How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

39 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

 

 

10 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

In general I have been starting to wonder what is the actually definitions of the limitation at this moment?

Armored vehicles that look like western and have manned turrets?
(because we already have remote turret western APCs and PT-91 is a modern tank made in the west that just looks eastern)

APCs with 20mm+ gun and tanks, both not of soviet origin or based on them. An obvious distinction between harmless and dangerously escalatory, I'm baffled that you had to ask

Von der Leyen seem to be doing a great job btw, I like the new hawkish EU. 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Huba

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

2 hours ago, IanL said:

I guess my fear is that if Ukraine doesn't keep going now and finish the job they might not get another chance.

The question I have is what does "finish the job" mean?  All of Feb24 land + Donbas + Crimea? 

Whatever the Ukrainians decide

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

I think finish the job is "get as much as possible before exhaustion forces you to the table". 

That's a good place to stop.

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

But "as much as possible" starts w asking where is opportunity

100%

[billbindc]

27 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The most immediate problem I see with Prigozhin's rise is that he seems dependent on continuing/more conflict. His whole play is military competence, so his accession requires the war in Ukraine to continue, or starting some sort of conflict somewhere else just to keep the politics pushing the right way. This seems to greatly increase the odds of Russia fighting Ukraine to the point of utter failure, followed pretty quickly by some of the more extensive breakup scenarios. Because their just won't be an army left.

I would be wary of putting too many chips down on Prigozhin. There are other players out there (Patrushev pere and fils, Ivanov, etc) who are much more formidable than the Wagner PMC boss when you look at the coalitions they can put together. Remember, Prigozhin gets a lot of his power from being Putin's favored leashed dog. If there's a change in power, it is unlikely to be for someone who got them into this in the first place.

[Grigb]

3 hours ago, dan/california said:

The Czar is dead, Long live the Czar. That man is headed for a crown or a window at about Mach 1.5, with the throttles hammered all the way to the stops, and the afterburner flames visible from space. Does he have any competent adult sons or sons in law? I would like to familiarize myself with the new dynasty. Not really joking...

He has a son Pavel

Pavel seems to be talented businessman. 

Quote

Pavel Prigozhin is the owner of five companies previously owned by his mother, Lyubov Valentinovna Prigozhina: Beta LLC, Turstatus, Lakhta Park Premium LLC, Lakhta Park LLC and Lakhta Plaza LLC.

Apart from that not much is known (though I did not dig deep). He could be Pavel IV from Dinasty of Prigozhins. If RU will not disintegrate before that. 

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

By win-win+, I mean the US are masters of going into a nation and creating win-win opportunity, and then they leave a nice little margin for themselves to keep ahead, just enough. 

That's a good way to express it. I'll try to remember to seal that some time.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The US track record is not perfect, and people/corporations who have exploited this have been caught out and anti-US crowds have built an entire mythology around it.

Yeah, I struggle with that. By that I mean I struggle explaining it. My best friend's family in high school fled Vietnam when it finally fell. He felt no trust for the US government. He never let me forget about those moments where the US seemed just as bad as the USSR. I always knew the comparison was not equal and so did he frankly but what happened to his home country and that mythology always bugged him. I'm still weary too even though arguably we in Canada are the largest beneficiary of the Win-win+ strategy you describe.

[The_MonkeyKing]

Rhetoric has been a big predictor of Russia's next moves. Now the rhetoric is intensifying hard. I believe these guys would be facing charges if they said what they said couple months back.

[Battlefront.com]

36 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Steve, I'm not sure you understand that the 2022 invasion changes everything

Oh, I get it and then some.  But you're... well... not thinking about it the same way I am.  A cease fire with LPR would be devastating to the Russian war.  I mean, possibly triggering a coup attempt sort of devastating.  This is the whole reason why Russia claims to have invaded, so to have 1/2 of that reason just say "look, we're out of it" would be catastrophic to Putin's entire political house of cards.

In the short term it would also mean less fighting for Ukraine, which since it has so much more fighting to do would be a good thing.  You're thinking about Minsk too much... two nations can agree to a cease fire without any of that monitoring BS.  In fact, it's better that there not be.  Ukraine detects any aggressive action from LPR, then it's back to the battlefield 10 minutes later.

Ukraine loses absolutely NOTHING by doing this because it makes no guarrantees to the LPR puppet regime at all.  No acknowledgement of their alleged reasons for existing.  It's just a case fire.

I think you are wrong that Ukrainians aren't capable of reevaluating the situation after the shooting stops.  What comes after the war ends could range from Ukraine unilaterally ending it and invading anyway all the way through to some sort of political arrangement.  Provided Zelensky doesn't make any promises, I get the sense that the vast majority of Ukrainians would be willing to see how it goes.

Steve

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Rhetoric has been a big predictor of Russia's next moves. Now the rhetoric is intensifying hard. I believe these guys would be facing charges if they said what they said couple months back.

It is already happening. They are hitting infrastructure targets. But it seems at the moment they switched to hitting dam infrastructure that can affect Inhulets river. It says two things to me:

1. RU are bad at destroying UKR crossings with weapons
2. They are very nervous regarding Bridgheads and possibility UKR breakthrough there. 

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

2 hours ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

I now believe that Kherson was a feint and never had, and still doesn't have, enough combat power to close the sack. They are maintaining the pressure though... but they haven't cracked the Russian line yet, not that I've seen.

It's hard to tell as the news blackout there is pretty through, but it doesn't feel like a feint to me.  It feels like a tough slog through well prepared defenses by a defender that isn't folding up like a cheap suit as it did in Kharkiv.

It could be hard for us to tell the difference. Part of the genius of making the RA think that the attack was coming at Kherson was that they pulled forces from other regions the the Kherson area. We now know that was the Ukrainian plan. Of course that means they actually face more troops there. They are effectively isolated but the Ukrainian army still faces more Russian army units simply because their telegraphing it as a major attack worked. So, even if it is more than just a feint that alone would mean they would have a harder time of that attack by their own planning.

[dan/california]

10 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Rhetoric has been a big predictor of Russia's next moves. Now the rhetoric is intensifying hard. I believe these guys would be facing charges if they said what they said couple months back.

 

18 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I would be wary of putting too many chips down on Prigozhin. There are other players out there (Patrushev pere and fils, Ivanov, etc) who are much more formidable than the Wagner PMC boss when you look at the coalitions they can put together. Remember, Prigozhin gets a lot of his power from being Putin's favored leashed dog. If there's a change in power, it is unlikely to be for someone who got them into this in the first place.

The propaganda would seem to be inclined to my theory that Putin will double down yet again in an attempt to reinforce Prigozhin's position as the savior of mother Russia. And when it comes to the post Putin power struggle I am not inclined to bet against the guy with a proven record of putting heads on pikes above the castle gate. I realize that he could also be messily dead before I finish lunch. There have not been many situations in history with less certainty about them. The resemblance to 1917 grows by the day. That one turned out so well after all...

Edited September 15, 2022 by dan/california

[The_MonkeyKing]

3 minutes ago, Grigb said:

It is already happening. They are hitting infrastructure targets. But it seems at the moment they switched to hitting dam infrastructure that can affect Inhulets river. It says two things to me:

1. RU are bad at destroying UKR crossings with weapons
2. They are very nervous regarding Bridgheads and possibility UKR breakthrough there. 

Luckily Russia is quite sort on cruise missiles and the like. Also Ukraine air defense is way better now than ever. They might not be very capable of "plunging Ukraine into darkness" as they say...

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

 

The propaganda would seem to be inclined to my theory that Putin will double down yet again an attempt to reinforce Prigozhin's position as the savior of mother Russia. And when it comes to the post Putin power struggle I am not inclined to bet against the guy with a proven record of putting heads on pikes above the castle gate. I realize that he could also be messily dead before I finish lunch. There have not been many situations in history with less certainty about them. The resemblance to 1917 grows by the day. That one turned out so well after all...

Where most people look at Prigozhin and see Stalin, I look at Prigozhin and see Kornilov or Wrangel. 

[kraze]

4 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Where most people look at Prigozhin and see Stalin, I look at Prigozhin and see Kornilov or Wrangel. 

When I look at anyone near the tsar - all I see is a bunch of russians not dying a natural death.

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Where most people look at Prigozhin and see Stalin, I look at Prigozhin and see Kornilov or Wrangel. 

All that makes perfect sense, the situation is so fluid, on multiple levels, as to be utterly unpredictable. Lenin was 12 hours form an impromptu firing squad right up until he was the Czar of all the Russias, albeit without the snazzy wardrobe. But Prigoshin has a cadre of people who will shoot who he tells them too, and ask no questions at all, unless someone gets to them with a better offer, and we are back to the impromptu firing squad.

Edited September 15, 2022 by dan/california

[Ultradave]

1 hour ago, Cederic said:

We have an answer!

 

When I was in the 82d, one mission we practiced over and over and over was the 2 gun raid, a fast quick hitting mission for a 105mm battery. I was the Fire Direction Officer for our battery as one of my assignments in the Army. Best job in Field Artillery (I may be biased). 

The "raid" was to move 2 guns forward by UH-60 to a position close to the front lines to fire at a lucrative target in the enemy rear. Since a 105mm is relatively short ranged compared to a 155mm, we needed to move up close, get dropped off, lay the two guns, fire the mission, pack up, call our rides and get out of dodge. In a hurry. But it was a quick strike at an important target of opportunity. These guys are firing at a leisurely pace. In a pinch, a 105mm can be fired almost as fast as a mortar. Almost. The gunner in the video is checking his sight on the aiming stakes to make sure the gun hasn't shifted with each round. We'd have a crew of 6 or so too, so the new rounds would come fast. It's cased ammo so loading is very quick, as you can see. Much more effective once we got UH-60s to replace the UH-1H choppers. 2 UH-60s could sling a gun under each with ammo strapped onto its trails, the gun crew, and me and my assistant one of us each in one of the choppers, and the "Smoke" (Chief of the Firing Battery - a SFC, the senior NCO in the battery next to the 1SG). 

As the FDO, I also had to act as XO on the spot and survey the guns while my "Computer"  (E-5 SGT who normally calculates elevation and time), set us up a temporary FDC to calculate from  - just me and him - and then after surveying in the guns run over and finish the calcs and safety check them.  The XO stayed back with the battery of 4 remaining guns, and my FDC team sergeant (a SSG), stayed there to run the full FDC back in battery. A lot of action in a real hurry, we'd be in and out in about 20 minutes after slinging 10-20 rounds per gun out. 

I don't know what these guys are doing but a M102 and this comparable UK howitzer are highly mobile and versatile. The shells don't pack the punch (about 1/3 the weight) but this is what they shine at. 

Note: No one checked the barrel between rounds. Bad form, and potentially extremely dangerous, although a little less so with cased ammo than separate. Need to check there's no obstruction in the tube.

Dave

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

”Major” Maxim Sokolov, deputy battalion commander in PMC Wagner:

 

[sburke]

37 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Rhetoric has been a big predictor of Russia's next moves. Now the rhetoric is intensifying hard. I believe these guys would be facing charges if they said what they said couple months back.

Russia says providing Ukraine longer range weapons is a red line.  They try and implement this policy and I think they will find we'll give a whole lot more than just longer range weapons.

[sburke]

As Ukraine firepower thunders, Russian troops flee to the border; Biden to meet with Griner relatives: Live updates (msn.com)

[dan/california]

If the Ukrainians are still pushing towards a place eight miles from the Russian boarder, and in deteriorating weather, they must be strongly of the opinion that Russia/LPR has nothing to push back with. They seem to want to spend the winter camped on ALL of the Russian supply lines bar the Kerch bridge.

[Huba]

18 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

When I was in the 82d, one mission we practiced over and over and over was the 2 gun raid, a fast quick hitting mission for a 105mm battery. I was the Fire Direction Officer for our battery as one of my assignments in the Army. Best job in Field Artillery (I may be biased). 

The "raid" was to move 2 guns forward by UH-60 to a position close to the front lines to fire at a lucrative target in the enemy rear. Since a 105mm is relatively short ranged compared to a 155mm, we needed to move up close, get dropped off, lay the two guns, fire the mission, pack up, call our rides and get out of dodge. In a hurry. But it was a quick strike at an important target of opportunity. These guys are firing at a leisurely pace. In a pinch, a 105mm can be fired almost as fast as a mortar. Almost. The gunner in the video is checking his sight on the aiming stakes to make sure the gun hasn't shifted with each round. We'd have a crew of 6 or so too, so the new rounds would come fast. It's cased ammo so loading is very quick, as you can see. Much more effective once we got UH-60s to replace the UH-1H choppers. 2 UH-60s could sling a gun under each with ammo strapped onto its trails, the gun crew, and me and my assistant one of us each in one of the choppers, and the "Smoke" (Chief of the Firing Battery - a SFC, the senior NCO in the battery next to the 1SG). 

As the FDO, I also had to act as XO on the spot and survey the guns while my "Computer"  (E-5 SGT who normally calculates elevation and time), set us up a temporary FDC to calculate from  - just me and him - and then after surveying in the guns run over and finish the calcs and safety check them.  The XO stayed back with the battery of 4 remaining guns, and my FDC team sergeant (a SSG), stayed there to run the full FDC back in battery. A lot of action in a real hurry, we'd be in and out in about 20 minutes after slinging 10-20 rounds per gun out. 

I don't know what these guys are doing but a M102 and this comparable UK howitzer are highly mobile and versatile. The shells don't pack the punch (about 1/3 the weight) but this is what they shine at. 

Note: No one checked the barrel between rounds. Bad form, and potentially extremely dangerous, although a little less so with cased ammo than separate. Need to check there's no obstruction in the tube.

Dave

Thanks for sharing that, it's great to hear from somebody with first hand experience! 

[sburke]

Russia Tells Pilots To Repair Their Own Planes Amid Sanctions—Report (newsweek.com)

[The_MonkeyKing]

48 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Rhetoric has been a big predictor of Russia's next moves. Now the rhetoric is intensifying hard. I believe these guys would be facing charges if they said what they said couple months back.

Now also politicians calling it a "war" publicly:

 

[Huba]

10 minutes ago, sburke said:

Russia says providing Ukraine longer range weapons is a red line.  They try and implement this policy and I think they will find we'll give a whole lot more than just longer range weapons.

* not an actual quote

Edited September 15, 2022 by Huba

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

Can you elucidate this?

I could probably write a book:

Forcing function - The US and west have been the the worlds hyperpower for at least 30 years.  Any conventional matchups come with so many caveats that only non-state networks have really been dumb enough to take them on in the CT/VEO space.  In fact the last time a nation state fell out of line the Gulf War happened and any great power outside of the US/western sphere took note.  So a revisionist state was trapped between the devil of nuclear warfare they could not win, and the deep blue see of being vastly overpowered in the conventional space.

Our History.  We understood our power early.  While interventions and CT work kept us busy in reality the west has not faced an existential state-based threat since the fall of the USSR.  As such, we let things slide in the famous "peace dividend days".  Everyone was counting mothballed tanks and ships, but we also mothballed the NS architecture capable of waging global scale political warfare.  Sure we kept intelligence and the like but funding went way down as we all figured "well who would mess with us".  It got a major boost after 9/11 but it was built to hunt humans in and amongst other humans, not deal with larger scale nation states.  So our ability to actually conduct counter-subversive and pre-emptive political warfare campaigns has atrophied over the last three decades.

Our reality.  Unlike autocratic societies, we lay our internal social divisions and friction-points out for everyone to see, we celebrate and fund them.  Further we have laws that enshrine freedoms and an open society based on the value of each and every citizen.  We doubled down on all of that after the Cold War ended.  What makes our nations strong a great are also some of our biggest vulnerabilities in this arena - not advocating for anything different here, this is just our reality.  Free press, free enterprise, free academia and freedoms "from and to" are what makes us the most powerful versions of humanity that ever existed; also leaves us very open to asymmetric strategies.

Their reality.  The revisionist power states, like China and Russia, were largely left out, or at least feel like they were left out of the re-writing of the global order.  They understand where they stand in the pecking order, and while it took awhile, they figured out that they 1) did not like it, and 2) had to start moving the needle to change it.  Direct confrontation with the west was impossible, so they went sideways.  They all have long histories in the subversive space, hell one could argue the Chinese invented it.  So they renewed old doctrines that leveraged energy resident within our systems to work for them - classic reflexive control.  This was done with long above-water campaigns of influence as they picked up steam.  Cyber and information space meant that societies became connected, but they also became "seeable" in extremely high resolution.  Like the invention of the microscope, this opened up new observable phenomenon, which we could not see in the Cold War.  States and corporations - often overlapping - went to town on this.  They collected data and developed theories of how humanity worked at micro-social scales that did not exists 30 years ago.  They could map those spaces and that could gauge cause and effect.  We used to sell stuff and collect "likes and subscribes", they, the other lost powers, used it to create "options".  Ones that are very hard to attribute and are aimed at what is both our greatest strengths and vulnerabilities - our open society.  These options were not legal acts of war, responses lay outside of our legalities and policies, and they were designed to hit us where they knew we would never even be able to agree at what happened - classic negative and null decision space.

Russia out front.  Russia has a very long history of playing these games and decided to flex first.  China has always been quietly waiting and watching in the background - stealing IP, buying off politicians and power brokers, colleting information and re-drawing maps.  Russia is not that nuanced, never has been really.  They were far more blunt and began act on their new theories - Gerasimov Doctrine/Russian Hybrid Warfare - whatever.  It was an ability to exercise strategic options outside of what we understood as war or peace.  Russia tried things out in Georgia and Chechnya - learned some hard lessons and then went prime time in 2014 in Ukraine.  No big conventional war, they just undecided Donbass and Crimea, and then made it too hard for us to really decide anything about it.  They pulled off wins in Syria and Africa (that no one really noticed) and kept getting free lunches while we in the west sat back and scratched our heads "how did they do that?"  Seriously, as I have told some senior people, "I am tired of admiring the other team".  China was doing all the same stuff, just much more nuanced and quietly - they called it unrestricted warfare/systems warfare but it basically amounts to the same thing; however, China appears much more adept at leveraging the rules and laws of the international order, while at the same time playing outside of them.

Unprepared and paralysis.  We really were in a kind of strategic shock in the west.  Both Russia and China had worked hard to make sure that they played out internal divisions and that groups in our own societies became indirectly invested (ignorantly in some cases) in their interests.  Our national security and defence architecture was too busy chasing "snakes" and was dislocated in dealing with state-based threats.  In many cases we had no policy or legal frameworks for what these new threat theories could do, and we sure as hell did not have counters/pushbacks.  So while we were basically strategically dislocated both Russia and China made great gains while we dithered and argued with each other - and I do not mean solely in the US.  North America, Europe and Pacific partners, all yelling and divided.  NATO was on the ropes, many nations had grown tired of GWOT, and we saw (are seeing) the rise of nationalism and isolationism.

Russia poops the bed - and modern war is in the wind.  For reasons I still do not understand Russia decides to drop its A-Game and fall back on an open conventional military power approach in Ukraine.  I have never heard a good reason why this is, and why they took this risk but here we are.  So China is sitting back watching, again as all this unfolds and what does it see?  Well first thing is that modern conventional warfare is upside down.  By our old metrics/doctrine Ukraine should have lost this, even in the face of Russian crappiness.  The war was going to be longer and grinding but eventually Ukraine would fold under the weight of a military machine that was an order of magnitude larger by some metrics. And then "boop"!  So what the hell happened? - well personally I think the 3rd offset (out of favor now) actually came into it age (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_strategy) in doing so it is re-writing conventional war as we know it.  Russia is running into a brick wall but China is watching and noting it. China was feeling strong, by old metrics it was catching up and rising to challenge the West - particularly when one considers our aversion to sacrifice.  Unless China is a complete idiot, and nothing I have seen suggests they are, then this war completely blew up their pre-war estimates.  Modern warfare just got insanely more lethal and expensive - harder not easier.  And once again western warfare looks like it leaped ahead, this was not the plan.

So What?  Well, despite all the sabre rattling with China over Taiwan, I suspect the Chinese are conducting a serious re-think (they should be).  Everyone in the bar is armed and sizing each other out.  A big guy draped with guns and ammo, looking like Rambo, picked a fight with a little guy who just punched Rambo's teeth in with his own ammo belts. A conventional conflict with China just got less likely, if China has been paying attention and I suspect they have.  The metrics by which China was gauging things just shifted and they are not going to pull "a Russia" blindly.

So, So what?  Well China is likely going to do a few things 1) re-set its conventional military power metrics, likely better than we will - we are going to bask in "well there you go, we win!", 2) Keep to its A-game longer and double down and what has been working - it saw what happened to Russia.  We on the other hand are likely to go back to arguing and losing the bubble, making us even more vulnerable.  That is the biggest unknown and question "how do we re-gain internal integrity in our systems, without breaking them ourselves?"  All the while China and very likely what is left of Russia will work in helping us to break us.  We are likely to see a lot more proxy actions done this way because invading is a dumb idea.  China has a decades head start on us, so we face major challenges getting better in this space - it is the one area that China's options are expanding and ours remain stagnant. 

Cold War, Hot Peace, Tepid Status Quo, it all really ends the same; more political warfare happening where the terrain favours the opponent - we need to get over ourselves and agree that in this area we are all of one mind: create equilibrium and expand options, while compressing our opponents.  And this is not all on the US, which has its own problems, we have seen pressures and threats here in Canada in ways that we do not have any response to other than "togetherness and resilience".  Every western country has a micro-social space, and it is largely lying wide open to direct influence, which in a democracy is incredibly powerful and dangerous.  I strongly suspect that this war will be a watershed moment for whatever comes next - likely a Coldish War but one where the lines are far more blurry and a significant continuing of the trend of the re-emergence of political warfare as a primary theater in pursuing national interests while blunting an opponents.     

Finally, my instincts tell me, "don't think 1960", they are telling me "think 1900".  There are a lot of similarities between now and pre WWI with respect to great power competition/conflict.  Accept now we have nukes and cyberspace - and the history of WWI to learn from.  Regardless, we need to win this war, put Russia back in a box and then everyone sit down and have  a serious conversation on how we let this happen and how we need to close the spaces between us or someone is going to use that: one second to midnight at a time.

Edited September 15, 2022 by The_Capt

[FancyCat]

59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh, I get it and then some.  But you're... well... not thinking about it the same way I am.  A cease fire with LPR would be devastating to the Russian war.  I mean, possibly triggering a coup attempt sort of devastating.  This is the whole reason why Russia claims to have invaded, so to have 1/2 of that reason just say "look, we're out of it" would be catastrophic to Putin's entire political house of cards.

In the short term it would also mean less fighting for Ukraine, which since it has so much more fighting to do would be a good thing.  You're thinking about Minsk too much... two nations can agree to a cease fire without any of that monitoring BS.  In fact, it's better that there not be.  Ukraine detects any aggressive action from LPR, then it's back to the battlefield 10 minutes later.

Ukraine loses absolutely NOTHING by doing this because it makes no guarrantees to the LPR puppet regime at all.  No acknowledgement of their alleged reasons for existing.  It's just a case fire.

I think you are wrong that Ukrainians aren't capable of reevaluating the situation after the shooting stops.  What comes after the war ends could range from Ukraine unilaterally ending it and invading anyway all the way through to some sort of political arrangement.  Provided Zelensky doesn't make any promises, I get the sense that the vast majority of Ukrainians would be willing to see how it goes.

Steve

We will have to see. Hopefully, fingers crossed, this stage of the war comes much sooner than later.