How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Sounds to me like lots of indifferently trained men under tremendoous stress walking or scrambling around -- maybe even being herded at gunpoint -- at night in shattered, rubbish filled, unknown no-mans land.

...Guys, this tactical problem was SOLVED -- or rendered massively more costly for the Stosstruppen -- over a century ago, with AP landmines. Blow off some legs, alerting everyone and driving the rest to ground, then plaster them with whatever is handy (rifle grenades, mortars, 155mm). Next wave faces the exact same problem in the exact same spot.

Post-Vietnam FASCAM and Bloc-equivalent air and artillery cluster munitions scattered across enemy tactical axes of advance (and in CI situations, supply lines) was a useful and highly lethal improvement, although leaving a deadly legacy for postwar populations (as noted). 

Sure, not a panacea, but it freeking helps.

So it's either Western norms fairy (sans total air superiority, for now), or the lives of your bravest sons, plus still more of your country churned into a wasteland.

I think it's a bit in the middle; I do know that if I was Ukrainian in a trench to be overran by Russians I'd have no qualms at all about AP mining the heck of it. If HQ worries about it they can order an artillery strike on it tomorrow and call it 'command detonation'. 

However how serious do we take ourselves if our policy makers go 'boooh evil' when side X does it, while keeping their mouth shut when side Y does it because we like them better? 

I don't know how effective mining large swaths of land are though. They probably get bypassed and may in the future well be an obstacle for your own troops or people.

[Lethaface]

16 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Sound thinking too. We have a lot to catch up and perhaps less time than we hope. Ukraine will get all it needs to beat those bastards, of that I'm convinced.

I hope so, cooperating towards the common goal seems key at least.
If all the bickering would be maskirovka to have the Russians think we are still the same while silently setting up a vast support network / defense cooperation that would be a great ploy. I know some people here who have the opinion that's happening on a significant scale, but I'm not so sure about that. 

[Lethaface]

11 minutes ago, Tenses said:

As a Pole, I can also confirm this. Democracies around the World needs to change in order tu survive. And the problem is as old as any goverment - too much power. From absolutism, through monarchy up to democratic republic there are just some things, which should be not allowed even with having majority in place. Good constitution can probably take care of it but the problems described in it should be taken seriously.

In regard to PL, I can only say that it is not any more uniform than other countries so current goverment doesn't have that much support as it might be looking like from abroad. And hopefully this will at least partially change in the nearest future.  

We all have similar problems. Not even that much % of votes would have mean the Le Pen, Wilders or other 'bright lights' would be in power now. 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

Btw. in this war we still did not see a single full encirclement on any side yet.

Mariupol.

[LongLeftFlank]

34 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

A different thread I think, but by the same guy.

You're not talking about.... the infamous CMRT 'Haiku thread', are you?

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, Zeleban said:

think so too. Based on the information of this volunteer, it is not Russia that is engaged in wave attacks on our positions, but rather Ukraine.

How about the failed counterattack of 46 Mech Bde against Soledar? This side of the border it was extensively discussed and the tone of the reports was "it was not so bad after all" which usually means that the thing under discussion was pretty bad

[Maciej Zwolinski]

28 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

However how serious do we take ourselves if our policy makers go 'boooh evil' when side X does it, while keeping their mouth shut when side Y does it because we like them better? 

But why planting landmines would be an evil in itself? I am scratching my head and I am utterly flabbergasted by this sentiment

[Lethaface]

FWIW Dutch think tanks about the new offensive:

'They think Bakhmut will fall in a couple of weeks, but that Ukraine is turning it into a sort of Mariupol. But they don't think the Russians can do much more than that, Donetsk is too large. Maybe some feint attacks around Zaporizja, while the main goals will be Slovjanks and Kramatorsk. Which would be a big loss for Ukraine. But they expect Russia's attack to culminate in an Ukrainian offensive, when the Russian attacking troops have lost most of their combat power. Just like in August.' 

https://nos.nl/artikel/2463156-nieuw-russisch-offensief-in-oekraine-lijkt-begonnen-ze-duwen-op-alle-fronten

While in general these think tanks are of decent to good quality (depends on the subject/person), they were mostly wrong about the war in the beginning like the other think tanks. Although they have been getting informed better and better since mid 2022.

[Lethaface]

4 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

But why planting landmines would be an evil in itself? I am scratching my head and I am utterly flabbergasted by this sentiment

https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/faq/mines-fac-cartagena-021109.htm#:~:text=What is an anti-personnel,civilian man%2C woman or child.

I guess because no matter the intent, a mine will not make a difference between a child stepping on it vs an enemy combatant. AP mines are meant to maim and are rather good at their job. Angola, Cambodja, experiences like those have lead to the sentiment.

Edit: for Angola in 1995 there were 70.000 civilians killed (and as much wounded) from mines after the war ended. 20 years after the war still 20 people died on a daily basis because of the mines. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Lethaface

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

I don't think the fighter/bomber is any deader than the tank (and probably less), but it's subject to the same kind of conditions as the future of tanks.  The biggest is that it depends on asymmetry of technology and doctrine.  The jets and aerodynamics are pretty mature all around, but attack aircraft are part of a system, just like tanks are part of a system.  NATO/US don't just send fancy fighter/bombers off on their own - there are a ton of support systems, starting with the satellite ISR, then GlobalHawlks, and the various B707 based radar and command systems. E-3 for airborne monitoring and traffic control, the E-8 JSTARS to monitor things on the ground, EA-18s for SEAD, and so on.  They're all part of an interconnected system that makes it possible to reach out and touch someone with as little risk as possible to the guys driving them around.  Just like you can't just load up a bunch of M1 tanks on trains and ship them into Ukraine and expect them to be effective, you can't just drop off a bunch of F-35s (or F-15s, F-16s, or FA-18s, Typhoons, etc) without all the stuff that helps them do the things they do.  But if you have that whole set of toys and the doctrine to suppress the defenses around a volume of space, you can then use that space to deliver very high precision pain.

So the system you describe, like the tank (or heavy mass), appears to be having parts of that system critically impacted by changes on the battlefield.  The big one appears to be SEAD.  Modern SEAD is designed for an integrated AD network, these are pretty large enterprises that have to be penetrated and suppressed.  And then an opponents air power has to be countered both in the air and in depth (eg airfields).

But the issue is that AD is distributing and dispersing, and so is C4ISR.  So the best SEAD systems in the world, like the best tank systems in the world, cannot solve for 2 man teams armed with very long range fire and forget lethal systems using passive targeting sensors.  What we are seeing in Ukraine is massive air denial - which basically equates to both sides denying entry costs into airspace.  And they are both doing it through a lot of dispersed AD.  Now the UA are also plugged into a massive C4ISR architecture that can detect Russian fighter/bombers from take-off in Russia, which gives them time to react and pre-position AD, further complicating the air problem.

In the future cheap highly effective AD technology is going to jump on the unmanned bandwagon.  C4ISR is going to look like a massive cloud that goes from space to sub-surface.  So, like tanks, large centralized air power systems are going to become very vulnerable largely because they are highly visible.  And as you note, not just the front end, but the entire air power system (e.g. refeulers).  This will likely push the older larger manned platforms further back, much like we are seeing in both sides of this conflict.  At that point air platforms are essentially firing munitions from stand-off.  Now these can be precision munitions, but at these ranges they are basically competing with ground based deep precision fires which are much, much cheaper.  

Like mass on the ground, mass in the air will likely need to disaggregate and become more dependent on many-small-unmanned systems where the platform becomes a munition in itself.  Like the tanks, we will likely spend billions trying to figure out how to protect these legacy systems to the point they become so expensive and limited that we simply move on.

Right now, opponents of the western world are taking notes and if you have a spare bit of change invest in air denial technology/industry because it is going to be insane after this war.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

59 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I have a 350 page compendium of excerpted posts on historical WW2 strategy, operations and tactics, heavily JasonC but also Andreas and many others.

Would you mind sharing it somehow?

[LongLeftFlank]

37 minutes ago, Seminole said:

Burns diplomatic cable in 2008 is as pertinent as ever.  

The idea that NATO expansion wouldn’t cause what everyone predicted it did is weird revisionism.  
 

NATO expansion has served the neocons purpose.  Russia felt threatened and has ‘growled and shown her teeth’.  
 

Who (besides everybody) could have seen this coming?

Yes, and poor Imperial Japan was just nicely minding its own busines, rampaging across China, raping Nanking, cutting down all the trees in Korea, fortifying the entire ex-German Pacific islands mandate. Co-Prosperity Sphere, you know.

...and mean old Roosevelt needlessly provoked them with his metals and oil embargo, like a literal dagger to the throat of an oil poor maritime power I tell you!

I mean, what else could they do? but rampage across the entire Pacific, mass-murdering civilians by the bucketload?

Bring better arguments than drive-by Carlson/Buchanan retweets, mate. Otherwise, The American Conservative is over there.....

[Maciej Zwolinski]

2 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

I guess because no matter the intent, a mine will not make a difference between a child stepping on it vs an enemy combatant. AP mines are meant to maim and are rather good at their job. Angola, Cambodja, experiences like those have lead to the sentiment.

Ukraine is not Cambodia or Angola, and will have to clean up their country anyway. Their own soil. On which their own people walk.  From Russian AP mines, no less. What Angola has to do with anything? Why not give them the choice between using land mines and risking collateral damage and losing military advantage and risking Russian occupation and attrocities?

OK, I give up - this must be a Western thing. I guess Russian agents did as good a job infiltrating humanitarian organisations in the West, as they did with the ones pushing unilateral nuclear disarmament and giving up  nuclear energy generation.

[Bulletpoint]

21 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

You're not talking about.... the infamous CMRT 'Haiku thread', are you?

 

No, but I found it:

 

A bit confused about your memes at times by the way

 

[Beleg85]

22 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Mariupol.

Well yeah, but they were bound to the city anyway and did not wanted to leave it at any cost. and this was early time in war, nobody really knew what to expect. Add treason at the top of that.

[Zeleban]

15 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

How about the failed counterattack of 46 Mech Bde against Soledar? This side of the border it was extensively discussed and the tone of the reports was "it was not so bad after all" which usually means that the thing under discussion was pretty bad

Heard nothing about it. I know that the 46th brigade was sent on rotation to replace the troops defending Soledar. But I haven't heard anything about Ukrainian counterattacks under Soledar

[Bulletpoint]

Just now, Maciej Zwolinski said:

OK, I give up - this must be a Western thing. I guess Russian agents did as good a job infiltrating humanitarian organisations in the West, as they did with the ones pushing unilateral nuclear disarmament and giving up  nuclear energy generation.

Assuming you're Polish, your own country also voluntarily signed up to the mine ban treaty.

Poland destroyed all their mines in the stockpile in 2016, a full year before the deadline.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I am under no illusions about that, and I'm not saying world opinion would immediately turn against Ukraine if they started to use AP land mines.

It's just always a balancing act between their military usefulness and the diplomatic (and later demining) cost. So far, it seems Ukraine has decided that it's not worth it. There are now some allegations that Ukraine has used air delivered petal mines though.

When I comment about mines and cluster munitions here, it is not to "clutch pearls", but because I think it's interesting whether such a convention can be upheld in a full scale war.

And this war is a real hard test of the Mine Ban Treaty.

I am in the “no to AP mines”, “Yes to DPICM” camp.  The reason is cost versus gain.

Ukraine could simply withdraw from the Ottawa Convention and has some pretty good justification to do so, but they would take political hits.  These hits could impact post war, which is already going to be a careful navigational exercise.  The utility of AP mines is actually pretty limited, they were always more of a harassment device to add friction to your opponents operations.  Sure they would cause some attrition on RA forces but I think would be the political cost outweighing tactical gains.

DPICM are a different matter.  Ukraine in not a signatory of the Oslo Protocols, so we would basically be holding someone outside the agreement to our standards while they are fighting for their lives.  DPICM utility on the battlefield, especially when combined with C4ISR advantage is not small and can be decisive.  Further as ammo stocks of regular HE drop DPICM is a good substitute.  DPICM does come with risk of UXO but here careful recording and reporting comes into mitigate.  That and the areas that they would be employed are already likely heavily polluted by UXO already.

[Bearstronaut]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

After some threshhold the qauantity transforms to quality. Our soldiers describes Wagners attacks like zerg-rash. These are not "human waves" in usual sence. They attacks with small assault groups from different directions, infiltrate, wear UKR uniform and they do this continuously. You just have foled attack of one group, but since some time already another come from other direction.

 

It kind of amuses me to imagine future historians writing about this war and having to write a footnote to their readers to describe what a "Zerg" is. 

*A Zerg is a fictional alien species from a computer game popular in the late 1990s known for attacking in suicidal wave attacks and ignoring casualties.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

10 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

Heard nothing about it. I know that the 46th brigade was sent on rotation to replace the troops defending Soledar. But I haven't heard anything about Ukrainian counterattacks under Soledar

Can you handle Polish? Around 12 minute mark. The guy is an anti-linguist though, he mangles Ukrainian names something terrible - sorry

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

10 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

ssuming you're Polish, your own country also voluntarily signed up to the mine ban treaty.

Poland destroyed all their mines in the stockpile in 2016, a full year before the deadline.

And I have not stopped ranting at this rank stupidity ever since. 

[Lethaface]

10 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Ukraine is not Cambodia or Angola, and will have to clean up their country anyway. Their own soil. On which their own people walk.  From Russian AP mines, no less. What Angola has to do with anything? Why not give them the choice between using land mines and risking collateral damage and losing military advantage and risking Russian occupation and attrocities?

OK, I give up - this must be a Western thing. I guess Russian agents did as good a job infiltrating humanitarian organisations in the West, as they did with the ones pushing unilateral nuclear disarmament and giving up  nuclear energy generation.

LoL not everything you fail to grasp is an achievement by Russian agents or a 'Western thing'. What's not to understand, because of these things and the horrible deaths people decided it would be better to not use them ever again and tried to get that into a treaty. 

Whether you or I agree with the sentiment is another question.

Yes there are some groups who got money from Russia, knowingly or not. But not all 'humanitarian groups' are Russian proxies. Maybe give me some of the stuff you smoke

There's 106 nuclear reactors in the EU. I for one think Nuclear energy should be part of the mix. But we are dwelling off.

[Lethaface]

PS @Maciej Zwolinski it's not a western thing, your country seems to be infiltrated by Russian agents as well lol https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ottawasigs

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, Lethaface said:

Maybe give me some of the stuff you smoke

When the Dutch guy is asking for some of what you're smoking, it must be good stuff

[Maciej Zwolinski]

17 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

When the Dutch guy is asking for some of what you're smoking, it must be good stuff

I have smoked some of the Russian ones.