How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Taranis]

"Ukrainian gunners fire an M777 howitzer towards Russian positions on the front line in eastern Ukraine, November 23, 2022. ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP"

[Huba]

Partially a symbolic gesture I guess, but partially a logical element of Latvia constructing a border wall along the belarussian, and probably soon also the russian border. As of now, the whole BY-RU/ Europe border is either a front line, walled off, or the fences/ walls are being built. The exception is Finland that at the moment plans to wall-off only a section of it's border. New Iron Curtain.

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Huba

[The_Capt]

9 hours ago, acrashb said:

Breaking my vow of silence, you are wrong, as was Mr. Peng on the same subject.  In earlier, simpler times we called them emoticons:

The "Guest aaronb" ... that was me.

Dear lord, that post pre-dates me and harkens back to a time when iridium was a tonic to ward of “evil humours” and we thought smoking without seatbelts in a car the height of class - for the love of gawd Harry Potter’s testicles had not dropped yet.

I challenge your magic math at a fundamental level.  Blind people somehow communicate without visual cues and the written word has many ways to “emote” without this little bobble-headed cancers….it is call vocabulary.  

Pah! And Pish-Posh I say.

[Beleg85]

Curious.

 

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Dear lord, that post pre-dates me and harkens back to a time when iridium was a tonic to ward of “evil humours” and we thought smoking without seatbelts in a car the height of class - for the love of gawd Harry Potter’s testicles had not dropped yet.

I challenge your magic math at a fundamental level.  Blind people somehow communicate without visual cues and the written word has many ways to “emote” without this little bobble-headed cancers….it is call vocabulary.  

Pah! And Pish-Posh I say.

Dear lord indeed,, an ancient horror seems to be rising from the depths. 

Couldn't resist.....

[riptides]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

Dear lord indeed,, an ancient horror seems to be rising from the depths. 

Couldn't resist.....

The Peng challenge is dead, long live the Peng challenge.

 

Or somefink like that.

[womble]

Do we need to get the exterminators in? We seem to have an infestation of Peng.

[danfrodo]

17 hours ago, Huba said:

Video in this tweet shows drone dropping grenade at a bunch of russian soldiers cowering in a dugout. Not very graphic, but be warned. Theiner might be right that they are suffering severe hypothermia - or are just wounded, shellshocked or under heavy fire. Nonetheless, their apparent apathy is quite strange.

 

This is interesting relative to what I was thinking about on dog walk in the woods today.  Heavy fog, temperature around 37F (3C).  Living & sleeping out in the cold, damp, even at this relatively 'mild' temperature would be quite draining over time.  But along w the post above it did clarify something I was wondering about:  will the mud-caused break in major operations create stronger or weaker RU defense lines? 

On the plus side, RU has time to bring in & train mobiks, get supplies, dig in, fortify, pre-target artillery, etc.

On the negative side mobiks are often older, out of shape, and very angry about being kidnapped by Putin's army.  We know that RU commanders typically have very little concern for the welfare of the men in the trenches.  We know that RU troops are often seen without adequate food, clothing and shelter.  And many have old (really old!) weapons.  Seems like there will be many sections of the line filled w troops with rock bottom morale and physical endurance.  Fertile ground for fleeing, surrendering or even mutiny under pressure from UKR troops.

So by the time the ground freezes, some sectors will have gotten stronger but some will be brittle and weak.  This is my hope for the next offensive.   Lots of weak sectors to exploit, leaving the strong portions of the line isolated and useless while UKR drives around them.

[danfrodo]

from yesterday, a few interesting UKR war tidbits.  Hungary blocking Sweden & Finland in NATO.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/24/2138251/-Ukraine-Update-What-was-five-Russian-axes-of-attack-is-down-to-one-the-Donbas

[sburke]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Blind people somehow communicate without visual cues and the written word has many ways to “emote” without this little bobble-headed cancers….it is called vocabulary.  

Pah! And Pish-Posh I say.

your argument gets undermined when you use the written language improperly.  Corrected that for you.  Now hold out your hand so I can smite your knuckles with this ruler.  (My 3rd grader teacher actually did that)

[acrashb]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Dear lord, that post pre-dates me and harkens back to a time when iridium was a tonic to ward of “evil humours”

[...]

I challenge your magic math at a fundamental level.

[...] 

Pah! And Pish-Posh I say.

1) in other words, it is incontrovertible ancient wisdom, laid down at a time when C-----u itself stepped gingerly out of the way of a rampaging P--g.  Thank you for recognizing that.

2) you can lead a horse to water, hold the cup unto its lips, and still, it is all mere pearles before swyne.  On this issue I shall renew my vows of silence and perambulate up and down the cloister awaiting revelations.

3) and a hearty balderdash and poppycock to you, sir! 

 

PS: given that only 7% of communication is carried by text, as one would know if one had navigated my tortuous battle with Mr. P--g, please postpend a ";)" to each of the above statements.

Edited November 25, 2022 by acrashb

[Peregrine]

7 hours ago, Huba said:

As of now, the whole BY-RU/ Europe border is either a front line, walled off, or the fences/ walls are being built. The exception is Finland that at the moment plans to wall-off only a section of it's border. New Iron Curtain.

Iron is old fashioned. Tungsten curtain is more modern.

[acrashb]

On 11/23/2022 at 7:36 AM, The_Capt said:

So here is the part that people who have not been in a war simply do not get - it is an incredibly slippery slope to the bottom.  Humans are natural born killers for the most part and when given license they get very good at it very fast.

At the pace of the internet this is an old statement, but I've been thinking about it since (and before, just more so now).

On the natural born killers, this is a Hobbesian view.  We do not, and I do not wish to, live in a Hobbesian world.  Locke was much more accurate, and his views create a world worth living in - as it happens, his views strongly informed the US constitution (and others).  Both spoke of man in a natural state, before society takes hold, and while Hobbe's views have some traction - members of primitive societies live in constant fear of disease, starvation, and violence, the latter supporting Hobbes' "nasty, brutish and short" - overall Locke was correct.  

Having said that, if we summarize Hobbes' views, Russian society tends in that direction.  In this table we see echos and outright images of Russia under the Czars until and including now. 
 

Which leads us to the slippery slope.  The angle and length of that slope would, I think, depend on the starting point.  Further, if humans are natural born killers, more would shoot during combat. Modern training leads to a higher active rate in modern armies, but during WWII it was three out of ten doing the shooting, even after becoming combat veterans.

Rather than being natural born killers, isn't it reasonable to say that the horrors of war brutalize away natural restraints?  If the horrors are worse and the starting point worse, the slope is short and steep.  Perhaps Russian society pre-brutalizes residents. 

If the horrors are moderated (through training, medevac, micro-social structures aka "band of brothers", etc.) then the slope would be longer and shallower - allowing more time to catch soldiers before they slip right off the slope.

Or I'm talking out of my butt; but I like to think that my neighbours aren't ready to kill me because I don't cut my grass regularly.

Edited November 25, 2022 by acrashb

[Vanir Ausf B]

12 hours ago, dan/california said:

On a similar note, an interesting interview with someone from the Russian side.

__________

There is a thesis that the lion's share of drones used by soldiers are supplied by humanitarian orgs. Is that true? Many experts say that our military-industrial complex has "missed" small drones. Yes - the bulk of small UAVs are supplied by volunteers, including our org. The problem with the (quadcopter) drone is the fact that these are consumable products, and the life of a drone on the front line is very short - literally a few weeks from the first flight to its destruction. This is true even if the drone is piloted by a trained operator. And if the operator has not had the appropriate training, does not have relevant combat experience, then this is 1-2 sorties - and the drone will be lost. But at the same time, it is necessary to clearly understand the whole story with drones, and its not exactly true that our Armed Forces were not ready for the very appearance of this type of weapon.

We are witnessing a unique situation - the first mass use of small drones in history. I agree that up to this point, small drones have been used in various military conflicts, for example, in Syria, Yemen, and during the military conflict of 2014-2022 in the Donbass. Our military-industrial complex periodically paid attention to this, but it either did not have resources, or did not have direct orders from the government (to mass produce small drones). As a result, our military-industrial complex was engaged in the production of heavier drones with a narrower specialization, such as Orlans, Zala Aero products and the like. They (Russian military drones) just have a different purpose, are more narrowly specialized, are more expensive and require a different attitude to their use. Do small drones exist in the US Army? No, they don't exist there in larger numbers either. Their (American) military-industrial complex missed this (drone) moment in the same way, and by and large, none of the modern armies of the world was ready for the Mavic phenomenon. To say that only we missed that is fundamentally wrong. The bottom line is that there was no such massive drone as the Mavic in any army, and not a single military even imagined that it would be needed in such volumes.

To what extent has this war changed the idea of small drones - should we expect them to appear in all armies now? Speaking philosophically, this war has changed many views on the Armed Forces, not only in terms of drones, but also in terms of command and control. Flaws in the organization of communications, high-precision weapons became visible. I'll give you an example. For example, the American HIMARS themselves are rather mediocre multiple launch rocket systems, they don’t shoot well, they don’t hit so far, but when satellite-guided precision munitions are used in this system, it turns from mediocrity into a first-class tool for suppressing and destroying enemy rear lines. All this works when it can hit the given targets with high accuracy. We also have similar systems, like Uragan and Smerch, which have precision-guided munitions, satellite guidance, and so on. The problem is that the Americans, in addition to high-precision guidance, have a satellite reconnaissance complex. It allows real-time tracking of targets on the surface of the earth. We have the components of multi-domain integration, communications and control, but, unfortunately, the components of multi-spectral spatial reconnaissance have not been given due attention. We thought that the Americans were spending crazy money, sawing the budgets into some kind of meaningless toys. But we proudly open the 1980s ground force combat manual and everything is "fine" with us. But it turned out that these gadgets actually work.

It suddenly became obvious that our army also needed them. This is also a matter of worldview. It is necessary that generations of officers, generals, those who promote military science, change their worldview in terms of applying new modern technologies. We need gadgets that allow us to increase the effectiveness of conventional weapons, the speed of information processing, and combat control. Old weapons that could no longer be upgraded and effectively used, once equipped with "gadgets", can be very effective. In this sense, the war made it possible to look at these approaches with different eyes, to show that those approaches that dominated military science and the military-industrial complex for decades turned out to be outdated and inappropriate. Now it is necessary to develop new solutions that will allow Russian Armed Forces, our military-industrial complex to come together, and to rethink the national security...

...I would advise you to pay attention to communications, because traditionally (I can’t say why) our army is always bad with them. Buying some kind of radio station, albeit an analog one, is probably helpful in this conflict.

https://twitter.com/SamBendett/status/1595788630206849024

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Vanir Ausf B

[Battlefront.com]

OK, now that my turkey coma has subsided, I've had a look at what happens when I'm gone for any extended period of time.  Sadly, I see that it quickly degenerates into Pengarchy.  Let's tighten up the standards and leave the philosophical discussions of emojis to lessor folks in more obscure places.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

18 hours ago, JonS said:

'Fight' or 'flight' are the two reactions to intense survival situations that everyone immediately thinks of, with 'fight' naturally being what everyone assumes their own reaction will be /rolleyes

But along with those two there is 'freeze'. Adopting a freeze response doesnt require being "drugged or drunk" /rolleyes or to be suffering from hypothermia /rolleyes

It's one of the normal responses to hyper arousal, aka. acute stress.

Very true and I've seen lots of videos what show this sort of response, even before things got cold.  1000 mile stare of veterans who have been "hyper aroused" for too long is a well documented fact.

However, *if* mobiks are being treated as horribly as we believe them to be, then hypothermia may be in the mix to some extent.  At the very least it might predispose a soldier to "freeze" rather than "fight" or "flight".  I'd caution the bloggers making too big a deal out of it, but I'm guessing it is playing a role to some extent.

Steve

[JonS]

52 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

However, *if* mobiks are being treated as horribly as we believe them to be, then hypothermia may be in the mix to some extent

Of course, although that 'if' is carrying a fair bit of weight - founding conclusions on assumptions is always a tad^ risky. But the really key section - as you astutely note - is 'hypo may be IN the mix', not 'hypo is THE mix'.

Will being cold and wet for a long time mess you up? Yes. Yes it will. But we don't know how long these guys have been at the front, we don't know what their rotation policy is, we don't know when they last had a hot meal or fresh socks. We can make assumptions about all those things, probably chauvinistic assumptions because we really don't like Russia right now^^, and from that assume they must have hypo and that they're drugged and dunk to boot. Buuuut see the first sentence about extrapolating from assumptions.

Which, you know. That's all nice. The real problem arises when you start plotting out future courses of action based on conclusions derived from assumptions with sketchy foundations. Like, to take a random example, "Oh, of course the entire Russian Army is going to collapse next week, because look here look watch this video of two guys doing nothing when they get a bunch of HE to the face. Obviously they are drugged and drunk and have hypo and these two guys  are accurately representative of the entire Russian Army. There is no other explanation. Therefore collapse. Next week. One shove and the whole rotten house will collapse. QED."

 

^ metric of course. 1 tad is 1/10 of a smidgen, naturally. It's just science.

^^ except for these guys. Those guys they love Russia.

Edited November 25, 2022 by JonS

[Huba]

2 hours ago, acrashb said:

On the natural born killers, this is a Hobbesian view.  We do not, and I do not wish to, live in a Hobbesian world.  Locke was much more accurate, and his views create a world worth living in - as it happens, his views strongly informed the US constitution (and others).  Both spoke of man in a natural state, before society takes hold, and while Hobbe's views have some traction - members of primitive societies live in constant fear of disease, starvation, and violence, the latter supporting Hobbes' "nasty, brutish and short" - overall Locke was correct.  

As an trained, though not practicing archaeologist, it is my (non-)professional opinion that the most important of the early pra-human's inventions was a pointy stick with which he could kill larger animals and defend himself, also from other humans. There would be no leaving the African savanna without this skill (and perhaps ability to make fire). From it follows that we were natural born killers way before we became what constitutes a homo sapiens. If one feels philosophical,  an interesting question is if learning NOT to kill each other allowed us to create civilization, or if it was the ability to coerce an kill others that made bigger social structures possible...

Edit:

On a related note, 2001: A Space Odyssey is the best movie ever made  

 

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Huba

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

 The real problem arises when you start plotting out future courses of action based on conclusions derived from assumptions with sketchy foundations.

Yup, exactly this.  Similar to looking at videos, seeing Russians running away, and presuming it's because just realized there wasn't a washing machine left in the village, so they had no incentives to stay and fight.  Sure, the lack of a washing machine might very well have played a role, but it's all speculative.  All we know is that they ran away and it's just as probable they did so because they didn't want to die at all, washing machine or not.

Steve

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

As an trained, though not practicing archaeologist,

Me too. But the hand axe is widely considered the most useful and abundant tool for early humans. It was today's Swiss Army knife. Technicians are trained to find the smallest pieces in the hope to find a settlement site to excavate. They are the markers of early human camps. The hand axe was also used as a weapon along with obsidian spear tips. I think the axe was more numerous since they were easier to make. But spears were an early stand off weapon and could make or break a battle. Civilization was the result of the Neolithic revolution with the transition of many human cultures from hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making increasingly large populations possible. Warfare existed before and after settlements - the ongoing fight for resources. So as populations increased in density, the likelihood of warfare also increased even though their food source was more dependable.  Its hard to say which lifestyle was more "peaceful". It's also hard to say fire was an invention. Best to say the control of fire was the actual invention.

Edited November 25, 2022 by kevinkin

[Huba]

14 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Me too. But the hand axe is widely considered the most useful and abundant tool for early humans. It was today's Swiss Army knife. Technicians are trained to find the smallest pieces in the hope to find a settlement site to excavate. They are the markers of early human camps. The hand axe was also used as a weapon along with obsidian spear tips. I think the axe was more numerous since they were easier to make. But spears were an early stand off weapon and could make or break a battle. Civilization was the result of the Neolithic revolution with the transition of many human cultures from hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making increasingly large populations possible. Warfare existed before and after settlements - the ongoing fight for resources. So as populations increased in density, the likelihood of warfare also increased even though their food source was more dependable.  Its hard to say which lifestyle was more "peaceful". It's also hard to say fire was an invention. Best to say the control of fire was the actual invention.

No discussion here. By "pointy stick" I really meant any dangerous object with which one can hurt a fellow man or an animal. The very idea of ganging up on a prey is perhaps even older, as it is an observed behaviour of chimps, though apes don't use tools to kill anything large and dangerous. The concept to arm oneself to do this is IMO much more important that a particular tool - a bone, stick or rock is enough to make a world of difference, dedicated weapons development comes as secondary consideration. 
The information loss and inability to asses what our ancestors made from wood, skins etc is a huge bummer.

Edit: on a second thought, perhaps the idea to use weapons against pesky intruders is also older than even early humanity itself, as this video proves  Also, I promise to end the offtopic

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Huba

[MikeyD]

In medieval Europe farmers would continually dig up stone axe heads in the fields but they had no clue what they were. One theory was they were thunderbolts thrown down from the sky. The things that made the crash-boom sound during storms. It makes you wonder what some other civilization fifteen thousand years from now, will make of the bizarre objects dug up from the fields of some future version of Europe.

[poesel]

Germany has offered Poland patriot missile systems, but Poland declined and suggested to station them in Ukraine:

https://www.dw.com/en/poland-asks-germany-to-send-patriot-missiles-to-ukraine/a-63877843?maca=en-GK_RSS_SmartNews_Volltext_ENG-20051-xml-media

Our minister of defense then said we had to consult with NATO, which was immediately answered by Stoltenberg that this is Germany's decision. Obviously, Germany cannot station a patriot system in Ukraine, only deliver it.

How long would it take to train the Ukrainians on that system?

[Huba]

12 minutes ago, poesel said:

Germany has offered Poland patriot missile systems, but Poland declined and suggested to station them in Ukraine:

https://www.dw.com/en/poland-asks-germany-to-send-patriot-missiles-to-ukraine/a-63877843?maca=en-GK_RSS_SmartNews_Volltext_ENG-20051-xml-media

Our minister of defense then said we had to consult with NATO, which was immediately answered by Stoltenberg that this is Germany's decision. Obviously, Germany cannot station a patriot system in Ukraine, only deliver it.

How long would it take to train the Ukrainians on that system?

This became a rather big topic in Polish military infosphere lately. IMO our MoDs proposal was made in bad faith and aimed at bashing Germany - but my expectation was that all of this will stop at Lambrecht's statement that the the proposal was only for deployment in PL, and handing the systems to Ukrainians is off the table.
If Błaszczak manages to actually  shame DE into sending 2 Patriot batteries to Ukraine, honestly I'll go crazy. It will be a completely unexpected turn of events. It would be a great way to earn back a LOT of credibility for Germany. Really the best possible outcome of a rather nasty feces throwing event.
I think that the training would have to be done by the US, as Patriot firing are done exclusively in the White Sands Missile Range. As for the schedule, AFAIK our Patriot crews are to train for 2+ years before the first battery achieves initial capability. Though knowing Ukrainians, they will be done in 6 months or so.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Huba

[dan/california]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3750324/

This is an article about cold related injuries on the British side in the Falklands campaign. I worked in the ski business for over decade, and my standing joke is that I froze to death for a living, so I have paid a fair bit of attention to this issue for a long time. To complement the the above study on the British side in the Falklands, I also went to truly fascinating talk once by the U.S. Amies senior cold weather researcher. Quite a lot of his EXTREMELY unpleasant slideshow was from soldiers on the Argentinian side. They did not have the SOP, leadership, and gear to prevent rampant trench foot among other unpleasantness. I am assuming that both the Ukrainian winter environment, and the mobiks situation is at least as bad. Now if I was on the Ukrainian General Staff I would spend a fair bit of resources and energy checking that assumption, but in the absence of the ability to understand Russian radio intercepts without translation software, and deploy recon teams, I think it a pretty good assumption. It obviously needs to be checked against more data as it becomes available.

 

I looked for some actual data on the Argentinian side, and I couldn't find any with a few minutes googling.