How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

just a quote taken from article discussing Moscow's elite adjusting to the war. I remain skeptical that the elite will rise against Putin to end the war. To better wage it, sure, but not end it.

 

[G.I. Joe]

10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

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

 

8 hours 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.

I love it that we're counting five years and one Olympiad without a medal and nine years and two Olympiads without a gold medal as a "drought." I sometimes think Canadians are the international hockey equivalent of New York Yankees fans - it seems we're never really satisfied unless our team wins a championship.

[Harmon Rabb]

I'm sure she's a very nice lady once you get to know her.

[Zeleban]

7 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

I'm sure she's a very nice lady once you get to know her.

I remember in the late 90s I even liked some of her songs. She was a popular rock performer in the CIS. Maybe we see the result of long-term drug use

[poesel]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

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.

Ukraine will be in NATO long before it is in the EU. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, it would take many, many years of negotiations before anything would happen.

Neither is Ukraine (as it currently is) ready for the EU, nor is the EU ready for Ukraine. In its current state, the EU would become incapable of doing anything if it would at such a big nation (some say it already is...). The necessary reforms will spark discussions like wrestling in a cesspool.

Don't get me wrong - I think Ukraine should and will be in the EU. But my guess is, it will join together with England, so don't hold your breath.

[Beleg85]

43 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

I remember in the late 90s I even liked some of her songs. She was a popular rock performer in the CIS. Maybe we see the result of long-term drug use

There was one podcast about Russian artists sold for Kremlin some half yer ago, author - known russicist- mentioned that Cziczerina is most probably seriously mentally ill (mean clinically, not just culturally like so many others there), and regime use her to their will. So much for Sinnead O'Connor of the Russian World...a pitty, Urallic Rock was interesting scene.

Also note Nikita Michalkov is reportedly at intensive care from yesterday. Just like poor old Zhyrinovsky, he may die just in time before seeing his beloved Empire falling apart before his eyes.

2 hours ago, Huba said:

Edit: more probably, we'll learn that our Mig-29s (modernized during the last 6 months, probably integrated with JDAMs and some other goodies) will be handled to the Ukrainians.

...unless they are already there.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Beleg85

[Huba]

48 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

...unless they are already there.

One way or another, my guess is that our PM/ MoD will make public some of the PL contributions - the opportunity to bask in glory can't be ignored

 

[Beleg85]

2 minutes ago, Huba said:

One way or another, my guess is that our PM/ MoD will make public some of the PL contributions - the opportunity to bask in glory can't be ignored

Definitelly, Germans get much praise in last days so Kaczyński fear he could loose some of his political mojo. But I am very curious what caused change to this decision of sending German  Patriots to Ukraine in the end. There were rumours from behind dyplomatic curtains that disputes on last batch were heavy and involved many actors. There is visible coordination now among the West, and we could only guess is it because they think Putin is loosing it or they know something we don't about Russian plans. Flip of a coin, at least for now.

[Huba]

8 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Definitelly, Germans get much praise in last days so Kaczyński fear he could loose some of his political mojo. But I am very curious what caused change to this decision of sending German  Patriots to Ukraine in the end. There were rumours from behind dyplomatic curtains that disputes on last batch were heavy and involved many actors. There is visible coordination now among the West, and we could only guess is it because they think Putin is loosing it or they know something we don't about Russian plans. Flip of a coin, at least for now.

Regarding Patriot from DE, I'm positive it was the heroic call of our serenissimus MoD  Speaking of the whole sudden commotion though, the most prolific narrative seems to be that all the actors finally agreed on the course of action and decided to pursue it. Surely end of US elections, and "old" Congress voting on the money for 2023 helped with that. There are some voices though, that it was unilateral decision by Macron to go ahead with AMX-10RC that tipped the scales:

 

Edited January 6, 2023 by Huba

[Beleg85]

9 minutes ago, Huba said:

Regarding Patriot from DE, I'm positive it was the heroic call of our serenissimus MoD  Speaking of the whole sudden commotion though, the most prolific narrative seems to be that all the actors finally agreed on the course of action and decided to pursue it. Surely end of US elections, and "old" Congress voting on the money for 2023 helped with that. There are some voices though, that it was unilateral decision by Macron to go ahead with AMX-10RC that tipped the scales:

 

Shrapnel taken from Rogozhin' buttock is a pebble that started avalanche.

[Huba]

1 minute ago, Beleg85 said:

Shrapnel taken from Rogozhin' buttock is a pebble that started avalanche.

Putting the "butt" in the butterfly effect

[dan/california]

5 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Germans are getting fast.

 

23 minutes ago, Huba said:

Regarding Patriot from DE, I'm positive it was the heroic call of our serenissimus MoD  Speaking of the whole sudden commotion though, the most prolific narrative seems to be that all the actors finally agreed on the course of action and decided to pursue it. Surely end of US elections, and "old" Congress voting on the money for 2023 helped with that. There are some voices though, that it was unilateral decision by Macron to go ahead with AMX-10RC that tipped the scales:

 

I think comprehension has finally dawned in Paris and Berlin that the fastest way to end this thing is beat Russia and be done with it. The outgoing U.S. Congress appropriating enough money to float Ukraine for a year or more got the message across in old Europe at least. I don't think we really know how it was received in Moscow yet? And we might not until Russian State TV starts broadcasting Swan Lake or the equivalent.

Edited January 7, 2023 by dan/california

[LongLeftFlank]

On 1/6/2023 at 1:52 AM, LongLeftFlank said:

Soledar

"Salt mine" is an industrial complex, visible here.

 

 

 

[LongLeftFlank]

Another interesting forensics thread from Danspiun, providing context for various videos and images, in this case the recent fighting around Bakhmut. Worth browsing.

 

Master map-making gold here, eh @benpark?

 

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[JonS]

On 1/6/2023 at 4:49 PM, The_Capt said:

My advice is that anyone spouting “percentages” or detailed predictions

I'm not even sure what a %age would /mean/ in this context. The whole point of predictions is so that you can change your inputs.

If I - or more specifically the met service - predict it's going to rain tomorrow, great! I'll wear a coat and my office clothes won't get wet. The clouds over my city don't care whether I wear a coat or not. They'll rain, or not, in response to stimuli outside my control and unresponsive to my actions.

But predictions of a human reactive system? Bwah? Say your you-beaut Binford Predicto2000(tm) delivers a result that, if nothing changes, the Ukrainian Army has a 48.62% chance of "winning" ... with the definition of "winning" to be determined. Ok, great, but with that information in hand wouldn't you move heaven and earth to make changes to affect the outcome? Won't the Russians be doing the same thing in response to both your changes and their own internal stimuli?

So ... what are we left with? Two weeks aago your Binford Predicto2000(tm) said 48.62% chance of "victory", which is of course utterly meaningless now that almost everything has changed. Yay?

Edited January 7, 2023 by JonS

[poesel]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Ok, great, but with that information in hand wouldn't you move heaven and earth to make changes to affect the outcome?

This is why we have propaganda. If your soldiers knew that Predicto™ has predicted your loss, they will lose hope. But tell them they will win, and their extra effort might tip the scale.

The easier availability of information has made this task much more complicated, though not impossible. It still boggles my mind, that the average Russian is not better informed. But then, they are only humans, like everyone else.

[paxromana]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

It still boggles my mind, that the average Russian is not better informed. But then, they are only humans, like everyone else.

I taught High School for 38 years. My first Computer was an Apple IIe thence through first release Apple Mac, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, IBM clones of various sorts ... which meant I was probably part of the less than 5% of teachers (regardless of age) who were actually confident/competent with Computers (tho I was not a Programming or Technical whiz).

We kept on (still do) getting told that our students were all tech savvy ...

Not in my experience. The number of plagiarists in HSC assessment (think UK A Levels or something like an Essay based SAT for the US) tasks who were stunned on being caught (this was before the intro of programs which can detect such) by doing a simple Google search with Boolean operators ... was amazing. They simply didn't have the most basic clue.

Heck, the number of kids who had no idea how to do any sort of Google Search other than the crudest was amazing. No idea of what Boolean operators were or how to use them.

I'd guess, based on first hand experience, that probably no more than 5% of my students were competent/confident with Computers ... so, about the same as the number of teachers.

VPNs? They wouldn't have had a clue. How to refine Google searches? Likewise, no clue.

I'd suggest that the Russian population is the same, no more than 5% would have the basic understanding to use a VPN - and, of course, how many read a non-Russian language? Very few I would expect ... and even fewer with any proficiency.

SO that's why so few Russians have any idea what is actually going on in ouside the Russki Mir echo chamber ... and a lot of those who are tech competent/confident and can read a foreign language have ... left.

Someone mentioned something along the lines of them not being understand why the West as a whole hasn't been making a major effort to penetrate the Russosphere ... think Soldatensender from the BBC in WW2 which was listened to assiduously by German troops even though they almost always knew it was an Allied propaganda station. Why? Since 95% of the news they broadcast was true - and more accurate and truthful than Goebbels' stations spew ... and they had the latest German popular music. 

That's how you get through to them ...

Edited January 7, 2023 by paxromana

[Beleg85]

M.Lachowski also states that reserve AFU brigades, including 46AA and 17th Armoured rushed and stabilized the situation. There are heavy clashes in the city, but lines seem to hold. Russians did captured some footholds but not as large as previously thought.

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

I'm not even sure what a %age would /mean/ in this context. The whole point of predictions is so that you can change your inputs.

If I - or more specifically the met service - predict it's going to rain tomorrow, great! I'll wear a coat and my office clothes won't get wet. The clouds over my city don't care whether I wear a coat or not. They'll rain, or not, in response to stimuli outside my control and unresponsive to my actions.

But predictions of a human reactive system? Bwah? Say your you-beaut Binford Predicto2000(tm) delivers a result that, if nothing changes, the Ukrainian Army has a 48.62% chance of "winning" ... with the definition of "winning" to be determined. Ok, great, but with that information in hand wouldn't you move heaven and earth to make changes to affect the outcome? Won't the Russians be doing the same thing in response to both your changes and their own internal stimuli?

So ... what are we left with? Two weeks aago your Binford Predicto2000(tm) said 48.62% chance of "victory", which is of course utterly meaningless now that almost everything has changed. Yay?

So I suggest that humans at war are a 3rd order chaotic system.  Harari posed that there are 1st and 2nd order chaotic systems:  1st order are built on a lattice of non-linear variables which all have a possibility effect at a macro level - eg the weather.  2nd order are 1st order chaotic systems that can react to predictions, they are self aware - eg economics.

I put forward that humans at war are another order of chaos beyond 2nd in that in warfare we can and will react to imagined stimuli before they actually occur.  We remember future.  In this the input (stimuli) variables are not only non-linear, self-aware and adaptive, generation is also done in the virtual space of human imagination.

So this goes beyond being able to predict how an opponent will react to a prediction, it is being able to predict with accuracy how an opponent will generate and react to internal predictions and then react again to when those self-generated predictions collide with reality.

In CM playing against a human, we do this all the time.  Bil H knows The_Capt always overreaches so he is going to react to that stimulus before The_Capt even hits the start button.  But Bil H knows The_Capt knows he knows and will factor that into this battle as well. The_Capt meanwhile thinks “Ah this time I will overreach, Bil will never expect it because I always do it!  Ah crap!!”

So trying to build a Predicto2000tm to take into account all that and sustain any level of accuracy is impossible right now. Instead we rely on subjective assessment based on how well the assessor understands the opponent.  “Getting inside their heads” is not just a cute term, it is literally what we are trying to do.  Once we do that analysts are then looking for behavioural cues that verify or shift their framework of the opponents framework, and they are doing this constantly.  This goes beyond “what are they doing?”  It goes into “what are they thinking?  And “what do they think we are thinking?”  Here things like cultural boxes and background on doctrine and training are important as it gives some lines of the box your opponent is within.

Finally, behavioural analytics are getting better at predicting what a single person will do based on historical data.  Cambridge Analytica and the OCEAN model and all that.  But we are not talking one person, we are talking thousands to millions of people reacting to what each other is doing and thinking while trying not to get killed.  Anyone of which may have a real impact on outcomes - the sniper who decided not to kill Washington at Brandywine or all of Harry Turtledove. That problem set is way outside the abilities of artificial intelligence or machine learning or whatever.  Human analysts are not able to do it with high levels of accuracy but they are the best we have and highly trained/experienced ones can create advantage.

I suspect if we ever develop a computer able to conduct accurate hi resolution predictive analytics in warfare, we will have already broken economics, democracy and dating, at which point war as we understand it may not even matter as we will have to redesign the entire human social enterprise.

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by The_Capt

[kevinkin]

While I default to the human vs the machine, let's not forget the victories DeepMind has stacked up in games with imperfect information:

https://venturebeat.com/uncategorized/deepmind-makes-bet-on-ai-system-that-can-play-poker-chess-go-and-more/

The sheer volume of information and speed at learning and providing solutions will be some sort of tool in military affairs. But as they say, garbage in, garbage out. There is no effective way to test AI predictions of war based on human inputs. That would require a war to take place to validate the model. Even if a human - machine system was shown to be very good in bloodless wargames, I doubt policy makers will rely on it for strategic planning, resource procurement and allocation. What fun is that for inside the beltway types? AlphaCode tends to bleed on cocktail napkins. At the tactical level, data handling and speed are important. Sure, give AI a try with UAVs. At the strategic level, understanding the predicting the results of human interrelationships is difficult. Trying to understand and predict the vagaries of countless individuals might be impossible. However, one situation is interesting with AI. Those are the circumstances where communication with human controllers is slow or nonexistent. Under those scenarios, giving systems complete top to bottom control (strategic to tactical) might have to be ceded. But this gets into areas of science fiction quickly e.g.  autonomous star ships. As for war in 2023, just give RAND the problem and do the opposite. 

[akd]

 

[Yet]

31 minutes ago, akd said:

 

no packs? no gear? no rifles? 

or are my eyes lacking?

[The_MonkeyKing]

@Huba need your POL insight! What is with the Leo2 stuff?

is this related to last:

 

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

@Huba need your POL insight! What is with the Leo2 stuff?

Our PM and MoD held a press conference, covering many topics but without that much substance - it's the election year. Regarding the Leo2, they declared that PL is willing to participate in a wider coalition (which apparently they are building -unverifiable claim of course), but won't take any unilateral action.
There's some NATO ministerial meeting on Jan 19th, followed by the Ramstein conference on 20th, perhaps we'll know more then.

[Zeleban]

27 minutes ago, Yet said:

no packs? no gear? no rifles? 

or are my eyes lacking?

Do you think it's customary to leave weapons on the battlefield?