How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_MonkeyKing]

4 minutes ago, Butschi said:

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ukraine-waffenliferungen-rheinmetall-kann-leopard-kampfpanzer-erst-2024-liefern-a-34b749d8-62b9-44e3-a75b-fcad61361e2b

Rheinmetall has just announced that refurbishment will take until 2024. They have 22 Leopard 2s.

I doubt the Bundeswehr will want (or can afford...) to give away a significant number of theirs. I guess the rest is with KMW?

Bundeswehr cannot afford because? I wonder how Poland could have afford to send hundreds and hundreds of tanks and invest in hundreds and hundreds of new ones.

[JonS]

They are unbelievably complex machines.

[JonS]

4 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Bundeswehr cannot afford because? I wonder how Poland could have afford to send hundreds and hundreds of tanks and invest in hundreds and hundreds of new ones.

This would be part of the reason. Poland bought a bunch of tanks, while Germany was buying a bunch of healthcare.

Edited January 15, 2023 by JonS

[LongLeftFlank]

16 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

I'm confused.. Is this still part of the "beavers"-topic?

 

 

(That will teach Steve to twist my flattened tail!  Bares powerful incisors)

As to the young lady in question, the aesthetics of the younger generation are... different.

Although her eyebrows are a little Brezhnev retro.....

[Zeleban]

The notorious training of Russian chmobiks. Strict observance of safety measures when firing from RPGs

[Eddy]

Defence Editor of the Economist tweets

Which is what I always thought because 1) it's the Mirror, 2) article says sending AH-64E of which we have the square root of bugger all and 3) it's the Mirror. For non-UK people The Sun, The Mirror, The Star and The Express are really, really not good sources for information

[Mm1ut1]

I wouldn’t be surprised if civilian techs were supplied by a Blackwater like company to “Advise” Ukraine on how to use complex equipment like Patriot.

[Combatintman]

34 minutes ago, Eddy said:

Defence Editor of the Economist tweets

Which is what I always thought because 1) it's the Mirror, 2) article says sending AH-64E of which we have the square root of bugger all and 3) it's the Mirror. For non-UK people The Sun, The Mirror, The Star and The Express are really, really not good sources for information

You can add the Daily Mail to that list too.

[kevinkin]

Russians bomb Soledar "anyway":

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-bombs-soledar-91-times-since-wagner-group-liberation-claim-ukraine-says-1773436

May be the civil war starts here? 

Just can't push all your chips into the pot when they differ in currency. The game get a little confusing. 

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230113-logistical-challenge-looms-for-ukraine-over-promised-tanks

Another source talks about the pace of support:

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/13/1148970555/armored-vehicle-pledge-to-ukraine-marks-a-change-in-the-war-with-russia

Major powers supporting Ukraine could have decided that it is in their interest to allow Ukraine to move faster because the longer war goes, the more weapons will be required. So maybe time is a factor now, not only unpredictability of Russia.

[Huba]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

This would be part of the reason. Poland bought a bunch of tanks, while Germany was buying a bunch of healthcare.

Hardly. Up to 2020 Poland was nominally spending 2% of it's GDP on defence, often part of that money wasn't used and went back to the main budget. Also, German GDP is 5 times bigger than Polish. Add to it that for replacements the cost is mainly acquisition, manning and maintenance remains more or less constant.
There are many reasons why we are sending armor and Germany isn't, but availability of cash ain't one of them. That's all I have to say about it, or I'd have to dust off ye olde Germanbasher2000.

[Eddy]

49 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

You can add the Daily Mail to that list too.

Too right, but didn't know my audience 

[Butschi]

2 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Bundeswehr cannot afford because? I wonder how Poland could have afford to send hundreds and hundreds of tanks and invest in hundreds and hundreds of new ones.

Ah, that's because you are mixing up two different things. I said the Bundeswehr (possibly) can't afford it, not Germany. If the Polish army can part with a major part of their tank fleet then probably whatever agency is responsible for acquiring their materiel is not as staggeringly incompetent and/or corrupt as ours.

See, if the Bundeswehr was well run but too small, I'd say we just don't pump enough money in there. If on the other hand a large fraction of vehicles, planes, helicopters, ships, etc. is not in any usable state... If an agency of 8500 people is unable to equip a unit that is actually going to go into a conflict zone (a few 1000 soldiers), if this unit has to borrow personal security stuff from other units or just buy it privately, if our elite swimmers don't even have a f****** pool to train in, giving them twice as much money won't solve the problem.

We can discuss if that makes sense in the bigger picture but I understand every commanding officer for not wanting to part with the equipment that happens to be ready to use.

[The_MonkeyKing]

Rheinmetall made statement that GER industry won't be able to supply any MBTs this year because hundreds of millions retrofit investments that have not been made yet. (Rheinmetall cannot make such investments without orders)

I remember Rheinmetall bringing this up last summer...

I guess because procrastination on this for so long GER tanks are going to have to come out of Bundeswehr inventory.

[mosuri]

7 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Greece, Hungary, Turkey, Swiss, Austria will not give any. Also Finland has max give of only a couple (I disagree with that decision)

I would like to see a reasonable plan for backfilling whatever amount we donate. While I agree the donation should be something meaningful, that land border of ours isn't going away. More likely it's going to be part of Cordon Sanitaire v2.0 ...

[Butschi]

13 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Rheinmetall made statement that GER industry won't be able to supply any MBTs this year

This is precisely what I said on the previous page, right? Generally, don't believe a word of what BILD writes. This time they are right, though.

16 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

tanks are going to have to come out of Bundeswehr inventory.

Which is... difficult as I said. Also, "have to" is technically wrong because so far Germany did not promise to deliver any. We'll see.

[The_MonkeyKing]

28 minutes ago, Butschi said:

This is precisely what I said on the previous page, right? Generally, don't believe a word of what BILD writes. This time they are right, though.

Which is... difficult as I said. Also, "have to" is technically wrong because so far Germany did not promise to deliver any. We'll see.

Reminds me of argument gaining traction fast in Finland.

Being unwilling to weaken our own defense is in direct conflict with helping Ukraine to victory. 

Even every ammunition order is very likely to reduce availability for Ukraine. Investments have to be managed carefully not the overlap with the Ukrainian defense needs(example F-35 is very safe investment but buying 155m ammo on quick order is detrimental).

If we are unwilling to weaken our own defense or want to strengthen it, those resources are definitely not going to Ukraine. And Europe has extreme weak stockpile and industry base for these. 

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Didn't realize this. Changes things.

Sounds like unbelievable long time. 

For most people not in the business the time, cost and effort on training is a bit of a mystery.  It would be a bald face lie to say that military training is the high point of human efficiency; however, the reality is that it always takes longer than you think.  Further, training is directly linked to quality of output.  If you want cannon fodder, well sure you can train them up in a few days.  If you want decent troops with a better chance to stay alive well denying that chance to an opponent, well no free lunch.

And then there is supporting systems.  So I had a very interesting offline side conversation with a German tanker and the German system is setup to minimize training time compared to the Canadian one.  They can do in weeks what it takes us months to do.  Why?  Well it is not because Germans are better or that they are taking risks, it has to do with the logistics systems supporting that tank.  In Germany tank crews do not do a lot of what we would consider first line repairs and maintenance.  They have built a plug and play logistical system designed to simply pull out a piece of the tank and rotate in a new one.  This means that all that crew training we do to fix/maintain a tank in situ is not required for the German Army because their logistical system is taking the load off.

And then there is collective training.  A lot of what we have been talking about is individual training, which is frankly the easy part. Getting a bunch of primates to fight as an organization takes a lot of effort and again it is linked to supporting systems.  If we give the UA a platform that is capable of new methods of info sharing, communication and targeting, it is going to take time for the UA to incorporate that into how a unit fights.  Otherwise, like the Apaches, you are going to see Challengers (or freakin Leo 2s) fought like T-72s, which defeats the entire point as any competitive advantage will quickly fly out the window and then all the Macgregors of the world can point out why it was a huge waste of money to send them in the first place.  

These are not magical chariots, these are complex weapon systems that need to be integrated into an extant system and then change that system without totally disrupting it.  Some stuff, the stuff we should be prioritizing, are low cost, high impact.  They can be incorporated quickly to effect without too much disruption to the rest of the UA system.

”But, but, the Pz2000s!”  Well yes, I would like an assessment of how those and the 777s actually performed and how bad of shape the fleet is in right now.  A lot of mud has been thrown at “delicate western systems” from guns to rifles, but these are not peacetime weapons, all of them saw about 20 years of warfare somewhere in the world. In Kandahar those M777s were firing every day for months/years. Now the warfare in Ukraine has been far more intense, however, how much damage to those western systems has been user error because we pressed them into service so quickly?  

The absolute gold are the systems that the UA already had, or nearly automated western systems that come in compete packages (ATGMs, AD and HIMARs).  And even those are likely going to show training issues when we fully unpack them, for example there was a video early on in the war of a guy using a Javelin at about 800 meters on a truck.  Well trucks need to die, and maybe that was all they had but a Javelin is designed to kill a tank at 2.5 kms, and there were few of them.  I personally would let the truck go, or find a better way to kill it…like a machine gun.

I just keep coming back to the point that CM is the last 60 minutes of effort that takes years to build, and this war is not a series of CM battles.

Edited January 15, 2023 by The_Capt

[Harmon Rabb]

 

[Huba]

16 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Reminds me of argument gaining traction fast in Finland.

Being unwilling to weaken our own defense is in direct conflict with helping Ukraine to victory. 

Even every ammunition order is very likely to reduce availability for Ukraine. Investments have to be managed carefully not the overlap with the Ukrainian defense needs(example F-35 is very safe investment but buying 155m ammo on quick order is detrimental).

If we are unwilling to weaken our own defense or want to strengthen it, those resources are definitely not going to Ukraine. And Europe has extreme weak stockpile and industry base for these. 

The same principle applies even to the USA, at least in certain crucial categories like artillery and GMLRS, though they have much more depth to draw from.
Poland went that way to a significant distance, and will probably go further still, giving out more than half of our mechanized forces or more, with perspective of making up for the diminished numbers only in 2026. In the meantime, NATO allies provide security by stationing their forces here. In case of Finland it would be a bit more tricky, as NATO accession is still not done. As for other EU countries, the problem seems to be that they don't see the crisis as that existential and prefer to "play it safe" by not allowing a capability gap. I really hope that the upcoming Ramstein will change things, as reasonably the only source of considerable number of modern AFVs and other crucial equipment in Europe are the inventories of active units, there's no way around that.

[The_MonkeyKing]

1 minute ago, Huba said:

The same principle applies even to the USA, at least in certain crucial categories like artillery and GMLRS, though they have much more depth to draw from.
Poland went that way to a significant distance, and will probably go further still, giving out more than half of our mechanized forces or more, with perspective of making up for the diminished numbers only in 2026. In the meantime, NATO allies provide security by stationing their forces here. In case of Finland it would be a bit more tricky, as NATO accession is still not done. As for other EU countries, the problem seems to be that they don't see the crisis as that existential and prefer to "play it safe" by not allowing a capability gap. I really hope that the upcoming Ramstein will change things, as reasonably the only source of considerable number of modern AFVs and other crucial equipment in Europe are the inventories of active units, there's no way around that.

Glad Poland has done as it has.

I am guessing now that the conversation is moving from "we cannot escalate" to "we cannot afford to give" the resistance is going to have to start breaking easier.  The arguments are so much more concrete here than the elusive "escalation" risks.

Actually president of Finland stated exactly that Finland's support is limited by the combination of being outside NATO and having the second longest border with Russia in Europe. I suspect the stance will change with the NATO membership.

EU leading countries are Germany, France and Italy. Sadly I think we are lucky to have Germany leading out of that trio....

[Huba]

31 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Glad Poland has done as it has.

I am guessing now that the conversation is moving from "we cannot escalate" to "we cannot afford to give" the resistance is going to have to start breaking easier.  The arguments are so much more concrete here than the elusive "escalation" risks.

Actually president of Finland stated exactly that Finland's support is limited by the combination of being outside NATO and having the second longest border with Russia in Europe. I suspect the stance will change with the NATO membership.

EU leading countries are Germany, France and Italy. Sadly I think we are lucky to have Germany leading out of that trio....

Brexit really was a huge blow to the EU as a political entity, I believe the dynamic would be much different with UK present to drag these laggards forward. But yeah, I agree that the change in rhetoric is noticeable, even if painfully slow. I only hope we'll manage to get our **** together in time, though hopefully after initial moves by EU, Uncle Sam will step in as usual and help solve the situation.t will be supper funny if 5 years from now M1 will be the most common tank in European armies, except from Ukraine who will operate a 1000 Leo2, due to mega-ringtausch scheme 

In related news, our PM is reportedly travelling to Berlin tomorrow to make a case for the tanks deliveries (and score some German-bashing points with his constituency).
 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Huba

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Harmon Rabb said:

 

New Perun for my workout today, I was just wondering what I would watch .  Thx for the heads up on this.  I'm interested to see if my beliefs on UKR badly needing AFVs w better firepower & survivability holds up under Perun's scrutiny.

Edited January 15, 2023 by danfrodo
addition

[womble]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Germany tank crews do not do a lot of what we would consider first line repairs and maintenance.  They have built a plug and play logistical system designed to simply pull out a piece of the tank and rotate in a new one.

This seems like an excellent reason to choose Leo over M1. Not just for the training requirement reductions, but because it makes keeping the fleet running easier, if all you need is a stream of reconditioned parts coming east and worn-out ones going west. Existing facilities [Edit:] in safe NATO territory [/edit] can do the actual repairs and you don't need to create repair depots up near the front.

Sorting out that log train is its own headache, though. It's just a problem that can be dealt with in parallel using different resources to the actual fighting end of the system.

Edited January 15, 2023 by womble

[Holien]

14 minutes ago, Huba said:

Brexit really was a huge blow to the EU as a political entity,

Some would say a courtesy from a Russian leader who ran an expensive covert influence campaign that swung the vote just over the line.

Europe (the world) really needs to understand what Russia does to democracies via the back doors...

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

EU leading countries are Germany, France and Italy. Sadly I think we are lucky to have Germany leading out of that trio....

Looking by the chart, Spain has surprisingly large fleet of Leos. 300+ pieces for a country with no natural enemies in sight nor special post-colonial obligations (like France and UK) gives some hope they may throw several vehicles extra.

 

Just about yesterday attak- it was bloody; casualties count ticks currently at 29, with 73 wounded. Identities of victims comes out. This Lady, native of Donetsk served as mobile stomatologist for frontline soldiers, she lost her husband before and now orphaned 3-year old son.

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Beleg85