How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

35 minutes ago, Erwin said:

FWIW:  The US remorselessly grinds into action:

"President Biden said Saturday that the U.S. would address the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, with an official saying that the  administration is considering shooting down the craft once it is over the Atlantic Ocean later today." 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-considers-shooting-down-chinese-spy-balloon-over-atlantic-11675536746?mod=hp_lead_pos1

"“We’re gonna take care of it,” Mr. Biden said..."

Perhaps this saga is finally over

Meanwhile, stories from Bakhmut from M.Lachowski:

https://twitter.com/LachowskiMateus/status/1621952972409151490

-situation is getting worse, village of Paraskiivka is contested.

-small units are getting hammered daily. His collegue platoon was holding the line north of the town for 3 days, throught almost constant Russian attacks. They  were surrounded with only 3 men escaping by night; entire platoon is now down to 5 men.

-Neighbour positions also took significant looses.

- Muscovites in that sector are numerous and very well armed, with NV drones, precise mortars and artillery. They attacked constantly, in large concentration.

-While some backward Russian units may be indeed poorly armed and led, many are very well eqiuped and learning fast.

-Just as predicted by many soldiers on the frontlines, Muscovite mobiliziation did change a lot. Ukraine needs constant support and more weapons.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Beleg85

[Zeleban]

 

[LongLeftFlank]

Conscripting women now.

 

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

Why we have balloon news in this thread? This is Ukraine war thread

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Vet 0369 said:

Not quite sure of this. Perhaps it is meant only for intelligence on “signals.” I’m sure that with Alaska and the contiguous U.S. and Canada being overflown, the signal traffic must be substantial. I remember many incidents in the 1960s of Soviet “Bears” flying just outside of U.S. and Canadian airspace, and watching Soviet “Trawlers” just 3 miles off the east coast of Massachusetts whose sole purpose was to gather signal intelligence. Not an uncommon practice. The Chinese ballon might be for the exact same purpose. What we don’t know about is whether or not it is “manned.” The payload is the size of three buses, so that is a distinct possibility. 
 

Additionally, I have heaRd a report that there is also one overflying South America, so perhaps they have two “errant weather balloons?”

A manned high altitude SIGINT platform, moving at about 120 khp visible by amateurs with telescopes?  Considering the economic footprint China has, combined with cyber capability, I can think of about a hundred better ways to collect SIGINT data than whatever this is.  The biggest problem with the entire idea is the fact that we are all talking about it.   It is extremely high profile, on many levels, which is the exact opposite of what you want in a strategic ISR collection platform.

If this is a Chinese SIGINT platform, it is pretty much one of the worst way to go about it.

Hey if anyone wants to start covering their roofs with aluminum foil, go for it.  But just know the Chinese already had a lot of capability without going to all the trouble of a freakin balloon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaogan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongxin_Jishu_Shiyan

https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-ramping-its-electronic-warfare-and-communications-capabilities-near-south-china-sea

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4453/1

And this does not even start to unpack their cyber capabilities.

https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/china

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_China

Or their HUMINT capabilities:

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2019-11/Chapter 2%2C Section 3 - China's Intelligence Services and Espionage Threats to the United States.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_activity_abroad

But ya sure, "let's send a giant balloon that every bored yokel from Alaska to the Eastern seaboard can see and track across social media."

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

 

Yup already on mainstream news as well.  https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/u-s-downs-chinese-balloon-over-ocean-moves-to-recover-debris-1.6260109

Well I hope the 3 little guys inside made it out - but no mention of parachutes.  Of course if this was a intel platform, we are going to see why it is a terrible freakin idea as the US military collects all the evidence and equipment.

[akd]

21 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Why we have balloon news in this thread? This is Ukraine war thread

That balloon almost brought the entire United States down, which would of course been disastrous for Ukraine. Catastrophe for the free world narrowly avoided.

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, akd said:

That balloon almost brought the entire United States down, which would of course been disastrous for Ukraine. Catastrophe for the free world narrowly avoided.

A potentially crippling national...nay, continental security crisis.  And we have to ask ourselves...how long before Chinese-made balloons swarm over the Ukrainian border?  (Actually as a stand-off operational platform they start to make a lot more sense.) 

[NamEndedAllen]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

we are going to see why it is a terrible freakin idea as the US military collects all the evidence and equipment.

Pretty sure the Chinese were and are well aware of that. Have to think at this stage that we on the outside of DIA and the rest, have very little knowledge of the Chinese intentions with this and the other increased and highly visible surveillance episodes over the past year or more. They’ve swarmed naval assets in the Pacific with drones, sometimes rather close in to the Coast. They’ve had a series of Intel balloons over sensitive sites in the Pacific. I’d bet there are more incidents not public. This aerial surveillance device is a new generation not publicly seen before. What the stepped up non-satellite, unmanned naval/air layer of their Intel collecting means is unknown. Might be triggered by the increasing military and policy talk about the likelihood  “war with China”, potential Taiwan invasion concerns due to new USA focus on Ukraine. But we don’t know. 
 

The only thing we do know is that China is the single near-peer military threat to the USA, and has publicly announced its intentions to equal or surpass it in all capabilities by 2050. Which suggests they don’t feel it necessary to pretend they aren’t there yet. So why the ramping up of incidents, public or not? As Steve is wont to say, all we have are tea leaves.

Edited February 4, 2023 by NamEndedAllen
WONT! Spellcheck changed it to “won’t”

[danfrodo]

Our friends at tank encyclopedia have a new video that emphasizes how arty & IFVs are probably more important than the tanks being sent.  Forum has known this for a while but nice to see the thinking condensed here.  Tank encyclopedia is my go-to whenever I am playing CM and there's an armored vehicle I don't know enough about. 

RU probably looking to do (relatively) massed infantry attacks over the next couple months and having a nice IFV in rapid-mobile support would make all the difference in the world to the poor schmucks trying to hold a trench.  Beats the heck out of pickup trucks.  A bunch of 20/30/40mm shells fired from a protected platform should dissuade mobiks who venture too far forward.

 

 

Edited February 4, 2023 by danfrodo
edit: the tank enc guys think most of the AFVs will be put into NATO-gear units that won't see action anytime soon. But lots more lighter AFVs are what the frontlines would see over next couple months. So lots of 50 cals on various AFVs but not the IFVs

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Interesting thread about corruption in the Russian army on example of one (ugly as hell...) tracked vehicle:

 

Pre production prototype

 

[Beleg85]

https://wavellroom.com/2023/02/01/anatomy-of-a-russian-army-village-assault/

An article about Russian preparations for one small-scale BTG action, from summer months but worth reading. Limitations in communication seem deadly to BTG as a concept; it's curious if Russians improved it by now, using much larger assault formations near Vuhledar.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Beleg85

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Pretty sure the Chinese were and are well aware of that. Have to think at this stage that we on the outside of DIA and the rest, have very little knowledge of the Chinese intentions with this and the other increased and highly visible surveillance episodes over the past year or more. They’ve swarmed naval assets in the Pacific with drones, sometimes rather close in to the Coast. They’ve had a series of Intel balloons over sensitive sites in the Pacific. I’d bet there are more incidents not public. This aerial surveillance device is a new generation not publicly seen before. What the stepped up non-satellite, unmanned naval/air layer of their Intel collecting means is unknown. Might be triggered by the increasing military and policy talk about the likelihood  “war with China”, potential Taiwan invasion concerns due to new USA focus on Ukraine. But we don’t know. 
 

The only thing we do know is that China is the single near-peer military threat to the USA, and has publicly announced its intentions to equal or surpass it in all capabilities by 2050. Which suggests they don’t feel it necessary to pretend they aren’t there yet. So why the ramping up of incidents, public or not? As Steve is wont to say, all we have are tea leaves.

I argue that this, if it was a surveillance platform, was a pretty big mistake, not some deliberate strategic machinations by the unknowable Chinese grand strategy.  Sure Chinese have been poking and prodding, intel gathering and playing reindeer games around the globe, so were the Russians...we get it, you guys are flexing.

But this stunt is way above a lot of thresholds.  An incursion into NA airspace with intent (assuming the thing isn't just a weather balloon and all this is so much theatre) is not a small escalation.  Further to do it with a blatantly overt platform, which is now causing all sorts of diplomatic pain does not track along with Chinese methods to date. 

So it looks more like a weird error that is going to end up costing China, as their best play was - like Russia - to keep us all divided on the actual threat.  For example, China is still Canada's second largest trading partner.  So we talk tough and make noise but how much are we really willing to sacrifice here if we are not entirely convinced China is really a threat?  Well plopping balloons all over the place over NA soil, which we shoot down and then show all the evidence to the planet, is just about the worst way to keep us divided on the issue.  So China either decided to throw down and escalate for "reasons" or it was an embarrassing screwup. 

Edited February 4, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

A potentially crippling national...nay, continental security crisis.  And we have to ask ourselves...how long before Chinese-made balloons swarm over the Ukrainian border?  (Actually as a stand-off operational platform they start to make a lot more sense.) 

I have repeatedly asked people if there is some sort of tethered balloon that could get the Ukrainians some sort of airborne early warning radar, but there just doesn't seem to be anything ready for prime time.

14 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

https://wavellroom.com/2023/02/01/anatomy-of-a-russian-army-village-assault/

An article about Russian preparations for one small-scale BTG action, from summer months but worth reading. Limitations in communication seem deadly to BTG as a concept; it's curious if Russians improved it by now, using much larger assault formations near Vuhledar.

If the assault Vuhledar is the new and improved version of the Russian army?! Then this war is going to be over in August, and not with a Russian victory.

[NamEndedAllen]

28 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I argue that this, if it was a surveillance platform, was a pretty big mistake, not some deliberate strategic machinations by the unknowable Chinese grand strategy.  Sure Chinese have been poking and prodding, intel gathering and playing reindeer games around the globe, so were the Russians...we get it, you guys are flexing.

But this stunt is way above a lot of thresholds.  An incursion into NA airspace with intent (assuming the thing isn't just a weather balloon and all this is so much theatre) is not a small escalation.  Further to do it with a blatantly overt platform, which is now causing all sorts of diplomatic pain does not track along with Chinese methods to date. 

So it looks more like a weird error that is going to end up costing China, as their best play was - like Russia - to keep us all divided on the actual threat.  For example, China is still Canada's second largest trading partner.  So we talk tough and make noise but how much are we really willing to sacrifice here if we are not entirely convinced China is really a threat?  Well plopping balloons all over the place over NA soil, which we shoot down and then show all the evidence to the planet, is just about the worst way to keep us divided on the issue.  So China either decided to throw down and escalate for "reasons" or it was an embarrassing screwup. 

Those are good points, and plausible. The atmospheric currents where it is operating could well have  interfered with a much less aggressive mission. I do think it is worth keeping an open mind about this one - both for your take, and for other versions. The simultaneous appearance of another one over Latin America, reported in multiple sources, plus the track of the North American one seem notable. No matter what, meteorological, weather, airstream data is of course of military value. 
 

Nonetheless, your interpretation as an accident is reasonable both for how bizarrely visible and for the political timing. The Chinese have not been proceeding like unintelligible idiots. So either an honest accident, or something got their backs up enough to believe they actually needed to do this for some value we don’t see.

[Beleg85]

41 minutes ago, dan/california said:

If the assault Vuhledar is the new and improved version of the Russian army?! Then this war is going to be over in August, and not with a Russian victory.

This should also help...

During last half of the year we witnessed visible, gradual improvement in small drone warfare on Ukrainian side, in terms of paylaod, tactics and crucially amount of available pieces. It is quite possible at the end of the conflict explosive-wielding quadrocopters will not be only nuissance for single enemy positions and vehicles but truly a weapon system used to blunt even larger attacks. Last videos from Vuhledar showed something like that- copters blowing vehcles and infantry belonging to what looked like reinforced muscovite mechanized platoon. One analysts here wrote several weeks ago that Ukrainians work on coordinating and developing such larger, pioneering "drone-assault" tactics by amassing drone operators in those separate units, joined by apps of their own design. No longer 3-men teams, but entire platoons with theoretically tactical potential.

 

On another nore, interesting article in Guardian about Ukrainian saboteurs from controversial Korchynsky's "Bratstvo" battalion (folks killed in ambush in Russia belonged to this group); unfortunatelly unverifiable but seems largely legit:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/04/ukraine-special-forces-russia-border

Edited February 5, 2023 by Beleg85

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Those are good points, and plausible. The atmospheric currents where it is operating could well have  interfered with a much less aggressive mission. I do think it is worth keeping an open mind about this one - both for your take, and for other versions. The simultaneous appearance of another one over Latin America, reported in multiple sources, plus the track of the North American one seem notable. No matter what, meteorological, weather, airstream data is of course of military value. 
 

Nonetheless, your interpretation as an accident is reasonable both for how bizarrely visible and for the political timing. The Chinese have not been proceeding like unintelligible idiots. So either an honest accident, or something got their backs up enough to believe they actually needed to do this for some value we don’t see.

Well I can only hope they are not smoking the same stuff as Russia.  I would not have pegged Russia as dumb enough to engage in a land war in Europe when they had been so successful on the subversive front…yet here we are.  

[kevinkin]

Technical error or trolling America by design. If an honest mistake there are channels by which to inform the world.  If trolling the America, Superbowl week would be better. If honest mistake, maybe they were embarrassed and mum was the word. So, "lets just take advantage of what we have in front of us"; mums the word while watching America's reaction inside and outside the beltway. Sort of a combination of both in the end. With plenty of time for a SNL skit. John Belushi in a duck hunter's cap etc..

 

 

 

[chrisl]

18 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Technical error or trolling America by design. If an honest mistake there are channels by which to inform the world.  If trolling the America, Superbowl week would be better. If honest mistake, maybe they were embarrassed and mum was the word. So, "lets just take advantage of what we have in front of us"; mums the word while watching America's reaction inside and outside the beltway. Sort of a combination of both in the end. With plenty of time for a SNL skit. John Belushi in a duck hunter's cap etc..

I think the main argument against technical error is that people who launch those kind of balloons generally build in a mechanism to vent the envelope and/or drop the payload if it starts to go out of planned bounds.  The US has a few ranges in North America as well as arctic and antarctic.  There are scientific ballon flights that go for weeks or even months travel across or around Antarctica, but if they went anyplace where they were a hazard I'd expect a) whoever controlled the airspace they're entering to be warned and b) them to get dropped if they were likely to become a hazard.

[The_Capt]

11 minutes ago, chrisl said:

I think the main argument against technical error is that people who launch those kind of balloons generally build in a mechanism to vent the envelope and/or drop the payload if it starts to go out of planned bounds.  The US has a few ranges in North America as well as arctic and antarctic.  There are scientific ballon flights that go for weeks or even months travel across or around Antarctica, but if they went anyplace where they were a hazard I'd expect a) whoever controlled the airspace they're entering to be warned and b) them to get dropped if they were likely to become a hazard.

Unless they lost contact/control.  The manoeuvring of these things is actually quite sophisticated so this one basically drifting speaks to a loss of control.  Unless the Chinese built in a fail safe (which can also fail) then we are back to…

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by The_Capt

[chrisl]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

Unless they lost contact/control.  The manoeuvring of these things is actually quite sophisticated so this one basically drifting speaks to a loss of control.  Unless the Chinese built in a fail safe (which can also fail) then we are back to…

 

If a fail safe fails into an unsafe state it's not a fail safe...

But that's a major screw up to not be able to drop the balloon and have it go over a foreign country with which you have a slightly tense political relationship.  And then not warn them in advance and provide instructions for them to try to bring it down before it drifts over half a continent.

[kevinkin]

If intentional, would China allow anything of value fall into the US hands? I mean the NTSB can put fragments of a/c back together and I did not see a fire in the video. Maybe there was a fire. I think the balloon was benign technically. So the only intentional thing is a big middle finger to the US. Why not. It took a ground based citizen to alert the media. The government was silent. Cat and mouse game. But who is who in this bizarre news story. Certainly the initiative (for what's its worth) was in China's hands on this one and I bet they like that. 

Edited February 5, 2023 by kevinkin

[MikeyD]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

I have repeatedly asked people if there is some sort of tethered balloon that could get the Ukrainians some sort of airborne early warning radar, but there just doesn't seem to be anything ready for prime time

I flashed on an old memory. When Iraq invaded Kuwait Aug 2 1990 the Kuwaiti royal family was able to escape because a tethered balloon surveillance system had given them forewarning of the approaching Iraqis. 

[chrisl]

Also curious that the balloon didn't seem to have a parachute.  The conventional (and fail resistant) way to deploy parachutes on those type of balloons is just to hang the payload by the parachute with an attach point at the top center of the chute. Once the balloon is separated, the package starts to fall and the chute opens.  Even with the remnants of the envelope attached you'd at least expect to see the chute flail around, even if the flapping envelope prevented proper inflation.  Here's pictures that include the full chain of a long duration antarctic ballon.  You have to scroll down a ways, and there's both pictures and a diagram after the lift/separation chain.

[sburke]

there is only one way to reply to China.  Float our own balloon over Shanghai.