How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_MonkeyKing]

news from Moscow starting to cross the level to be believable:

 

[Battlefront.com]

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well first off I am very wary of western analysts declaring anything "settled" in this war considering how much they got wrong in the first place.  By their metrics of tank-power Ukraine should be a puppet state of Russian by last Apr.

So I am curious as to how the tanks have been essential or have been employed.  For example, "15 tanks did the break in battle at Balakliya", that is a single Company, so what/how were they integrated into a break in battle that was kms wide?

It is not so much that the "tank is dead", it looks more like its role is evolving.  Nothing we have seen in this war looks like it was supposed to wrt mech and armoured warfare - so here we have a successful breakout battle and I am still not sure how it was integrated into it.  And then there is "what the hell happened with RA armor?", but by this point I doubt the Russian can keep theirs in gas, let alone in combat.

And then we have this Light Infantry/SOF breakout, unless some of these maps have been wrong.  We wont answer it here but the most dangerous thing we can do with this entire experience is validate pre-existing biases and promptly ignore all the other weird signals.  Especially when the validations might be the weird signals, not the main.

I am still of the opinion that tanks are no longer a decisive part of the land battle equation.  Thanks are now adjunct to mobile light infantry armed with all sorts of neat-o gizmos.  As you point out, the scale of operations and successes Ukraine is experiencing now can not be explained by tanks.  Therefore, logically something other than tanks are more important.

I'm also still of the opinion that the tank will eventually evolve into lighter remote systems.  We've had a lot of discussion about that so I'll just say nothing in this offensive has changed my mind at all.  Quite the contrary.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

news from Moscow starting to cross the level to be believable:

 

More tea leaves

Steve

[kevinkin]

12 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

suggests to me that they are being used more like self-propelled guns, for direct fire support against hardpoints/targets/lines  that cannot be bypassed, and also capable of providing indirect fire with drone support.

Additionally, I think Ukraine is using complex task organization to adapt quicky on the battlefield to initiate highly specific combat missions rather then grouping armor and mechanized forces into large easy to find formations. Task organization has been around forever, but Ukraine may have found ways to do so making their units far less detectable until they are on top of the Russians. It has been mentioned the Ukraine soldiers are more tech savy (much more) than their enemy. Ukraine is putting into actual practice what has been only theorized via wargaming in the past.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

news from Moscow starting to cross the level to be believable:

 

Oh my, here we go.

[Ultradave]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

More tea leaves

Steve

Expecting a poor reaction from the public to some very bad news perhaps?

Dave

[Calamine Waffles]

Maybe tanks alone won't win the war for you. But I don't think you'll win the war without tanks.

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I woke up to sooooo many pages I thought that maybe Ukrainian forces were in the Urals and shaking hands with Finns.  Alas, that was not the case.  But it's pretty darned close

Some quick thoughts on a bunch of different topics.

Information Warfare - some Twitter guy pointed out that Russia spent weeks messaging about Kherson.  They knew the big offensive was coming (Ukraine announced it long ahead of time!) and this allowed the Russians to form at least some narrative of what was to come.  The offensive started and the messaging was consistent with reality ("tough fighting, our forces are heroically holding") in the Russian sense of reality (i.e. selective and distorted).  This allowed the RU Nats and the general populace to mostly feel OK with what was happening.  Kharkiv, on the other hand, had ZERO messaging ahead of it and the disaster was both quick and decisive.  The Russian MoD had NOTHING to give the RU Nats to feed off of, yet they can't stay quiet because they are realtime observers.  Lacking direction from the MoD meant they had to go with what they had in front of them and what they had in front of them was a disaster for their cause.  We've seen how this is playing out and it's really bad for the Russia sense of stability.  To the point that they are now calling Putin a "traitor".  Russian MoD's lack of planning for this eventuality is directly responsible for this.

No preparations  - it's been noted that the offensive was fairly obvious.  We, here, noted it but figured that either it was to distract the Russians from Kherson or would be more-or-less local attacks at weak points in the Russian lines.  Either way, the Russians SHOULD have prepared for something, yet they didn't.  People here correctly asked why they didn't.  Well, I think the answer is two fold; inability and denial.  The simple fact is that Russia doesn't have the forces to spare for defending everything all at once, therefore they couldn't have beefed up the defenses in Kharkiv even if they wanted to (until very recently.  See next point). 

The forces there could have prepared better, but likely didn't have the resources to do so.  They certainly didn't have reserves that could create rearward defenses AND still defend the frontline.  This is where denial comes in... can't do what you need to do?  Then deny that you need to do it and hope for the best.  This is how the Russians have been behaving since the 1st day of the war with only periodic instances of facing up to the facts.

Hopes pined on 3rd Army Corps - the Russians are supposed to be on the offense.  From an imperialist, chauvinistic standpoint this is extremely important.  Admitting that Russia is on the defensive is a form of defeat even if the frontline is stable.  That's the boat Putin put everybody in when he launched this war.  If the powers inside the Kremlin and the populace don't see gains then, by default and inference, Russia has been defeated in concept and spirit.  Therefore, the 3rd Corps was developed SPECIFICALLY to show the people that Russia could restart offensive operations and "finish off" the Ukrainians.  This mentality (political in nature) required that the 3rd Corps be deployed with offensive operations in mind. 

However, it is clear that senior Russian military leaders realized that the fight in Kherson would be tough and that Ukraine might swing a fist into the otherwise quiet southern line between the Dnepr and Donetsk.  So they temporarily (likely in their mind) parked a lot of the force north of Crimea to wait and see how the Kherson offensive played out.  The rest of the ready force went to Donetsk South to get ready for some hoped for exploitation attack.  Parking any substantial part of this in Kharkiv would be counter to the political purpose of the 3rd Corps, so obviously they didn't go there.

What this did was put the bulk of the 3rd Corps into positions that could not respond to a Ukrainian attack they conveniently hoped wouldn't happen.  Ukraine, on the other hand, might have waited until Russia had committed the forces before launching Kharkiv, maybe they didn't care.  It's a good question to have answered after the war.

Reality is a real thing - in total, this meant that Ukraine was able to conduct the planning and initial execution of the Kharkiv offensive without much consideration for Russian's doing anything to complicate either (for reasons mentioned above).  Because the Ukrainians properly sourced their offensive with capable and well equipped forces, in sufficient quantity, with appropriate planning... the results are not all that surprising.  This is exactly the sort of thing I've been waiting for Ukraine to do, but lacked the OSINT to know when they would be ready to do it.

Final thought - this is collapse and it is as expected.  Russia is totally fooked.  The Ukrainian offensive will eventually run out of steam and, if they are smart (and they show no reason to doubt their intelligence), they will stop when they sense the head of steam is petering out.  Even if the Russian lines have not reformed, better to stop before the enemy has a chance to counter attack and reverse some of the gains (this happened in Kharkiv North this spring).  My hope is that they have more steam than we might guess they have and that the offensive will continue for at least another week, maybe two.

This whole war has been fascinating for so many reasons.  I expect Ukraine is not done fascinating us.  Nor is Russia, but not for good reasons

Steve

I have to say what surprised me was that the UA had enough capacity and depth to pull off a double operation.  We knew they were force generating like demons but being able to assemble three Div-level/like (and where is that 3rd one btw?) formations and then support two of them at the same time is a much higher level of capability than I think anyone had reported on.  I fully expected a grind for a few weeks at Kherson and then a RA collapse there before it gets too wet - and that is very much still on the table, but to do it in two places at once!?...I will literally plotz if they pull out a third.

[Haiduk]

@The_Capt

The writing of UKR soldier in TG

Translation:

Kiss hands of the motor-infantry and tankers. They are builders of this breakthrough: they are beat in defense and seized crucial points, they supressed attempts of the enemy to organize itself on new lines, they drove out the enemy over the horyzon and left on their way the pile of of burned enemy armor together with bantlings. The news feed couldn't  keep up with them, in their success believed nobody, funny "analysts" considered that the flag near Buhaivka couldn't be raised already on the third day, that ours can't wet own legs in Oskil so quicly. They can. The peple of steel, which crush enemy skulls with tracks.

[Battlefront.com]

Something struck me last night while watching the Ukrainian soldier work his way to the counter battery system in the field.  He started probing for mines and then stopped.  Why?  Most likely he gave the situation another thought and figured that the Russians wouldn't have mined this far to the rear.  I'm sure he's correct.  Which gets us back to talking about the effectiveness of mines in modern warfare.

Russia likely heavily mined the approaches to the Kharkiv frontlines over many months.  They mined everything else, so it's a logical assumption.  As I suspected (and stated here several times), Russia had not set up anything approaching a second or third line of defense.  Therefore, no mines of any significant density.

The first belt of mines didn't cause Ukraine much hesitation.  I mean, what... a couple of HOURS at most?  It couldn't have caused a lot of casualties either as the delay would have been longer.  Still, I am sure Ukrainian forces responded rather cautiously in areas due to mines.

Once through this thin line of defenses the Ukrainians could be reasonably sure that there would be no mines of any significance.  And that means no delay for advances, on constriction on routes, no concern for surprises in the middle of maneuver.  This means less hesitation to go onto the next town and less stress when approaching it.

I don't know how big a factor the lack of mines is for Ukraine's tip of spear guys, but I suspect it is reassuring to them at the very least.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I have to say what surprised me was that the UA had enough capacity and depth to pull off a double operation.  We knew they were force generating like demons but being able to assemble three Div-level/like (and where is that 3rd one btw?) formations and then support two of them at the same time is a much higher level of capability than I think anyone had reported on.  I fully expected a grind for a few weeks at Kherson and then a RA collapse there before it gets too wet - and that is very much still on the table, but to do it in two places at once!?...I will literally plotz if they pull out a third.

My surprise as well.  Theoretically I knew they had the time and resources, not to mention will, go have the capacity to do it.  However, I thought they would be more cautious and gone with 1 main effort and several opportunistic attacks with limited objectives.   I am VERY happy to be wrong

Steve

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

@The_Capt

The writing of UKR soldier in TG

Translation:

Kiss hands of the motor-infantry and tankers. They are builders of this breakthrough: they are beat in defense and seized crucial points, they supressed attempts of the enemy to organize itself on new lines, they drove out the enemy over the horyzon and left on their way the pile of of burned enemy armor together with bantlings. The news feed couldn't  keep up with them, in their success believed nobody, funny "analysts" considered that the flag near Buhaivka couldn't be raised already on the third day, that ours can't wet own legs in Oskil so quicly. They can. The peple of steel, which crush enemy skulls with tracks.

Cool, clearly on the field and this guy really likes em.

Of course if the signals out of Moscow start gelling, this thing could be over by Mon and then the post-game analysis can really start. 

Edited September 10, 2022 by The_Capt

[sburke]

Regarding these Russian troops deploying in Moscow.  just to make sure I don't go too whacko - this isn't related at all to Moscow day events is it?  This really is deploying of troops unexpectedly?

Next question... who is commanding these troops?  Putin or someone else?  Guess we'll know later today.

[Huba]

Fredericus II is completed, time for Wilhelm (but bigger and better, with blackjack and hookers):

Edited September 10, 2022 by Huba

[Grigb]

Agent Murz reports that at Lyman RU regulars regrouped and transferred themselves to DPR aka ran away. Rosguardia and LPR troops are fighting. 

So, front collapsed there as well but there are pockets of resistance.

[Homo_Ferricus]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

Regarding these Russian troops deploying in Moscow.  just to make sure I don't go too whacko - this isn't related at all to Moscow day events is it?  This really is deploying of troops unexpectedly?

Next question... who is commanding these troops?  Putin or someone else?  Guess we'll know later today.

I had the same thought, though the guy recording the video of the trucks in the recently posted video said something along the lines of, "Never have I seen something like this before." And I imagine this guy has been around for previous Moscow Days.

[The_Capt]

Damn, I lose the bet.  I figured it would be at least 48 hours before any mainstream media said "collapse".

[The_MonkeyKing]

7 minutes ago, sburke said:

Regarding these Russian troops deploying in Moscow.  just to make sure I don't go too whacko - this isn't related at all to Moscow day events is it?  This really is deploying of troops unexpectedly?

Next question... who is commanding these troops?  Putin or someone else?  Guess we'll know later today.

indeed good questions. All we can see is someone is preparing for something. 

[Holien]

Can the day get any better? 

[Calamine Waffles]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I have to say what surprised me was that the UA had enough capacity and depth to pull off a double operation.  We knew they were force generating like demons but being able to assemble three Div-level/like (and where is that 3rd one btw?) formations and then support two of them at the same time is a much higher level of capability than I think anyone had reported on.  I fully expected a grind for a few weeks at Kherson and then a RA collapse there before it gets too wet - and that is very much still on the table, but to do it in two places at once!?...I will literally plotz if they pull out a third.

 

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

My surprise as well.  Theoretically I knew they had the time and resources, not to mention will, go have the capacity to do it.  However, I thought they would be more cautious and gone with 1 main effort and several opportunistic attacks with limited objectives.   I am VERY happy to be wrong

Steve

It takes roughly about 6 months to mobilise and train men properly, so right on schedule we're seeing the ZSU committing large units of mobilised men now, 6 months after the war started.

As pointed out months ago, none of the best Ukrainian units were committed to the Severodonetsk and Bakhmut axes defensive operations en masse, even though some were known to be in the relatively quiet Kharkiv/Kherson regions.

We knew the VSRF were undermanned and having to control a frontline the distance between Moscow and Den Haag, all while attempting an assault in the Soledar direction towards Bakhmut.

Finally, the Ukrainians were telegraphing their intentions to attack at Kherson for months, which is geographically and strategically favourable for them due to the destruction of the bridges over the Dnipro river, and hence time is on their side for such an offensive and they have no need to rush.

All of this together should have suggested to people that Kherson alone could not have been the sole main effort.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[Hapless]

Everyone remembers how Red Storm Rising ended, right?

Edited September 10, 2022 by Hapless

[DesertFox]

26 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Expecting a poor reaction from the public to some very bad news perhaps?

Dave

Maybe Putin fell outta a window?

[Holien]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

To be clear, Ukraine is not on a leash with respect to their own territory. They are just not heading to Moscow anytime soon. 

OK thanks for the explanation I agree that Ukraine will not be invading Russia but I disagree that they are on a leash as that implies they are being walked / controlled by someone and I see no one controlling them, people might request they don't do certain things with weapons they have generously given them.  

Anyway let's hope Russia is undergoing some change of leadership. 

[Haiduk]

Colonel-general Oleksandr Syrskyi comanded of this operation. Also he commanded the defense of Kyiv

 

 

[dan/california]

Can we get unlimited likes, just for this week?