How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[LongLeftFlank]

57 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

But in the direction of Kremennaya - Liman, the enemy is very actively preparing for offensive operations, which, as far as I understand, should follow within the next week, despite, to put it mildly, rather modest successes in their previous "preparatory-offensive" measures in this direction.

So, I think, we will accordingly ... in the near future we will devote the lion's share of our attention to the region of the northern Luhansk region and the southeastern Kharkov region ...

 

Heavy air activity too, based on this anecdote:

While underwhelming to date by Western standards, Russian CAS is among the things frontline Ukrainian soldiers appear to fear most.

But there's likely another reason the Ukies are pouring so much cement in this sector....

This concentrated Russian thrust back along the Kreminna-Torske-Lyman road is constrained by the E-W Severski-Donets on the south, and by the Oskil - Zherebets - Krasny river lines, (with the land in between them deeply cut by E-W ravines and balkas), on the north. So not much room for flanking operations. 

This has the look of an EPSOM-GOODWOOD 'funnel', with 20th CAA advancing on a 'front' of a single vehicle, or else probing through woodlands filled with UA rocket-toting jaegers.

This all has the look of another Russian operations-level debacle.

Edited February 11, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Zeleban]

Given the development of events in the Kupyansk and especially in the Liman direction, the situation in the Seversk direction is increasingly acquiring the character of a "bone in the throat" for the enemy. I mean the area Serebryanka - Belogorovka (top) - Verkhnekamenskoye - Vyemka. For it is obvious that without taking this area under your control, any offensive actions of the enemy, both to the north (the Limansky direction) and to the south (the section from Spirne to Veseloe, and towards Slavyansk or Seversk) will, let's say, be associated with very inconvenient troubles ...

Even further south (the area of the village of Razdolovka), the enemy managed to advance and create a certain threat of a breakthrough in the city of Seversk from the south, but his further actions in this direction are unlikely to be so successful without capturing at least Belogorovka, Verkhnekamensky and Vyemka. ... After all, it is obvious that no one "smiles" at the most crucial moment to receive a "tangible blow" to their right or left flank ...

 

That is why the "mobics" of the 6th motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd AK are so stubbornly attacking Belogorovka, Verkhnekamennoye and Spirne.

- with the help of a motorized rifle platoon, with the support of 2 tanks and 1 BMP-2 (from the 6th brigade of the 2nd AK), the enemy attacked the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of the Lisichansky Oil Refinery - the area northeast of Verkhnekamennoye ... to no avail, one tank received damage from Ukrainian fire. Further, the "Lugandians" regrouped and this time without "armor" they tried to attack in the same direction again, but again ... with the same result.

- with the forces of an incomplete company (also from the 6th brigade of the 2nd AK), the enemy also attacked in the direction of Nikolaevka - Spirne ... to no avail.

- 2 assault detachments from the PMC "Wagner", together somewhere about a motorized rifle platoon, without equipment and with very liquid art support, tried to break through from positions in the "notorious" village of Sacco and Vanzetti in a northwest direction from it (as they say ... "gone into the void"). After getting under crossfire and finishing off with mortars, the remnants returned back.

It is obvious that as of today... the enemy tactical group operating in the area of Soledar has set its sights on Seversk and has begun to "turn north." The logic of such a decision is quite clear - to go to the rear of our units, which continue to hold Belogorovka and Verkhnekamenskoye and thus create a real threat to Lisichansk and even Kremennaya ...

Having made its way to Seversk, the enemy command expects to "kill two birds with one stone" - to greatly facilitate their further attack on Liman (at the same time removing the direct threat to Lisichansk), and also to reach the near approaches to Slavyansk and Kramatorsk from the east ... i.e. to return", at least, to the "situation with Izyum", but this time... on the other side... in the direction from Seversk (yes, of course, it's more convenient... no need to force the Seversky Donets...).

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I think the one thing that a lot of Americans do not understand is that fundamentally being at the top of the heap of a global order means that in order to stay on top you are going to have to "sort out everyone else's messes" or it just comes back to bite you later.  That is because as a global super power everyone else's messes are in fact your messes.  Sucks but it is reality.

Yes, and that is the problem with the Isolationists.  They think it is possible to ratchet back involvement in foreign affairs (especially war) without any negative consequences.  This is, of course, false.

On the other side of the spectrum are the Interventionists (most recently called Neocons) who believe the US needs to interfere pretty much everywhere in order to stay on top.  This includes undermining allies in some cases.  This is also false.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

A lot of it has to do with economics that frankly I do not understand.  The reality as I understand it is that the US does not really sell anything substantial anymore (at least not compared to what it buys) other than the idea of the USA.  That idea makes the USD the world currency reserve and it underpins a lot of foreign investment into the US - from buying your debt to investing in selling things to you.  The underpinning idea is that the US = safe.  And that safety extends well beyond your own borders. 

This has been partially addressed already, but it does boil down to the US having certain things to offer that are "value added".  Meaning, their practical value is higher than their tangible one.  Chip making equipment, for example, provides capabilities for a foreign economy that do not show up in trade balance equations.  Then there's things like the financial industry in the US that everybody wants a piece of (literally when talking real estate).  However, the biggest thing that the US has to offer is knowledge.  As f'd up as our health care system is, guess where the world's top medical clinicians and researches go?  The US.  And food exports, of course.

So, the US influence on a global scale is complicated and nuanced.  Unlike Russian' influence, it isn't just military and raw materials.

The challenge for the US is that a complicated and nuanced export economy requires complex and nuanced trade relations with countries that are, increasingly, scrutinized for how nice they are.  Russia, on the other hand, doesn't need that sort of relationship with the world to support the kleptocracy because there's enough money from brute force methods of trade to get what they want.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

There have been proponents of the "let it burn and contain" strategy within the US, but I think the risks become to high in a globalized world.  If the US simply stands back and lets things unfold, they can quickly spiral out of control. 

Exactly.  Which is why I will never be in the Isolationist camp.  I know too much to be in with that lot   However, I also think the Interventionists create more problems than they solve.  Which is why I would prefer a compromise where the US doesn't have to act as world leader as much and accepts the ramifications that it isn't the world leader as much.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Tell me please, who is this clinic idiot and frick?

 

[Kraft]

11 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Tell me please, who is this clinic idiot and frick?

I looked him up.

He makes $1,419/month from 473 idiots on patreon to say outlandish things. Seems he found his bread earning by throwing away his morales to feed the Trump crowd, like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson etc.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Kraft

[Zeleban]

7 minutes ago, Kraft said:

I looked him up.

He makes $1,419/month from 473 idiots on patreon to say outlandish things. Seems he found his bread earning by throwing away his morales to feed the Trump crowd, like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson etc.

He has over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. It is very similar to the artificial winding up of subscribers. Russia has special bot farms that create the illusion of popularity for many Putin's propagandists. I won’t be surprised if it turns out that well-wishers from Moscow also took care of his account

[Haiduk]

12 minutes ago, Kraft said:

I looked him up.

He makes $1,419/month from 473 idiots on patreon to say outlandish things. Seems he found his bread earning by throwing away his morales to feed the Trump crowd, like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson etc.

Oh, leftist frick, I though so. But... How his neomarxism gets along with conservative Trumpism...

[Jiggathebauce]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Oh, leftist frick, I though so. But... How his neomarxism gets along with conservative Trumpism...

He's a fascist. Plain and simple.  Found out he could make a lot more money by skewing right-wing than being involved with leftist politics. 

[Kraft]

5 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Oh, leftist frick, I though so. But... How his neomarxism gets along with conservative Trumpism...

Some would point to the horseshoe theory here.

I proclaim instead that both sides are too retarded to notice the discrepancies.

Its the same in europe, neo-nazis and "antifa" tankie leftist in the same protest literally side by side for daddy Putin. 

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Kraft

[Jiggathebauce]

2 minutes ago, Kraft said:

Some would point to the horseshoe theory here.

I proclaim instead that both sides are too retarded to notice the discrepancies.

 

The simpler answer is that they are liars who will say whatever the people paying them want. They don't have actual coherent beliefs outside of what their checkbook allows

[LongLeftFlank]

Oh bloody hell, do we have to scroll pages and pages of blather about these kinds of empty headed attention seekers now?

What the hell does this have to do with the war?

This entire thread can drown very quickly in American and EU political yabbida yabbida yabbida.  There's no freeking end to it.

Go watch Tucker and Rachel or whoever.

Edited February 11, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Kraft]

6 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

The simpler answer is that they are liars who will say whatever the people paying them want. They don't have actual coherent beliefs outside of what their checkbook allows

I agree fully with this, hence why I mentioned the other 2 clowns (although tucker probably drank his kool aid), but the base of either do not notice, nor do I think they would care. 

But lets not get too much into US politics, I think giving spotlight to these clowns is too much credibility. What should be the issue is why they are allowed on Fox News to talk to millions of americans.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Kraft

[akd]

21 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Oh, leftist frick

Not really.  Something more special that is almost impossible to categorize into traditional left and right. I think the “MAGA (Make America Great Again = Trump cult) communist” pretty much sums it up. But ultimately these people are fascists wearing masks.

Edited February 11, 2023 by akd

[BletchleyGeek]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

This concentrated Russian thrust back along the Kreminna-Torske-Lyman road is constrained by the E-W Severski-Donets on the south, and by the Oskil - Zherebets - Krasny river lines, (with the land in between them deeply cut by E-W ravines and balkas), on the north. So not much room for flanking operations. 

This has the look of an EPSOM-GOODWOOD 'funnel', with 20th CAA advancing on a 'front' of a single vehicle, or else probing through woodlands filled with UA rocket-toting jaegers.

It is definitely looking very rough for the Russian Army. Also and as noted by @Zeleban , the sheer pressure applied in this area is putting the AFU in the Siversk area between a rock and a hard place. As noted by Constantine in the video I linked earlier this weekend, the Siversk area doesn't look easy to defend now that the RuAF is pushing north from the Blahodatne area.

Edited February 11, 2023 by BletchleyGeek

[sross112]

With the mention of the 60mm mortars in the last couple days I got to thinking about the old "knee" mortars. The British, Germans and most other large armies had them and then they seemed to fade out from most everyone except the USMC over the years. A little reading seems to elude to the thought that they were replaced by the grenade launchers; M203, M79, etc. Now some armies are bringing back the light mortar, I believe the UK brought back a 60mm a few years ago. I think that most people that have been around both know that the 60 gunners were way more capable for most targets than a 203 gunner. I know, I know, your uncle's best friends second cousin could shoot a VC out of a tree at 1200 yards from the hip in the thick jungle with his M79, but not everyone's uncle's best friend's second cousin is Chuck Norris.  

Then I see that the USMC has a GPS guided 60mm mortar round now. @Vet 0369 gave a good testimonial as to the viability of the 60mm mortar, but a GPS round? Man, that is a game changer for company level fire support. Tie that into the drones for observation and you have a very fast, accurate and nasty sniper team on your company front. I'm thinking that the UA needs a large freighter crammed full of those rounds as soon as possible!

The big guns are great and their PGM's do wonderful work, but they are big, expensive and burn out. I think an M777 costs around 3 mil and Excaliburs cost $65,000ish. A 60 mortar is around $10,000 and a GPS round $18,000 when first manufactured, probably a lot less now. If the tech is there for the 60, it has to be there for the 81s and 120s as well. Seems like a good investment considering. Still need those big guns, but we could send a whole lot of the little ones to have a great pay off for a small investment. Save the big stuff for the big and far away targets. Another plus would probably be a pretty light logistics and maintenance tail.

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, and that is the problem with the Isolationists.  They think it is possible to ratchet back involvement in foreign affairs (especially war) without any negative consequences.  This is, of course, false.

On the other side of the spectrum are the Interventionists (most recently called Neocons) who believe the US needs to interfere pretty much everywhere in order to stay on top.  This includes undermining allies in some cases.  This is also false.

This has been partially addressed already, but it does boil down to the US having certain things to offer that are "value added".  Meaning, their practical value is higher than their tangible one.  Chip making equipment, for example, provides capabilities for a foreign economy that do not show up in trade balance equations.  Then there's things like the financial industry in the US that everybody wants a piece of (literally when talking real estate).  However, the biggest thing that the US has to offer is knowledge.  As f'd up as our health care system is, guess where the world's top medical clinicians and researches go?  The US.  And food exports, of course.

So, the US influence on a global scale is complicated and nuanced.  Unlike Russian' influence, it isn't just military and raw materials.

The challenge for the US is that a complicated and nuanced export economy requires complex and nuanced trade relations with countries that are, increasingly, scrutinized for how nice they are.  Russia, on the other hand, doesn't need that sort of relationship with the world to support the kleptocracy because there's enough money from brute force methods of trade to get what they want.

Exactly.  Which is why I will never be in the Isolationist camp.  I know too much to be in with that lot   However, I also think the Interventionists create more problems than they solve.  Which is why I would prefer a compromise where the US doesn't have to act as world leader as much and accepts the ramifications that it isn't the world leader as much.

Steve

The other problem is that intervention got hijacked by the liberal humanism crowd and R2P.  So it was no longer a pragmatic interventions based on national interests and became “who will think of the children!!!”  I am not a cold hearted bastard (no heart left to be cold) but interventions to save people very often caused more problems than they solved (e.g. Somalia).  

The problem now is that an unstable state or situation is an opportunity for US competitors.  So if the US contracts we don’t get natural course of evolution, we get China.

There is no argument on “what the US has to offer”, it is the greatest and most powerful empire in the history of humanity.  The question - as an extremely rich vassal state next door - how do we keep it that way?

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Oh bloody hell, do we have to scroll pages and pages of blather about these kinds of empty headed attention seekers now?

What the hell does this have to do with the war?

This entire thread can drown very quickly in American and EU political yabbida yabbida yabbida.  There's no freeking end to it.

Go watch Tucker and Rachel or whoever.

Now, now, we can’t have German bashing day without “America and EU political Yabbida Day” fair and equal air time etc. We just had “Russian apologist/It is all the US/NATOs fault Day” so we are on track in the rotation.

[dan/california]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Now, now, we can’t have German bashing day without “America and EU political Yabbida Day” fair and equal air time etc. We just had “Russian apologist/It is all the US/NATOs fault Day” so we are on track in the rotation.

We could save the next round national/political/hitsorical recriminations for the heart of mud season in a month or so? There is an awfully lot of actual war to talk about right now.

These poor *%%*(*%#@  fools for instance. They have somehow gotten this far without noticing that they live in Mordor.

I suspect they will gets a lesson shortly...

[JonS]

On 2/11/2023 at 5:33 AM, The_Capt said:

DPICM is fundamentally a very different problem.  ... 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 possibly go wrong?  Well the whole thing blew up in their, and our, faces...literally.  Old stockpiled DPICMs had embarrassing dud rates...  More modern DPICM systems are seeing lower dud rates than the HE being tossed around the battlefield today...

There is an order of magnitude issue here that you're ignoring, as well as different terminal effects.

One 155mm DPICM round carries 50-80 submunitions. At a 5% failure rate that is 2-3 UXO with every round of DPICM fired. HE rounds are - d'uh - unitary, so you're looking at 1x UXO for every 50-100 rounds fired (which, frankly, seems high to me, but we'll use your numbers). To put that in battlefield terms; from a single battery engagement (6 guns, 5 rounds FFE) you'd therefore expect zero (0) HE UXO, and around one hundred and twenty (120) DPICM UXO. From every fire mission.

Secondly, HE failures tend to bury themselves. Deep. Like, really deep. They're still dangerous, obviously,  but you really have to work hard to piss them off and make them show their teeth. DPICM, on the other hand, by design sits on the surface looking cute and harmless.

From an earlier post:

On 2/11/2023 at 5:33 AM, The_Capt said:

The conventional wisdom is that DPICM drastically reduce the rounds-to-kill rate, particularly for armored vehicles.

Are you sure about that? DPICM can be pretty great against soft skin vehicles, but the grenades are kinda too small and their orientation too random to be much use against armoured vehicles, except in absurd quantities.

https://ffi-publikasjoner.archive.knowledgearc.net/handle/20.500.12242/2069

Edited February 12, 2023 by JonS

[Halmbarte]

The big difference in supplying conventional & ICM is that it would be the Ukrainians deciding when and where to use ICM to defend their people & country.

They can decide for themselves to use ICM or not as they are going to live with the consequences of their decisions. 

H

Edited February 11, 2023 by Halmbarte

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The question - as an extremely rich vassal state next door - how do we keep it that way?

As long as you Canucks keep coming to the US to buy your smokes and spend holidays at our beach resorts in the summer, everything should be fine!

Steve

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, JonS said:

There is an order of magnitude issue here that you're ignoring, as well as different terminal effects.

One 155mm DPICM round carries 50-80 submunitions. At a 5% failure rate that is 2-3 UXO with every round of DPICM fired. HE rounds are - d'uh - unitary, so you're looking at 1x UXO for every 50-100 rounds fired (which, frankly, seems high to me, but we'll use your numbers). To put that in battlefield terms; from a single battery engagement (6 guns, 5 rounds FFE) you'd therefore expect zero (0) HE UXO, and around one hundred and twenty (120) DPICM UXO. From every fire mission.

Secondly, HE failures tend to bury themselves. Deep. Like, really deep. They're still dangerous, obviously,  but you really have to work hard to piss them off and make them show their teeth. DPICM, on the other hand, by design sits on the surface looking cute and harmless.

Sure let’s play “bad lies and statics”, it is Saturday.  Sure but DPICM are a fired at a very small percentage compared to HE.  During the Cold War the best that the West could muster was something like 15% of ammunition stocks.  So we basically have an order of magnitude more HE being fired than DPICM.  This is also because DPICM is more deadly than HE, about 10-15 times more effective:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-purpose_improved_conventional_munition

So in your example you would need only need to fire 2 DPICM rounds to the 30 HE.  So 6 UXOs on the high side.  So sure you get 10 UXO DPICM for every HE but you are firing 10 times as many HE to get the same effect.    And these are the old non-self neutralizing DPICM rounds, one would hope the US would cough up the newer ones.

Now if in this war the UA we’re to suddenly be given all the old stocks and started firing them on par with HE you could have a point but I am not sure we are going to see that because we already did Lebanon.

As to “digging in and hiding quietly”, personal experience does not line up.  Having done live fire Cbt Team training in places like Suffield I can tell you that a lot of 155mm UXOs do not conveniently tuck themselves away.  Driving around them is no joke.  At one point we were spending as much time marking them as we did in attacking.

And to my original argument, you would have to fire a LOT of DPICM to get anywhere near the level of contamination an small AP minefield has, but this has not stopped the Anti-cluster munitions crowd from pushing this apples to oranges issue.  I am definitely not a fan of handing over 40 year old junk DPICM to Ukraine.  But the more modern self-neutralizing stuff meeting the US militaries less than 1% guidelines makes more sense.

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:

The big difference in supplying conventional & ICM is that it would be the Ukrainians deciding when and where to use ICM to defend their people & country.

They can decide for themselves to use ICM or not as they are going to live with the consequences of their decisions. 

H

And this bring up another couple issues to toss into the debate -

1..The UA would have a very high interest in recording any DPICM usage for post-war clean up.

2.  It is not like the UA is going to be lobbing these into virgin fields where children play, most of the battlefield in Southern Ukraine are highly contaminated right now anyway. The RA has fired a lot of ordinance and planted mines all over these areas, so the additional contamination problem of DPICM is likely pretty minimal compared to the problem that already have.

Edited February 12, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

41 minutes ago, JonS said:

There is an order of magnitude issue here that you're ignoring, as well as different terminal effects.

One 155mm DPICM round carries 50-80 submunitions. At a 5% failure rate that is 2-3 UXO with every round of DPICM fired. HE rounds are - d'uh - unitary, so you're looking at 1x UXO for every 50-100 rounds fired (which, frankly, seems high to me, but we'll use your numbers). To put that in battlefield terms; from a single battery engagement (6 guns, 5 rounds FFE) you'd therefore expect zero (0) HE UXO, and around one hundred and twenty (120) DPICM UXO. From every fire mission.

Secondly, HE failures tend to bury themselves. Deep. Like, really deep. They're still dangerous, obviously,  but you really have to work hard to piss them off and make them show their teeth. DPICM, on the other hand, by design sits on the surface looking cute and harmless.

You are correct on the technical details, But the Russians have rained their version of DPICM, and those really unpleasant plastic toe popper mines on scale I can't even think of a decent analogy for. I will eat my hat if they have kept any records at all. The old work one the hydraulic fluid won't come out of. Throw in the general expenditure of ~60% and counting of conventional ordinance made in the former Soviet Union since 1955. All of Ukraine that has been fought over is going to have to be de-mined. Yes it is a truly overwhelming mess. Hopefully we will get better at the miserable process. But nobody can get  a good start on that until the Russians go home. The DPICM might move that along.

Edit: Cross posted with The_Capt

Edited February 12, 2023 by dan/california

[poesel]

How much of the stuff given to Ukraine is a gift, vs they have to pay for it after the war? Do we know that?