How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Vet 0369]

On 7/8/2022 at 1:31 PM, Artkin said:

What is Russia's policy on recalling troops who finished their contracts already? A large portion of the "reserves" could be this pool of people. 

Here in the US you can be recalled after you serve. So if you served 5 years then they can recall you back into service even if you were already out for 4 years. I believe the amount of time is the same as you served. This is what I was told by a friend.

Every male citizen in the U.S. has a six-year “obligation” to serve That is part of the Selective Service Act. Every eligible male is required to register with the Selective Service. Since we now have an “All Volunteer Service,” each individual has the choice of whether or not to “fulfill” his obligation. I f you serve two years in the military, you generally serve two years active duty and four years Active Reserve. Three years Active Duty is (I believe,) two years Active Reserves, and one year inactive Ready Reserves possibly three years Inactive Ready Reserves, and if four years Active Duty, two years Iactive Ready Reserves.At the end of those times, the man has fulfilled his six-year obligation to serve, and cannot be called up under any circumstance. An Officer, on the other hand holds his or her Commission from Congress, and can (ability) and may (permission) be recalled until a specific age, that I don’t know.

[MSBoxer]

2 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

An Officer, on the other hand holds his or her Commission from Congress, and can (ability) and may (permission) be recalled until a specific age, that I don’t know.

My father was recalled 2 years after retiring.  It was also 2 months after he died.  Oddly enough the signature on his recall orders was signed by the same general who sent his honor guard to my dad's funeral since he was dad's last commanding officer and a good friend.  

Not sure how this ties into anything....still find it funny.

[Vet 0369]

On 7/8/2022 at 2:40 PM, Bearstronaut said:

When you enlist in the US military you sign up for 8 years. If you enlist for an active duty contract of 5 years then you still owe three years to Uncle Sam in either the regular Reserves or the Inactive Ready Reserve. The regular Reserves you do the whole “one weekend a month, two weeks a year” thing. IRR you don’t have to do a thing but the military can call you back if the crap hits the fan. After you complete the 8 year obligation I’m not sure they can legally force you back in the military. However, retirees can be called back to active duty.

To be perfectly honest, during my 12 years in the U.S.M.C (1969 to 1981), I have never heard of an “eight-year” contract. The Selective Service Act sets your obligation to six years. If some “creative” Recruiter got someone to sign a contract for eight years with those other conditions, then SHAME ON HIM OR HER and the Commanding Officer for deceiving a gullible 18 or 19-year old with such crap. I’d put them in the same category as the recruiters who deceived the young Russian Conscripts to sign contracts so the could be sent to Ukraine without their knowledge. I I served as a Recruiter for a bit, so I know some of their deceptively vague tricks, but have never heard of anyone doing  eight-year contracts. Even the contracts to reenlist are from two to four years maximum.

 Unless you are under contract, to the best of my knowledge, you CANNOT be forced back into the service unless you were an Officer.

[Vet 0369]

22 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

My father was recalled 2 years after retiring.  It was also 2 months after he died.  Oddly enough the signature on his recall orders was signed by the same general who sent his honor guard to my dad's funeral since he was dad's last commanding officer and a good friend.  

Not sure how this ties into anything....still find it funny.

MSBoxer, I very sorry to hear about the loss of your Father. Was he an Officer or Enlisted? If Enlisted, perhaps he had re-enlisted for four years shortly before retiring which would have him still under contract? That’s the only circumstance I can think where one could be recalled. If you still have his orders that activated him, those could shed some light on it. 

[MSBoxer]

Just now, Vet 0369 said:

Was he an Officer or Enlisted?

Colonel (Chaplain), retired in 1989 after 22 years.  His final posting was in the department which was responsible for keeping in touch with retired chaplains who were still on the potential recall list.  That is why it was so funny that he was recalled.  Mom called the general and told him "If Chuck shows up, let me know.  I have some questions for him"

He passed Jan. 1 1991, about 1 1/2 months before the liberation of Kuwait, which is why he was recalled.  As my cousin said "God needed him to welcome any incoming troops"

[Vet 0369]

4 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

Colonel (Chaplain), retired in 1989 after 22 years.  His final posting was in the department which was responsible for keeping in touch with retired chaplains who were still on the potential recall list.  That is why it was so funny that he was recalled.  Mom called the general and told him "If Chuck shows up, let me know.  I have some questions for him"

He passed Jan. 1 1991, about 1 1/2 months before the liberation of Kuwait, which is why he was recalled.  As my cousin said "God needed him to welcome any incoming troops"

Thank you for clarifying that. As I said, an Officer is appointed by Congress, and can and may be recalled up to a certain age. It sounds to me like an administrative SNAFU.

God bless him an all of you. He served in one of the most crucial jobs in the Military.

[Splinty]

Once someone enlists in the military, the obligation is 8 years. If one enlists for 3 years active duty then one is in the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) or inactive reserve for 5 more years. It is possible to shave some of that time by enlisting in the regular Reserves or National Guard.

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Artkin said:

I don't believe this.

Some people don't believe the world is round, but guess what?  They're wrong about that just as you're wrong about this.  You seem to confuse sound logic with logic.  What Putin did was logical, it just was really bad logic.  I gave Putin more credit than he deserved because I didn't think he'd be idiotic enough to invade at all because he'd lose, but he went ahead and did it anyway.

To be fair to Putin, the US military, intel, and think tanks also thought Ukraine wouldn't last more than 72 hours.  So did most of the western countries' own organizations.  Which is why there's been a massive amount of attention being paid to this war on the intel side.  The US intel had all the details of the Russian plans well ahead of time, but they didn't understand what it would lead to.

The evidence that Russia thought this would be over in a few days is overwhelming.  Not the least of all captured invasion documents from the burnt up units around Kyiv.  Cripes, we spent a few hundred pages talking about these things.  If you had even read them you'd understand why people are either telling you you're dead wrong or simply ignoring you.

Steve

[Bearstronaut]

1 hour ago, Vet 0369 said:

To be perfectly honest, during my 12 years in the U.S.M.C (1969 to 1981), I have never heard of an “eight-year” contract. The Selective Service Act sets your obligation to six years. If some “creative” Recruiter got someone to sign a contract for eight years with those other conditions, then SHAME ON HIM OR HER and the Commanding Officer for deceiving a gullible 18 or 19-year old with such crap. I’d put them in the same category as the recruiters who deceived the young Russian Conscripts to sign contracts so the could be sent to Ukraine without their knowledge. I I served as a Recruiter for a bit, so I know some of their deceptively vague tricks, but have never heard of anyone doing  eight-year contracts. Even the contracts to reenlist are from two to four years maximum.

 Unless you are under contract, to the best of my knowledge, you CANNOT be forced back into the service unless you were an Officer.

Brother, no offense but it’s been over 40 years since you were in the military. I spent most of the last decade on active duty with the army and am currently a reservist. Trust me, it’s an 8 year service obligation. 
https://www.arpc.afrc.af.mil/IRR/

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, SeinfeldRules said:

I personally doubt this is actually in Ukraine. The name on the barrel appears to be 1SG Conrad Schmidt, a Medal of Honor recipient from the 2nd Calvary Regiment. 2nd Cavalry Regiment is on of the the permanent Army units in Germany and their howitzers have been seen before in training videos for Ukrainian artillerymen. Other 2CR howitzers also have MoH winners painted on their tubes:

This howitzer being in Ukraine would imply that we took actively serving howitzers off one of the few active duty units we have permanently stationed in Europe and sent them straight over the border into Ukraine... when there seems to be plenty of stockpiled M777s from various unit closures that would probably would have sent first. I also highly doubt we would have done that without stripping them of our identifying marks. Some other oddities: the spades are upright and you absolutely can not fire the howitzer in that position and it takes several minutes to dig them in correctly. Also, the massive camo net setup is very much an American artillery TTP (and hopefully one that will die, as it's terribly ineffective when you have the barrel pointing out the front. Easy to operate under but in today's battlefield makes you MORE obvious to ISR).  Taking both into account, the howitzer is both not in position to fire and not in a position to displace quickly... which to me points that it's a training situation and not in a combat zone. 

Thanks for chiming in!

One confusing thing that happens in the open source world is someone gets a bit of intel (confirmed or rumor) and matches it up with the closest thing they can so they can have a visual to go along with their text.  The intel might be accurate even if the image is not.

However, it is also possible that some Ukrainian soldier training in Germany is using a fully kitted out M777 with all the fun stuff turned off, someone took a video of him in training, and next thing you know people think the image is in Ukraine or at least it's a weapon system they're going to get soon.

Not possible to tell which at this point, so I'll go along with you on this and be skeptical until there's harder info.

One thing I will say is that the US seems to be doing a deliberate strategy of escalating the sophistication of equipment it's providing Ukraine.  Which means providing Ukraine with full featured M777s is at least plausible.  The earlier concerns that Ukraine couldn't handle them or that they wouldn't employ them effectively has been solidly disproven.  Especially in the last 2 weeks.  I am expecting the US to increasingly sending Ukraine more high tech stuff as time goes on.

Related, I remember when HIMARS first started to be discussed as a possibility it was speculated that Ukraine would soon be hitting things 300km away.  Then we found they wouldn't get those missiles.  However, now that Ukraine has HIMARS in service it could get them any day and make use of them the next day.  Russia must understand this and they must be very concerned about it.  If Ukraine can inflict this much damage in such a short period of time with the shorter range stuff, just imagine what they can do with the long range stuff!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's reporting on the recent development of Russia requesting 85 regions to each raise a volunteer battalion of 400 men.  This is the latest development in the "covert mobilization" effort.  It is thought 34,000 troops can be raised by August, but of course these units are going to be of very poor quality and likely equally poorly equipped.  Light infantry cannon fodder.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-13

Steve

[dan/california]

41 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

ISW's reporting on the recent development of Russia requesting 85 regions to each raise a volunteer battalion of 400 men.  This is the latest development in the "covert mobilization" effort.  It is thought 34,000 troops can be raised by August, but of course these units are going to be of very poor quality and likely equally poorly equipped.  Light infantry cannon fodder.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-13

Steve

Are the Russians going to keep shoving lower and lower quality troops into the meat grinder until the average quality of their whole force is so bad that it is subject to a cascading rout/mutiny/surrender. So the surrender of one battalion or the loss of Kherson or similar just results in the whole thing coming apart? The full 1917 scenario?

[MikeyD]

That tricked-out M777, at first I thought it was US Marine uniforms but I adjusted brightness and contrast and nope, that's definitely US Army camou.

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by MikeyD

[Battlefront.com]

35 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

That tricked-out M777, at first I thought it was US Marine uniforms but I adjusted brightness and contrast and nope, that's definitely US Army camou.

 

 

 

Yeah, he put that in there as a reference for the barrel naming in US service.  So already known to be US Specifically 2nd Cavalry Regiment. 

The Ukrainian video, on the other hand, for sure shows a Ukrainian soldier next to a fully tricked out M777.  The point is that the barrel in that video shows a Meddle of Honor recipient as does the one from 2CR.  No US unit would send such a gun to Ukraine without painting over the barrel, therefore we can safely assume that specific gun in that specific video is not in Ukraine.

Steve

[FancyCat]

One thing I do note, 1917 and the collapse of the Russian army, there was much, much more social discontent domestically, and right now not even the more positive scenarios envisioned at the beginning of the year, like protest movements for peace are existing. As much as we hope for a collapse, 1917 looks quite impossible now and in the near future. Maybe later it develops but we shall see.

[Battlefront.com]

56 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

One thing I do note, 1917 and the collapse of the Russian army, there was much, much more social discontent domestically, and right now not even the more positive scenarios envisioned at the beginning of the year, like protest movements for peace are existing. As much as we hope for a collapse, 1917 looks quite impossible now and in the near future. Maybe later it develops but we shall see.

The pressures are all there, but Russians are used to not being able to express it publicly.  Especially since 2011.  It would be incorrect to expect to see a direct correlation between overt signs of discontent (protests) and real discontent.  Gotta look for the subtle signs and guess at their collective significance.

I do not expect a lot of warning of Putin's removal from power or a direct challenge to him from either large scale public protest or from cloak and dagger internal sources.  One night we'll go to bed thinking that the next day will be the same and we'll wake up to something very different.  When that happens (likely scenario, anyway), the lead up will look pretty straight forward in hindsight.

Steve

[Taranis]

"Ukrainian soldiers on an armored vehicle in Siversk in Donetsk Oblast on July 8, in the midst of a Russian offensive in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. AFP/Miguel Medina"

*BTR-80

[Aragorn2002]

10 hours ago, Artkin said:

So yeah that video was posted previously and was discussed a bit. It went into how most of Ukraine's energy is located in the far East and how the grain is next if Russia keeps pushing North and West.

The video isn't sobering to me. It's been no mystery that the Ukrainians have taken losses. They lost a lot of APC's and IFV's which probably won't be replaced anytime soon. The tanks have already been replaced, and Poland is giving up its PT-91 Twardy's now? Not sure if that's a fact yet. Ukraine's army is going to get larger and larger while they wait for the winter to come and go. So either Russia will try something hasty, or wait until next year. It's obvious they thought this war would take a long time, and they wanted to finish it within the year, so they started as early as possible. They probably thought they initial shock of the first two weeks would have them far in Ukraine's road network, and then as the ground dried they would be able to shift their tactics back onto the dirt. This is all speculation, but to me it makes sense.

You can monitor their defense industry by checking copies of The Military Balance as the years go by. It appears they have spent their time mostly modernizing equipment. Their newest stuff looks like  anti-air systems.

I agree with the Austrian analysis with regard to the offensive capacities of the Ukrainian army. It's limited and won't change for the coming months. The Russians aren't out of offensive steam yet. That time will come, but ain't here yet. So they will gain more ground. Ground which will be very difficult to reconquer. My guess is that this conflict will stall in a war of attrition, with limited counterattacks from time to time. The Russians will try to breake that stalemate by hitting Ukrainian citizens, but that will only resolve the will to fight of Ukraine. So yeah, a tiger by his tail, but that tiger will have lost a lot of hair by the time it can sink it's teeth into Putin's throat. And no doubt we will see a lot of trickery and misery before that happens.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[panzermartin]

Apparently this is from Kherson area , arty responding to UKR attempted advances there. 

It looks they are at least able to harass the treelines accurately, and reproduce this CM like linear barrage pattern with what looks like rocket artillery. 

Note: Turn the sound off

[Aragorn2002]

3 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Apparently this is from Kherson area , arty responding to UKR attempted advances there. 

It looks they are at least able to harass the treelines accurately, and reproduce this CM like linear barrage pattern with what looks like rocket artillery. 

Note: Turn the sound off

Impressive. Must be hell to be on the receiving end of that. Proves that the Russians aren't as incapabele as we like to believe.

[Grigb]

Civilian "Girkin" (Nesmyan) regarding recent RU public interview/questioner

• 9% drop in support of SMO
• 9% drop in watching RU TV [propaganda]
• 3% only would be happy to unite the territories in any form

Quote

The sociological project "Chronicles" has conducted a new study on the attitude of Russians to the fighting on the territory of Ukraine. The results showed a drop in support for SVO by nine percentage points at once — from 64 to 55%. An increase in anxious moods is recorded.

It is curious, but the same 9% stopped watching TV and propaganda pouring out from it, comparing with previous interviews in May. Which indirectly confirms that support for the special operation is largely provided artificially by direct information violence. As soon as a person "gets off the needle" of the inculcated hatred, he quickly sobers up and turns into a normal person.

And another interesting figure of the survey: only 3 percent of respondents said they would be happy to unite the territories in any form. The rest are less optimistic about the results of their own or do not see any sense in them for themselves. Simply put, the goals of the entire event [SMO] are perceived distantly and indirectly by the absolute majority of the population.

 

[Grigb]

9 hours ago, hcrof said:

True, but unlike WW2, it can be spotted by a drone and destroyed by mortar fire even if it is in a defilade position with earth on top of it - seems like a bit of a deathtrap to me but I might be wrong 

Cope bunker, yes.

[Der Zeitgeist]

45 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

It looks they are at least able to harass the treelines accurately, and reproduce this CM like linear barrage pattern with what looks like rocket artillery. 

I was going to say, my linear artillery missions in CM are never as accurate as this one. 

[Grigb]

9 hours ago, Artkin said:

I don't believe this. Ukraine had one of the largest ground armies in Europe before the fight. I think the fighting toward Kiev was Russia's primary effort to negotiate the Dniepr defensive line. It was a gambit, they lost it. But what fool would seriously think Ukraine would capitulate after having years of combat experience on their own border. 

The fool that gets information for watching his own propaganda while sniffing cocaine.

No one expected resistance. That's why it was named Special Military Operation. Special means the intent is not to fight the enemy. 

[Huba]

So I have a thought regarding @The_Capt search for the mass on the UA battlefield. We saw different attempts at that fail rather miserably during last months. One that succeeded was good old WW1 type artillery mas, which finally managed to slowly push the Ukrainian forces. It probably got countered already (we shall see soon) by UA deep precision strike, which I think will compromise RU ability to amass it's artillery to the Severodonetsk level in the future.

The Russian approach of massing dumb artillery and obliterating everything to make any progress is rather inaccessible to UA, and in many cases they wouldn't choose it even if it was (can't just level their own cities). So perhaps the one way UA could amass similar, or possibly even greater firepower is by the use of PGMs and superior ISR? It wasn't on the table till a week or two ago. but since GMLRS arrived, it's use become the most spectacular success. What I'm thinking is that to achieve any breakthrough, best tool UA has/ will have are the tube/ rocket guided munitions. They have guns capable of launching Excaliburs to great range, and fast. They have  1000 rounds from the last package, and more to come. They have proven capability with GMLRS, and the number of launchers will soon triple. They have superior ISR. Finally, with the SMart/ BONUS shells they even have limited ability to target moving targets at great ranges - like SPGs on the move in the rear of the battle zone. At the moment most of this is still on the way, and what is in theater is used piecemeal against high value targets. I imagine it will change if UA was ever to commit to attack. All this "smart" firepower, concentrated in relatively small sector and used for preliminary bombardment, and then in combination with advancing forces/ drone reckon in support might have an interesting effect. Especially it might allow for dealing with RU artillery in a very fast and brutal manner - untill PGMs and drones are not exhausted of course, but this whole idea rests on the assumptions of having 3 smart rounds for every Russian gun in the vicinity. From numbers perspective it seems quite achievable.

What's worth noting is that this type of mass PGM use was historically never available to any army advancing in conventional setting - even during initial phases of Iraqi Freedom, most of PGMs were air dropped and not GPS guided to allow for massed fire-and-forget launch, the way that will become available for UA very soon.

One thing that idea doesn't solve is of course RU airpower, that needs a technical solution on it's own, but it seems to be worked on. 

Does it sound plausible at all?

Edited July 14, 2022 by Huba