How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

UKR soldier, drone-recon instructor tells about battle for Bakhmut. Really, battlle for Bakhmut can be bloodiest in this war.

I've just turned back from Bakhmut. And I need to Bakhmut again. There is fuc...g s...t around Bakhmut.

I completely don't understand, how our mlitaruies in Bakmut still alive. Really, they should die by all laws of logic. There just a fu...g hell. Those, who live in Bakhmut are Titans.  93rd, 53rd [I suppose, he misspeled and there should be 58th], Skala [eng. Crag, volunteer recon battalion] and other. You are Titans. Everybody. All.

Guys, if somebody says that ****..g hell around Bakhmut is not just ****...g hell. This means, you can die, making extra step. This means, that you have skirmishes on "zero line" ALWAYS. This means five minutes without shelling is exclusion.

This means that people have been dying. That one tank of rusnya [derogatory name of Russians] can make incapacitate whole rifle company. That one katsap's [derogatory name of Russians] battery can kill 20 men for own ammunition load. That means that we have been burying people. Friends. Nearest.

Bakmut still stands. By the cost of people. Bt the cost of best childen of Ukraine. 

 

Further he answered about whey General Staff doesn't send there more troops:

 

Because there just mathematically more of rusnya. Because there no opportunity to deploy more our troops. Because there are more Russian assets, than "helmets". Because no opportunity. General Staff did everithing to keep Bakhmut standing

 

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[dan/california]

 

30 minutes ago, Huba said:

I'm hardly qualified to make predictions about future US political landscape, but there clearly are somev(important?) voices in GOP that are way more hawkish than Biden's administration:

 

Hopefully regardless of how the election comes out the lame duck session can fund Ukraine VERY generously for the whole year (2023), It seems like McConnell is willing to be sensible on the issue.

[dan/california]

They had to edit the tape of the gunstabilzation test so that "quality control" of the beer could be performed. followed by further testing, with more beer. 

[GAZ NZ]

Quote

 

 

Funny history 

They were pulled from combat apparently 

I found his video on Turkey vey interesting as well 

They are a middle player in this conflict playing both sides for $

Worth a watch

 

[Haiduk]

Rare video of UKR 1P148 Konkurs tank destroyers work

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

If we aren't sensitive to letting things like Javelin fall into Russian hands, why not just send Ukraine high end thermals to slap into their current MBT fleet? That would solve the whole "heavy equipment" problem. The javelin looks like it has pretty good thermals already.

If I'm not mistaken high end digital optics use extremely tiny mirrors to reflect singular bits of information to draw up a larger image. That's how they get such great resolution... with the number of mirrors reflecting tiny bits of light.

You're talking about wavefront correction.  That's one element of extremely high performance optical systems, but it's not always necessary at battlefield ranges, and it's definitely not sufficient on its own.  There are also a variety of ways to implement it, including active mirror systems as you describe.  But it's not trivial to implement, and a lot of the manufacturing can't be ramped up very quickly.  

In addition to the fancy mirrors, you also need a bunch of fancy passive optics that have to get shoehorned into/onto the tank and be tough enough to survive an environment that's really hostile to precision optical alignment.  And you need detectors.  The IR detectors for a fancy targeting system that you'd put on a tank are very different than what you'd put on a Javelin or NLAW and probably much more export restricted (I've never tried to export either, but I live adjacent to that world and can guess).  If we were going to do such a thing, probably the quickest cost effective way would be to ramp up production of the Thales system that's already in manufacture for Soviet/Soviet-derived tanks.   

[chrisl]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Very interesting analogy but not quite there to my mind.  The cargo cult as you outline is an emulation without actual capability behind it - it looks like an airfield built by people with no idea how an airfield works.  I do not believe the Russian military is in this camp…well at least not at the start of this thing.

The Russian military has capability and capacity but they appear to be set up to prosecute a war from the 1990s or even the Cold War.  Their military doctrine, training and even metrics of success are all from a bygone era.  Take this military and drop it into 1991 and we are talking a very different outcome.   The UA would not have access to real time full spectrum C4ISR or digitally supported targeting…no one really did.  Even in the Gulf War only about 10% of munitions were PGM.  No HIMARs, no UAS, ATGMs definitely last gen, so maybe TOW but that system was not going to dominate the battlefield.  No, if this was 30 years ago we would likely be supporting an insurgency across the Polish border.

We see videos of training goons hitting each other and calling it training, Google some old Marine corp training videos from the 80s, we were not that much more sophisticated at times.   No, the issue isn’t that Russia does not have military capability or is pretending, it is that is not learning fast enough what modern warfare actually looks like.  Further it keeps doubling down on old metrics of success - mass, terrorizing civilians and holding territory.  It keeps building for that and fighting for that.  This is very similar to the deadlocks of WW1 where “just one more push” and we will win.  We mock but we saw this same logic in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - “if we kill just one more XX leader, they will fold”.  So we are by no means immune.

I do not think Russia is a cargo cult (which is a brilliant piece of history btw), I think they are a military fighting for the wrong war.  The narratives we have heard for months coming from Russia social media reinforce this…they cannot see it, they do not understand why they are losing.  Mobilization was supposed to cure everything by throwing more mass at the problem, when it is clear that will not work.  Then tac nukes, which won’t work even if they do use them.  Oh wait, “stop the restraint” and conduct a blitz terror campaign against Ukrainian civilians like it is 1940.  Even those obstacle belts - which look professionally constructed btw- are an old way of thinking that I am not even sure will work even if they build enough of them.

 These are all symptoms that Russia simply doesn’t not even know what it doesn’t know at this point.  Better news is that they appear wed to their doctrine so learning will happen very slowly.  What is very important is that Ukraine and the West do not give them time to learn.  I suspect it is too late to be honest, and has been since early days.  The learning that needed to happen was 5 years ago so that they could invest in a competitive C4ISR system instead of retooling an old one and blowing money on T14s and hypersonic-whatever-those-BS-systems-were-supposed-to-do.

It is interesting that this war is not just a collision of wills, it is a collision of collective learning.

I'll bite and continue to defend the Cargo Cult analogy.

The Russian army is emulating what they see armies doing, but they have no understanding of what's happening inside any of the equipment, let alone the amount of organization and communication that has to occur for it to be useful.  They have no idea how an army works, how logistitcs work, or really even a tank, let alone a warship or aerospace ISR assets.  

They're really good at making big things out of lots of metal and making them roll, belch fire, and explode.  They'd be very popular at Burning Man if they smoked more weed and turned their abilities to peaceful purposes.  But all that stuff (tanks, the Moskva, the Kuznetsov, Soyuz launch vehicles) are the coconut headphones of the 21st century.  They build that stuff, they light it on fire, it's dramatic, and when they use it for military purposes it's got enough bang to kill a lot of people if it lands on them.  But it's a hollow shell.  

They can put stuff into space, but they have no idea what to do with that ability.  Like building airfields for planes that won't come, they build launch vehicles for ISR satellites that will never exist.  

They have thousands of tanks (mostly inherited from the USSR) that drive around and spew metal, but those tanks barely have radios, don't have GPS, and only have targeting systems better than the Mk I Eyeball if they buy them from Thales. They're basically throwing fast explosive rocks indiscriminately.

They have thousands of IFVs/APCs that they stuff with troops dressed in fatigues and armed with automatic weapons, but they don't even know how many troops to put in one, and don't know how to support them, and don't know what to have the troops do once they get there. They did the huge thunder runs toward Kyiv, but the troops won't get out of the APCS, don't know where they are, and don't know what to do when they get there.  It's like a bunch of guys with coconuts on their ears going out to the airfield (that would probably work as an airfield) and waving in the planes that don't exist.  It was a theater blitzkrieg, and they expected the Ukrainians to perform the other half of the play by throwing up their hands in surrender.

The Moskva is a truly impressive example of cargo cultism. They got ahold of a ship that was all welded up and armed with fancy missiles, CIWS, and radars, but they might as well have had coconuts over their ears (and may in fact have) for all the good any of the radar and CIWS did against a couple of missiles.

It's play acting with 20th century equipment (or facsimiles. some of their optics and electronics might as well be Fisher-Price or coconuts and bamboo), but there's no understanding behind it.  Sometimes they have enough understanding of something to be effective for a short time - they figured out how to use UAVs to direct artillery.  But an awful lot of it is putting on a show that's only effective because of the amount of fire and metal it's spewing. If you duck and get out of the way while they use up what they're carrying, they don't have enough understanding of logistics to keep spewing metal and then Ukraine takes back large amounts of area quickly.  I think most of what you wrote after the first two paragraphs actually supports the cargo cult hypothesis.

[dan/california]

30 minutes ago, chrisl said:

If we were going to do such a thing, probably the quickest cost effective way would be to ramp up production of the Thales system that's already in manufacture for Soviet/Soviet-derived tanks.   

This makes by far the most sense of all the half baked ideas, But sending them a brigade set of modern NATO MBTs, and IFVs, and all the trucks to keep them running  makes a lot more. The point where the boiling the frog  approach to this war made any sense is over. The pot needs to be blown completely out of the kitchen with enough force to just send the Russians home. The slow boil approach is just running up the body count on both sides.

Edited October 23, 2022 by dan/california

[kevinkin]

7 minutes ago, chrisl said:

cargo cult

Brings back re-run memories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyERnu7zUw

Went over my head in grammar school. 

[chuckdyke]

5 hours ago, danfrodo said:

letting all those troops escape to fight another day is not good either. 

It was more or less the way Saladin did it in Jerusalem. Both sides had too much to lose.

The Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

[danfrodo]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

I'm hardly qualified to make predictions about future US political landscape, but there clearly are somev(important?) voices in GOP that are way more hawkish than Biden's administration:

 

In the world of pre-crazy, GOPers would be the more hawkish.  So good to see some of the hawks pushing back.  What point is there in being a tough guy if you look the other way when the damsel is in distress?

[danfrodo]

10 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

It was more or less the way Saladin did it in Jerusalem. Both sides had too much to lose.

The Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

Yeah, I get why they might want to let them leave.  I just don't want to see those guys later in the war.

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, danfrodo said:

Yeah, I get why they might want to let them leave.  I just don't want to see those guys later in the war.

Never seen the dam but it might function as a bridge. 

[Beleg85]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHGWbfbuuk

This video of a US volunteer from May. Not something spectacular, but interesting as he puts entire records from his GoPro with deep commentary, giving pretty holistic view how combat there looks. Note local civilian grabbing rifle and leading them into area. There is also a lot of confusion where friendly positions are (common thing judging by other volunteers).

In general, his channel is worth subscribing into. Other videos (like the one how identify Russian drone) are also worth watching.

[Fenris]

6 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

They indeed are. This week is very bad for Russian propagandists and Russian planes...:

 

Might have stepped on a petal mine.  Doesn't look very serious.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1584266520422936576

https://twitter.com/i/status/1584222043452497920

 

Here's the vision relating to the quote pic.  Not particularly interesting except to see the quality of the mobilised men that Pushilin is talking to.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Fenris

[sburke]

so much for Elvis recovery this week - Phillies are going to the series.  Seems Steve will have to manage the timeout button for a while longer.

[dan/california]

24 minutes ago, sburke said:

so much for Elvis recovery this week - Phillies are going to the series.  Seems Steve will have to manage the timeout button for a while longer.

Poor guy, I hope his liver makes it thru....

[dan/california]

43 minutes ago, Fenris said:

 

Might have stepped on a petal mine.  Doesn't look very serious.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1584266520422936576

https://twitter.com/i/status/1584222043452497920

 

Here's the vision relating to the quote pic.  Not particularly interesting except to see the quality of the mobilised men that Pushilin is talking to.

 

 

I hope he receives the VERY BEST in Russian medical care.

[Beleg85]

Also, to raise up morale- the return of famous moustached Belarusian volunteer giving guidance to Moskals mobiks what they can do with their flag. Sounds actually pretty practical.

 

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Very interesting analogy but not quite there to my mind.  The cargo cult as you outline is an emulation without actual capability behind it - it looks like an airfield built by people with no idea how an airfield works.  I do not believe the Russian military is in this camp…well at least not at the start of this thing.

I agree that Cargo Cult isn't spot on, but in some respects it's pretty close.  I think a better analogy is out of science fiction stories about the decline of complex high tech societies that worship/idolize what their predecessors built, but haven't much of a clue how to care and maintain them.  As things become harder to fix and impossible to replace, capabilities atrophy and the situation gets progressively worse.  This is the premise behind such classics as Ringworld and Foundation, but also evident in lots of other books (books 2 and 3 of the Deathworld trilogy are my favorites!).

The Moskva is a great example of this.  Apparently they didn't know how to use their radar or perform damage control.  They got hit and sunk because of missing knowledge and properly functioning systems.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

This is very similar to the deadlocks of WW1 where “just one more push” and we will win.  We mock but we saw this same logic in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - “if we kill just one more XX leader, they will fold”.  So we are by no means immune.

Ah, but this is a bad analogy.  Nobody has figured out how to fight and win a deep rooted resistance movement embedded in a culture that, by and large, doesn't want any of the benefits that the occupiers have to offer.  Nobody, so it's not analogous to this war because much of is going on has been solved for in the past, if not in practice but at least in theory.  Cripes, the numbnuts in the Kremlin could just download the US military PDFs on theory, practice, lessons learned, etc. and probably improve their knowledge of how to fight Ukraine by a factor of 10 and take steps to implement things in a logical, prioritized manner that is consistent with Russia's capabilities.  Which begs the question... have they ALREADY done that and this is the best they can do?  I'm thinking that's more right than wrong.  Personally, I think they half assed figuring out what went wrong and are half assing the corrective measures.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 These are all symptoms that Russia simply doesn’t not even know what it doesn’t know at this point.  Better news is that they appear wed to their doctrine so learning will happen very slowly.  What is very important is that Ukraine and the West do not give them time to learn.  I suspect it is too late to be honest, and has been since early days.  The learning that needed to happen was 5 years ago so that they could invest in a competitive C4ISR system instead of retooling an old one and blowing money on T14s and hypersonic-whatever-those-BS-systems-were-supposed-to-do.

This is where the Cargo Cult thing has a bit more legs.  The Russians have been obsessed with looking to be a modern military without understanding what makes a military modern.  Unlike the Pacific islanders, who had to make do with what they had locally, Russia went to the West and purchased things to look cool for the cameras.  Guys running around with NVGs on WW2 era steel helmets and body armor made of fiberglass with tanks produced 40 years ago using tactical doctrine from before NGVs were individualized does not a modern army make!

Steve

[dan/california]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I agree that Cargo Cult isn't spot on, but in some respects it's pretty close.  I think a better analogy is out of science fiction stories about the decline of complex high tech societies that worship/idolize what their predecessors built, but haven't much of a clue how to care and maintain them.  As things become harder to fix and impossible to replace, capabilities atrophy and the situation gets progressively worse.  This is the premise behind such classics as Ringworld and Foundation, but also evident in lots of other books (books 2 and 3 of the Deathworld trilogy are my favorites!).

The Moskva is a great example of this.  Apparently they didn't know how to use their radar or perform damage control.  They got hit and sunk because of missing knowledge and properly functioning systems.

Ah, but this is a bad analogy.  Nobody has figured out how to fight and win a deep rooted resistance movement embedded in a culture that, by and large, doesn't want any of the benefits that the occupiers have to offer.  Nobody, so it's not analogous to this war because much of is going on has been solved for in the past, if not in practice but at least in theory.  Cripes, the numbnuts in the Kremlin could just download the US military PDFs on theory, practice, lessons learned, etc. and probably improve their knowledge of how to fight Ukraine by a factor of 10 and take steps to implement things in a logical, prioritized manner that is consistent with Russia's capabilities.  Which begs the question... have they ALREADY done that and this is the best they can do?  I'm thinking that's more right than wrong.  Personally, I think they half assed figuring out what went wrong and are half assing the corrective measures.

This is where the Cargo Cult thing has a bit more legs.  The Russians have been obsessed with looking to be a modern military without understanding what makes a military modern.  Unlike the Pacific islanders, who had to make do with what they had locally, Russia went to the West and purchased things to look cool for the cameras.  Guys running around with NVGs on their helmets and body armor made of fiberglass with tanks produced 40 years ago does not a modern army make!

Steve

100% agree with all of this. BUT, you did an excellent post on military Darwinism years ago in Iraq/Afghanistan. Specifically that if a war goes on long enough the less competent side will improve by the simple expedient of the incompetent ones getting killed. I realize the Russians have gotten many of their better pre war units trashed so badly it has blunted this effect, but on some level, and at some rate of speed it is still happening. Ukraine and friends want to WIN this bleeping thing before this process results in some sort of minimal competence on the Russian side at a scale that might matter. 

[Bulletpoint]

8 hours ago, Haiduk said:

For those, who havn't own twitter account and can't see a video - Russian Su-30 crashed in Irkutsk. It has fell on two-storey building, but without losses among civilias. Both pilots are dead. The jet belonged to Irkutsk aircraft plant and reportedly was under test flight.

 

To me, it looks like it was crashed on purpose. Pilot suicide?

[keas66]

16 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

To me, it looks like it was crashed on purpose. Pilot suicide?

 I saw some comments to the effect that the oxygen supply  system  had failed and both crew members were unconscious ...but who knows

Edited October 23, 2022 by keas66

[acrashb]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think a better analogy is out of science fiction stories about the decline of complex high tech societies that worship/idolize what their predecessors built, but haven't much of a clue how to care and maintain them. 

You noted "Foundation", where this was very well described - as I recall the late-era Imperial atomic 'technicians' formed something of a religious cult around maintenance of the star ship engines.  But the word I think we are searching for is ancient, defined by the Greeks: barbarian.  

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nobody has figured out how to fight and win a deep rooted resistance movement embedded in a culture that, by and large, doesn't want any of the benefits that the occupiers have to offer. 

From the immortal Monty Python troop: Reggie: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Xerxes: Brought peace? Reggie: Oh, peace? SHUT UP!

I think the modern way to approach this is to look back at the Westphalian accords.  The "Responsibility to protect", especially Pillar III, is a recipe for endless, violent insurgency when applied to cultures that will not give up ... their culture, whether or not others see it as a legitimate culture.  That still leaves plenty of room for humanitarian aid, it just shuts out forcibly imposing governments /  cultures.

In other words, don't fight the resistance movement.  Let it do what it wants if and only if it stays within its own borders.

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russia went to the West and purchased things to look cool for the cameras. 

A side effect of the culture.  It's a kleptocracy, with a strong-man focus (Tsarist).  The strong man needs to look strong - hence the T-14.

[chrisl]

23 minutes ago, keas66 said:

 I saw some comments to the effect that the oxygen supply  system  had failed and both crew members were unconscious ...but who knows

yeah, kind of a lot of ways that an aircraft with automation can drill itself into the ground under power. The already mentioned runaway trim (caused by MCAS in the 737-MAX, but with other possibilities as well), loss of various control cables, motors, wires, hydraulics, oxygen, etc.  I don't know anything about Soviet/Russian aircraft, but if they follow any of the design principles we've seen in the rest of the equipment I'd be surprised if they run redundant controls physically separate from the primaries.  Assuming they have backups for all the critical controls at all.