How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

We might actually get to predictive analytics one day, a lot of debate on this. We in the military have been burned before so there is skepticism but advances in computing may make it possible in the future.  If anyone is throwing around percentages now, they are literally making it up.  How do you assign probability to human behaviour in conflict on this scale?  We do not even have the theories or data processing we would need to start tackling this in any meaningful way. I am not sure we will ever be able to do fully accurate predictive analytics, it is the shining city in military and intelligence circles as these authors you have pulled note.  You sure are not going to find it on the internet to somehow inform you on this war.  Deep in the bowels of places like Cambridge Analytica and Palinteer maybe and I don’t trust them either.

The problem is due to the chaotic nature of warfare you need to model all behaviour in order to have any hope of accuracy.  Right now Low-Medium-High is as best we can do and I would not even go that far on some points. Of course there are many methods to conduct this work - Capability Based, Assumptions Based, and Effects Based to name a few, but none have really replaced a roomful of human beings rolling all the factors around and going “boss, looks like it will go this way…maybe”.

Finally, predictive assessments like this are a trap in themselves.  If we believe them, then we make excuses for readjust resources etc. This crap get all sorts of attention when someone wants to risk manage for budgetary and political reasons but they do not really reflect reality.  The reality is that “knowing is impossible so double down on reacting”, which is expensive and inefficient - and bureaucrats hate inefficiency.

Even in fairly well understood and controlled engineering of complicated aerospace systems it's difficult to do probabilistic risk assessments. The consequences are usually not hard to know, though they can be hard to quantify, but the probabilities of bad events occurring are just really not easy to come up with from first principles, nor are there generally good statistics of a relevant situation to point to.  So we set requirements with a lot of margin and test beyond those margins, and most of the time it's reasonable for getting high reliability.

Simulating probabilities from detailed models is "non-trivial" - collections of interacting things generally behave very different from the individual things, and it's taken ages for us to go from understanding atoms to understanding collections of identical atoms in various arrangements, and then collections of non-identical ones.  Predicting the the mechanical outcome of a missile launch isn't hard - it's pretty easy to know where it's going to go.  Predicting the higher level effect of that is much harder and depends on a lot of things we're not likely to ever be able to measure or quantify effectively.  Predicting the "boom" effect of launching a lot of missiles or shells is pretty straightforward, and something at the CM scale can do it well (as CM usually does). Predicting the effect that that will have on any particular larger scale that involves morale and collective social decisions isn't likely to be quantifiable any time soon.

 

[NamEndedAllen]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Glad you found some int academics that seem agree with you and would love to somehow reduce warfare down to nice clean percentages - shocking.  A lot of these articles are out of date and come from the 00’s when we had become enamoured by EBO and RMA.  Back then we were convinced we could “maths” our way through warfare and spent a lot of money trying to do it.

First, thanks for the detailed discussion. It clarified for me how we seemed so much at odds. I’ve inadvertently muddied the discussion by not clearly distinguishing events within warfare from speculations about what follows. I certainly don’t pretend to have your expertise in the war fighting realm that you have so well described, and don’t dispute your characterization of assessing potential events in warfare. My initial post concerned what might be the state of Russia and Ukraine following the *end* of hostilities - how the hostilities play out we don’t know, certainly there exist a range of possibilities. But of great interest is what Russia looks like especially in the case of losing, one way or another. Regime change, collapse, fragmentation, non-collapse with a heavily militarized society, diplomacy challenges in all that, etc.  These sorts of scenarios and many others are the stuff of estimates such as what USA National Intelligence Estimates traditionally address, among much else. Those come with the community’s degrees of confidence in their predictions and assessments, at least in the past when I read them - the 90’s, Oughts and early teens.  The scales vary, can be in six term style ranging from “remote, unlikely…to very likely, almost certainly”. Or in percentages, sometimes fairly specific depending on the subject. And yes, NIEs also used broad confidence levels of high, medium and low. Where relevant, time frames are included. So allow me to bow to your knowledge here on war, and that my mentioning different ways hostilities might end overstepped into that territory. While I maintain the methods of my non-war forecasting and estimates. 

The NIEs cover practically every threat we can imagine, and so can be of interest beyond war topics. They often overlapped with my own career, often for strategic and scenario planning. Yes, partly in academia but also for the second largest broadcast network. Included in those realms (but obviously not limited to) were time frames and confidence levels, besides all the rest of the necessary rigamarole of planning.. There was no getting around them.

Without getting into an overblown game of references, time frames and probabilities can be seen in a representative NIE or two. Here you will see time frames and such very early in the doc. This from 2021 https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/NIE_Climate_Change_and_National_Security.pdf 

And the famous Iran NIE on Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, from back in my time of interest, using the six step probability scale “unlikely” to “almost certainly”:

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports and Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

[Thomm]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Right now Low-Medium-High is as best we can do ...

One of our mechanical engineering professors once told us that the first thing he does when reviewing a thesis is to cross out all adjectives.

[Audgisil]

42 minutes ago, Thomm said:

One of our mechanical engineering professors once told us that the first thing he does when reviewing a thesis is to cross out all adjectives

Just a small comment from the peanut gallery. I always hated it when people get some silly rule stuck in the their head and lose sight any ability to compromise or allow for nuance. Sure lets throw out all the subtlety available in the language to just follow some made-up rule.

True story: Winston Churchill once had an editor go through a speech and change all of the sentences that ended with prepositions. Churchill responded by writing in the margins, "This is the kind of nonsense, with which I will not put up."

And to bring this back to the discussion of analysis of the current conflict and post-war ramifications, we also should be careful about trying to shoehorn our predictions or preconcieved notions into any tidy little rules that we've invented just for ourselves. We humans love to sometimes try and invent rules and categories where none really exist.

Now I'll let the adults get back to discussing things.

[TheVulture]

18 minutes ago, Audgisil said:

True story: Winston Churchill once had an editor go through a speech and change all of the sentences that ended with prepositions. Churchill responded by writing in the margins, "This is the kind of nonsense, with which I will not put up."

I've always heard it as the even more ridiculous "up with which I will not put".

Possibly not true regarding Churchill having said it though : the anecdote seems to be an evolution of one that originally didn't involve Churchill at all: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/?amp=1

[LongLeftFlank]

17 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Meanwhile the UA developed a new integrated ISR system that we will likely be buying after this war.

At this point the RA and UA are not even the same species of military.

Hey, if Canada took Ukraine in as a province or territory postwar, that would solve Ukraine's NATO problem, tout suite. 

Also, they're in NAFTA in the event the Eurocrats get too insufferable. (If I'm a factory owner, I'll take Ukrainian oligarchs over Mexican drug cartels in a heartbeat)

...It would also solve Canada's Olympic (men's) hockey drought in short order.

Come on (offit), what's so hard about this? Canada's seen it all before.

• Recognition as 'distinct society', check!
• Cultural love for skidoos, jacuzzi built-ins and gas grills, check!
• 'Consensus government', check! (extreme localisation might actually suit Ukes kind of well, very Viking.... also doesn't threaten Grits' stranglehold in Ottawa)
• Rights to (almost but not quite) secede peacefully, check!
• Endless colourful folk costumes for Justin to prance around in, check!
• Yalta vastly more attractive summer beach destination than Port Colbourne, Sarnia, Yarmouth, Hanlans' Point or Wreck Beach (I must steadfastly deny any direct umm exposure to the last two, anyway it was decades ago)
• Solid majority of the Canadian electorate no longer suffers from a deep need to feel guiltier and more woke than the Americans, for at least another generation, check!
• Subsidised by Alberta and Ontario, check!
• Perhaps draw the line at trilingual education....

 

[PS please don't take this seriously]

Edited January 6, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[LongLeftFlank]

42 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

I've always heard it as the even more ridiculous "up with which I will not put".

Possibly not true regarding Churchill having said it though : the anecdote seems to be an evolution of one that originally didn't involve Churchill at all: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/?amp=1

I like the old story about the new student who asked: 'Scuse me, can you tell me where Harvard Yard is at?' and when the supercilious reply came: 'At Hahvahd, we do not end our sentences in prepositions.' responded 'OK, can you tell me where Harvard Yard is at, *******."

[Taranis]

Germany announces delivery of combat vehicles to Ukraine
 

Quote

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit announced on Friday the delivery of around 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine before the end of the first quarter. A Patriot anti-aircraft missile system from army stocks is also to be delivered to Ukraine in the first quarter, he added. Training in the handling of the Marder vehicle is to take place in Germany and last about eight weeks, the spokesman said.

Source : Le Monde

[Beleg85]

Interesting map showing how situation around Soledar may look like- reportedly it is attacked constantly from 3 sides:

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

In the year 2525.....

 

 

Oh yeah, Psychohistory... Every sci-fi needs some magical box, but this one was so infantile I could never genuinly understand why people praised Foundation cycle so much. Especially that author never even bothered to explain how it actually mean to work.

[paxromana]

According to the NYT the Russians are whining that the Ukrainians are having the sheer gall to shell them ... during their faux cease fire ... doesn't your heart just bleed for them ...

Um, tell me again, who invaded whom?

You wanna stop being shelled? Get back behind the 2014 borders.

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

...It would also solve Canada's Olympic (men's) hockey drought in short order

I really would not say this part in any bar back home…low blow. We did just win the juniors, so there is that.

[LongLeftFlank]

Full disclosure:  I rooted for Hašek in '98.  You may now place me on Ignore and revoke my passport....

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

These sorts of scenarios and many others are the stuff of estimates such as what USA National Intelligence Estimates traditionally address, among much else. Those come with the community’s degrees of confidence in their predictions and assessments, at least in the past when I read them - the 90’s, Oughts and early teens.  The scales vary, can be in six term style ranging from “remote, unlikely…to very likely, almost certainly”. Or in percentages, sometimes fairly specific depending on the subject. And yes, NIEs also used broad confidence levels of high, medium and low. Where relevant, time frames are included. So allow me to bow to your knowledge here on war, and that my mentioning different ways hostilities might end overstepped into that territory. While I maintain the methods of my non-war forecasting and estimates.

Your faith in the intelligence community and scenario analysis is actually refreshing - lotta people in my line of work beat up on these guys because of their poor track record and rigid approaches. I think this is unfair and loses a lot of babies with the bath water.  It is like the old adage “no plan survives contact”, which often becomes a rallying cry to “not overthink” which turns into “well let’s just not think”, which is dangerous.  Everyone misses the next part of that adage “time spent on planning is priceless”.

To my mind the value of scenario creation and assessment is not its predictive value.  We rarely get it right, and even more rarely act on it. BFC created a scenario for a possible war in Ukraine set in 2017 that involved NATO full intervention.  On the surface utter fiction and they got it completely wrong…silly BFC.  But in thinking about that fictional scenario (and playing the game) a lot of people could have been better prepared for this war when it happened in 2022 as it has.

The value is in the exercise of creating deep understanding of all the variables and moving bits of a future problem, not assigning percentages and word metrics.  I have been deeply in force planning and development in my career, stuff upon which billions of dollars was riding, and we never got the future right on any given scenario.  What we did do is get clarity on the trends/patterns that drive those scenarios and pinning capability development on those is never a bad idea.

I for one would be interested to see what the NIE, or whoever, is saying about what happens after this war ends. I really do not care what percentages of certainty or uncertainty are, however, I would really like to know how they arrived at them.  “How we learn something” is not based on how well our predictions turned out - this is sentient adaptive non-linear systems largely constructed on self generated fiction, bounded within linear systems (macro-physics), sitting on quantum mechanics - we are not going to solve for that anytime soon.  It is based on how we analyzed and assessed the scenario in the first place - the value is in the conduct of the exercise, not the result/output.

Now the really hard part is what to do with all this and here we often get into pure human intuition and instinct - we spent millennia developing it, it kept us alive far longer than we ever should have made it, and it still relies on the most complex computer processor in existence. Decision space and decision advantage are at the heart of everything we do.  We can have a zillion scenarios and predictions but it all comes down to “what are we going to do about it?”

In my experience the trick is about positioning for advantage. Where do we park ourselves to be best prepared to react?  And here we can take all the help we can get.  

[LongLeftFlank]

44 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Oh yeah, Psychohistory... Every sci-fi needs some magical box, but this one was so infantile I could never genuinly understand why people praised Foundation cycle so much. Especially that author never even bothered to explain how it actually mean to work.

Well come on Copernicus, next you'll be That Guy asking why Thorondor didn't just carry Frodo and Nazgûl-repelling-beam-of-light-Maia Gandalf express to Mount Doom and save books II and III?

...Or why the well-greaved Achaeans didn't do that horse thing straightaway, or just burn all the crops and starve out Troy, saving ten-odd years of repetitive 'and his hand clutched the earth, and the darkness came before his eyes' blahblahblah in between....

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I really would not say this part in any bar back home…low blow. We did just win the juniors, so there is that.

Yup,  there is just that... 

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well come on Copernicus, next you'll be That Guy asking why Thorondor didn't just carry Frodo and Nazgûl-repelling-beam-of-light-Maia Gandalf express to Mount Doom and save books II and III?

...Or why the well-greaved Achaeans didn't do that horse thing straightaway, or just burn all the crops and starve out Troy, saving ten-odd years of repetitive 'and his hand clutched the earth, and the darkness came before his eyes' blahblahblah in between....

Or why have Indiana Jones in... Indiana Jones & the Ark of the Covenant. 

 

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well come on Copernicus, next you'll be That Guy asking why Thorondor didn't just carry Frodo and Nazgûl-repelling-beam-of-light-Maia Gandalf express to Mount Doom and save books II and III?

These are all behind-the-curtain machinations of this fishy individual called Tom Bombadil. Probably a Mordor spy anyway.

[LongLeftFlank]

1 minute ago, Beleg85 said:

These are all behind-the-curtain machinations of this fishy individual called Tom Bombadil. Probably a Mordor spy anyway.

Frivolous bourgeois stoner, and fellow traveller of Entwives!

[A Canadian Cat]

On 1/4/2023 at 12:41 PM, The_Capt said:

It could also end up trying to manage two insurgencies actively supported by Russia, and none of that is a good news story as insurgencies are notoriously difficult when supported from the outside and offer a lot of opportunities to lose ones strategic narrative.

Yeah the more I think about it the more I see the validity to Steve's point that Ukraine might want to consider letting some of the pre 2014 territories go. Why take on such insurgencies when you don't have to? Obviously that's Ukraine's decision but likely worth considering. The problem is this will still only bring lasting peace if the government in Russia has a better attitude. Of course it's a peace that a Ukrainian government could hold on to easier than trying control a place that the Russians are meddling directly in but it still does not give a long term peace. For that we need something different in Moscow.

 

On 1/4/2023 at 12:41 PM, The_Capt said:

The other side of the dilemma is a shattered Russia no longer able to prosecute bad on Ukraine.  Which sounds like a great idea but at that point Russia may be in free fall and unravelling, Ukraine and the West will then have a whole new set of problems, not the least of which is revenge attacks using WMDs by non-state or pseudo state groups, having a Russian Civil War spill over, or a refugee crisis for the ages, or...well pick your poison.

Well you paint a dire picture and no doubt a shattered Russia would cause lots of problems. The thing is it feels a bit like when rich people say "it's hard being rich, there are so many problems you poor people just don't have" - LOL "yeah I'll take those problems in exchange for my current ones thanks". We have had decades upon decades upon decades of first the Soviet Union and then Russia ****ing around in other peoples business to everyone's (but a few rich criminals) determent. Part of me would like to try living without those ***-holes having that much power.

Yes, I realize my rich people's problems analogy totally breaks down because while a rich person can go back to being poor a shattered and broken Russia cannot be put back together again later.

I still feel very curious about what the world would be like without a powerful fascist benefactor ****ing around in countless governments around the world.

 

On 1/4/2023 at 12:41 PM, The_Capt said:

There is a scenario where we get a stable western orientated Ukraine and a functioning Russia whose main aim is not to make everyone else's lives miserable so they can feel better about themselves, on the road to some sort of renormalization - but man, it is one slim needle to thread as far as I can see. 

Yes, that would be ideal. My issue is I just do not see how that is a likely out come. It is probably the least likely end state for Russia.

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Interesting map showing how situation around Soledar may look like- reportedly it is attacked constantly from 3 sides:

 

 

 

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

 

Interesting.  I wonder if this will play out like the other recent RU gains.  RU pushes, takes big losses, gets pushed back a little and is too spent for another push.

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Interesting map showing how situation around Soledar may look like- reportedly it is attacked constantly from 3 sides:

Oh yeah, Psychohistory... Every sci-fi needs some magical box, but this one was so infantile I could never genuinly understand why people praised Foundation cycle so much. Especially that author never even bothered to explain how it actually mean to work.

Dear gawd, if you take away the MacGuffin popular fiction will implode!  

[dan/california]

53 minutes ago, IanL said:

Yeah the more I think about it the more I see the validity to Steve's point that Ukraine might want to consider letting some of the pre 2014 territories go. Why take on such insurgencies when you don't have to? Obviously that's Ukraine's decision but likely worth considering. The problem is this will still only bring lasting peace if the government in Russia has a better attitude. Of course it's a peace that a Ukrainian government could hold on to easier than trying control a place that the Russians are meddling directly in but it still does not give a long term peace. For that we need something different in Moscow.

I think the general Idea The_Capt has suggested repeatedly is that the treaty bringing Ukraine into NATO and the EU is signed at the same table, by the same people, at the same time, as the one resolving claims to Crimea, and the L/DPR. This would mean the very next Kaliber/Iskander launched at Kharkiv would be a CONSIDERABLY higher cost mistake for Russia. It might also make it sellable in Ukraine.

Edited January 6, 2023 by dan/california

[FancyCat]

I won't rehash the same peace negotiations discussed before, only point out the Ukrainian people have shown no indication of being the type to passively disagree with their government and Zelensky was by no means popular before the invasion.

Also, again considering Russia's current proposals around beginning talks is requiring the concession of lands currently occupied by Russia pretalks, any notion of trading away lands is gonna let Russia think that it has a chance of winning this conflict. We can harp all we want on sanctions and such destroying Russia as a country but clearly Russian pov is that the west is weak and will fold and beg for Russian gas and oil soon enough and since they will fold, conceding anything to Ukraine is premature and foolish.

[dan/california]

7 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

I won't rehash the same peace negotiations discussed before, only point out the Ukrainian people have shown no indication of being the type to passively disagree with their government and Zelensky was by no means popular before the invasion.

Also, again considering Russia's current proposals around beginning talks is requiring the concession of lands currently occupied by Russia pretalks, any notion of trading away lands is gonna let Russia think that it has a chance of winning this conflict. We can harp all we want on sanctions and such destroying Russia as a country but clearly Russian pov is that the west is weak and will fold and beg for Russian gas and oil soon enough and since they will fold, conceding anything to Ukraine is premature and foolish.

I am not under any illusion the fighting is anywhere close to over. Just attempting to clarify one of the many ways this thing could wind down, someday, maybe. Indeed it would be a brilliant exercise in diplomatic needle threading to achieve it. It is at least as likely the currents idiots running Russia keep trying until there is a full 1917-18 level disintegration. But if there is   an overwhelming outbreak of good sense someone should have the draft treaties ready to go.