How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Seminole]

14 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

 

Do they send the 'real' ones, or the export version with lower quality armor?

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, poesel said:

I feel a bit neglected: now that we deliver the tanks, nobody is interested in Germany anymore!

 

Ich liebe dich!

1 hour ago, poesel said:

However, since he didn't explain himself (see above), we don't know if this is the intended outcome or just luck. And I guess we never will...

My main beef with him this whole time wasn't mentioned by you, which was that he failed to come up with a consistent policy through this whole ordeal.  Conflicting statements, BS excuses that were easily trashed, moronic statements from some of his party, and just a general sense that Germany knew it wanted to delay things but didn't want to say so.  I think this was very damaging for Germany's image even and wasn't necessary.  He could have probably gotten the same end result on the tanks without people deciding his name should be turned into a verb to represent indecisiveness.

Steve

[Bil Hardenberger]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It will be sometime soon, of that I'm sure.  China is already figuring out how it can fight more like Ukraine than Russia.  That is troubling because China has the resources to do vastly better than Ukraine.  Relying upon China to fight like Russia is now was one of the big things US/NATO had going for it up until this war, so not good that this is likely to change.

That's a common misunderstanding, the Chinese military has actually been trying to remake itself using the Western model as a guide, see:  China's Desert Storm Education. Though they have a long way to go to be in the same league as the US military they are getting there... need I say that I have a professional interest in the PLA?   

Bil

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

Thanks for these two very long and detailed answers. I am not going to argue your points - they are firmly in your area of competence - because I am actually thinking more in epistemological terms here. Instead, let's move away from your 30+ years of expertise (which I don't want to belittle in any way) to view things from a different angle, based on my 20+ years of experience in science and engineering:

I appreciate your analogy, but it's got a significant "flaw" in that you are talking about a product (the AI driving system) that is purely theoretical and trying to make predictions about how it might work in the real world without having a hundred years of relevant real world experienced with self driving technology to draw from.  You're right to worry about someone taking it out for a spin in Atlanta

Sticking with your analogy, if there were a bunch of car companies (not just Tesla) that has been using AI driving systems in the real world for a long time (10+ years) all over the world, you'd be able to note some patterns, commonalities, flaws, etc. that emerge. 

With all of this cumulative knowledge, studied in depth, you'd probably be able to draw some conclusions about how the systems behave in given circumstances.  Combine this with a deep understanding of how the AI systems, vehicles, people, roads, etc. work and you SHOULD be able to have an opinion of how an AI driven car might behave within a specific environment.

That's more-or-less what we have going on with this war.

The war in Ukraine is between two armed forces that are heavily dependent upon equipment and conventional objectives (e.g. taking and holding territory).  This is exactly the sort of conflict the US/NATO is designed to fight.  Given the importance of equipment and 30 years of hard evidence that the US/NATO has a massive edge, confidence should be at least reasonable that the US/NATO would come out ahead in any conflict with Russia.  Especially when we've seen that Russia's old "ace up its sleeve" (mass) isn't working very well in this war in large part because Ukraine's use of US/NATO weaponry.

To use your driving analogy again, it is akin to your AI car being tested in a real world small village in Poland and then wondering how well it would do in a small village in France.  It's not that big of a leap, so it should be fairly easy to adjust for the differences compared to wondering how it would do in Atlanta or driving through the Congo.

Steve

[dan/california]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, my scenario is only applicable to this specific war within 1-2 years from now tops.

Steve

I think one of the The_Capt's larger concerns is that current NATO equipment and, to non professional observers, doctrine Are working just well enough in Ukraine that that West will draw the wrong lessons from this war. Or at least it won't draw the right ones throughly enough completely rearrange how the next trillion in defense spending gets spent. That could be unfortunate if China does learn the right ones.

[poesel]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

My main beef with him this whole time wasn't mentioned by you, which was that he failed to come up with a consistent policy through this whole ordeal. 

That's what I meant with 'not explaining himself'

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

He could have probably gotten the same end result on the tanks without people deciding his name should be turned into a verb to represent indecisiveness.

Regarding tanks being sent and how he is viewed from the outside - yes.
But a definitive 'no' from the inner politics view. He could not have decided this faster - that would have created a local **** storm.

It is the most non-threatening way to send tanks - for both the German AND the Russian POV for very different reasons.

But no praise from me - as I said, we will never know if that was an act of a genius or dumb luck.

[Harmon Rabb]

AFU servicemen using a French made VAB.

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

That's a common misunderstanding, the Chinese military has actually been trying to remake itself using the Western model as a guide, see:  China's Desert Storm Education. Though they have a long way to go to be in the same league as the US military they are getting there... need I say that I have a professional interest in the PLA?   

Bil

Ah, I should have been clearer.  I'll try again

Relying upon China to fight as poorly and half assed as Russia is now was one of the big things US/NATO had going for it up until this war

Russia has spent the last 15 years or so trying to "remake itself using the Western model as a guide" and this war is shown that it didn't work out so well.  The compromises, short cuts, and areas concentrated on Russia made towards this goal clearly didn't work.

Ukraine has spent the last 8 years also trying to "remake itself using the Western model as a guide".  With far less resources, but greater intelligence, it got far closer to it than Russia.  Or perhaps more accurately, Ukraine was more successful at tailoring it's force to get the job done right compared to Russia.

This war has given China an opportunity to look within itself and assess if it is making some of the same mistakes as Russia and not doing the things that has made Ukraine so effective.  I don't know enough about the state of the Chinese military to say where they are right now, but I am confident that China is reassessing what it is doing and what it should be doing.

Steve

[Kinophile]

Don't know if LLF already posted this,  but sounds like something is afoot in the Kremina region.  Not just the current pressure but an actual push. 

https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/i-sleep-light-enough-in-the-field-that-a-cat-farting-will-wake-me-up/

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, poesel said:

That's what I meant with 'not explaining himself'

Ah, I thought you meant specific to tanks.  If you are also applying it to previous issues, like Marders and Dingos, then we're in agreement

13 minutes ago, poesel said:

Regarding tanks being sent and how he is viewed from the outside - yes.
But a definitive 'no' from the inner politics view. He could not have decided this faster - that would have created a local **** storm.

It is the most non-threatening way to send tanks - for both the German AND the Russian POV for very different reasons.

But no praise from me - as I said, we will never know if that was an act of a genius or dumb luck.

Yup, it does sound like that the speed of making the decision wasn't within Scholz' power to influence much (I still think he could have tried to go all Winston Churchill on the German public), but I really don't see that he had to be viewed as indecisive, or even comical at times.  A good leader can navigate difficult political situations without looking foolish in the process.  He might not have chosen a method that made him unpopular, but he would be unpopular for his decision not for the impression that he wasn't capable of making a decision.

Steve

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

I feel a bit neglected: now that we deliver the tanks, nobody is interested in Germany anymore!

Wait a moment...

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-spy-arrest-germany-foreign-intelligence-agency-treason/

 

Reportedly from Vuhledar. Fierce battles going there, Ukrainian artillery is working hard:

 

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ich liebe dich!

My main beef with him this whole time wasn't mentioned by you, which was that he failed to come up with a consistent policy through this whole ordeal.  Conflicting statements, BS excuses that were easily trashed, moronic statements from some of his party, and just a general sense that Germany knew it wanted to delay things but didn't want to say so.  I think this was very damaging for Germany's image even and wasn't necessary.  He could have probably gotten the same end result on the tanks without people deciding his name should be turned into a verb to represent indecisiveness.

Steve

This. 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I crunched the numbers on this but it bears re-calcs:

So Russian forces - with paramilitary from DNR/LPR and Wagner, after mobilization are around 350k in country right now?  (They had 200k in initial invasion, which they have debatably sustained and the mobilized 300k, of which half were supposed to actually go in-country).

The "Line" is about 700km long from tip to tip.  This gives a force density of about 500 troops per km, but this is not how things really work.  First off this number has to include support troops so maybe 2/3rds are actually able to be "on the line", so say 340 ish per km.  And then you need depth, reserves and rotations, which will take up nearly half in a normal military, but the RA is probably packing them in and leaving them there, so I would go 2/3rds again.  So we are at around 225 troops per km, which is a healthy company group but of course this is uniform and does not account for concentrations for attacks, which are going to leave other areas pretty thin. 

I think I calculated a troop density of around 1000-1500 per km during WW1, but they did not have the ISR and range of manoeuvre, but even with that nowhere near that level.  Russia would need to put nearly 1.5 million troops in country to create that level of sustainable troop density. 

My bet is that the UA is more than happy for the RA to pull in and grind itself as the rest of their line gets thinner and thinner.  Eventually something has got to give.  As the RA gets blinder and less mobile due to vehicle attrition all they will have is human capital, and not enough, to cover the frontage.  UA is going the other way. 

That sounds high. The advertised force before we found out that a lot of the BTGs were significantly understrength was 200K.  The real numbers could have been 150K, or even as low as 125K, which would provide a lot of explanation how they got too strung out to support themselves and got spanked.  Take from that 90K casualties (assuming KIA+non-returning WIA), add your 150K from the mobilization and keep the rest of the math the same and it could be as low as 130-ish/km.  Probably concentrated at least slightly higher near rail junctions and tapering lower as the difficulty of supply to a location increases.  Russia doesn't have the same kind of ISR that Ukraine does, so Ukraine probably has a pretty good idea of Russian force distribution provided by western supporters, while Russia's view of Ukraine is a little more spotty, and probably provided by aircraft and drone flyovers locally.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, chrisl said:

That sounds high. The advertised force before we found out that a lot of the BTGs were significantly understrength was 200K.  The real numbers could have been 150K, or even as low as 125K, which would provide a lot of explanation how they got too strung out to support themselves and got spanked.  Take from that 90K casualties (assuming KIA+non-returning WIA), add your 150K from the mobilization and keep the rest of the math the same and it could be as low as 130-ish/km.  Probably concentrated at least slightly higher near rail junctions and tapering lower as the difficulty of supply to a location increases.  Russia doesn't have the same kind of ISR that Ukraine does, so Ukraine probably has a pretty good idea of Russian force distribution provided by western supporters, while Russia's view of Ukraine is a little more spotty, and probably provided by aircraft and drone flyovers locally.

I think this misses Russian reinforcements we heard about being pulled from other districts to replace losses.  With a total force reaching 1M pers, I have to believe they backstopped the losses to some extent, hence the logic to go with their entry force numbers of about 200k.  Of course we know that some units were way understrength.

I mean we could go with a range of say 150-250 troop per km on average, and then much higher in areas of main effort/thinner in quiet areas.  Overall point being is that the line is onion skin thin in places and with every wasted attack getting worse...this jives with the UA strategy of sticking in place and grinding it out with the RA in locales of otherwise low operational value. 

As to ISR, the UA is hooked into the largest and best ISR architecture our species has ever produced, while I expect Russian ISR, which was not "advanced" at the start of this, but not zero either, has been severely beat up.  On Oryx for example it is showing a spectrum of ISR and EW equipment and over "225 Command Posts and Communications" (that is just crazy).  So the ability for the RA to "see", understand what it is "seeing" and then communicating that understanding has been mauled up pretty badly, and this is stuff you cannot mass produce.

So what?  Well RA is getting blinder, dumber and slower.  Which means it cannot react as quickly as it did at the outset of this war.  Its OODA loop is stretching and as such it has to invest human capital along the line to hold it, as opposed to manoeuvre units that can react and cover off greater frontage with fewer troops.  The UA does not need the same troop density to cover off the same ground because they can see RA massing and moving well back and have the ability to manoeuvre and fire in response.   Gotta be honest, crunching these numbers and the current UA strategy of "hold and kill" is making a lot of sense.    

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

That's a common misunderstanding, the Chinese military has actually been trying to remake itself using the Western model as a guide, see:  China's Desert Storm Education. Though they have a long way to go to be in the same league as the US military they are getting there... need I say that I have a professional interest in the PLA?   

Bil

Japanese couldn't shoot straight because of the anatomical differences of Mongoloid eyes and were basically unfit. The ones I met were very fit and had excellent eyesight. British POWS, I salute you with this post, Imo the Chinese won't tell on social media, you won't find a You Tuber with the name of Captain Chang explaining Chinese tactics and doctrine.

[Vanir Ausf B]

1 hour ago, Seminole said:

Do they send the 'real' ones, or the export version with lower quality armor?

'Fake' armor

__________

But federal policy forbids the export of Abrams with classified armor packages used by the U.S. military, which includes depleted uranium, according to a fourth person with knowledge of the policy. The U.S. strips the vehicles of this secret armor “recipe” before selling them to other countries. There are other armor packages the U.S. can provide for foreign military sales customers. The Pentagon is planning to provide Ukraine the A2 version in this “exportable” form, according to one defense official and two other people with knowledge of the deliberations.

__________

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/26/us-sends-ukraine-advanced-abrams-tanks-00079648

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

Now I don't know, maybe you are brave enough and would want to try it, say, during rush hour in downtown Atlanta. Well, I wouldn't let you. Not because I don't trust in my own skills. Based on my knowledge and experience I'd say chances are quite good it would work. But while I have a good feeling, I don't have enough evidence. I have tested my self-driving car in one subset of possible situation. I know my data and - although all the ingredients are there - it doesn't cover all situations and there is always something that isn't in the data. My simulation, while great, is an abstraction and I know it falls short in some aspects. And so, before I have tested it in a much greater variety of situations I cannot actually make a robust prediction. And the different authorities responsible for clearing my car for real-life traffic pretty much share my view of things.

Well, we are coming from a quite different background and since wars don't happen all that often and it is morally questionable to stage them in real life, I guess your approach is as good as it gets. But maybe you understand why it gives me headaches.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

With all of this cumulative knowledge, studied in depth, you'd probably be able to draw some conclusions about how the systems behave in given circumstances.  Combine this with a deep understanding of how the AI systems, vehicles, people, roads, etc. work and you SHOULD be able to have an opinion of how an AI driven car might behave within a specific environment.

That's more-or-less what we have going on with this war.

The war in Ukraine is between two armed forces that are heavily dependent upon equipment and conventional objectives (e.g. taking and holding territory).  This is exactly the sort of conflict the US/NATO is designed to fight.  Given the importance of equipment and 30 years of hard evidence that the US/NATO has a massive edge, confidence should be at least reasonable that the US/NATO would come out ahead in any conflict with Russia.  Especially when we've seen that Russia's old "ace up its sleeve" (mass) isn't working very well in this war in large part because Ukraine's use of US/NATO weaponry.

To use your driving analogy again, it is akin to your AI car being tested in a real world small village in Poland and then wondering how well it would do in a small village in France.  It's not that big of a leap, so it should be fairly easy to adjust for the differences compared to wondering how it would do in Atlanta or driving through the Congo.

Steve

In engineering language, Steve's (and Charles') CM model has been validated and he understands what its limitations are, and he's willing to make predictions, even fairly strong ones, based on that knowledge of the model and its limits.  

My argument in favor of that is that CM is really designed from the ground up to have a lot of accurate modeling of things down to the tank round (but maybe not quite the bullet trajectory) in battalion-ish level engagements.  The little detailed stuff of round capability and trajectory is very grounded in physics to the extent that things like weapon and armor performance are publicly available. It's why it appeals to grogs.  But it's also validated at the system level by a huge amount of game play in which people design scenarios based closely on historical engagements and get outcomes that are more or less consistent with the actual engagements.  CM keeps this fun as a game by letting you set up asymmetric victory conditions so that you can have a scenario where one side will reliably get pasted, but the victory conditions just require them to achieve a certain level of performance while they get driven off the map.  So that lets someone who has a really solid understanding of the model make predictions about larger scale outcomes by knowing how the smaller, but still much larger than micro-scale, engagements are going to go.

I understand how that can be very unsatisfying if you're used to having a very safety sensitive function like driving in public depend on your model and model validation.  But as @Butschisays, it's not a good idea to start wars to validate the model.  There are lots of situations where you can't fully validate the model before you have to depend on it, and how much you're willing to depend on it also depends on the consequences.  If the model for a self-driving car is wrong, someone gets hurt or dies.  If Steve is wrong he just has to eat some crow on a forum (unless he's giving a lot more advice to the military than he lets on).  But overall, the CM model has been very effective at understanding what's possible and likely to happen in this war.

Edited January 27, 2023 by chrisl

[FancyCat]

 

 

[DesertFox]

Goebbels and Artur Axmann would have been delighted...

 

 

[dan/california]

7 hours ago, riptides said:

More to it than that I think we all would agree. For the current war at hand, add leadership and availability to the mix.

We seem to be working on a new version of the Drake Equation...

 

Quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#:~:text=The Drake equation is a,in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Just like the original every term is its own rather large discussion.

5 hours ago, Zeleban said:

 

I really wonder how this plays in Germany. Could it be good timing for Scholz? In that Ukraine will simply do whatever he wants done as a thank you for the Leopards?

6 hours ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

If anyone misses the fun "what the hell is wrong with Scholz"-discussions we had, get ready for the ultimate "Estonia wants to send German-made DPICM artillery rounds to Ukraine"-Clusterfu***. 

 

Yeah this is the next fight, and not just with Germany. Hopefully at least some people have hopefully learned that saying yes very quietly is the best way to respond.

6 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Someone else would have to lead the way, for sure, before Germany would even think of agreeing to that.

What countries still make their own cluster munitions? Turkey? Finland? Poland?

I think Turkey already sent some.

55 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ah, I should have been clearer.  I'll try again

Relying upon China to fight as poorly and half assed as Russia is now was one of the big things US/NATO had going for it up until this war

Russia has spent the last 15 years or so trying to "remake itself using the Western model as a guide" and this war is shown that it didn't work out so well.  The compromises, short cuts, and areas concentrated on Russia made towards this goal clearly didn't work.

Ukraine has spent the last 8 years also trying to "remake itself using the Western model as a guide".  With far less resources, but greater intelligence, it got far closer to it than Russia.  Or perhaps more accurately, Ukraine was more successful at tailoring it's force to get the job done right compared to Russia.

This war has given China an opportunity to look within itself and assess if it is making some of the same mistakes as Russia and not doing the things that has made Ukraine so effective.  I don't know enough about the state of the Chinese military to say where they are right now, but I am confident that China is reassessing what it is doing and what it should be doing.

Steve

Spare a tiny violin of sympathy for folks in the Chinese military logistics system. Their inspections are being inspected, and doubt the inspectors have much of sense of humor.

[JonS]

10 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Hopefully at least some people have hopefully learned that saying yes very quietly is the best way to respond.

So, are we still in favour of the international rules based order, or are we against it now?

 

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no-one is watching.

Edited January 27, 2023 by JonS

[Harmon Rabb]

2 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Goebbels and Artur Axmann would have been delighted...

 

 

If I was Solovyov I would only give this performance a C grade. While they correctly brought up that by invading Ukraine, Russia is defending itself from fascist invaders.

They completely omitted the dangers posed by CIA funded Ukrainian biolabs™ and Satanism.

They need to watch my show more.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Don't know if LLF already posted this,  but sounds like something is afoot in the Kremina region.  Not just the current pressure but an actual push. 

https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/i-sleep-light-enough-in-the-field-that-a-cat-farting-will-wake-me-up/

Nah, I took a break mate, please do carry on.

Anyway, it's been 40 pages of tankstankstanks.  The cranky Yukon intel guy and the outright caustic Kiwi gunner have it right.

Kill all the trucks you can, as fast as you can, as deeply behind the enemy front as you can.

Let's see how Ivan handles REALLY soldiering in 19th century conditions. Without horses....

[FancyCat]

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2023 by FancyCat

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

The cranky Yukon intel guy

For the life of me I can’t figure out who this is.  I mean we all know who the caustic Kiwi gunner is…