How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

Not sure if he is right in this actual example...they could die in shelling (like the one hitting them at the end) or being in shock. But if Russians indeed are dying by hypothermia, perhaps it can be one of earliest videos directly confirming it.

[dan/california]

Looks like a good time!

[sburke]

Belarus' top diplomat, ally to president, dies at 64 - ABC News (go.com)

 

TALLINN, Estonia -- Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, a longtime associate of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, has died at age 64.

Belarusian authorities didn't name the cause of death. Makei wasn't known to suffer from any chronic illness.

Prior to becoming foreign minister in 2012, Makei served as Lukashenko's chief of staff and earlier had worked as presidential adviser.

Edited November 27, 2022 by sburke

[JonS]

15 hours ago, Fernando said:

the American system was quite good

Thanks Fernando, that's a good summary.

[BlackMoria]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

Belarus' top diplomat, ally to president, dies at 64 - ABC News (go.com)

 

TALLINN, Estonia -- Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, a longtime associate of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, has died at age 64.

Belarusian authorities didn't name the cause of death. Makei wasn't known to suffer from any chronic illness.

Prior to becoming foreign minister in 2012, Makei served as Lukashenko's chief of staff and earlier had worked as presidential adviser.

Must of stood too close to a open window, perhaps.

[cesmonkey]

I wonder what the status is of the Nova Kakhovka dam that people worried earlier might be blown up leading to massive flooding downstream. Is it still in Russian hands?

[dan/california]

30 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

I wonder what the status is of the Nova Kakhovka dam that people worried earlier might be blown up leading to massive flooding downstream. Is it still in Russian hands?

Ukrainians at one end, Russians at the other. Quite a bit of hot, speedy metal in between. They blew the road bridge and one small section of control locks, but not enough to cause something catastrophic. Who knows if they have a bigger charge ready to go.

 

[G.I. Joe]

8 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Winter warfare is hard - like “wishing you were dead” hard.  It is ridiculous without proper logistical support and regular troop rotations.  Fog eating snow might just turn into ice shattering the RA and the UA driving over their frozen corpses.  If the RA has a division of elite Siberian troops left in the pantry, now would be the time to use them.

General Winter just showed up...and there's a tryzub on his cap badge.

[Kinophile]

To summarize the winter fighting process:

 

 

[dan/california]

The part about ""fifteen months of porridge" sounded rather unfortunate.

[Offshoot]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

The part about ""fifteen months of porridge" sounded rather unfortunate.

Heh, it's 1.5 months, or "one and a half [полтора] months".

[Bulletpoint]

11 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Not sure if he is right in this actual example...they could die in shelling (like the one hitting them at the end) or being in shock. But if Russians indeed are dying by hypothermia, perhaps it can be one of earliest videos directly confirming it.

It's the typical example of taking a video that shows very little and then spinning a narrative around it.

What we actually see is one soldier checking on other soldiers who seem like they are dead. Is there any clear sign it's a Russian checking on Russians? Is there any sign they died from hypothermia?

And did anyone ever claim Russians can't freeze to death, or is that just a fake quote? Would have to be a complete fool to claim something like that. Not even propaganda bots are that stupid.

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

To summarize the winter fighting process:

 

 

This is pretty accurate; however, I would place logistics as the first concern . Individual training, equipment and discipline are very important in cold weather - I once had a solider get trench foot in 3 days because he slept with his boots on, the medics were flabbergasted.  I reamed out this Sgt because making sure troops did it right was his job.

Logistics are the critical path because the best trained and equipped troops are still going to time expire much faster in these conditions compared to summer.  People basically become like batteries, you need to continuously switch them out.  Continuous troop/unit rotations - slower on defence, faster on offence - are required in order to rest and refit more often.  This is a significant logistical (“sustainment” is the formal term) challenge in the area of force management.  Not just physically rotating troops but getting them back to warm/dry, replacing clothing and equipment, and medical.  Given the ranges and ISR dynamic - for the RA this is very bad news as troops will need to be rotated well back, like out of HIMARs range.  The UA will need to worry about artillery ranges.

The next big challenge is C2/operational integrity.  Continuously rotating units means that you are continuously re-integrating them in and out of operations - this is really why operations tend to slow down.  So a unit is pulled out to warm up/refit for a few days and then will likely be put in somewhere else on the line and have to be reintroduced to that area.  It takes time for troops to get to know what is going on, getting to know who they are facing, pattern of life etc.  

Or you could leave units in place but then they are only ever at 50% strength because half the unit is back warming up - you then need to double unit densities to sustain force levels.  This makes unit reintegration much easier but really takes away formation flexibility and agility because you only have half your force effective at a given time.  You could try 1/3 rotations, but those come at an attrition cost as the 2/3rd on the line stay in place longer.

So the real friction points in cold weather are logistics, C2 and capacity.  In reality one can think of the battlefield as a set of negative environmental pressures on a human-based organization trying to get something done.  Cold weather is a major multiplier of those pressures.  Comparing the two sides and I also suspect the UA has advantage, they have demonstrated much better logistics and C2; however, they are likely hurting in capacity.  RA has capacity (technically) but it’s C2 and logistics have been shown as very poor.  Once the RA capacity starts to fail, their whole system collapses - we have seen it three times now.

The question really is - how much can the UA influence and exploit the RA system failures while under a negative environmental pressure as well?

[quakerparrot67]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

The part about ""fifteen months of porridge" sounded rather unfortunate.

iirc, in british english that would refer to time spent in prison...

 

cheers,

rob

 

[FancyCat]

 

 

 

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

 

This would seem to be an odd move. Russia simply cannot afford to give up any more territory if it plans on holding on to anything north of the Crimean peninsula or west of Mariupol. 

[kevinkin]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The question really is - how much can the UA influence and exploit the RA system failures while under a negative environmental pressure as well?

The Finns have looked at this in detail and have passed ideas along to NATO over the years. Too much to copy-paste so here is the article and one passage below. Sounds a bit familiar to the war at hand. It will be interesting to see what new forms the UA comes up with the next 4-5 months. 

https://warontherocks.com/2016/07/lessons-from-the-winter-war-frozen-grit-and-finlands-fabian-defense/

Perhaps some of the most useful insights into this unique way of war can be gleaned by perusing the writings of Finnish veterans later recruited as winter warfare advisors for the U.S. Army. In their view, it was not sufficient to adapt to a harsh geography. Rather, the goal should to develop new forms of operational art that enable one to leverage that same geography against an ill-adapted foe. ....

Strategists in Helsinki still plan for an in-depth defense of their homeland, with the aim of drawing any potential invader into the hinterlands where they would be ground down by small units equipped with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), lightweight artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). While American strategists have only just begun to rediscover concepts of archipelagic defense, Finnish planners have long developed sophisticated operational concepts around the defense of their many narrow inlets and small islands that incorporate a mixture of mine warfare assets, underwater listening posts, fast attack craft, and coastal jaeger units armed with anti-ship missiles and mortars.

With almost the entirety of its territory falling under the coverage of advanced Russian air defense systems, Helsinki has adopted an equally pragmatic attitude toward the defense of its airspace. Rather than choosing to engage in a fruitless competition for air dominance, the Finnish Air Force focuses on redundancy and survivability: dispersing air strips, practicing emergency highway landings, and erecting a highly mobile air defense grid.

Edited November 27, 2022 by kevinkin

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

The Finns have looked at this in detail and have passed ideas along to NATO over the years. Too much to copy-paste so here is the article and one passage below. Sounds a bit familiar to the war at hand. It will be interesting to see what new forms the UA comes up with the next 4-5 months. 

https://warontherocks.com/2016/07/lessons-from-the-winter-war-frozen-grit-and-finlands-fabian-defense/

Perhaps some of the most useful insights into this unique way of war can be gleaned by perusing the writings of Finnish veterans later recruited as winter warfare advisors for the U.S. Army. In their view, it was not sufficient to adapt to a harsh geography. Rather, the goal should to develop new forms of operational art that enable one to leverage that same geography against an ill-adapted foe. ....

Strategists in Helsinki still plan for an in-depth defense of their homeland, with the aim of drawing any potential invader into the hinterlands where they would be ground down by small units equipped with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), lightweight artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). While American strategists have only just begun to rediscover concepts of archipelagic defense, Finnish planners have long developed sophisticated operational concepts around the defense of their many narrow inlets and small islands that incorporate a mixture of mine warfare assets, underwater listening posts, fast attack craft, and coastal jaeger units armed with anti-ship missiles and mortars.

With almost the entirety of its territory falling under the coverage of advanced Russian air defense systems, Helsinki has adopted an equally pragmatic attitude toward the defense of its airspace. Rather than choosing to engage in a fruitless competition for air dominance, the Finnish Air Force focuses on redundancy and survivability: dispersing air strips, practicing emergency highway landings, and erecting a highly mobile air defense grid.

Oh that is very good.  Mirrors a lot of what we have seen throughout this war.  I think the major western powers, primarily the west have viewed this as the "poor mans warfare".  However, clearly advances in modern technology have done something fundamental here. This sounds a lot like the corrosive-dispersed defense we have seen from the UA throughout; however, they did not need an archipelago or wicked terrain to tie it together. Even the Finnish approach to air power is mirrored here and sounds a lot like "parity-through-denial" the UA also seems to be able to practice.

What is really interesting is that the UA has demonstrated twice that one can execute a form of corrosive offence.  It looks different from traditional manoeuvre offensives but it clearly works.  I think the entire thing lines up with high-speed precise attrition (= corrosion) where you are able to effective attrit key connectors and nodes in an opponents operational system faster then they can replace them.

[Haiduk]

18 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Famous Ukrainian Chernozemy are extremely fertile type of soil (many farmers around the world would kill for several cm's level of soil of such fertility on their turf), but also heavy and difficult to dig in, very easily turning into extremely sticky, dense mud.

Chernozem in Bakhmut area some other from chermozem in, for example, central Ukriane. By texture it belongs to light-clay type of chornozem soils, so more heavy and more sticky if wet, than in central Ukriane. Usually chermnozem is easy to dig in, but on Donbas, especially in it south-eastern part under chernozem soil is more thin and under it lays very hard ground of Ukrainian Crystal Shield. So you can't dig in from surface with a shovel more than to waist-deep or even in some places to knee-deep without a hack, special sapper HE charges, trench-digging machine or excavator.

During Debaltsevo battle UKR troops were deployed in mostly poor fortified positions, which they can dig with shovels and battalion PZM vehicles (if they were available). Sector C Command didn't care about establishing of heavy fortified positions - on whole salient there was a single engineer excavator! 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

 

@sburke

Major Andrey Orlov, unit unknown, probably tank troops, was killed on 9th of July

Major Roman Gribchenko, chief of RAV service (missile&artillery weapon service). Served in Shali, Chechnya - either 70th MRR or 50th SP artillery regiment of 42nd MRD, 58th CAA, Southern Military District, was killed on 6th of April.

Major Andrey Lisunov, duty unknown - likely HQ of tank battalion of 291st MRR of 42nd MRD, 58th CAA, Southern Miliatry District. Was killed on 9th of March

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

@sburke

+1 major %)

Major Vladimir Stakhiryuk, senior officer of organization&plan department of Military Medicine Directorate of Southern Military District. Was killed on 20th of November

 

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Haiduk

[billbindc]

 

The folks selling AI are very sure AI will change everything...

[Haiduk]

This night Russians launched two S-300 missiles, which hit a ostrich farm in Zaporizhzhia oblast %) Survived ostrichs walked near the crater %)

 

[Haiduk]

"Kraken" has captured Russian squad likely somewhere in Kharkiv or Luhansk oblast

 

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Brimstone 2 have arrived

Despite many videos of Brimstone launches from cars, there are no any information about their effectiveness