How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

It is very important that money is given to Ukraine or for arming Ukraine, if this is true, than the money is being put to good use on restarting production of Soviet munitions.

 

[Haiduk]

UKR artillery hit buildings of Topaz factory in Donetsk. In the past on this factory ELINT assets Kolchuga produced, but since 2014 this is the place of DPR/Russians troops and vehicles deployment. 

... After the shelling enemy vehicles became to scatter from Topaz (lower video)

 

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

No, is mostly about cpability of unit to conduct own tasks autonomously. Since 2000th Russian army due to local conflicts transferred from old Soviet divisional structure to separate brigades structure, when each brigade has own set of heavy support weapon systems and wasn't depend from higher HQs and to be more flexible. But since Russia again became to dream about own empire ambitions and prepare to "big war", they again partially turned to divisional structure for solving of more scale tasks. Part of separate brigades were turned out to divisions, some were reduced to regiments. But there are many units remained as separate brigades in compositins of armies or army corpses (of coastal units)    

All UKR brigades are "separate".

Thank you for the explanation. I read a little about Serdyukov's reforms and also how they were being reverted.

What really confused me was that both Ukraine and Russia utilize the Separate brigades. Now I understand.

Also, when I first saw a Russian corps on a battle map near Kherson I was a little confused. I didn't realize Russia had any. I remember seeing that they were either marine or coastal defense as you said.

[Grigb]

Some details from Murz regarding the recent UKR strike of Red Ray ammo warehouse.

Quote

 

1. It used to be the arty ammo warehouse of the arty brigade of the 2nd AK. With the beginning of the SVO, it seems, it became a warehouse for all arty ammo, delivered by trains from the Russian Federation to the railway station located in the same Red Ray [city]. Some pieces of what was scattered by explosions around the neighborhood are identified as aviation NURS [Unguided Rockets], well, according to the shades of smoke during the fire, some particularly enlightened men believe that anti-aircraft missiles were also lying there.

2. The story about  people on the spot allegedly saw that the detonation in the warehouse began after the Su-25 attack may be explained by the fact that near by there is approach route to the LBS [line of combat contact]  of Russian Su-25s. It just happened.

3. The air defense was working at the time of attack, people saw a double launch of anti-aircraft missiles. But it is already known that the APU liked to work with "Tochkas" in volleys of 3-4. [It seems RU AA defence is incapable of dealing even with small volleys] 

4. The power of the first detonation was such that people tend to believe that a significant part of the delivered ammo was simply dumped in a pile in one place, despite the fact that the territory of the plant is huge and it was possible to correctly pack it to not having Hiroshima in case of hit. Some of the people, of course, are sure that this is sabotage-betrayal. I think they just didn't see the point in dragging it back and forth, given the huge traffic and the lack of people and equipment for logistics. [RU non-mechanized manual handling bites them]

5. Of course, the second key target of the "Tochkas" was the station itself, packed with ammo trains. After hitting the warehouse, the locomotives dragged the trains with which the station was clogged away at superluminal speed.

Well, yes, continue to wait for the Russian offensive.

 

[Grigb]

Interesting bit about RU drones and EW from couple of RU video. It looks like commercial drones are doing most of the work in RU forces. Military drones seem to be very expensive and rare. As such RU EW devices tend to block their own drone operations. This could be the reason they are using EW sparingly.

[MOS:96B2P]

On 6/17/2022 at 12:02 PM, BFCElvis said:

Just hanging out.....my itchy banning finger hasn't been used in a while. I have it on standby.

Thank you.  Glad to have you back in the neighborhood.  

[Haiduk]

49 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Some details from Murz regarding the recent UKR strike of Red Ray ammo warehouse.

Mmmm... Of course, Krasnyi Luch means "Red Ray/Beam" in English (this name was given in 1920 by Bolsheviks and it symbolized "the light of Red October to the people in capitalism darkness like a hope of liberation"), but the own names of towns are not translated 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Haiduk

[DesertFox]

Very good if true!

 

 

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Very good if true!

 

 

If true we might need a gofundme for SBurke for external hard drive just to hold the file of all the known dead RU officers.  Good news indeed, if true.  We'll probably never know but I hope the US provided intel for this.  That adds insult to injury for Putin.

[Beleg85]

31 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

"the light of Red October to the people in capitalism darkness like a hope of liberation"

Interesting longer sum up from an analysts who know some internal details about sorrow state of supplies from NATO countries to Ukraine and its historical background (in *pl, but one can translate automatically; first part of the thread is pritty obvious for guys here so you may skip).

Edited June 18, 2022 by Beleg85

[Suleyman]

Artillery is definitely king of war, although when it comes to US forces when we get air superiority I’m sure that’s just as nasty since we rely on aviation more. Although we got pretty decent artillery 

[FancyCat]

10 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

If true we might need a gofundme for SBurke for external hard drive just to hold the file of all the known dead RU officers.  Good news indeed, if true.  We'll probably never know but I hope the US provided intel for this.  That adds insult to injury for Putin.

Frankly, I hope Ukraine figured it out all on its own, as surely when Russia is defeated, they will do their best to blame NATO, and pretend Ukraine is just some cannon fodder NATO officers command and it would be nice to slap their stupid brains around the fact Ukraine beat the pulp out of them. 

Good point here, except the dam at Nova Kakhovka, can the Russians blow it to ensure no crossing points of the Dnipro? Or does that cause the Northern Crimean Canal to have no water and therefore no more water for Crimea? Now that was a PR victory for Russia in opening the water supply to Crimea, and while water supply can be transported in from elsewhere, apparently Wiki says the loss of the water supply from the canal had affected Crimea in some manner when Ukraine stopped the supply post 2014. 

 

 

[Calamine Waffles]

4 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Good point here, except the dam at Nova Kakhovka, can the Russians blow it to ensure no crossing points of the Dnipro? Or does that cause the Northern Crimean Canal to have no water and therefore no more water for Crimea? Now that was a PR victory for Russia in opening the water supply to Crimea, and while water supply can be transported in from elsewhere, apparently Wiki says the loss of the water supply from the canal had affected Crimea in some manner when Ukraine stopped the supply post 2014.

I don't recall where on Twitter I saw it, but apparently the geography downriver means that if they blow the dam most of the flooding will be on the eastern bank of the river downstream, which is where the Russians would be in a fight for Kherson.

[LongLeftFlank]

33 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

I don't recall where on Twitter I saw it, but apparently the geography downriver means that if they blow the dam most of the flooding will be on the eastern bank of the river downstream, which is where the Russians would be in a fight for Kherson.

Suyi

[Huba]

54 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

I don't recall where on Twitter I saw it, but apparently the geography downriver means that if they blow the dam most of the flooding will be on the eastern bank of the river downstream, which is where the Russians would be in a fight for Kherson.

Taking a closer look at Nova Kakhovka dam, it looks like road bridge is a separate structure by the side of it, and railway crossing is a kind of superstructure built on top of it. It should be possible to demolish those without blowing up the main dam. 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Huba

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

No, is mostly about cpability of unit to conduct own tasks autonomously. Since 2000th Russian army due to local conflicts transferred from old Soviet divisional structure to separate brigades structure, when each brigade has own set of heavy support weapon systems and wasn't depend from higher HQs and to be more flexible. But since Russia again became to dream about own empire ambitions and prepare to "big war", they again partially turned to divisional structure for solving of more scale tasks. Part of separate brigades were turned out to divisions, some were reduced to regiments. But there are many units remained as separate brigades in compositins of armies or army corpses (of coastal units)    

All UKR brigades are "separate".

Also, generally speaking throughout modern military history...

"Separate" can mean a unit that is not organically attached to a specific higher headquarters.  For example, X Brigade is assigned to Y Regiment of Z Division.  But there are some Brigades that do not report to a Regimental or Divisional HQ, therefore they are "Separate".  Generally "Separate" formations have additional capabilities that normal ones get from their parent formation.  For example, more logistics or extra artillery.  That sort of thing.

The benefit of Separate units like this is they can be assigned to any HQ at any time, usually as a reinforcement for critical offensive or defensive activities.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

It is very important that money is given to Ukraine or for arming Ukraine, if this is true, than the money is being put to good use on restarting production of Soviet munitions.

 

I'll point out something that hasn't been explicitly said in this thread yet.

We've talked about the possible wavering of support for Ukraine as costs mount and the war continues.  "War fatigue" is a real risk.  And this is why the US is so important!

The US is capable of spending the money to support Ukraine on things that another NATO country might not do on its own.  Imagine a conversation with Romania that goes like this:

US -> hey, could you put that ammo factory back online for Ukraine?

Romania -> would love to, but we don't have the money.

US -> no problem, we'll send you a check or we can use VISA or Mastercard if you like.

Romania -> it looks like we'll be able to get that ammo factor back online after all!

 

The point here is that Ukraine needs help that isn't necessarily directly available from the US.  However, the US can use its political and monetary capital to make things happen that otherwise wouldn't.

We're all a smart bunch here so I think we've all understood this since the start, but I still think it is at least worth explicitly mentioning.  At least once

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Grigb said:

Some details from Murz regarding the recent UKR strike of Red Ray ammo warehouse.

 

Well, the video evidence of the explosion certainly is consistent with Murz's description.  And we do know that Russian practices are generally sloppy, so I assume that whatever the safe and correct method for storing ammo is they absolutely didn't do it.

Up until now Ukraine's strikes on ammo stocks have had only tactical relevance.  A particular BTG or RGT might experience a slight shortage of ammo.  However, in this case I think this might have operational impact as artillery ammo is very cumbersome to transport.  It will take a long time to replace what was lost.  Even better if Russia is having difficulty with ammo supply generally!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Grigb said:

Interesting bit about RU drones and EW from couple of RU video. It looks like commercial drones are doing most of the work in RU forces. Military drones seem to be very expensive and rare. As such RU EW devices tend to block their own drone operations. This could be the reason they are using EW sparingly.

This has been widely reported by Russian sources and Western analysts since the early days.  Not just with drones, but with radio communications too.  And apparently some Russian devices use GPS and not GLONASS, which means jamming GPS can also affect their operations.

This becomes an even bigger problem for an armed force that generally doesn't have a good understanding of the tactical battlefield.  It's been pointed out many times already, by Russians themselves, that Unit A has absolutely no idea what Unit B is doing.  I've assumed this has an impact on conducting EW operations.

For example, if Unit A switches its EW capabilities on, Unit B might suddenly find it's stuff not working without any warning.  This causes Unit A to hesitate to switch it on EW.

Steve

[JonS]

12 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And apparently some Russian devices use GPS and not GLONASS, which means jamming GPS can also affect their operations.

Depending on the jamming system, if you're jamming GPS you're probably jamming GLONASS too, since they are - at the level of basic physics - the same system. On the other hand, it is a fully-realised capability for jammers to leave 'windows' in the frequency spectrum that you don't want jammed, and it's reasonable to suppose that Russian EW wonks know what freq GLONASS operates at and leave a window there.

Edited June 18, 2022 by JonS

[Beleg85]

1. Article about  Russian mobilization from practical side. It seems a lot of guys from poorer regions don't mind volunteering. Some Russians are having "cold calls" from recruitment offices offering them adventure in Ukraine. "Sir, did you considered joining an army..."  :

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/high-casualties-russia-pulls-out-all-the-stops-to-find-fresh-troops-a-254bf9c2-c83b-4492-8dea-1f5cec53b03e

2. Short but curious detail about Dvornikov from Ch.Grozev:

https://odessa-journal.com/bellingcat-investigator-why-putin-doesnt-trust-general-dvornikov/

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

For future conversations we should keep in mind three examples of how Ukraine has beaten Russian forces on the ground so far:

Northern Ukraine - crushed Russian forces into the earth so badly that they realized they could not hold the terrain they already had.  Result was a huge retreat by Russia without Ukraine having to launch a significant counter attack.

Kharkiv - ground Russian forces into the earth, but Russia wanted to retain control of the territory.  However, due to major losses elsewhere, Russia was obligated to remove many of the remaining combat capable units and replace them with very low quality and even worse motivated DLPR forces.  Result was a significant retreat and relief of the strikes on Kharkiv as well as threatening critical Russian LOCs.  Unlike Northern Ukraine, however, this was achieved by two? concentrated, but small scale, counter offensives with a lot of light infantry rolling up the Russians generally.  Meaning, Ukraine actively retook terrain but not with a large and coordinated counter offensive.

Mykolaiv - again, Russian forces were ground down and significant Ukrainian pressure built up around the edges of Russia's advances.  With no immediate prospects for advance and serious threats to the LOCs, Russia withdrew its forces before they could be cut off.  This is different than either Northern Ukraine or Kharkiv.

 

If Ukraine is able to apply enough pressure/threat to Kherson, Russia is going to have to contemplate one of these three scenarios or risk losing all of its forces on the western side of the Dnepr.  Depending on which option Russia selects determines how much additional fighting Ukrainian forces will have to do.

It should also be mentioned that the primary MILITARY reason for Russia to remain on the western side of the river is it gives them fantasy options to restart a westward advance sometime in the future.  However, militarily if they do not think they can hold Kherson it makes no sense to keep it.  This is similar to Severodonetsk from the Ukrainian military point of view. 

However, there are POLITICAL and ECONOMIC reasons for Russia to hold Kherson.  If Russia is unwilling to compromise/sacrifice those needs, then it means they may very well overextend themselves militarily.  This could create the first situation where Russia doesn't do the smart thing and winds up losing a lot of forces in a humiliating defeat.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, JonS said:

Depending on the jamming system, if you're jamming GPS you're probably jamming GLONASS too, since they are - at the level of basic physics - the same system. On the other hand, it is a fully-realised capability for jammers to leave 'windows' in the frequency spectrum that you don't want jammed, and it's reasonable to suppose that Russian EW wonks know what freq GLONASS operates at and leave a window there.

What I'm saying is it appears that Russia uses both GLONASS and GPS systems.  So if they have a single EW spectrum blocker, then they neuter both.  If they have one that leaves a window open for GLOSNASS, then they might neuter part of their capabilities.

It would be typical Russian military to have a system designed to not block their systems but then wind up using the enemy's systems and therefore can't use their own EW capabilities.  We've seen this with radios already.

Steve

[JonS]

concur

[sburke]

Lithuania enforces EU sanctions on goods to Russia’s Kaliningrad (msn.com)