.  From the maps we see a little UKR movement, but not much, at least so far from what we know.  I sure hope there's lots of low quality RU troops on that front.

I wonder if there's any kind of highly mobile armored exploitation forces waiting behind the front for an opportunity.

[Cederic]

23 hours ago, panzermartin said:

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.    

 

 

I find the Russian position you posit to be flawed and ignorant - which doesn't mean that the Russians don't believe it, just that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

NATO's members are individual countries. The US can choose to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, can send troops into Panama, can try and assassinate the leader of Cuba but none of those are NATO actions. None of them oblige other NATO members to participate and no other NATO members took part in some of those activities. Conflating individual countries with a defensive pact between multiple countries would be childish of the Russians.

Incidentally the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not just 'Britain', is still Great (ask the Ukrainians) and did not occupy and loot countries at will. We introduced terribly civilised cultural practices like cricket to them, helped them exploit and profit from their natural resources then set them free as independent nations capable of making their way in the modern world. We're nice like that. (The sods have responded by continually beating us at cricket.)

If Russia is scared of the US that may be reasonable: The US is the only country capable of posing a material nuclear threat to them. In no way does it excuse their belligerence towards their neighbours, let alone invading one of them. That's colonial expansionism, something the argument you presented portrayed as a bad thing.

 

[Harmon Rabb]

45 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Incredible.

Haiduk's in for a hell of a surprise when he gets back on his pc...

FUNDED!

$1500 to get him a new laptop. Amazing. Thank you, everyone who donated.

 

Happy to send some money over.

The speed at which we were able to fund this idea is a testament to just how much others appreciate Haiduk's many insightful contributions to this topic.

 

[Centurian52]

On 6/7/2022 at 3:44 PM, Vanir Ausf B said:

Article on the challenges of operating a hodge-podge of foreign equipment.

But an oversight nearly delayed all maintenance on the guns at the hard-to-reach front lines, Ukrainian officers said. The entire M777 machine is put together on the imperial system used in the U.S., meaning that using a Ukrainian metric wrench on it would be difficult, and would risk damaging the equipment.

Only after sending the guns did the U.S. arrange for a rushed shipment of toolboxes of imperial-gauge wrenches, said Maj. Vadim Baranik, the deputy commander of a maintenance unit.

But tools can be misplaced, lost or destroyed, potentially leaving guns inoperable unless someone scrounges up a U.S.-supplied wrench.

https://news.yahoo.com/potent-weapons-reach-ukraine-faster-114318516.html

Really? I know the US public has stuck with imperial, but I thought the military had at least switched to metric (I always knew the caliber of my M16 in millimeters, not hundredths of an inch, and I qualified on a 300 meter range not a 300 yard range). If it's causing these sort of interoperability issues we need to switch to metric yesterday! I don't really believe that one system is truly better than the other, but standardization matters, and most of the world has already chosen to standardize on metric.

[danfrodo]

7 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

Really? I know the US public has stuck with imperial, but I thought the military had at least switched to metric (I always knew the caliber of my M16 in millimeters, not hundredths of an inch, and I qualified on a 300 meter range not a 300 yard range). If it's causing these sort of interoperability issues we need to switch to metric yesterday! I don't really believe that one system is truly better than the other, but standardization matters, and most of the world has already chosen to standardize on metric.

Both metric and imperial systems work and have lots of success to attest to this.  Except that one is really f--ing stupid and the other is based on the number of fingers you have as well as being based on our actual base10 number system.  While the other is based on things 12, 16, 60, 5280, and other nonsense.  Two particularly stupid things that unfortunately are too baked in to ever change is our clocks (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours??) and degrees (360??  wtf?).  arbitrary, hard to work with numbers.  We are so used to these that we don't realize just how stupid these are.  If they were all some kind of base10 it would all be 10x easier to work with.

[Huba]

8 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Both metric and imperial systems work and have lots of success to attest to this.  Except that one is really f--ing stupid and the other is based on the number of fingers you have as well as being based on our actual base10 number system.  While the other is based on things 12, 16, 60, 5280, and other nonsense.  Two particularly stupid things that unfortunately are too baked in to ever change is our clocks (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours??) and degrees (360??  wtf?).  arbitrary, hard to work with numbers.  We are so used to these that we don't realize just how stupid these are.  If they were all some kind of base10 it would all be 10x easier to work with.

The way we split year into parts is also not the smartest, French Revolutionary Calendar FTW

Edited June 10, 2022 by Huba

[Cederic]

6 hours ago, poesel said:

Before Trump & Putins invasion there really was no chance for an EU army. No one would have thought the US could go isolationist and that there could be a major war in Europe.
These events could be the catalyst that makes it happen. And whatever form that EU army takes, it will be firmly inside NATO.

The prospective EU army was a (small) factor in Brexit, which predates Trump.

That the UK would eventually have to bail out Europe (again) by defeating it continues to be anticipated (if the EU doesn't collapse first). Yes, we'll probably want the Americans to help (again).

The EU demands EU dominance in everything and doesn't tolerate dissent. It's why the UK left (we just want free trade) and EU demands to control taxation, foreign policy and have its own army meant that the moment EU and NATO priorities conflict, the EU will either abandon NATO or demand it changes. It doesn't know any other way of operating.

It's one reason I really hope Ukraine doesn't join the EU, and why Hungary (and even Poland) have so many conflicts with their overlords.

[Grigb]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

ha, it's LLFs day for Alternative Facts then lol! I hope you're right, in this case!

Not only their voice acting skill is poor, they did not say syka, blyat, na hui, ebat or pidori. They said once zahyichim him and that's all. This is not how Russian soldiers talk.

[acrashb]

Perhaps Putin is as ill as has been rumoured:

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/vladimir-putin-needed-urgent-medical-assistance

 

 

[panzermartin]

53 minutes ago, Cederic said:

 

 

53 minutes ago, Cederic said:

Incidentally the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not just 'Britain', is still Great (ask the Ukrainians) and did not occupy and loot countries at will. We introduced terribly civilised cultural practices like cricket to them, helped them exploit and profit from their natural resources then set them free as independent nations capable of making their way in the modern world. We're nice like that. (The sods have responded by continually beating us at cricket.)

It's true that every war, occupation and colonization brings developments in infrastructure, governing model, cultural additions, lots of good things as well. The Romans also invaded Britain and brought some good things too, walls, forts, aqueducts, ways to count etc. Even Brittania was a word of theirs. One can say it was in a way part of the evolution of human race. But you wouldn't want the Romans above your head all the time, would you? . It still was an occupation that involved a lot of violence, suppression and humiliation of natives. Colonial powers didn't set those countries free because they matured but because there were bloody unrests and weren't strong enough anymore to handle them . Cricket and driving on the left is fine but they had been also killing people as recently as in the late 50s in Cyrpus for instance...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/07/tortured-to-death-the-14-cypriot-men-killed-by-british-in-50s-uprising

 

 

[Grigb]

4 minutes ago, acrashb said:

Perhaps Putin is as ill as has been rumoured:

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/vladimir-putin-needed-urgent-medical-assistance

Unfortunately, the source is RUMINT. It is an interesting channel if you like to know fresh Kremlin rumors and that's all. 

[Armorgunner]

This should be the new NATO round. Not the new 6.8mm, or? 900 rounds at the same weight as 100 rounds of 7,62x51. The same trajectory as 5,56. And the ability to penetrate Nazirussian APC´s. Like BTR, and MT-LB!

http://www.gotavapen.se/gota/cbj/cbj_crtg.htm

 

[Cederic]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But you're saying here that a 250 USD Chinese drone that could be issued to and used by any rando rifle squad still needs a 3 million(?) missile or AAA system

The $250 drone can be shot down with small arms - see

Sure, in military use the drone will be further away - but it'll be hovering or moving much more slowly.

The Predator/Reaper scale drones are aircraft, they'll need AA due to altitude and/or range.

The gap is in-between. While there's amusement potential in the way the Orlan-10 is designed and put together, it's cheap and it's less easily targeted by small arms. That goes all the way up to the Bayraktar sized drones, where you're out of range or sight for small arms, but too small (or blinking difficult) for AA. Those sized drones remain cheap enough that you'll bankrupt a small nation or two paying for AA missiles to down them.

That's the sweet spot for anti-drone research right now. Produce something that can take down drones for $10k or less per drone, can hit anything from a consumer grade Chinese quadcopter up to a Bayraktar, and you'll get rich off the royalties even if you never make one yourself.

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Unfortunately, the source is RUMINT. It is an interesting channel if you like to know fresh Kremlin rumors and that's all. 

Cost per round?

[acrashb]

13 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

But you wouldn't want the Romans above your head all the time, would you?

That depends.

 

 

[panzermartin]

1 minute ago, acrashb said:

That depends.

 

 

[Vacillator]

1 minute ago, acrashb said:

That depends.

A true classic, Life of Brian.

I have difficulties with most of what was said earlier about the fiasco otherwise known as Brexit, but as this is not a thread about Brexit I'll keep them to myself.

[dan/california]

14 minutes ago, Cederic said:

The $250 drone can be shot down with small arms - see

Sure, in military use the drone will be further away - but it'll be hovering or moving much more slowly.

The Predator/Reaper scale drones are aircraft, they'll need AA due to altitude and/or range.

The gap is in-between. While there's amusement potential in the way the Orlan-10 is designed and put together, it's cheap and it's less easily targeted by small arms. That goes all the way up to the Bayraktar sized drones, where you're out of range or sight for small arms, but too small (or blinking difficult) for AA. Those sized drones remain cheap enough that you'll bankrupt a small nation or two paying for AA missiles to down them.

That's the sweet spot for anti-drone research right now. Produce something that can take down drones for $10k or less per drone, can hit anything from a consumer grade Chinese quadcopter up to a Bayraktar, and you'll get rich off the royalties even if you never make one yourself.

Small drones certainly can be shot down by small arms, but the internet is literally buried in videos of of ones that weren't dropping grenades. The "dropees" to coin a phrase were presumably not volunteers. And someone is going to start turning out truly militarized versions of the inconvenient size very soon, and in quantity.

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, Cederic said:

The $250 drone can be shot down with small arms - see

While buzzing a shooting range by a bunch of “bros” who know it’s coming?  Mind you in a war scenario all those range-yokels were just lit up and would be pounded by indirect fires before they could scramble to their big ol’ pick ups.

Drones come in a lot of sizes.  The cheap ones are small and really hard to see at range, where they can stay because camera technology has advanced dramatically.  So you get small cheap drones lighting you up while flying a km away and beaming that info back to an operator with a radio while you can’t hear or see them.  And if you get lucky and do see them you need to look like an Afghan wedding firing like a lunatic to put enough dumb lead in the air to hit the thing, which gives up your position entirely.

There are very few hard conclusions we can draw from this war as of yet.  However, the modern reality that unmanned systems have arrived and are changing warfare is one we can bank on.  This is not a fad, nor can we wish it away and go back to the good old days.  Now what the implications will be is still in motion but we are starting to see it in Ukraine.

Edited June 10, 2022 by The_Capt

[acrashb]

25 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Unfortunately, the source is RUMINT. It is an interesting channel if you like to know fresh Kremlin rumors and that's all. 

Fair enough.  When I see things in the National Post I don't always check source, as NP is a real paper / news organization with fact checking - most of the time.  Well, we can hope

Edited June 10, 2022 by acrashb