How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[holoween]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That is powerful stuff.  This is where Clausewitz breaks down - when government and the military become extensions of the people, a war of the people cannot ignore the deeply cultural and personal factors that drive the conflict itself well beyond a simple "rational extension of policy".

You either havent read clausewitz or chose to ignore important parts:

"The military power must be destroyed,[...] The country must be conquered [...] But even when both these things are done, still the War [...]
cannot be considered as at an end as long as the will of
the enemy is not subdued also

 

[Aragorn2002]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well given the Ukrainian political levels mastery of the narrative, I think we can forgive them for a small communications mis-step.  What is shocking is just how nervous the West is right now.  Everyone remember these infographics from before the war?

We went through this in the initial phases of the war, all waiting for the "inevitable defeat of Ukraine" and then it totally went the other way.  Now it is almost like there is a push to re-affirm a pre-conceived reality of "Ukraine losing" at the slightest hint of a tactical set-back.

That's the problem of Westerners, isn't? We don't have the stomach for war. That's what Vlad is counting on.

[Huba]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well given the Ukrainian political levels mastery of the narrative, I think we can forgive them for a small communications mis-step.  What is shocking is just how nervous the West is right now.  Everyone remember these infographics from before the war?

I don't think it is a misstep, it's rather a collateral damage caused by overall extremely effective strategy. The way people all over Europe are putting pressure on the leaders is tremendous, and regarding the military support specifically, the support is only getting bigger(yes, I'm thinking of Germany   but not only). 

Quote

We went through this in the initial phases of the war, all waiting for the "inevitable defeat of Ukraine" and then it totally went the other way.  Now it is almost like there is a push to re-affirm a pre-conceived reality of "Ukraine losing" at the slightest hint of a tactical set-back.

OTOH, a lot of people, our great community included to a degree, got overly enthusiastic, a premature case of victory disease. With this mindset, seeing RU objectives reduced week by week is not enough to have the bias confirmed, and any successes on their part make you feel tipsy. Broad picture disappears and fall of some random village seems like end of the world.

I'm absolutely sticking to the prevalent idea that RU is on a downward spiral to collapse, all available data seems to confirm this. The latest 3rd battalion commitment seems like another gimmick that will just make the fall harder. IMO writing is on the wall, just without precise schedule.

[Haiduk]

Looks like Russian EW asset landed UKR R18 drone-bomber. Interesting that instead usual RKG-1600 ammunition (based of RKG-3 HEAT hand grenade) it carried KZ-4800 HEAT bomb, based on KZ-6 engineer HEAT ammunition - 3 kg total weight, including 1,8 kg of HE TG-40. KZ-6 used for destruction of roads, runways, equipment, buildings, making of holes in hard soil. Placed on the armor KZ-6 can maintain damage beyond 50 mm of steel.

KZ-4600 are producing since the mid of 2021 on Mayak factory for "Aerorozvidka" volunteer UAV unit.

    

Edited June 13, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Rare and to this time secret Russian UAV, adopted by FSB was shot down today over Mykolaiv. This UAV has 12 cameras for hi-res cartographing

[Aragorn2002]

18 minutes ago, Huba said:

I don't think it is a misstep, it's rather a collateral damage caused by overall extremely effective strategy. The way people all over Europe are putting pressure on the leaders is tremendous, and regarding the military support specifically, the support is only getting bigger(yes, I'm thinking of Germany   but not only). 

OTOH, a lot of people, our great community included to a degree, got overly enthusiastic, a premature case of victory disease. With this mindset, seeing RU objectives reduced week by week is not enough to have the bias confirmed, and any successes on their part make you feel tipsy. Broad picture disappears and fall of some random village seems like end of the world.

I'm absolutely sticking to the prevalent idea that RU is on a downward spiral to collapse, all available data seems to confirm this. The latest 3rd battalion commitment seems like another gimmick that will just make the fall harder. IMO writing is on the wall, just without precise schedule.

I predicted that it would take Russia 2 weeks to Blitzkrieg Ukraine, so I'm not very good at this, but I think there won't be a collapse from either side, just a war of attrition, that will drag on for at least half a year.

[Huba]

On 6/11/2022 at 12:12 AM, dan/california said:

The_Capt  said, many hundreds of pages ago, that top tier land warfare was becoming much more like naval warfare. With endless layers of countermeasures, and counter counter measures deployed to protect the actual ships. The question in both cases is CAN you protect the actual ships/tanks at a cost anybody can afford.

A related question is do we want to put all of this stuff, and mental bandwidth required to operate it, on the heads of every tank crew. It might make a lot more sense to bite the bullet and make one tank out of four a countermeasures platform. My spitball on that would be a SERIOUS phased array radar, laser system, ~20-35 mm rotary cannon with smart shells, and a couple of whatever comes after the stinger. The goal would be for this unit to deal with threats as far out as possible. Lase drones the the second they clear the tree line, and or horizon, shoot down ATGMs when they are hundreds of meters out, blast out various kinds of ECM that will fry an egg a mile away, and let the rest of the unit do their already hard jobs. Just to be clear I think this needs to be on a survivable tracked chassis, Maybe even a modified Abrams hull. I am assuming you can hook that turbine up to one heck of a generator if you set your mind to it. For triple points you could let the ECM unit control RWS on other vehicles when there were high priority threats incoming.

If the bad guys are not playing at the same level, well a rotary cannon is never a bad thing to have.

We discussed it 2 days ago. In the Panther tank concept from Rheinmetall, unveiled today at Eurosatory 2022, 7.62 RWS's main purpose is shooting down UAVs, according to this article (in Polish). Prototype is equipped with Iron Fist APS, so presumable it provides the necessary sensors.

https://defence24.pl/przemysl/eurosatory-2022-pantera-z-ostrym-pazurem-nowa-generacja-leoparda

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Huba

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I predicted that it would take Russia 2 weeks to Blitzkrieg Ukraine, so I'm not very good at this, but I think there won't be a collapse from either side, just a war of attrition, that will drag on for at least half a year.

Perhaps "defeat" might be a better term, not necessarily rapid disintegration.

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 9:03 PM, Battlefront.com said:

We haven't had a fun picture in a while, so here's one staring Russia's latest tank battalion to enter the war.  Apparently this was taken on a road march to the norther portion of their Kherson positions.  Anybody want to comment on what we see in this picture?

Steve

That would appear to be several non-uniformed (civilian?) personnel sitting on a T-62 (fume-extractor 1/3rd of the way down the barrel, although I suppose the road wheel gaps are a more reliable identification feature, I just can never remember which road wheel configuration goes to the T-55 and which goes to the T-62), which appears to have gotten stuck on the side of the road (hung up on the barriers on the side?) and (I assume) abandoned.

Not sure what conclusions to draw. We knew they were bringing in T-62s. If this is showing up in the Kherson area perhaps it is there to free up a higher quality unit for the push on Sievierodonetsk (I suppose that would be a sensible use of lower quality equipment)? Obviously it didn't have the best driver in the world.

[Aragorn2002]

On 6/10/2022 at 6:03 AM, Battlefront.com said:

We haven't had a fun picture in a while, so here's one staring Russia's latest tank battalion to enter the war.  Apparently this was taken on a road march to the norther portion of their Kherson positions.  Anybody want to comment on what we see in this picture?

Steve

I bet the Ukrainian army is planning a commando raid with tractors behind enemy lines at this very moment.

[Cederic]

10 hours ago, G.I. Joe said:

with the greatest possible respect to the Royal Navy, no true peer-level ally since at least the late Fifties

Totally agree. US vs Royal navies in a straight fight would be short and brutal. Britannia rules the waves, but these days it's mainly through diplomacy and the ability to talk the US into supporting us.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

You either havent read clausewitz or chose to ignore important parts:

"The military power must be destroyed,[...] The country must be conquered [...] But even when both these things are done, still the War [...]
cannot be considered as at an end as long as the will of
the enemy is not subdued also

 

Or have read enough to know when to apply and when to leave it in the past.

Clausewitz - and here it is hard because there are really two Clausewitz in his work On War, young and old.  The old C never finished his revisions because he died but you can see him starting question his own thoughts with age...as we all do.

Clausewitz - war equals will, is frankly junior highschool of war theory, which gets slapped on every T-shirt and Reddit discussion.  Duh, no kidding.  Every war theorist in history before and after Uncle Carl had a bead on that one.  Hell raise a couple kids and any human being can figure that one out.

What is important is how that Will is generated, sustained and directed.  And here Clausewitz does not quite get the entire picture.  *Heresy!*  Further without some of the ingredients that he missed, one cannot really apply his thinking nor his design philosophy to modern warfare. 

Clausewitz saw the Will of warfare as the engine of warfare and generated by the people (the passion)...he was absolutely correct there; however, he saw war through an early 19th century aristocrat lens.  Around that hot passionate Will, of the uneducated masses one must have government and here he was really talking about a ruling elite whose job it was to guide and provide the "reason" to that Will...otherwise known as "policy" or literally the "how of power".   The military was the means of warfare, the strength through which it was professionally applied.  In Uncle C's world the people stayed back and were "passionate" in their fervor and support.  Politicians set the policy of wars and then, like the public, stayed out of the execution.  Military fought the war, in glorious isolation until they won or lost and then the government took over again.  This whole "trinity" - and before any Clausewitzian priests out there jump in, I really do not care what the original translation from Old German may "have really meant", this is semantic apologist tactics - was an elegant system to which linear, but artistic military design could be applied...in fact we use a form of it to this day.

Problem: the relationship between the military, government and people did not stay nicely separated. In his papers on Small Wars he wrestled with this (e.g. arming the populace for resistance) and never quite landed it.  Further his underlying thesis of warfare being "rational" as passion was governed by "our betters" was rickety back in the day and in the face of modern democracy really starts to fray.  The people are the government and the military and as such one cannot divorce human irrationality from warfare.  This is really bad news as linear design also starts to fall apart because human systems are non-linear in nature (see: discussion on reaction to Severodonetsk).  So even though we try to apply linear design working back from that T-shirt End you have posted up there, it never works out as easily as we would like. Taking into account things like culture and history (e.g. humans can remember the future) the limitations of Clausewitz start to appear.  And none of this accounts for micro-social level warfare, famously coined as "war amongst the people" which is a whole other level of crazy.

Now before the Prussian crowd start sharpening pitchforks and lighting torches, Clausewitz was a giant in the creation of modern military theory. But to my mind he was like Newton and his physics has limitations that need to be noted and moved beyond, not wholesale abandoned.  

Edited June 13, 2022 by The_Capt

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, slysniper said:

How in the world is it not going to remove tanks from the battlefield as we think of them presently.

Yeah, this gets back to a discussion we had many hundreds of pages ago.  Tanks, as we know them, are going to be phased out in our ilfetime.  They are too big, too expensive, and now too vulnerable.  The key element, though, is that there is a viable replacement for them.  That's the nail in their coffin.

IFV/APCs are going to see something similar, but inherently we'll still have an armored vehicle that carries people.  I just don't think it will resemble what countries have on hand now.  I picture something that is able to withstand top attacks, for a start, and doesn't necessarily have an inherent ability to directly support its dismounts.  In other words, a heavily armored "battlefield taxi" with the offensive weapons systems held by UGVs.

Steve

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Worthy piece from Adam Tooze tracing the diffusion of Auftragstaktik from the Wehrmacht via the Bundeswehr to the US Army and its subsequent adoption by the Ukrainians and, as Tooze does well, ruminating on the wider implications: e.g., is there a 'Western Way of War?'

This is great piece of history of military theory, very interesting read.

Btw. by Western Way of War you mean specific V.D. Hanson theory  put in his (not very well researched) books or just a general tendency to build upon independent thought, rationality and down-to-top innitative? There are great historical debates as to what extend this notion of individualism is accurate or actually self-flattering image. But we need another thread for that

Edited June 13, 2022 by Beleg85

[Aragorn2002]

35 minutes ago, Huba said:

Perhaps "defeat" might be a better term, not necessarily rapid disintegration.

I found and still find it hard to believe that Russia's position is that bad. Even if it is, they won't back down. Perhaps I'm a child of the cold war too much, but I think this is just the beginning. And the West should realize that and act accordingly. Make Ukraine candidate for EU and NATO and send them so much tanks and locomotive artillery that they won't know where to park them. 

It's not Ukrainian or Russian weakness where I'm worried about, but Western weakness.

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Beleg85]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Problem: the relationship between the military, government and people did not stay nicely separated. In his papers on Small Wars he wrestled with this (e.g. arming the populace for resistance) and never quite landed it.  Further his underlying thesis of warfare being "rational" as passion was governed by "our betters" was rickety back in the day and in the face of modern democracy really starts to fray.  The people are the government and the military and as such one cannot divorce human irrationality from warfare.  This is really bad news as linear design also starts to fall apart because human systems are non-linear in nature (see: discussion on reaction to Severodonetsk).  So even though we try to apply linear design working back from that T-shirt End you have posted up there, it never works out as easily as we would like. Taking into account things like culture and history (e.g. humans can remember the future) the limitations of Clausewitz start to appear.  And none of this accounts for micro-social level warfare, famously coined as "war amongst the people" which is a whole other level of crazy.

Now before the Prussian crowd start sharpening pitchforks and lighting torches, Clausewitz was a giant in the creation of modern military theory. But to my mind he was like Newton and his physics has limitations that need to be noted and moved beyond, not wholesale abandoned.  

This

And that is why critics of Clausewitz (like Keegan school), even if often misatributed his quotes, were usually right in their conclusions. The way culture and anthropology shaped the military was always crucial, not the other way around.

[Cederic]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

screaming bloody murder and calling for more weapons. It has quite a rallying impact on Western societies I think, but overdone entices defeatist thinking. Balancing that is not easy from communication management perspective. 

For that reason alone I was happy to see a couple of pages ago a "we're really grateful for the support provided, could you please send more" message, rather than the "Why aren't you supporting us more" demands.

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

He escaped to UKR-controlled territory. I can say also that not only pro-Ukrainian people flee frpm occupied territories - both since 2014 and now. Many of "vata" go to Kyiv, western Ukraine, Poland. They continue to hate Ukraine, but don't want to go to Russia. Maybe because true Russian patriots always prefer to love "ideal Russia" on the distance from its terrible reality 

I think many in the occupied Donbas are now seeing the true face of Russia and not liking it at all.  However, I would be surprised if this changed people to having a favorable view of Ukraine.  That would mean admitting being wrong, and people do not like to do that.

Yes, it does seem that pro-Russians outside of Russia for some reason don't want to live in Russia.  Which I have always found humorous because it is an admission that they really prefer the country they are currently in more than Russia.

Steve

[Cederic]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Duh, no kidding. 

You say that, but from a highly educated and embedded position. The rest of the world needs frequently reminding - see my next post for a comment on why.

20 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

he was like Newton and his physics has limitations that need to be noted and moved beyond, not wholesale abandoned

I do like that comparison, and accept entirely that we've had two centuries of thought (and applied practice) since Clausewitz shared his impressive 'starter for ten'.

 

[sburke]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I swear the online tone is as jumpy as the prettiest goat at an Afghan barn orgy right now. 

There is an old joke referencing not risking getting an ugly camel..  Clausewitz, Clausewitz blah blah blah  The important bit is the GOAT IS BACK!

[Cederic]

20 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

one wonder if this tactic of "bleeding them out" in the city fights is worth it in the end. Right now it seems Ukrianians are fighting (theoretically at least) other Ukrainians

An objective cynic might suggest that Ukrainian leadership can see the positive side of leaving the Donbas with no fighting age men: Makes the post-war era significantly simpler for a few years, especially if those years are used to, erm, change attitudes in the region.

  

14 hours ago, dan/california said:

The above is why I think 2/24 borders with EU and NATO membership is the best scenario for Ukraine. In the LPR/DPR and Crimea that is probably the majority outlook or close to it. I grant you the Russians are trying get literally every male between 15 and 60 killed in this war, but that isn't going to put the rest of the population in these godforsaken "republics" in happy mood.

Again a cynic might suggest that half the population will want to move (return) to Russia anyway.

But even beyond that: Why should Ukraine abandon its territory instead of educating those that live there? It shouldn't be too difficult to offer people a choice between helping Ukraine succeed and moving to some ****hole in Russia where they'll be despised and trained as expendable insurgents.

Sorry, I may be lacking in sympathy for Ukrainians that have access to the Internet and don't see how ****ty Russia is towards them. Your father was killed by Ukrainian forces? No ****ing wonder, the Russians used him to soak up ammunition so that their own forces can survive a few days longer.

The Ukrainians illegally shelled your village killing your mother? Fine, find a lawyer (I'm sure Russia, Amnesty International, whoever, will fund this for you) and sue them. Use their own laws against them. Your alternative is decades of hatred, and if that's your choice, I have no sympathy anyway. Because you can't expect Ukraine to just walk away and allow Russia to invade, allow the Donbas to revolt, allow its citizens to be killed, raped, deported.

Ukraine needs to be seen to be acting in a judicial and reasoned manner, but beyond that, idiots in Donbas are exactly that: Ignorant stupid idiots. I would refuse to allow such people to steal land from my own country so can only support Ukraine in refusing to allow it to happen to theirs.

If Ukraine misbehave then, well, my sympathies change. Stand up to your oppressor and all that. I just haven't seen evidence that Ukraine is systemically misbehaving. But even there: the objective cynic would observe that an authoritarian anti-humanitarian state would impose its will on a rebel province anyway, so there're still no reasonable circumstances in which Ukraine should or would accept the loss of Donbas.

So a well-intentioned Ukraine helping its citizens move on from years of Russian aggression will seek to embrace and support the Donbas, and a spiteful malicious Ukraine will seek to subjugate the Donbas. Which Ukraine would walk away, writing off years of conflict knowing they've left their enemy poised to make further aggressions in eight years time? I just don't see it.

  

11 hours ago, Huba said:

After the war, make it easy for anyone from that region to migrate to UA and call it a day. Most important is to have a deal that is (at least on paper) permanent, so those breakaway regions won't hinder country's future, blocking EU/ NATO ascension.

Permanent? Until Russia invade again. Peter the Imbecile isn't going to stop - didn't you hear him proclaim the need for a new Russian Empire. No peace that relinquishes Donbas is worth the paper it's written on, you may as well surrender the whole of Ukraine at the same time.

 

6 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I just can't see the UA retaking Crimea though, barring a very large and visible popular uprising in their favour, which seems very doubtful to me.

I can't see Ukraine retaking the whole of Donbas and halting Russian aggression without Putin being toppled. I can't see Ukraine accepting less than the whole of Donbas (for the reasons above).

Ergo we need to consider Crimea post-Putin. I think taking and holding it will be far far more difficult than the Donbas but my arguments above have to apply. It may prove too large an effort for Ukraine to try though; there may be a halfway-house in which Donbas is fully re-integrated but Crimea is lost. I'm not sure how that can work for Ukraine though, unless the negotiated peace includes things like 'fully demilitarised Crimea' in which case Russia would have to agree to dismantle their naval base in Sevastopol.

Taking it by force may be an easier task.

  

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think the only practical way Ukraine can militarily take back the lost Crimean and Donbas territories is if the Russian government collapses into chaos.

I wrote all the above without posting it because I'm three pages behind. So it's nice to be able to agree with Steve on this

  

3 hours ago, Zeleban said:

there is no difference between the direct surrender of Ukraine and the abandonment of part of its territories in exchange for "peace."

We're back to Zelenskyy's referendum on any peace treaty. It was a genius move on many levels.

  

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

No-o-oo

I rest my case.

 

(If anybody thinks this is off-topic or distracting from detailed tactical analysis of specific MLRS opportunities against depleted BTGs unwisely attempting contested bridge crossings while supported by artillery directing drones under attack from heroic low-altitude SU-25 pilots, I have only one comment: In Iraq and Afghanistan the people that won the war lost the peace.)

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

There is an old joke referencing not risking getting an ugly camel..  Clausewitz, Clausewitz blah blah blah  The important bit is the GOAT IS BACK!

Damn, should have went with camel...using goat too much.  No wonder the poor thing looks so nervous.

[Haiduk]

Enemy destroyed the third bridge to Siverodonetsk, but as said the head of military administration Serhiy Haidai, the transport communication between Lysychansk and Siverodonetsl still exists

In last days we have several videos of different UKR artillery strikes on Russian ammunition storages and artillery positions. Maybe the number of 155 mm howitzers are gradually increasing and we now can reach with "longer hand" to this places, where enemy felt itself in safety. Ukr forces several times hit ammunition and logistic centers in Donetsk and also struck TV transmitter, so Russian channels disappeared and evem locally UKR TV-channels are available now.

Here is video, uploaded today, but related to 10th of June - reportedly UKR SOF, operating behind the enemy lines spotted enemy reduced Grad battery in 4 launchers near Boroven'ky village  9 km NE from Siverodonetsk. UKR artillery hit position, destroying 2 or 3 launchers

 

[Huba]

7 minutes ago, Cederic said:

Permanent? Until Russia invade again. Peter the Imbecile isn't going to stop - didn't you hear him proclaim the need for a new Russian Empire. No peace that relinquishes Donbas is worth the paper it's written on, you may as well surrender the whole of Ukraine at the same time.

But taking whole/ part/ none of Donbas back doesn't change it one bit, unless Russia transforms into Canada of the East. The worst case short therm though would be for Ukraine to be entangled in some "frozen conflict" that would prevent it from becoming a NATO member - which IMO is the only permanent security solution for this country.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Huba

[Aragorn2002]

16 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Enemy destroyed the third bridge to Siverodonetsk, but as said the head of military administration Serhiy Haidai, the transport communication between Lysychansk and Siverodonetsl still exists

In last days we have several videos of different UKR artillery strikes on Russian ammunition storages and artillery positions. Maybe the number of 155 mm howitzers are gradually increasing and we now can reach with "longer hand" to this places, where enemy felt itself in safety. Ukr forces several times hit ammunition and logistic centers in Donetsk and also struck TV transmitter, so Russian channels disappeared and evem locally UKR TV-channels are available now.

Here is video, uploaded today, but related to 10th of June - reportedly UKR SOF, operating behind the enemy lines spotted enemy reduced Grad battery in 4 launchers near Boroven'ky village  9 km NE from Siverodonetsk. UKR artillery hit position, destroying 2 or 3 launchers

 

Gorgeous.