How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

New York Times proving again that I should drop my subscription.

Ukraine makes gains in Kherson, but Russia’s advantage holds.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/15/world/ukraine-russia-news-war

 

[FancyCat]

59 minutes ago, Cederic said:

Rumint - the Mirror is a 'left wing' tabloid but despite that I do find its journalism is very credible.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putins-panic-stricken-officials-27738405

 

I doubt its anything that would accommodate Ukraine's demands, probably a attempt at forcing the West to reign in Ukraine and Zelensky from maximalist aims. 

[poesel]

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

All war is sacrifice.  It is a bad thing if people forget that sacrifice for a greater good is an ongoing requirement in order to sustain their way of life.  

Problem with that sentence is that is true for both sides. Always - in every conflict current or past.

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Or they could use a “great peace” to completely forget that, get rich off human insecurities and raise generations of “me-centric” entitlement (i.e. “sacrifice is for others) who believe that their last selfie is a great work of art and they should get a participant medal for everything.

Now I know this is a gross oversimplification, plenty of the last generations are doing great things.  However, after watching democracy wither largely because people don’t bother to show up, and now an egregious embolden act of war against the west by Russia that is becoming “boring”; I am concerned to say the least.

Yeah, but I don’t think that going to war is the best way to educate the youth. Can work out (US after WWII) but can go catastrophically wrong (Germany after WWI). The latter being the more common case, so I’d rather spend the money on the educational system.

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I too hope for a Rousseau-like state and an end to war but until that day comes we all need to be ready to pay the bill when it comes due.

The end of all wars will come when the AIs take over. That will either start paradise or judgement day. Depends on how good the programmers are.

The possibility of war will unfortunately never go away.

1 hour ago, Cederic said:

It may be highly capable but if this is true, it's a bit too fragile:

 

What works on the range with all the time in the world to follow procedures and do maintenance still needs to work in the field.

The worn out barrels have been replaced. They were used a bit in excess of the design parameters, hence they wore out early. 
I guess that happened earlier with the PzH since it is comparatively easier to load and fire this gun than the others.

There is a problem with the auto loader. When the gun is loaded in high elevation and is then lowered, this creates a small gap between shell and charge. That creates an error message.

[Beleg85]

Totemic animal of Russian military should not be a bear or an eagle, but lemming. Here another proof:

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Beleg85

[akd]

How many guys were in / on that BMP?

Edited August 15, 2022 by akd

[Beleg85]

4 minutes ago, akd said:

How many guys were in / on that BMP?

I counted at least 12 persons running away.

Russian soldiers actually behave worse than AI pixeltruppen from some camp RTS from late 90's (not talking about CM).

[sburke]

18 minutes ago, akd said:

How many guys were in / on that BMP?

Not sure - will check with local cleaner for number of soiled underwear.  That will at least give count of survivors.

[dan/california]

41 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Totemic animal of Russian military should not be a bear or an eagle, but lemming. Here another proof:

 

No one would put two mines that close together.... ooopsie!

No one will ever be able to harass steve about the AI again.

 

[_Morpheus_]

Ugledarsk direction, 08/15/22, Ka-52 helicopter

 

[Harmon Rabb]

37 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

I counted at least 12 persons running away.

Russian soldiers actually behave worse than AI pixeltruppen from some camp RTS from late 90's (not talking about CM).

That post takes me back. I remember some of those retro RTS games from the '90s like the Command & Conquer series were not particularly realistic but really fun to play. Also a good gateway to get players interested in more serious computer strategy games.

[Beleg85]

This can't go any better...

 

[Harmon Rabb]

Reminds me of the story about the Russian robot that turned out to be a man wearing a suit.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46538126

 

[dan/california]

18 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

This can't go any better...

 

 

11 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Reminds me of the story about the Russian robot that turned out to be a man wearing a suit.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46538126

 

Everything at that exhibit is vaporware. Shogui is praying to every god he can think of those Iranian drones are not. Because if they don't make a timely appearance Russia is will be lucky to be holding the 2/24 lines at Christmas.

 

[FancyCat]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

No one would put two mines that close together.... ooopsie!

No one will ever be able to harass steve about the AI again.

 

three mines, there were 2 wrecks.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Totemic animal of Russian military should not be a bear or an eagle, but lemming. Here another proof:

 

There were three guys in the tall grass to the right and front of the BMP.  They got up pretty quickly and moved out as well.

As an aside, I just had a BBQ experience that resulted in an unexpected fireball right at me (lean burgers?  Not for me!) and I lost some of my eyebrows.  I can only imagine how much those guys on the back deck got singed by the blast.

Steve

[Vacillator]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I lost some of my eyebrows

Most of us only have two Steve, how many did you have? Or is that a hint that you're not the average guy

[FancyCat]

This was vehicle #2 out of #3.

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Here the question of Russian AirPower comes into play.

Not much, I think.  So far what we've seen fixed wing used for is bombing a known, fixed location with dumb munitions.  There's no in close strafing and seems there's nothing even close to AGM-65 ATGMs.  Pilots seem to be deliberately instructed to stay away from the frontline area in order to avoid getting shot down.  Add to this the apparent very long delays when support is called and it arrives.

Rotary aircraft appears to be used to better effect, but I'm not sure how much better.  Certainly they are more likely to get in close to do their own targeting,   On the other hand, they are quite vulnerable to MPAD, as the previous KA-52 shoot down video reminds us.

Ukraine has been deliberately beefing up its AD in Kherson and stripping Russia of its AD.  And then there's undoubtedly the reduced capacity of air support coming out of Crimea (loss of planes at least) and supply issues north of Crimea.

In other words... I'm not too concerned about Russian airpower suddenly becoming detrimental to Ukraine.  Hasn't been so far.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

Most of us only have two Steve, how many did you have? Or is that a hint that you're not the average guy

Heh.  Meaning I didn't loose 100% of the hair. Just the top halves got a bit crunchy.

Burgers turned out great though!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Why don't we have a report about the results of the strikes on the road bridge last night?  The video of the attack looked to document a span of bridge falling into the river.  Either the whole thing or one half, hard to see, but I'm sure a very large chunk is no longer there.  Yet I've seen no reporting on it at all.  Odd, eh?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Another sign of Ukraine moving decidedly towards becoming a member of the EU... two new faces heading judicial organizations which multiple reformist groups within Ukraine are cheering about:

https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/08/15/ukraines-civil-society-rejoices-as-key-judicial-self-governance-organ-elects-two-spotless-members/?swcfpc=1

Steve

[chuckdyke]

T72's going for a bargain price. I must say the BMP3 in Black Sea impresses me. But I stick with my Mazda 4WD.

Putin pushes Russia's combat-tested arms for export (msn.com)

 

[paxromana]

6 hours ago, Cederic said:

Rumint - the Mirror is a 'left wing' tabloid but despite that I do find its journalism is very credible.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putins-panic-stricken-officials-27738405

 

But what can they offer that will save their necks?

Withdraw from all 2022 gains? Admitting it was a huge mistake which not only failed but failed miserably and which will take Russia a generation to recover from ...

Or, as Ukraine would reasonably demand, get completely out of the DPR/LPR ... admitting the whole of Putin's venture from even before 2014 has been a massive own goal?

I reallly don't see how they could survive, not politically, not for long ... and that means, soon thereafter. not personally, either.

On the other hand, if they're trying for 'we'll keep what we took and you end sanctions' so they can try again 'real soon now' ... I can't see even Scholz agreeing to that. Probably Orban and Erdogan useful fools that they are. But no-one else.

Edited August 15, 2022 by paxromana

[chuckdyke]

The Russians gave scant regards to the 'Hearts and Minds Battle'. That's what you get by indiscriminately bombing and killing. IMO he explains it very well.

 

[JonS]

On 8/14/2022 at 8:34 AM, Battlefront.com said:

solated elongated mushroom cloud.

As I laid out in my "report" many pages back it seems the order was:

1. single large explosion with distinct, sharp mushroom cloud (above video)
2. single large explosion that was more ball like than mushroom.  Didn't go as high.  Lots of smoke already evident before the explosion
3. twin very large explosions within large amounts of existing smoke.

I had thought there might be a 5th explosion on its own, but it now appears to be the second one from a different angle

Presumably the always-on global earthquake monitoring network would have caught this. Bombs are orders of magnitude less powerful than earthquakes, but the sensors are pretty sensitive. It wouldn't reveal which particular plane spontaneously deconstructed first, second, etc, but would reveal where 'the twins' were in the overall sequence, how many total impacts there were, and something about secondaries.

Filtering out background noise might require some sophisticated filters.

Actually, that same network could perhaps be coupled with the forest fire sat imagery to get a sense of which sectors are getting jiggy with it, and for how long.