How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, kevinkin said:

Media experts did not, but the Pentagon did. The US came to the conclusion that Russia was not the conventional threat as it once was. However, inside the beltway, keeping Russia on the board was beneficial. First, the US never wants Russia to be a threat again. Second, large organizations hate taking money off the table and Russia was a way to maintain funding even if the expenditures were on systems destined for the Pacific. So the general public was sort of left in the dark letting them believe Russia was a conventional threat to NATO while lobbyists and others continued to make out. Why kill the goose ... With pressure on military budgets, a little slight of hand is OK. Got to get one of those lobbyist gigs. It does come down to the guts Ukraine puts forward and their technical ability to use NATO weapons effectively. And not to mention Ukraine's ability to adapt fast. Can't accurately study those soft factors prior to war. So there was always a bit of nervousness surrounding a Russian attack. It's never helpful to take things for granted ... ask Yankee fans.

So now the question is whether can we deter the Chinese from doing something EPICALLY stupid....

[mosuri]

Having some time to think idle thoughts, I recalled that amateur astronomers do a sort of crowdsourced meteor tracking -- they point wide field cameras up to the sky and log any streaks of lights recorded by those cameras to a common database. Given locations of the cameras are known the data can be used to calculate where a meteor might have landed.

That got me thinking that in principle a geographically spread swarm of drones could be used to pinpoint the location of enemy artillery. Each drone would have a known location, attitude and bearing (GPS, accelerometer, and electronic compass) so any distant flashes they observe could be collected together and processed quickly enough to send a return packet to the determined location before the gun has time to move.

Of course image processing to filter for gun flashes would require some computing power from the drone but should be doable, at least during a night, in principle - many things are possible in principle -- and would require relatively clear weather to see far enough ... well, like said, idle thoughts. But the thought of a swarm of relatively cheap observers providing real time data over a potentially wide physical area, and being able to distill useful bits of information from that data, feels useful.

 

[Taranis]

 

Ukrainian winter preparations

[kevinkin]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

EPICALLY stupid

Well the money has to go somewhere. And to raise it, threats have to be maintained - either perceived or real. 

[dan/california]

17 minutes ago, mosuri said:

Having some time to think idle thoughts, I recalled that amateur astronomers do a sort of crowdsourced meteor tracking -- they point wide field cameras up to the sky and log any streaks of lights recorded by those cameras to a common database. Given locations of the cameras are known the data can be used to calculate where a meteor might have landed.

That got me thinking that in principle a geographically spread swarm of drones could be used to pinpoint the location of enemy artillery. Each drone would have a known location, attitude and bearing (GPS, accelerometer, and electronic compass) so any distant flashes they observe could be collected together and processed quickly enough to send a return packet to the determined location before the gun has time to move.

Of course image processing to filter for gun flashes would require some computing power from the drone but should be doable, at least during a night, in principle - many things are possible in principle -- and would require relatively clear weather to see far enough ... well, like said, idle thoughts. But the thought of a swarm of relatively cheap observers providing real time data over a potentially wide physical area, and being able to distill useful bits of information from that data, feels useful.

 

My current "it might work" question is can lidar spot a a standard Russian AT mine in a wheatfield. The implications for food prices in the next couple of years are not trivial.

It will take thirty years to sort out the tree lines and hedgerows.

Edited October 25, 2022 by dan/california

[JonS]

7 minutes ago, mosuri said:

in principle a geographically spread swarm of drones could be used to pinpoint the location of enemy artillery. Each drone would have a known location, attitude and bearing (GPS, accelerometer, and electronic compass) so any distant flashes they observe could be collected together and processed quickly enough to send a return packet to the determined location before the gun has time to move.

The problem with this cunning plan is that artillery propellant charges are designed to burn completely before the round leaves the muzzle, making them flashless.

I discovered that to my chagrin on my very first live fire exercise, back in 199mumble. "Cool" I thought "a night mission - I'll get my camera!" Shortly followed by "wait, what? Did I just blink at the wrong time? Every time?" Shortly after that someone kindly explained what the F in FNH meant to the FNG.

It would work for rockets though.

[riptides]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I always liked “we brought a gun to a knife fight”.

I liked  

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war"

General Stanley McChrystal

[Battlefront.com]

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, you keep mentioning this.  Moving several hundred thousand troops anywhere on an offence, even shoddily is incredibly hard.  You are really undersubscribing the difficulty of this under ideal conditions, now compounded by the UA who can see that entire line of advance back to the border from space.  Further the UA has precision fires and ATGM systems that are fire and forget out to 3+km hitting with 90% accuracy.  The fact the Russians got as far as they did should not be tossed aside so easily.  

Again, I'm not saying that Russia sucked at everything it did in Phase 1.  I am saying that I don't see anything special there that makes me think they have even a decent grasp of modern warfare.  What they displayed is they could blunder through Ukrainian defense faster than they could organized and do very little to address the problems the defenses caused.

Here's an animation for us to all refresh our memories about the advances achieved in Phase 1.

From what I've seen Russian units were literally told "drive as fast as you can to this town here" with absolutely no plan beyond that.  If they made it wasn't through any sort of mastery of modern warfare, it was simply that on that the defenders weren't in position on that road at that time or weren't armed well enough to affect the advance.  When the Ukrainians were in place the Russians had great difficulty dealing with them.  This is what the rear logistics discovered as they were also told "drive as fast as you can to this town here" without any form of route security.

The reason Russia was able to advance at all is through a combination of mass and Ukrainian defenses that were still in a state of shock.  Numbers can compensate for a lot in a situation like this.  However, Russia didn't have the numbers everywhere and so the gains very quickly petered out WELL SHORT of what Russia had planned on.

It's not so much that I'm dismissing what the Russians did, but saying that they told everybody before the war that they could do a lot more.  And they convinced the Western experts to believe the same thing.  But they couldn't do it.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

You would have to back this up.  I have never heard anyone thinking this, nor the UA having the luxury to pull this off while being invaded.  

Do you think they were sitting around since 2014 doing no planning?  Of course not.  Do you think they were planning to defend their borders with mechanized forces and defeat them mano-a-mano?  Of course not.

While I can't find an easy reference for what was going on, I was paying attention to what various countries (including the Baltics) were preparing to do in the event of full scale war.  This is one reason I was so bullish on the ability for Ukraine and the Baltics to shred Russian ground forces to pieces.  All four of these nations adopted fairly similar approaches.

1. do not bunch up along the border where Russian artillery and air can strike before anybody can react
2. create unconventional units (in Ukraine's case TD, but I'm also very familiar with Estonia's Defense League) that can be mobilized locally within hours.  That includes weapon caches, chains of command, and communications channels
3. use forests and ambush tactics to bog down Russian advances and buy time to mount a formal conventional challenge
4. use key urban areas (logistics hubs) to frustrate Russia's logistics and tie up troops that otherwise would be moving forward
5. wait for Russia to demonstrate what it's objectives are and commit forces only when it's clear (Ukraine had the advantage of the entire Russian war plan in their hands a few days before the invasion, at the least)

This is largely what the Ukrainians did and it worked beautifully.  They improvised the Hell out of the details, but the overall framework they were operating within was not.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What I saw was the UA adapting quickly with what they had and were likely surprised by the outcome as well.

Agreed.  They, like everybody else, overestimated Russia's capabilities and underestimated their own.  I don't think they expected to hold places like Sumy for the entire time.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

 That is one helluva assessment and I would need to see some facts before I bought off on it.  Have they learned how to exploit RA weakness over time, definitely.  But the idea that they specifically and deliberately tailored their operational and tactical approaches before the war because they knew exactly where the Russian suck is a reach with the info we have.

I don't think so.  It's pretty logical and it was what I did on my own years before the war.  I don't think I'm particularly special, so I think it's a leap to think that Ukraine, who knew they were going to get invaded sooner rather than later, wasn't thinking the same things (and more) than me.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And here we fully disagree.  Would we have done better, likely.  Would it have been easy or would our strategic objectives be guaranteed..I am not sure at all for all the reasons I listed before.  Our logistics are just as vulnerable, for example how does one secure a 5km wide corridor for 100kms? Against dismounted infantry?  How does one hide mass and ours is just a big and hot as Russia’s.  In Iraq insurgents shut down US operational logistics with IEDs for days at a time, here we are talking an opponent with next-gen ATGMs and C4ISR - we would have to bake space to take out their assets, knocking ours out at the same time. UAVs everywhere, hell ISIS drove us nuts with Amazon drones and they  were nowhere near this level.  

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I think it would be messy for sure.  However, the greatest asset Ukraine had in its opposition to the early days of Russian advances was the Russians were disorganized, scattered, and with few exceptions vastly under resourced in terms of dismounted infantry.  Time and time and time again Russian POWs stated that they didn't have any orders other than drive down Road A until you get to Town B.  Cripes, they didn't even have maps in some cases and when they did they had maps predating the renaming of Soviet towns.  There's some pretty humorous anecdotes about interacting with locals at the time.

The point I made in the previous post is that a NATO force would not START the war with that as Plan A.  They would accept a slower rate of advance or a more limited one or a combo of both in order to have troop density sufficient to challenge the defenders.  They would have ISR4.  They would have f'n maps.  It simply would not be the same poop show that Russia conducted and that would change the dynamic very dramatically.  However...

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

No, I am sorry but to say “we would be fine and the UA only won because Russia sucks” smacks of western hubris which is exactly what the European powers did with the lessons they observed in the wars leading up to WW1.

Who said I thought a NATO force would be "fine"?  No, I think they would eventually get their asses handed to them, quite handily in fact.  I just think it would have been later and with a lot fewer embarrassing YouTube and Twitter videos.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I also do not think Russia would have won this if they “sucked less” because no one (or at least very few) predicted the impact the new realities of the modern battlefield would have.

I was fully expecting Russia to take over everything east of the Dnepr, less Kyiv, during Phase 1 and Phase 2 (consolidating the middle portion).  I then expected them to be bled white by unconventional warfare aided by conventional forces on the other side of the river.  Russian incompetence at all levels PLUS Ukraine being super smart about nearly everything dramatically changed the possible outcome.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Make the Russians better at combined arms, even joint fires and they they might have lost slower but they were not going to achieve their objectives because their entire system was built for a battlefield that does not exists anymore - giving them a faster horse is not going to make a difference against a bird in a vertical race.  

Correct.  This is, I think, the crux of the "Russia sux" argument.  The problems with the Russian military are so deep and wide that a few tweaks here and there wouldn't change a damned thing.  However...

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Make the UA worse by taking away the advantages they had and their success does some into question, as it was back in 2014.  

It's the combination that would have changed the near term outlook for the Russians.  If they didn't suck so badly, and the Ukrainians weren't übermensch warriors, then Russia would likely have taken more territory at less cost to it and more cost to Ukraine.  The war wouldn't end and Russia would certainly lose, but it would be a dramatically different war than the one we have now.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Hell we can test some of this in CM right now for that matter - fight to emulate a proxy war with someone backed with China.  We can’t directly attack Chinese C4ISR and they have outfitted our opponent with all the bells and whistles (UAS, deep strike, PGMs and AD).  Let one side fight all modern combat armsy just like out doctrine says, and let then other fight like the UA, now that would be an interesting experiment.

That sounds familiar to me

OK... trying to sum up.  I think Russia sucks and that is the primary reason they have flubbed this war so badly.  I think NATO, against the same exact challenges, would do far better BUT would eventually lose because NATO has not figured out how to fight an unconventional war and win.  Or at least hasn't demonstrated that it can.  On the other hand, if Russia didn't suck so badly and Ukraine stumbled more than it did (losing the fight above Crimea was a HUGE blunder) we'd be seeing an entirely different war.  Maybe Kyiv under siege for months, Kharkiv starved into submission, etc. 10s of thousands more Ukrainian casualties and 10s of thousands fewer Cargo 200 for the Russians.  Russia was simply not up to the task, despite them and the Western experts telling us they were.

Steve

[akd]

Continuation of previous Terra video of Ukrainian operation to seize a village:

Looks like the Russian IFVs are BMD-2s, so presumably a VDV unit.

[mosuri]

24 minutes ago, JonS said:

The problem with this cunning plan is that artillery propellant charges are designed to burn completely before the round leaves the muzzle, making them flashless.

I discovered that to my chagrin on my very first live fire exercise, back in 199mumble. "Cool" I thought "a night mission - I'll get my camera!" Shortly followed by "wait, what? Did I just blink at the wrong time? Every time?" Shortly after that someone kindly explained what the F in FNH meant to the FNG.

It would work for rockets though.

Oh man...

Need to use infrared instead it seems, found this online now: Infrared Detection and Geolocation of Gunfire and Ordnance Events f rom Ground and Air Platforms

[Battlefront.com]

28 minutes ago, JonS said:

The problem with this cunning plan is that artillery propellant charges are designed to burn completely before the round leaves the muzzle, making them flashless.

I discovered that to my chagrin on my very first live fire exercise, back in 199mumble. "Cool" I thought "a night mission - I'll get my camera!" Shortly followed by "wait, what? Did I just blink at the wrong time? Every time?" Shortly after that someone kindly explained what the F in FNH meant to the FNG.

It would work for rockets though.

I did read somewhere that someone has either built or is planning on building drones that can get an acoustical bearing.  Put a bunch of those up in a sector of front and it should allow for good detection and triangulation, would it not?

Steve

[A Canadian Cat]

On 10/24/2022 at 11:45 AM, The_Capt said:

I definitely think there was an element of this within the RA, along with corruption and baffling strategic decisions.  However, recall that this was the same army that performed in 2014. https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf

Yes, good points. I we should also remember that their force quality is not even. Clearly they have units that are better and those that are worse. My impression looking back with hindsight is that the success the RA had in 2014 would not have been universal if scaled up. In other words they had success when their best equipped and trained solders fought but if they had to fight with a 200 000 strong force most of it would not have fought that well.

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, akd said:

Continuation of previous Terra video of Ukrainian operation to seize a village:

Looks like the Russian IFVs are BMD-2s, so presumably a VDV unit.

Well, that was worth the watching time!  Thanks.

Steve

[A Canadian Cat]

On 10/24/2022 at 12:20 PM, dan/california said:

The hardest problem in human history is how to take a country that is a complete mess and make it a minimally decent place to live, and then get from their to at rule of law, human rights and so on. Ukraine was well on its way to making that transition

My impression is that populations that are ready to have a better place to live and want to achieve better governance can be assisted to get to their goals faster. Populations that are still focused on grievances of generations past or think their current corrupt and authorization ways are actually better cannot really be remoulded by an outside force into a better run government.

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Maj. Alexey Chuprov, probably a Su-25 pilot in the 266th Separate Assault Aviation Regiment, although he may be an officer from another unit stationed at the same airbase:

 

Col. Ruslan Rudnev, regiment commander, and Lt. Col. Oleg Chervov, deputy commander for flight training, (both already on the list, but maybe without unit) seem to also be noted as losses from the 266th Assault Aviation Regiment.

Maj. Maxim Kovalev, Ka-52 pilot, probably in the 39th Helicopter Regiment:

Lt. Col. Alexander Bolotnikov, 98th Guards Airborne Division:

 

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by akd

[Battlefront.com]

On 10/24/2022 at 11:45 AM, The_Capt said:

In 2014 it was Russia and Russian-backed that were tearing the UA a new one.

Yes and no.  Russia had some distinct problems at the tactical level.  They had some of their elite units in Ukraine for most of the summer, yet were steadily losing ground in many places and not having much luck at the Donetsk airport (the Bakhmut of 2014!).  There were some pitched battles with VDV units (oh sorry, "volunteers") that didn't go well for VDV.  This is why Russia had to up their game by invading more properly in August.  After initial gains they had a choice of tough fighting or pursuing Minsk.  They went with Minsk as a stalling tactic while they prepared to take more territory in the early winter.  This turned into the Debaltsevo offensive which, again, didn't go very well from the Russian side even though ultimately they took their objective.

All of this reinforces your point further below...

On 10/24/2022 at 11:45 AM, The_Capt said:

 I suspect they were using that template for this war when the UA was really Cold War era in capability.  The intervening 8 years could be some of the most important in modern history for the region as Ukraine modernized pretty dramatically while Russia sat back and rolled around on Mayday, investing in boutique military capability instead of modernization.

Worse, by some measures Russia regressed over the past 8 years.  One of the informative Twitter guys, I think, talked about the decline of readiness and contractor levels.  Too much info to absorb so no chance in me finding that one!

On 10/24/2022 at 11:45 AM, The_Capt said:

Then in 2022..whoops, wrong war Russia.  And it has been a mad scramble to try and keep it together from day 1.  All the experts were pointing to UA attrition but it was the attrition on the RA that was doing serious harm.  Their best troops likely got killed in that first month and as capability eroded military objectives went with them - we have been watching the RA devolve ever since the beginning.

I think that if Russia had really been paying attention they would have entirely rethought their approach in Phase I.  If they could conceive that the UA had moved so much in nearly a decade and that western ISR was going to make their lives so difficult, they may have tried to prosecute a military strategy that isolated Ukraine from western support first, then went for the decapitation objectives.  Their’s was a fault of fatal assumptions and there is much that can be learned from that.
 

This is one reason I was surprised Russia didn't do better in Phase I.  I credited Russia with having learned more from the 2014/2015 fighting than they apparently did.  Best I can tell they went into Ukraine in February 2022 expecting that Ukraine hadn't improved either, even though they had been in hostile contact with them the whole 8 years.

This would be stupid, but perhaps excusable, if Russia had no intentions of invading Ukraine fully.  I mean, what's the point of preparing for a war you're not going to fight, right?  But Putin *was* planning on invading Ukraine, yet I don't see 8 years of preparations for it.  Seems that it was a notion that Putin assumed didn't need any specific attention to preparations.

Steve

[dan/california]

54 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Again, I'm not saying that Russia sucked at everything it did in Phase 1.  I am saying that I don't see anything special there that makes me think they have even a decent grasp of modern warfare.  What they displayed is they could blunder through Ukrainian defense faster than they could organized and do very little to address the problems the defenses caused.

Here's an animation for us to all refresh our memories about the advances achieved in Phase 1.

From what I've seen Russian units were literally told "drive as fast as you can to this town here" with absolutely no plan beyond that.  If they made it wasn't through any sort of mastery of modern warfare, it was simply that on that the defenders weren't in position on that road at that time or weren't armed well enough to affect the advance.  When the Ukrainians were in place the Russians had great difficulty dealing with them.  This is what the rear logistics discovered as they were also told "drive as fast as you can to this town here" without any form of route security.

The reason Russia was able to advance at all is through a combination of mass and Ukrainian defenses that were still in a state of shock.  Numbers can compensate for a lot in a situation like this.  However, Russia didn't have the numbers everywhere and so the gains very quickly petered out WELL SHORT of what Russia had planned on.

It's not so much that I'm dismissing what the Russians did, but saying that they told everybody before the war that they could do a lot more.  And they convinced the Western experts to believe the same thing.  But they couldn't do it.

Do you think they were sitting around since 2014 doing no planning?  Of course not.  Do you think they were planning to defend their borders with mechanized forces and defeat them mano-a-mano?  Of course not.

While I can't find an easy reference for what was going on, I was paying attention to what various countries (including the Baltics) were preparing to do in the event of full scale war.  This is one reason I was so bullish on the ability for Ukraine and the Baltics to shred Russian ground forces to pieces.  All four of these nations adopted fairly similar approaches.

1. do not bunch up along the border where Russian artillery and air can strike before anybody can react
2. create unconventional units (in Ukraine's case TD, but I'm also very familiar with Estonia's Defense League) that can be mobilized locally within hours.  That includes weapon caches, chains of command, and communications channels
3. use forests and ambush tactics to bog down Russian advances and buy time to mount a formal conventional challenge
4. use key urban areas (logistics hubs) to frustrate Russia's logistics and tie up troops that otherwise would be moving forward
5. wait for Russia to demonstrate what it's objectives are and commit forces only when it's clear (Ukraine had the advantage of the entire Russian war plan in their hands a few days before the invasion, at the least)

This is largely what the Ukrainians did and it worked beautifully.  They improvised the Hell out of the details, but the overall framework they were operating within was not.

Agreed.  They, like everybody else, overestimated Russia's capabilities and underestimated their own.  I don't think they expected to hold places like Sumy for the entire time.

I don't think so.  It's pretty logical and it was what I did on my own years before the war.  I don't think I'm particularly special, so I think it's a leap to think that Ukraine, who knew they were going to get invaded sooner rather than later, wasn't thinking the same things (and more) than me.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I think it would be messy for sure.  However, the greatest asset Ukraine had in its opposition to the early days of Russian advances was the Russians were disorganized, scattered, and with few exceptions vastly under resourced in terms of dismounted infantry.  Time and time and time again Russian POWs stated that they didn't have any orders other than drive down Road A until you get to Town B.  Cripes, they didn't even have maps in some cases and when they did they had maps predating the renaming of Soviet towns.  There's some pretty humorous anecdotes about interacting with locals at the time.

The point I made in the previous post is that a NATO force would not START the war with that as Plan A.  They would accept a slower rate of advance or a more limited one or a combo of both in order to have troop density sufficient to challenge the defenders.  They would have ISR4.  They would have f'n maps.  It simply would not be the same poop show that Russia conducted and that would change the dynamic very dramatically.  However...

Who said I thought a NATO force would be "fine"?  No, I think they would eventually get their asses handed to them, quite handily in fact.  I just think it would have been later and with a lot fewer embarrassing YouTube and Twitter videos.

I was fully expecting Russia to take over everything east of the Dnepr, less Kyiv, during Phase 1 and Phase 2 (consolidating the middle portion).  I then expected them to be bled white by unconventional warfare aided by conventional forces on the other side of the river.  Russian incompetence at all levels PLUS Ukraine being super smart about nearly everything dramatically changed the possible outcome.

Correct.  This is, I think, the crux of the "Russia sux" argument.  The problems with the Russian military are so deep and wide that a few tweaks here and there wouldn't change a damned thing.  However...

It's the combination that would have changed the near term outlook for the Russians.  If they didn't suck so badly, and the Ukrainians weren't übermensch warriors, then Russia would likely have taken more territory at less cost to it and more cost to Ukraine.  The war wouldn't end and Russia would certainly lose, but it would be a dramatically different war than the one we have now.

That sounds familiar to me

OK... trying to sum up.  I think Russia sucks and that is the primary reason they have flubbed this war so badly.  I think NATO, against the same exact challenges, would do far better BUT would eventually lose because NATO has not figured out how to fight an unconventional war and win.  Or at least hasn't demonstrated that it can.  On the other hand, if Russia didn't suck so badly and Ukraine stumbled more than it did (losing the fight above Crimea was a HUGE blunder) we'd be seeing an entirely different war.  Maybe Kyiv under siege for months, Kharkiv starved into submission, etc. 10s of thousands more Ukrainian casualties and 10s of thousands fewer Cargo 200 for the Russians.  Russia was simply not up to the task, despite them and the Western experts telling us they were.

Steve

The truly epic failure of the Russian air force needs to figure more prominently than it has. The fact that Ukraine has trains running, planes flying, and an integrated air defense system of some sort is utterly in defiance of pre war expectations. I don't think that would be the case against the U.S./NATO, not unless we posit more tech than Ukraine has. Would this difference be sufficient, probably not. but it would be large.

Edited October 25, 2022 by dan/california

[Lethaface]

On 10/21/2022 at 7:00 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Apparently some of Russia's anti-drone weapons are as good as their helmets and body armor:

Steve

That's assuming he knew what he was doing, the device was turned on and the battery wasn't empty

[Battlefront.com]

In other news... you know that US House of Reps "can't we just make peace" letter we were roasting yesterday?  Well, there was really no need for us to do that.  You see, it was all just a clerical error that caused a months old letter to be released without proper vetting.  Now that they realized that is the case, the letter has been formally withdrawn:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3703331-progressive-caucus-withdraws-letter-on-ukraine-strategy-amid-blowback/

The odd part is at the end of the Democrat's announcement where they asked if we believed it and if so are we in the market to buy a bridge in NYC

Steve

[billbindc]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

In other news... you know that US House of Reps "can't we just make peace" letter we were roasting yesterday?  Well, there was really no need for us to do that.  You see, it was all just a clerical error that caused a months old letter to be released without proper vetting.  Now that they realized that is the case, the letter has been formally withdrawn:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3703331-progressive-caucus-withdraws-letter-on-ukraine-strategy-amid-blowback/

The odd part is at the end of the Democrat's announcement where they asked if we believed it and if so are we in the market to buy a bridge in NYC

Steve

Nothing lamer than blaming staff for a letter you signed yourself.

[dan/california]

Just now, billbindc said:

Nothing lamer than blaming staff for a letter you signed yourself.

Two weeks before an election. People are doing silly things, and then even sillier things to try and fix it.

[Beleg85]

Russia, Christian conservative country fighting against whole world, just announced Jihad (note- not the first time he did it):

 

[Probus]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

The point I made in the previous post is that a NATO force would not START the war with that as Plan A.  They would accept a slower rate of advance or a more limited one or a combo of both in order to have troop density sufficient to challenge the defenders.  They would have ISR4.  They would have f'n maps.  It simply would not be the same poop show that Russia conducted and that would change the dynamic very dramatically.  However...

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

No, I am sorry but to say “we would be fine and the UA only won because Russia sucks” smacks of western hubris which is exactly what the European powers did with the lessons they observed in the wars leading up to WW1.

Expand  

Who said I thought a NATO force would be "fine"?  No, I think they would eventually get their asses handed to them, quite handily in fact.  I just think it would have been later and with a lot fewer embarrassing YouTube and Twitter videos.

In "CMBS 2" we should be able to wargame these scenarios and see if we can tell how NATO forces would have done in this hypothetical situation. Maybe not logistically, but at least tactically. Don't you agree Steve?

P.S. I can hardly wait!

[dan/california]

This seems like a significant data point in the artillery balance swinging to the Ukrainians advantage.

Edited October 25, 2022 by dan/california

[Haiduk]

On 10/24/2022 at 2:02 AM, Bulletpoint said:

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

Pilots suffocated. Likely either mistake of personnel, which charged much more nitrogen into breathing system or system failure. Reportedly two Su-30SM have conducted test flights (one sources claim after repair works, otehr that were new produces jets.) - one landed, but other didn't get in touch. First jet was took off again, and approached to second jet - pilots have seen that crew of second Su-30 sat with heads down withough any reaction. After second Su-30 wasted fuel, it fell on the city. 

@sburke

I don't know if it worth to include crew of this Su-30 in your list, because Orix doesn't include it for now yet in Russian losses, because this happened far from theater of operations. Both pilots were test-pilots:

- Maksim Konyushin - rank unknown, was employee of Irkutsk aircraft factory, civil aviation rank - honored test-pilot.

- Viktor Kryukov, major, civil aviation rank - 3rd class test-pilot

 

   Also:

Lt.colonel Vladimir Strelchenko, deputy commander of flying training of 487th separate helicopter regiment (Budyonovsk airfield, Stavropol' region) of 4th AF/AD Army. Got lost on 14th of April. The writing on rocket in memory of his name appeared on 23rd of April, now it confirmed

 

Lt.colonel Grigoriy Khudik, battalion commander of 237th air-assault regiment of 76th air-assaulr division, Western military district. Was killed on 6th of Sep after command post near Bilohorka, Kherson oblast was hit during the battle.