How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

27 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

[Calamine Waffles]

This article is about the 'unicorn' MiG-29MU2, but I found this bit interesting:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraines-uniquely-upgraded-mig-29-fulcrum-is-back

Quote

Another major advantage of Ukraine’s local MiG-29 upgrades is the switch to a more flexible maintenance schedule. Originally, under the Soviet-style guidelines, MiG-29s underwent deep maintenance every 200 hours or 24 months, with less-intensive maintenance scheduled every 100 hours or 12 months. Based on the demands of the war in the Donbas, the MiG-29MU1 introduced so-called on-condition overhauls, based on the overall condition and degree of use of the aircraft.

Soviet aircraft are designed for short TBOs in general, it's part of the reason why Soviet jet engines have short lives.

[Calamine Waffles]

If this is true, there is 0% chance that the strike was with Neptun

https://twitter.com/rrichcord/status/1557169834215018496/photo/1

[dan/california]

5 hours ago, akd said:

Possibly the fuel depot north of this location was hit, not the ammo bunkers.

The Russians have been desperately short of air launched PGMs this whole war. How much do you getlemen want to bet that a LOT of what they have left was in those bunkers?

[Grigb]

5 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Op, sorry misread his words. I think he said guys "from my squad" (?). Maybe shell shocked.

He indeed says food storage. But as @Haiduk said he talks about 2 strikes at 5 AM. So, most likely it is from different attack. 

Interesting though is hi fatalist comments at the end - this is how they f*ck us. You can feel the level of his belief in the RU AD.

 

5 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

And we should be always cautious with giving Russian nationalists opinions too much of significance- as one of the few politically active parts of Russian society, they are accustomed to being slapped by Kremlin in the face and forced to sit by. They are ofc also profoundly penetrated by FSB and other services, as Grigb wrote. Hard to tell if Putin even care at all for their opinions- maybe only in broader sense of reactions of more conservative parts of Russian society.

You are right but the Kremlin does pay at least some attention to RU Nats opinion. Some of the propaganda messages aimed at them specifically. It is hard to tell though anything definite except that. There are rumors that Kremlin (not only Putin) is afraid of Deep people (they supposedly consist mainly of RU Nats). But it is from RU propaganda, so it is difficult to accept at face value. And the concept of Deep people is flawed.

I personally leaning toward Steve opinion. War hardened them and gave them power they did not have before. As result they became noticeable players. For example, mostly unknown RU Nats reporters from the frontline now have an audience comparable to RU official media but much better respect and potentially much better influence. 

So, they became more powerful than they were. But we have yet to see whether it is enough to overcome their weakness.

[Grigb]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, it is even harder to believe they wouldn't have heard/seen HIMARS come screaming in for a landing, yet no witnesses say they heard or saw such thing.

One RU Nats wrote that he once was close to HIMARS strike and heard nothing of the kind. Just Ka-Boom.

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, Grigb said:

One RU Nats wrote that he once was close to HIMARS strike and heard nothing of the kind. Just Ka-Boom.

Explained above.  I hadn't thought about the supersonic aspect being that by the time you hear the missile you are already hearing its explosion. That means you're either only going to hear the explosion or you'll mistake the missile approach for part of the strike.  And of course nobody is going to see this sort of thing unless they happen to be looking right at the location at the split second of impact from a proper vantage point.

So I'll go back to what I said above.  Betting money is on HIMARS simply because it's the most likely weapon available to Ukraine for such a strike, especially because that is even more likely to have been used just north of Crimea.

I'm not ruling out Neptun yet... but HIMARS is edging it out with the latest round of info (including that incredible MACH 2.5 atmospheric reading).

Steve

[Grigb]

New video from UKR tanker checking RU T-80BVM. No explosives in ERA. And looks like it never had them.

Quote

 

• 00:00 It is trophy - T-80BVM
• 00:06 Sosna-U is removed
• 00:08 This is what I was talking about. This is ERA. There is [only] rubber. That's it.... Cool isn't' it? Probably it gives good protection! They are all like this
• 00:28 So that they don't say that it's not a T-80BVM
• 00:36 Well?
• 00:43 Turret similar to T-64
• 00:44 Machine gun mount is still not remote - there you can see handle. It is all according to [RU] classic [requirements]
•  00:55 Turret... is a weakness of this tank
•  01:01 Opening for old sight they just welded. And put right there [point to new openings]. At least they did this right
• 01:11 [UKR Repairmen] took everything from inside
• 01:19 It is the same T-80 at the back. Nothing new.
• 01:27 That's the whole T-80BVM
• 01:33 If the made it from T-80U it would be better
• 1:40 Let's check ERA of turret... nothing, next - nothing. And by the [water] traces we can see nothing was there at all. Water just drained [through]... this one is not opening.... they are all the same.
• 02:08 S for Supply [pointing to empty ERA - Joke]

 

Grozny assault is an exception they said. It is all RU capitalists' fault, they said. Do not judge RU army by it.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Grigb

[Grigb]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Explained above.  I hadn't thought about the supersonic aspect being that by the time you hear the missile you are already hearing its explosion. That means you're either only going to hear the explosion or you'll mistake the missile approach for part of the strike.  And of course nobody is going to see this sort of thing unless they happen to be looking right at the location at the split second of impact from a proper vantage point.

So I'll go back to what I said above.  Betting money is on HIMARS simply because it's the most likely weapon available to Ukraine for such a strike, especially because that is even more likely to have been used just north of Crimea.

I'm not ruling out Neptun yet... but HIMARS is edging it out with the latest round of info (including that incredible MACH 2.5 atmospheric reading).

Steve

I do believe it was HIMARS or at least US supplied weapons as well. It is because we are talking about a long-range strike with miss having potentially big political fallout. So, it rules out any experimental missiles and puts us back to something proven.  

[Battlefront.com]

From 5 pages ago (aka 1/2 a day):

13 hours ago, Grigb said:

So far, their reaction:

1. FTW is going on?
2. That's bad!
3. Interestingly they look like they received command to ignore it and switching to other news - Nikolaev explosions, Mali military training, UKR wheat in Levant. Girkin is still silent. 
4. Now it looks like RU propagandists are trying to peddle version it is sabotage!

It will be interesting to see how this evolves.  The Propagandist "dropped cigarette" explanation is as expected.  Russians really need to get some nicotine patches before they lose this war!  I wonder if this will morph any as with previous blatant coverups or if the Kremlin will insist on staying with this message no matter what other information comes out.

Interesting that this is such bad news that the RU Nats are pretty much being told out of the gate to "shut their pieholes".  It seems the Kremlin is learning to not give these guys any room to start exploring the truth as they have with other things, such as the Muskva.

If the RU Nats recognize how bad this really is maybe they will keep their mouths mostly shut even without threats.  As I speculated earlier, their two fallbacks for bad news is to blame the lack of mobilization and to blame top military leadership, neither of which is applicable here.  Therefore, all they can do is fuel defeatism if they tell the truth.  I'm not sure they want to do that even though their egos will need to be kept in check.

I think the reaction by the RU Nats tomorrow and maybe Thursday will give us some interesting tea leaves to poke at.  Assuming, of course, that Ukraine doesn't blow up something else high profile deep in Russian territory.  I don't know if they will stay on message if cigarettes keep dropping.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Russian "recruiting" caught on camera (see second tweet):

 

[Battlefront.com]

ISW rules out ATACMS because Ukraine "doesn't have them", which is one of the few things ISW has written that I view as wrong.  If they had written that there's been no official confirmation of Ukraine having them, that would be fine.  Because for sure they are not officially confirmed.  But why would they be?  Let Russia figure it out instead of announcing it in a press release.  Which gets back to Sojourner's point that there is a reason for Ukraine to lie about the strike being domestic Ukrainian weaponry.  It wouldn't be the first time Ukraine has done this sort of cover story.  They did this when they struck Russian facilities around Belgorod, for example.

However, it won't take long before ATACMS is confirmed in theater.  Mostly by more strikes.

Interestingly, ISW does speculate that it could be modified Neptun:

Quote

SW does not yet have any basis independently to assess the precise cause of the explosions. The apparent simultaneity of explosions at two distinct facilities likely rules out the official Russian version of accidental fire, but it does not rule out either sabotage or long-range missile strike. Ukraine could have modified its Neptune missiles for land-attack use (as the Russians have done with both anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles), but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis at this time.

So sticking with the domestic Ukrainian theory for a bit longer, I found this really informative article about Ukrainian weapons development.  One thing they pointed out that needs to be factored into the debate is this (my bold):

Quote

While we can't say with any certainty that Ukraine may have now deployed even a limited number of Grim-2/Hrim-2 missiles it has for actual operational use, or used these weapons against Saki Airbase, there is certainly a number of different relevant precedents in the current conflict. Most notable, of course, is the sudden appearance of Ukrainian units armed with domestically-developed Neptune shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles to sink the Russian Navy's cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, in April. Prior to that incident, it was not commonly understood that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had any real operational capability with Neptune, and if it did, it was extremely limited.

And this observation:

Quote

That a single Grim-2/Hrim-2 TEL that can fire two missiles could also fit with pictures and video that have emerged so far that appear to show two near-simultaneous major explosions at distinctly separate parts of the base. If this was indeed a missile strike, using domestically-developed weapons would only add to its propaganda value, having already demonstrated an ability to penetrate past Russia's substantial air and missile defenses to hit a key target in occupied Crimea.

It would be interesting to know if the strike on Genichesk looked to be two simultaneous hits as we saw with Novofedorivka.

The article concludes with something we discussed a bunch of pages ago:

Quote

The U.S. government has not been willing to supply such a capability in the form of land-attack cruise missiles or ATACMS ballistic missiles due to the risk of escalating and broadening the conflict. But, helping Ukraine build its own weapons would be a different story, and Ukraine had just such a weapon relatively deeply in development, as well as others.

You can find the article here:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/does-ukraine-have-a-stash-of-domestically-developed-ballistic-missiles

Here is another article the wrote about the strike itself.  They point out that suicide drones couldn't be ruled out, but due to the simultaneous hits caught on video I don't think that's likely.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russian-airbase-in-crimea-erupts-in-massive-explosions

They also wrote an article on HARMS that some where will no doubt be itching to read:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u-s-confirms-air-launched-anti-radiation-missiles-sent-to-ukraine

Steve

[Calamine Waffles]

I think there is some political logic to using something domestic like Hrim-2/Sapsan even if it may not be completely operational yet because it sends a message to the West that "we already have weapons with 300+ km range, can use it effectively, and have so far shown restraint in not using it against Russian territory proper itself, so you might as well give us the ATACMS."

That is also not to mention the morale aspect for both increasing Ukrainian morale and demoralising Russian forces. Plus, you could always get lucky with a good hit.

There's no real downside to doing it since if it fails they can just keep quiet about it.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[Taranis]

Maybe a "cigarette" ? 
Fire at oil depot in Yeisk, Kuban
https://t.me/russiakuban/22295

 

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Taranis

[Calamine Waffles]

 

[Letter from Prague]

I'm gonna say, finding out where a missile came from and how fast using magnetic anomalies is just so cool. I'm sure it's not new, but still.

[chrisl]

10 hours ago, danfrodo said:

that is a really good point.  These videos are gonna be all over RU social media.  

With a geolocated video that shows the flash and the time of arrival of the shock at the videographer you can estimate the amount of explosive that went up.

[womble]

"Someone dropped a cigarette" looks like sheer desperation propaganda. It's not even really worthy of the classification, given what we think we know about what really happened. Even if it was just one ammo store going up, what does it say about a) the quality and training of the personnel handling munitions (and by extension the whole RU armed forces), and b) the quality of the facilities in which the ordnance is stored? Neither of the answers to these questions could be considered "encouraging" news, or news to inspire the listener to avenge the dastardly actions of the Enemy. It just makes Russia look bad.

That the mouth pieces of the regime have such a low opinion of their audience (to the extent that they believe the Russian people will mostly not even consider the first-order implications of clumsy smokers in explosives storage) remains incomprehensible to me, even with all the cogent explanations of how the "average Russian's" thought proces have been shaped over the last few centuries.

They'd rather look like idiots than give the foe any credit at all. Sabotage is a more credible explanation that doesn't require the whole Ukrainian nation to be scarily competent, just that some (obviously mythical) "Ukronazis" managed to sneakily and unfairly infiltrate an installation with a large boundary situated in an area where such "cowardly" attackers could easily blend in... Do they have interns working the propaganda first level desk? 

[Grigb]

Update regarding RU handling Cottons at RU base.

1. RU propaganda streamlined their version - accident is no longer considered official. Official version now - causes are unclear, let's be patient and wait for the results of our investigation that will never come until public stop care about it.
2. For those how still ask questions (RU Nats) the response is - it could be accident but most likely it was sabotage but definitely not UKR missile, anyway, wait till official investigation is over.
3. RU Nats response is either ignore it completely or it is somewhat bad, but nothing we cannot handle. 

[Grigb]

There is one intercepted call I would like to stress. 

One of the subordinates [sounds like from Kavkaz btw] of Anton Struev, the company commander of the 15th "peacekeeping" brigade of the 2nd Guards Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District, called him and asked what to do regarding the car with possible civilians that just passed by. The response from Anton was:

• Anton: Bring everyone down, on penis, f*ck in the mouth [all], blyat
• Subordinated [annoyed]: I understand but here is whole village full of civilians
• Anton [shouting and interrupting]: why are you like [dumb] f*ckers - [if] there are a civilians waste them suka all. [Do you] understand?
• Subordinated [annoyed]: yes, [I have] understood

Quote from UKR SBU: One of those whom Struyev gave the order to kill survived and is ready to identify the Russian killer.

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, womble said:

Do they have interns working the propaganda first level desk? 

They have very talented spin doctors and numerous propagandists in various media sectors. As always, the problem is lack of decision on "what to think". Information need to travel up to the top, then it needs to be processed, decisions made, orders given and only then pushed  downwards. Despotic system is always at serious disadvantage compared to truth-oriented citizen societies when reacting to important unexpected events.

In a world of instant infiormation this is one of its most grave weaknesess. Also main reason why Peskov or Zakharova are walking jokes compared to stone-cold professional spokepersons like Psaki  et company. In order to lie credibly, one need a lot of space for initative given by system- and this is exactly where autocracy fails. It's much better strategy to simply ignore reality, when "No order what to think was given". 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Beleg85

[DesertFox]

3 hours ago, Taranis said:

Maybe a "cigarette" ? 
Fire at oil depot in Yeisk, Kuban
https://t.me/russiakuban/22295

 

 

Yeah, or heavy weather and a thunderstorm...

[Butschi]

28 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

They have very talented spin doctors and numerous propagandists in various media sectors. As always, the problem is lack of decision in "what to think". Information need to travel up to the top, then it needs to be processed, decisions made, orders given and only then pushed  downwards. Despotic system is always at serious disadvantage compared to truth-oriented citizen societies when reacting to important unexpected events.

In a world of instant infiormation this is one of its most grave weaknesess. Also a reason why Peskov or Zakharova are walking jokes compared to stone-cold professional spokepersons like Psaki  et company.

The answer to that is post-factualism, of course. You can come up with as many facts as you like, as often as you like, they are fake, anyway. That used to work well for Putin but I guess there are limits in an autocratic society. I mean, it still works very well for Trump but that is because his supporters chose to believe his alternative facts instead of the other side.

In Russia, I guess, it is more induced by propaganda and a lack of information (at least, I assume, it is more difficult to obtain without actively looking for it) than by choice. What do our resident experts for the Russian society think?

[Grigb]

Khodakovsky (commander of Vostok battalion) describes his experience on Vugledar direction fighting [according to RU reports UKR arty at Vuhledar is stronger than at Pisky]

Quote

During the two days of fighting in the offensive in the conditions of the "cross country terrain", I lost five irretrievably and seven wounded. In terms of irretrievable losses, this is more than in three months of fighting in Mariupol. In principle, I am considered the most "economical" in this regard, and therefore I do not count [losses] by tens, but this is not a reason not to do an analysis even with such a relatively small amount, especially since the current losses were accompanied by just a modest result.

The main thing is not a single dead or wounded from small arms fire - only from artillery. So we're talking about artillery... The attacking [RU] units' own artillery is usually short-range, and is located in the affected [enemy shelling] area. The enemy's reaction speed is [after] four or six of our shots, we immediately [got] "response". This suggests that their artillery reconnaissance is working effectively. The longer-range artillery, which is located outside the affected area, is subordinate only to the senior chief, and it takes from thirty minutes to four hours to get it, whereas similar enemy artillery reacts in a matter of minutes - why?

The point, it seems to me, is in the structure of the army organization and in the structure of army thinking. The NATO approach, which is actively used in Ukraine now, implies the possibility for any sergeant to request exactly the resource that can help solve the problem as part of the implementation of the plan. Our system does not consider it: you need to go through the entire chain of approvals before the senior boss decides to allocate the necessary resources to you, which, as you know, is problematic.

The resources work according to planned goals, but the plans of the senior chief may not coincide with the plans on the front line, where there is a need for a heavier resource, and then you need to wait, and at this time the enemy is working and causing damage to us. Then our offensives break down, then our defenses break through.. And here it's not a subjective factor - it's just the way the system is built.

My comments:

• I would believe Khadakovsky claims about losses at Mariupol - he is not stupid to participate in meat grinder when there are Mobiks. However, while Vostok was recuperating after Mariupol they completely missed single most important opportunity to achieve significant progress - force breakout at Pisky after UKR retreat from forward defense positions. I mean there was fresh Vostok battalion that lost almost nothing at Mariupol but it was other wasted battalions with the size of companies that tried to force the break out. And only when it was clear that everything has failed Vostok returned to battle and to completely different direction. Either Vostok lost significantly more at Mariupol or Khodakovsky does not do any serious fighting. Neither in Mariupol, not now.
• Despite public perception of war as hard fire fights, the majority of time outside of the settlements fighting looks like running around from arty without pretty much firing a shot (keep in mind that firefight means you are static - easier target for arty).
•  UKR arty can deal with RU if they get enough arty systems. On other hand RU arty cannot deal with UKR arty effectively.

[panzermartin]

Impressive strike. Could the simultaneous detonations indicate some behind the lines job taking advantage of the looser summer vibe in the peninsula? I have seen the HIMARS strikes and they are always sequential, unless you can program two or more missiles to hit the same time. Russians continue to deny to take this war as seriously as it is and I'm not talking only about the crimean tourists. Even those people in swimming suits might have guessed this is not a special operation anymore.