How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[BletchleyGeek]

4 hours ago, Fernando said:

1. Any Spaniard knows Alentejo is not Spain, but Portugal. 
2. We would see if Morocco could take both cities. Some people also thought that Russia could occupy Ukraine in less than a month.

My bad, I should have written "Iberian Peninsula". After ten years away maybe I am becoming something of an interpolation between nationalities.

[NamEndedAllen]

44 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Desertion = 10 years !?

We have "life" on the books:

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-5/page-11.html#:~:text=Conviction of Cognate Offence&text=133 (1) A person charged,of being absent without leave.&text=(2) A person charged with,of being absent without leave.

Covers much more than desertion. It’s an interesting article covering the challenges of discipline in a hastily expanded army from 250 thousand to over a million in a matter of months. Little vetting of recruits due to time pressures. Sustained war fighting bringing more problems than equipment and strategy/tactics. Some guys avoiding any punishment by paying a sum (to who? Commanding officer?). Others dealt with formally. All sorts of discipline issues. Questioning orders, drunkenness, etc. Of course there is push back, not all entirely unwarranted. “The new punitive rules remove discretion and turn courts into a “calculator” for doling out punishment to soldiers, regardless of the reasons for their offenses, lawyer Anton Didenko argued in a column on Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.” Not surprisingly, not all commanders are especially qualified, and cause some of the issues 

And: Zelenskyy, in his response to the popular petition asking him to scrap the changes, agreed that disciplinary action against military personnel should take into account their individual circumstances, and promised that the cabinet of ministers would further consider how to improve the disciplinary mechanism — though he did not specify when this work might be done; nor suspend the law in the meantime.”

And:

“… many discipline problems are rooted in ineffective or careless command, as well as the strain placed on Kyiv’s forces battling a far larger army of invaders, meaning they are not rotated as often as they ought to be.

“Fatigue and trauma lead to mental disorders, and bring chaos, negligence and even depravity into a soldier’s life. This strongly affects fighting qualities and obedience,” the officer said.”

 

[billbindc]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/world/asia/china-spy-balloon.html

I suspect the spy balloon is less the cause of U.S. China problems than symptom of them. Relations are not happy and getting worse as Billbindc has alluded recently.

Not sure if I've talked about the larger picture but as I see it, China expected Russia to roll over Ukraine and calculated that Taiwan would have been something like a fait accompli thereafter...particularly as there's going to be pretty big window of opportunity in 5 years or so when China will enjoy a bit of a force mismatch as the US coalition belatedly catches up. Instead, Russia muffed it and the West turned out to be much less of a paper tiger than expected. 

So China is in a strange place. As Hal Brands and William Imboden have posited, China is at a peak moment. It will get relatively stronger for a half a decade and then begin a slowish relative decline as demographics, economics and military preparation of potential opponents gets better. And it's been stumbling badly in its quest for hegemony (i.e. AU subs, Japan arming, Philippine bases, etc). 

Xi's response was to try and dial things back with the US for now and seek to wedge as a counter balance for European countries against overweening American political power and economic pressures. Just as that was getting into full swing, the PLA's 3rd Department dropped a huge turd in the bowl. I'm not so sure that's a symptom.  It looks to me more like there is an internal reaction from the Chinese military to burn any attempt of rapprochement before it gets traction. We'll see.

[The_MonkeyKing]

starting to see the effect of this week's offensives in the Oryx data as well:
https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine

 

[Haiduk]

11 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Because UKR lines are mostly static

In this war positions mostly changed dynamically and continuously. The chain of small positions in tree-plants on in the village yards, which small groups of defenders changes continuously. If you will sit on one place too long time, consider you are dead. Sooner or later artillery or tank will deal with you. Large entrenched strongpoints as I understand mostly used like close-rear "fortresses of last hope". They are big attractive targets to arty and aviation,so when the "thin red line" of small positions are lost, the fate of strongpoints is predicted. We had enough fortified positions near Kurdiumivka and Klishchiivka, but they were taken by continuous air and arty strikes + zerg-rashes. 

[NamEndedAllen]

12 minutes ago, billbindc said:

It looks to me more like there is an internal reaction from the Chinese military to burn any attempt of rapprochement before it gets traction. We'll see.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-shoots-down-new-object-flying-high-over-alaskan-waters

[The_MonkeyKing]

3 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-shoots-down-new-object-flying-high-over-alaskan-waters

This is a Ukraine thread

[Zeleban]

17 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

starting to see the effect of this week's offensives in the Oryx data as well:
https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine

 

Losses are clearly not 1:1

[Beleg85]

3 hours ago, Lethaface said:

And how DE supposedly 'pressuring' US into delivering tanks is a reason for PL to order 500 HIMARS.

No, I explained it in pevious posts, you can check.

DE has enough gravity if it wants to even change US stance regarding big security reasons (green light for NS2, Abrams,just to tell the few). So if zeitewnweide is not that deep as we would like, i.e. it's temporary shift under pressure of circumstances (even some German commentators seem to think that's the case, however, it's frankly too early to tell), we will have even further security disturbances in Europe. Especially in the wake of China going potentially rogue in the near future, deepening the cooperation with them is here considered...well let's say odd. But I get it comes  simply from current German economic model, basing on cheap labour in third countries, cheap raw resources and export, which is difficult to sustain in changing global order.

Btw, coming back to European Union...the main issues with this entity is not some Central European country having temporary issues with judiciary and trasnparency -brexit was many times more greater problem, and Poland stance is damaging mainly PL itself- it is rightly under yoke of mechanisms it agreed on, which will create precednece for future. HUN is actually much worse in this regard, as Orban is opportunist and not idealist like Kaczyński, so he can't be that easily hooked.

Real problems are:

-Lack of decisivness as to common European identity- welcome into human anthropology, where we prefer local and concrete rather than distant and superfluus.

-Fedarationists vs. "nationalists"- how EU should work internally. People don't like when decisions are made 1200kms away by some beurocrats who don't even speak their langauge.

-Different peeception as to dangers among various members (Hungary vs. Poland vs. Germany vs. France etc.)- who is ok to make interest with, who okayish but stay "safe", and to who is legitimate bad boy of international system. We widely differ in these assessments.

-And foremost- we are not mature enough geostrategically and need constant pushing by "older brother" from behind the Great Water. And this is really - as a European (gosh, how it sounds...)- genuinly embarassing fact.

Without USA, this continent would soon look like post-westphalian world but with nukes:

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[The_MonkeyKing]

5 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

Losses are clearly not 1:1

yeah, yesterday's photo confirmed loss data ratio was 69:4

[Beleg85]

In the night Russians attempted boat drone attack on Odessa Bay bridge. They seems to learn how to use them, however the same bridge was already hit by several kalibrs and still stands:

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[CAZmaj]

Ok, maybe some good points but still too little done:

MESSAGE TO THE WORLD FROM INSIDE A RUSSIAN PRISON 
BY ILYA YASHIN FEBRUARY 10, 2023 4:00 AM EST

Yashin is a Russian dissident and political activist. After condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was arrested in 2022 and is currently serving an 8.5-year prison sentence.

Soon it’ll be a year since the start of the war that the Kremlin unleashed against Ukraine. It has taken thousands of human lives, destroyed entire cities, and turned millions of families into refugees. Vladimir Putin, as the one responsible for this tragedy, has become a true symbol of evil, cursed around the world. But it also seems that, more and more often, the Russian people are treated as enemies. The main claim against the Russians: You did not resist the aggressive policies of your government, and that makes you accomplices to crimes of war.

My name is Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition politician, whom the Kremlin has kept in prison since the middle of last summer. I’ve been sentenced to 8.5 years of incarceration, because I publicly spoke out against the war in Ukraine. But today I want to say a few words in defense of my nation.

First: We did resist. Since the start of the war and throughout 2022, the police in Russia arrested almost 20,000 opponents of the war. According to human rights groups, protests have taken place almost every day in different cities since February 24, 2022, and only 18 of those days have passed without arrests and detentions. Against this background, we have seen astonishing examples of civil courage. For instance, Vladimir Rumyantsev, a provincial fireman, got three years in prison for building a ham radio to broadcast reports against the war, while Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Moscow city council, got seven years after he called for a minute of silence during a meeting of that chamber to honor the Ukrainian children who had been killed.

Second: People are fleeing from Putin. In the past year, around 700,000 citizens have left Russia. The majority of them have emigrated, not wanting to be involved in military aggression. I want to draw attention to the fact that this is twice as many people left the country than were drafted into the army. Sure, you could probably blame those who chose to escape instead of choosing the path of resistance, prison, and torture. But the fact is that hundreds of thousands of my countrymen left their homes behind, having refused to become killers on the orders of the government.

Third: Those who remain in Russia are living with the rights of hostages. Many of them don’t support the war, but they remain silent, afraid of repressions. But the silence of a hostage who has a terrorist’s gun to his head does not make him an accomplice to the terrorist.

I want to appeal to the wisdom of the international community. Do not demean the Russians, as that kind of rhetoric will only strengthen Putin’s power. By shifting the blame for war crimes from the Kremlin junta onto my fellow citizens, you are easing the Putin regime’s moral and political burden. You are giving him a chance to hide from the just accusations of people who have in essence become a human shield in this situation. I see that as a serious mistake.

Putin has brought enormous suffering to the Ukrainian people. But with this barbaric war he is also killing my country—Russia. I believe that Russians can become allies of the free world in resisting this tyrant. Just extend a hand to my fellow citizens.

-Ilya Yashin

Detention Center No. 1, Udmurtiya, Russia

 

https://time.com/6254450/ilya-yashin-a-message-to-the-world-from-inside-a-russian-prison/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc&utm_campaign=newsletter+brief+default+ac&utm_content=+++20230210+++body&et_rid=206404041&lctg=206404041

 

[chuckdyke]

7 hours ago, Tenses said:

Democracies around the World needs to change in order tu survive.

It is a circle. Tyranny, Democracy, Anarchy Back to Tyranny. In my opinion you discuss the phase of Democracy to Anarchy which is the excuse Tyrannies uses to justify their position and perpetuate their power.

[chuckdyke]

7 hours ago, Seminole said:

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

Tyrannies know that their system will eventually be replaced by a democracy. Everything is only temporary.

[Beleg85]

https://twitter.com/LachowskiMateus/status/1624150957746450433

M.Lachowski, from Bakhmut, broadcasting 2kms from fronltine:

- Russians spread fakes city is sorrounded. UA did several counterattacks and stabilized front near Krasne. Unfortunatelly few position south were taken.

- Enemy again gained visible artillery advantage. Ukrainians lack especially mortars and artillery shells. Katsaps are trying to correcting fire with drones now.

-However, Ukrainians are holding and very keen on holding the city. Fresh reinforcements are flowing into the town. Situation for now is very heavy, but still not critical.

[sburke]

25 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

Ok, maybe some good points but still too little done:

MESSAGE TO THE WORLD FROM INSIDE A RUSSIAN PRISON 
BY ILYA YASHIN FEBRUARY 10, 2023 4:00 AM EST

Yashin is a Russian dissident and political activist. After condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was arrested in 2022 and is currently serving an 8.5-year prison sentence.

Soon it’ll be a year since the start of the war that the Kremlin unleashed against Ukraine. It has taken thousands of human lives, destroyed entire cities, and turned millions of families into refugees. Vladimir Putin, as the one responsible for this tragedy, has become a true symbol of evil, cursed around the world. But it also seems that, more and more often, the Russian people are treated as enemies. The main claim against the Russians: You did not resist the aggressive policies of your government, and that makes you accomplices to crimes of war.

My name is Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition politician, whom the Kremlin has kept in prison since the middle of last summer. I’ve been sentenced to 8.5 years of incarceration, because I publicly spoke out against the war in Ukraine. But today I want to say a few words in defense of my nation.

First: We did resist. Since the start of the war and throughout 2022, the police in Russia arrested almost 20,000 opponents of the war. According to human rights groups, protests have taken place almost every day in different cities since February 24, 2022, and only 18 of those days have passed without arrests and detentions. Against this background, we have seen astonishing examples of civil courage. For instance, Vladimir Rumyantsev, a provincial fireman, got three years in prison for building a ham radio to broadcast reports against the war, while Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Moscow city council, got seven years after he called for a minute of silence during a meeting of that chamber to honor the Ukrainian children who had been killed.

Second: People are fleeing from Putin. In the past year, around 700,000 citizens have left Russia. The majority of them have emigrated, not wanting to be involved in military aggression. I want to draw attention to the fact that this is twice as many people left the country than were drafted into the army. Sure, you could probably blame those who chose to escape instead of choosing the path of resistance, prison, and torture. But the fact is that hundreds of thousands of my countrymen left their homes behind, having refused to become killers on the orders of the government.

Third: Those who remain in Russia are living with the rights of hostages. Many of them don’t support the war, but they remain silent, afraid of repressions. But the silence of a hostage who has a terrorist’s gun to his head does not make him an accomplice to the terrorist.

I want to appeal to the wisdom of the international community. Do not demean the Russians, as that kind of rhetoric will only strengthen Putin’s power. By shifting the blame for war crimes from the Kremlin junta onto my fellow citizens, you are easing the Putin regime’s moral and political burden. You are giving him a chance to hide from the just accusations of people who have in essence become a human shield in this situation. I see that as a serious mistake.

Putin has brought enormous suffering to the Ukrainian people. But with this barbaric war he is also killing my country—Russia. I believe that Russians can become allies of the free world in resisting this tyrant. Just extend a hand to my fellow citizens.

-Ilya Yashin

Detention Center No. 1, Udmurtiya, Russia

 

https://time.com/6254450/ilya-yashin-a-message-to-the-world-from-inside-a-russian-prison/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc&utm_campaign=newsletter+brief+default+ac&utm_content=+++20230210+++body&et_rid=206404041&lctg=206404041

 

The Black panther party and civil rights movements faced more gov't repression than these guys.  Sorry, cry me a river.  Putin wasn't raping and murdering civilians in Bucha.  The mass of Russian citizens has vocally supported a host of atrocities.  When I see armed resistance, worker strikes and direct actions by the Russian people in opposition to the war then I'll start making a distinction between Russians and their gov't.

[The_Capt]

39 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

yeah, yesterday's photo confirmed loss data ratio was 69:4

What is stark here is the level of RA operational level assets being lost.  Stuff like satellite comms, EW, engineering and CPs.  That stuff is supposed to be well in the back most of the time.  Either they got unlucky pulling this stuff forward (and why anyone would need to push a sat comms veh forward is beyond me), or the deep strike game is still playing out.  Lotta guns on the RA side too.

The UA lost a few trucks and maintenance workshop (which actually hurts a lot) but the rest is F ech stuff which is supposed to get broke.

[LongLeftFlank]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Don't oversell AP landmines here. Having been in minefields and witnessed some of the carnage you describe personally - and a lot of years as a combat engineer, I think I can play the "expert" card here.

AP landmines were always designed to harass and attrit - both physically and psychologically.  The only ones that were approaching lethality level to be decisive are area systems like claymore or bounding mines (especially when in daisy chain...nasty).  So their utility in warfare is not zero but it is also 1) upside down and 2) backwards:

Upside down - like most engineer obstacles you are trading work for time.  A LOT of work up front to buy a few seconds minutes later.  Making those minutes second count is what all arms defence is all about.  AP mine as part of that overall system is a very junior player in the modern age.  The vast majority of AP mines simply are never detonated.  They do support force multiplication but pale in comparison to AT systems.  Main reason is that mechanized made modern warfare - we will see how long that lasts - so kill the vehicle and a modern army is back to WW1.  AP mines were there to make clearance of those AT mines difficult and to kill engineers.  In some conditions they were still used for final defence, but in order to really have an effect you have to employ a very high density.  Go read on the Falklands War accounts of the final attacks on the Two Sisters.  The Brits hit minefields on the assault, took hits and just kept on going.  So as the modern era progressed the amount of effort to put out enough density in AP became entirely secondary to the AT problem.  Back in training, before the Ottawa Convention, we would plan for a lone single strip in a massive AT minefield that was frankly an enormous pain in the a@@ and did basically nothing.  We did employ them for nuisance minefields but these were last on the priority list of engineer works.  AT, AT and AT was always the priority. 

So the value of AP outside of very narrow circumstances really began to drop to the point that when the landmine ban came up, we kind looked at it and went "meh".  We still retain the command detonated point defence systems, like Claymores, so the ability really mess people up is still there.  And boobytraps/anti-handling devices exist in a grey area so if we need to deny critical systems in a withdrawal scenario we still could.  The old AP mines - "toe poopers" - really kind became old-school extra work that we really did not miss.

Backwards - The other problem with the old dumb AP mines was the fact that they killed/injured more people after the war than they did in the war itself.  This drove the costs of these systems way outside the battlefield gains.  Cambodia was really the eye opener, and then the Balkans, Afghanistan etc.  We saw that the post-war impact was like GDP-level harming - the cost of removing these weapons, especially if they records are lost or never made, was orders of magnitude of the weapon system itself.  So from a military strategic perspective these were literally cutting off the nose to spite the face.  They were never going to be decisive on the battlefield, and the post-war costs were enormous as we were seeing large swaths of agriculture, tourism and development areas were totally denied for at least a century unless a nation in post-war recovery could spend millions on clearances that would take years. 

So frankly, AP mines do not make warfare economic sense.  They may feel good but Ukraine sticking its neck out on this one is not worth it.  They will kill a few more Russians, but not enough to balance the blowback or post-war impacts.  The RA has demonstrated a stunning ability to feed people into this thing, so they are simply going to ignore any AP minefields, accept the casualties and move on.

DPICM is fundamentally a very different problem.  The issue here is the "peace community" really functions by fund raising and to do that they need "wins".  The AP Convention was a big win, so they were searching for a high profile follow up - enter Lebanon 2006.  Israel in a bafflingly bad military operation - it basically killed the credibility of their famous design approach - decided to start lobbing old stockpiles DPICM at hybrid forces who were fighting from within communities...what could possibli go wrong?  Well the whole thing blew up in their, and our, faces...literally.  Old stockpiled DPICMs had embarrassing dud rates - although, reality check; those dud rates do not even come close to the numbers of AP mines employed in older conflicts.  More modern DPICM systems are seeing lower dud rates than the HE being tossed around the battlefield today...but if it looks like a landmine and can generate crowd funding like a landmine...

 So the Anti-Cluster munition thing was born.  We in military circles knew that it would really go nowhere because DPICM has far more battlefield utility and in many circumstances it could be decisive.  So they bolted together a convention but there are holes one can drive a truck through and all the major players simply refused to sign off - although the US made some hand over heart promises.  So what?  Well DPICM essentially takes HE and distribute it widely and more efficiently.  When shaped charge rounds are employed the lethality goes up as well - plenty of studies out there, and we read a lot of them for CMCW.  So unlike AP which is a nuisance to an attacking combined arms unit, DPICM can kill it.  For Ukraine, and the US, the employment of DPICM is entirely legal, even if it makes some people queasy.  Neither nation signed the thing in Oslo and can legally employ the weapon systems in accordance with the Geneva CCW.  Modern DPICM have extremely low dud rates as they are built to be self-neutralizing - we are talking 95% and above, far higher than standard HE.  Now as PGM enters the battlefield en masse, my bet is that DPICM will also go the way of AP mines.  If we need to kill 10 attacking vehicles, we fire 10 PGM systems.  DPICM cost/benefit will very likely shift- along with a lot of systems - after this war and into the future.  So the entire thing may become moot, but we are not there yet.

So DPICM will have political costs, but I think they are mitigatable and are outweighed by critical battlefield utility.  AP mines, no; DPICM, yes. 

 

 

Appreciate your experience, but I think you are dancing a bit around the use cases here (AT mines or PGMs focused on vehicles is NOT the tactical challenge under discussion here, nor counterinsurgency situations where mines are planted or scattered on supply routes also used by civilians).

You have a particular frontline situation here where waves of assault squads are moving around in darkness in no-mans land filled with trash and flotsam (easy to disguise mines or bomblets). You want to slow them, hurt them, disorganise them, while you call in fire, shift reserves or just get the hell out. I don't get how this is so hard to accept as valuable.

...I don't know how the Tommies managed to ignore minefields in the Falklands; all I can assume is that not enough were laid. The Iranian revolutionary guards sure as hell had problems with mine belts.

On the 'political price', maybe you're too close to the topic. I can certainly respect that, but the average person in the West isn't going to change their opinion of Ukraine over its use -- declared or otherwise -- of more stuff that goes BOOM on invading soldiers in a war that has an unprecedented volume of BOOM. So as far as I'm concerned, it's a red herring as I've said multiple times.  Ukraine does not suddenly become a pariah over this, unless you're John Helmer.

If there are PGM alternatives, well fine and dandy, but they ain't stopping Ivan yet.

[billbindc]

The definitive take down of Hersh’s claims: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

[Beleg85]

3 hours ago, Zeleban said:

Just thought about these numbers. It turns out that even before the start of the most difficult phase of the battles for Bakhmut, our losses in the dead were already greater than our losses in the dead in Mariupol during 3 months of the hardest fighting. Thus, according to Pani Dobropilla's tweet, the battle for Bakhmut is several times more intense than the battle for Mariupol. I doubt it very much. The battle for Mariupol was a real disaster for Ukraine. Our troops were surrounded in a cauldron and completely cut off from supplies, they had no artillery support. In Bakhmut, can our troops receive supplies, replenishment, artillery support and at the same time suffer twice as heavy losses? I just can't believe it, it doesn't fit in my head.

Are we talking about KIA and MIA only? Well, since russians finally crawled onto Soledar only in january and touch villages around Bakhmut, managing to capture some solid buildings and turn them into command posts/ammo dumps/occassionaly wounded collection points (or execution chambers in case of Wagner), they may in fact achieve closer parity now. These urban battles are brutal. Also note that soldiers other than Wagner are also now fighting there in larger numbers, at least since Soledar assault.

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

wrote about cryings of DPR orcs about their losses, the price of which is buying success of Wagners. Girkin write about Vuhledar disaster. So if we have 1:1 around Bakhmut, we have 5/7/10:1 from Krasnohorivka -Avdiivka  to Vuhledar and this maintain proper average ratio

That would mean the Russian strategy of assaulting AFU at Bakhmut has a lot of sense, and conversly- it is grevious mistake to keep the city so dodgedly on Zaluzhny's side.

Btw. northern axis is also not bloodless- one of volunteers who is constantly sitting with Donbas batalion reported constant flow of lossess while AFU tried to encircle Svatovo. Numbers like 12, 15 KIA for several days, just from this unit (and maybe brigade itr was attached to). She also remarked her guess that casualties on this front are relatively equal in one dispatch. No easy victories there.

 

Hmm?...:

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[The_Capt]

36 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

If there are PGM alternatives, well fine and dandy, but they ain't stopping Ivan yet.

No they shredded his logistics system, C4ISR and cause him to implode at an operational level at least twice.

The density you would have to lay AP mines to get the effect you want would likely get more people killed than you would in fact inflict on the enemy.  They did an experiment back when I was at CFSME and laid a standard NATO AP strip in a training minefield.  They then had two entire courses run back and forth a half a dozen times over the minefield man abreast.  It created 2 casualties.  So the density you would have to lay these at would 1) stress the logistical system, 2) expose troops while putting them in place even given RA ISR and 3) not likely work like you want as the first 2-3 guys would get hit and then the rest would just charge over their bodies.

Mines are not some magic sticky carpet we can stick out there like mouse traps.  Just think about a company sized position, so 500m across because this is dense fighting.  So that is 500 sq meters in a single line, so if you want high density you are probably talking 4 mines per square meter, that is one mine in a 1/4 meter box.  That is 2000 AP mines to deny a strip 1 m deep.  Want to make that strip 10ms and we are talking 20000 mines.  100ms, so the stopping power your are looking for, 200000 AP mines....for 500m.  Oh, and then in a month or two you have to counter-attack over the same minefield...whoops.

It would be far better to use area command detonated systems which are already outside the Ottawa Convention. 

Political cost - I have noticed a trend here to "poo-poo" inconvenient political realities on both sides of this war.  Russian supporters or fearers wave away Putin's real political pressures and hazards that limit his actions (e.g. mobilization).  Doing it on behalf of the UA is not any better.  The UA might get away with it, but lets take Canada for a second...peace loving maple syrup slurping socialists that we are.  So we are in a minority government situation right now with the far left NDP actually holding the Liberals in power.  So consider for a moment what they are going to do with the sudden wide employment of AP mines by the UA as we send Ukraine billions of dollars in military aid in a post-pandemic economic crunch....I will let you mull it over.

The moral here, is that within politics risk is not simple nor straight forward - it is also highly connected.  So while you may wish to dismiss the issue, I am pretty sure the Ukrainians have not.  They have not given notice to withdraw from the convention, nor have we seen any evidence of violations...and they are fighting for their lives.

So 1) they will not do what you want, and 2) the risks are very real and frankly not worth it given point #1.  You want to make Russians die in numbers, how about just keep doing what they are doing because it seems to be working.  

Edited February 10, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Covers much more than desertion. It’s an interesting article covering the challenges of discipline in a hastily expanded army from 250 thousand to over a million in a matter of months. Little vetting of recruits due to time pressures. Sustained war fighting bringing more problems than equipment and strategy/tactics. Some guys avoiding any punishment by paying a sum (to who? Commanding officer?). Others dealt with formally. All sorts of discipline issues. Questioning orders, drunkenness, etc. Of course there is push back, not all entirely unwarranted. “The new punitive rules remove discretion and turn courts into a “calculator” for doling out punishment to soldiers, regardless of the reasons for their offenses, lawyer Anton Didenko argued in a column on Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.” Not surprisingly, not all commanders are especially qualified, and cause some of the issues 

And: Zelenskyy, in his response to the popular petition asking him to scrap the changes, agreed that disciplinary action against military personnel should take into account their individual circumstances, and promised that the cabinet of ministers would further consider how to improve the disciplinary mechanism — though he did not specify when this work might be done; nor suspend the law in the meantime.”

And:

“… many discipline problems are rooted in ineffective or careless command, as well as the strain placed on Kyiv’s forces battling a far larger army of invaders, meaning they are not rotated as often as they ought to be.

“Fatigue and trauma lead to mental disorders, and bring chaos, negligence and even depravity into a soldier’s life. This strongly affects fighting qualities and obedience,” the officer said.”

 

Anybody else think bears an enormous resemblance to at least one side in the Spanish Civil War?

 

[Beleg85]

https://threadreaderapp-com.translate.goog/thread/1624171912212389888.html?_x_tr_sl=pl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pl&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Today's thread with maps [Matchmaker- Svatovo; Merry- Vesele; stupid autotranslator]

Note there are reports (also from other sources) Russians prepare large mechanized force N-E of Kupyansk. If they manage to break throught, I would bet it would be this area that may witness some form of maneuvre warfare some folks here desired so much. However, it is unknown if moskals even can jump off such offensive without concentrating logistic first.  And when they do concentrate logistics, smoking incidents tend to happen.

2 hours ago, Zeleban said:

Losses are clearly not 1:1

Not applicable to Bakhmut unfortunatelly- much more infantry fights. Also Oryx is heavily dependant on published visual sources, and katsaps always publish them proportionally less than UA for some reasons.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[danfrodo]

26 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

https://threadreaderapp-com.translate.goog/thread/1624171912212389888.html?_x_tr_sl=pl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pl&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Today's thread with maps [Matchmaker- Svatovo; Merry- Vesele; stupid autotranslator]

Note there are reports (also from other sources) Russians prepare large mechanized force N-E of Kupyansk. If they manage to break throught, I would bet it would be this area that may witness some form of maneuvre warfare some folks here desired so much. However, it is unknown if moskals even can jump off such offensive without concentrating logistic first.  And when they do concentrate logistics, smoking incidents tend to happen.

We really have not idea what is really happening overall right now it seems.

I am getting faint whiffs of 1918 german summer offensive to try to win before the tide irrevocably turns against them.  That offensive was seriously dangerous but americans showed up just in time.  What will happen here?  We know UKR & RU taking heavy casualties but we don't know the ratio.  We know UKR has only given up limited territory and even the fall of Bakhmut doesn't matter strategically.  We know the ground stays frozen for the next 7 days.  We hear reports that RU has artillery superiority around Bakhmut.  Is that by UKR choice or by UKR deficiency??

Really wish there were multiple UKR brigades w western IFVs & tanks right now.  This could've happened if we just started the process 6 months ago, dammit.

Is RU really throwing everything into the fight, right now?  Does UKR have the reserves to both hold back this flood and still prepare for a later offensive?   Will next wave of mobiks be in place to thwart URK spring offensive even if RU depletes itself?  Putler may be counting on the spring rasputitsa to act as his fallback in case of failure, buying him a couple months to regroup after hurting UKR even in slaughtering his own troops.

I just don't know.  And the more I think about it the more I worry.

 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Kinophile said:

What utter total Tosh. Again,  yet again it's trotted out as a rationale for why Russia is "justifiably" aggressive. See look at a map,  look at the territory of NATO expanding inexorably eastward! What Russian leader wouldn't feel nervous and push back? All that blue! 

Yup, and it's been a thousand or two pages since we've last had to deal with this completely, totally, utterly, BS argumentation straight out of Russian propaganda.

Seminole, I do not want us to be distracted from having real conversations about real things relevant to this war instead of rehashing one of the most ill informed, illogical, and frankly dishonest points of view yet again.  You can just as easily find pages devoted to debunking this nonsense in this thread instead of making us have to go over it all again.

If you want to pursue this any further you will do so without posting privileges.  I will not tolerate this becoming a distraction again.

Steve