How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So here we are coming up a year into this thing and I think it is fair to say that the impact of this war on a global scale has been significant and very likely permanent.  The fact that it came on the heels of a the worst global pandemic since 1918, and that on the heels of the end of the Cold War and 9/11 all speak to one helluva crazy ride...and I suspect we are just getting started. 

So I am seeing the same question, of variations thereof, being asked all over the internet as we come up on the 1st anniversary of this war:  When will this war end?

This is a reasonable and perfectly predictable question.  However, it is really not asking when this war will actually end, it is really asking "when will we go back to normal? The way things were?"

Well the short answer is that this war will likely not end, it will turn into the next one. 

For this war to end, Ukraine and Russia would have to accept a lasting peace between their two nation states - and I am pretty sure that ship has sailed for a few generations at least.  Watching the Ukrainian and Russian political levels, something has dawned on me - they have already figured this out and are waiting patiently for the rest of the world to catch up.

It would be a serious mistake to think that once the killing abates that we can all go back to whatever we were doing before this thing broke out.  Too many fundamentals have been impacted.  The power balance in Europe, the role of Russia and its orientation, some deeper elements of warfare itself.  We are off the cliff here and in freefall, so no point arguing about the upholstery.

We can debate when the RA will fold, or freeze or whatever.  But the reality is that after this conflict a second one between the West and Russia is waiting in the wings.  Or if Russia completely implodes, another major (and very dangerous) conflict there.  And all the while we have the escalating competition between the US and China.  My sense we are at the beginning of a global scale collision, but it will not likely be WW3 (at least not yet), nor will it be a rehash of the Cold War - although it will share elements of it.  No this will more likely be something else entirely, but in so many ways the same.  A Tepid War, a Hot Peace, an Impressionist War with Baroque outbreaks.  This might just be the first war for full control of the human race and building the edifice for what comes next.

Regardless, the violence and dying in Ukraine will end or taper off, and that is not small.  But all war is an irreconcilable collision of human certainty that contains an element of violence, and we are headed for a big one on many levels.  We have horizontal collisions between the people and the state, between people and between states.  The war in Ukraine is a very real and brutal manifestation of things that have been simmering under the surface for years.

So this war will not end, it will morph and evolve.  Everyone needs to get used to that idea because I suspect our grandkids will be still fighting it.  Everyone needs to start thinking about sacrifice - something we are not very good at doing in the west.  I mean we understand it on some level, and some have had to sacrifice everything in the last 30 years.  However, on a broad scale I think we will need to be ready to make a lot more sacrifices in order to keep a voice in what happens next, and Ukraine is just the opening shot.   

Very interesting and I generally agree. What will make it different is that the resources that matter the most to the coming Luke Warm War are going to be distributed differently than the last one. It won't be coal or oil...it will be lithium, chip factories and innovation industries. And it will be happening while populations are declining, the planet is getting hotter and the resulting refugee flows will be both incomprehensible to us but also potentially highly valuable to competitors then. The soft power to attract people will be on a seesaw with the difficulties of assimilating or adjusting to the human flow. Really an old human story but with facets we haven't seen in our historical record. 

[The_Capt]

Just now, billbindc said:

Very interesting and I generally agree. What will make it different is that the resources that matter the most to the coming Luke Warm War are going to be distributed differently than the last one. It won't be coal or oil...it will be lithium, chip factories and innovation industries. And it will be happening while populations are declining, the planet is getting hotter and the resulting refugee flows will be both incomprehensible to us but also potentially highly valuable to competitors then. The soft power to attract people will be on a seesaw with the difficulties of assimilating or adjusting to the human flow. Really an old human story but with facets we haven't seen in our historical record. 

I actually think the most critical resource is an idea.  We have not seen a real rise of ideology in whatever this thing is, but it is right around the corner - in fact it is what most the yelling is about.  We have the old "isms" and of course "gimme some of that old timey religion" but I suspect some new ideas are just waiting to explode, they tend to at times like these. They might be re-hashes of older ones or maybe heading into science fiction.  Do not know.  But humans have shown that they will kill and die in the millions for an idea - and no one has the market cornered on this resource yet. 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

TOS-1A going BOOM. Enjoy the fireworks.

 

 

Simply glorious, and the music is even bearable for a change.

23 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So here we are coming up a year into this thing and I think it is fair to say that the impact of this war on a global scale has been significant and very likely permanent.  The fact that it came on the heels of a the worst global pandemic since 1918, and that on the heels of the end of the Cold War and 9/11 all speak to one helluva crazy ride...and I suspect we are just getting started. 

So I am seeing the same question, of variations thereof, being asked all over the internet as we come up on the 1st anniversary of this war:  When will this war end?

This is a reasonable and perfectly predictable question.  However, it is really not asking when this war will actually end, it is really asking "when will we go back to normal? The way things were?"

Well the short answer is that this war will likely not end, it will turn into the next one. 

For this war to end, Ukraine and Russia would have to accept a lasting peace between their two nation states - and I am pretty sure that ship has sailed for a few generations at least.  Watching the Ukrainian and Russian political levels, something has dawned on me - they have already figured this out and are waiting patiently for the rest of the world to catch up.

It would be a serious mistake to think that once the killing abates that we can all go back to whatever we were doing before this thing broke out.  Too many fundamentals have been impacted.  The power balance in Europe, the role of Russia and its orientation, some deeper elements of warfare itself.  We are off the cliff here and in freefall, so no point arguing about the upholstery.

We can debate when the RA will fold, or freeze or whatever.  But the reality is that after this conflict a second one between the West and Russia is waiting in the wings.  Or if Russia completely implodes, another major (and very dangerous) conflict there.  And all the while we have the escalating competition between the US and China.  My sense we are at the beginning of a global scale collision, but it will not likely be WW3 (at least not yet), nor will it be a rehash of the Cold War - although it will share elements of it.  No this will more likely be something else entirely, but in so many ways the same.  A Tepid War, a Hot Peace, an Impressionist War with Baroque outbreaks.  This might just be the first war for full control of the human race and building the edifice for what comes next.

Regardless, the violence and dying in Ukraine will end or taper off, and that is not small.  But all war is an irreconcilable collision of human certainty that contains an element of violence, and we are headed for a big one on many levels.  We have horizontal collisions between the people and the state, between people and between states.  The war in Ukraine is a very real and brutal manifestation of things that have been simmering under the surface for years.

So this war will not end, it will morph and evolve.  Everyone needs to get used to that idea because I suspect our grandkids will be still fighting it.  Everyone needs to start thinking about sacrifice - something we are not very good at doing in the west.  I mean we understand it on some level, and some have had to sacrifice everything in the last 30 years.  However, on a broad scale I think we will need to be ready to make a lot more sacrifices in order to keep a voice in what happens next, and Ukraine is just the opening shot.   

The West took a thirty year vacation, and proved that there is such a thing as too much booze, among other things. We are going to have to PAY ATTENTION going forward.

[dan/california]

17 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

She is a full Colonel and already knows the score.  

If her/your last name refers to a body of water it would explain a very great deal. That will be cryptic, or very obvious. Ignore it if its cryptic.

 

[Battlefront.com]

21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So this war will not end, it will morph and evolve.

I agree.  Early in the war we (in this thread) dashed our own hopes of this not being the case because we quickly ruled out a nicer form of Russia emerging from this war.  In fact, the prevailing opinion is that WHEN Putin leaves office (he is not immortal) someone just as bad, if not worse, will replace him.  It seems nobody here has any faith that the Russian people will get rid of the "yoke of tyranny" that they have labored under for... well... forever.  Revolt?  Yes, that is possible and increasingly likely.  But not significantly change the nature of the Russian government towards its people and, most likely, towards its neighbors.  Russia has invested far too much in its imperialist mythology to just set it aside.

If Russia stays together, in total or to a large extent, the best we can hope for is a new government that is at least superficially more democratic in nature.  Think Ukrainian government in the early days of post-Soviet space.  On paper much better, in reality... mixed bag.  If this happens there is hope that in 15-25 years that the people will slowly figure out that there is a better way and push more for it each year.  Let's keep in mind the fear of this is one reason why Putin wants Belarus and Ukraine locked up under his control.  He seems to be concerned that Russians might catch on, therefore we should have some hope that they will.

No matter what, though, Russia will not have the near term (5-10 years minimum) ability to threaten its neighbors the way it has under Putin.  It can still murder, hack, misinform, corrupt, etc. but it won't be able to swallow up territory like it has since 1990.  Even after it reconstitutes its military I doubt it would be able to do much externally because of the quality gap.

I think the best long term solution to the Russian threat is for it to break up into smaller pieces.  Peacefully would be preferable, but even bloody might turn out better in the long run than status quo.  Of course there are a ton of concerns and dangers coming from such a breakup, but that has to be weighed against the rest.  In a way just like arming Ukraine comes with a non-zero risk of nuclear war, yet we deliberately confront this threat because of the greater good we see at the other end.

Steve

[Vacillator]

40 minutes ago, dan/california said:

proved that there is such a thing as too much booze

Last night I watched an old BBC documentary filmed over many years in the Soviet Union (quite revealing and scary, particulary with hindsight).  And I would say that Boris Yeltsin proved your point way back then .

[Lethaface]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I actually think the most critical resource is an idea.  We have not seen a real rise of ideology in whatever this thing is, but it is right around the corner - in fact it is what most the yelling is about.  We have the old "isms" and of course "gimme some of that old timey religion" but I suspect some new ideas are just waiting to explode, they tend to at times like these. They might be re-hashes of older ones or maybe heading into science fiction.  Do not know.  But humans have shown that they will kill and die in the millions for an idea - and no one has the market cornered on this resource yet. 

Perhaps the idea is already there but we don't see it yet ;-). Imo the large shift we're still yet to fully see is software defined everything. The world is still for a large part in the analogue age, or using applications to help 'digitize' the same old processes. 
Like how scanning a paper document and emailing it to the next hop is 'automation'. 

Instead of 'computer aided design' we are now starting to enter the age of 'software defined design'. Like in how ChatGPT can help you write an essay, software will probably be (helping) designing the 'next generation' of pointy sticks. It will still take quite a while probably to widely proliferate if only because the resource of skilled technical people are scarce and it's not cheap. Not every power will be equally competent on this level. Russia losing much of it's skilled people will probably not be among the front runners. Although late adopters also have advantages. 

And the new 'isms have already arrived imo: instagram-ism, twitter-ism, ego-ism , etc. Perhaps the new ism will be anti-social media, in which case I might seriously consider converting. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Lethaface

[DesertFox]

Visegrad, so take it with a grain of salt. However Reznikov seems to be very happy.

 

 

[chuckdyke]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

this is definitely not the place for you to be.

Correct, I joined this forum to be a better player. Ukraine is a tragedy not at the present for my recreation.

Edited February 14, 2023 by chuckdyke

[danfrodo]

15 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

Instead of 'computer aided design' we are now starting to enter the age of 'software defined design'.

AKA 'generative design'.  This is especially important for design for 3D printing.  Our CAD tools and our manufacturing processes push our brains into a relatively cartesian, orthogonal space.  This helps us greatly because it reduces our design freedom so our brains can wrap around the (now smaller) design space better.  But in 3DP space the design space is wide open (mostly) and we can use modern tools, like topology optimization, to take advantage of that freedom.  (this is a part of a basic spiel I give all the time, actually did it for Machine Design magazine a year or so ago)

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Correct, I joined this forum to be a better player. Ukraine is a tragedy not at the present for my recreation.

ChuckDyke, you have a choice to not engage here, no?  Post on CM game threads.  This thread is not delaying new BFC products.  I think I just don't understand your point.  

[Haiduk]

UKR artillery of 128th mech.brigade has destroyed with precision strike the vehicle of newest Russian EW complex "Palantin". This happened near Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia oblast.

This complex was adopted in 2019 and probably exists in several items. 

Each complex includes four vehicles based on KAMAZ and can deploy 22 portable EW/ELINT stations along frontline. "Palantin" also can work as control center for connecting in one network of older EW/ELINT complexes. This comples is positioned as operative-tactical level and has a task to detect and supress battalions/brigades HQ radio in VHF and UHF ranges and wifi networks, including digital radio comms and SDR-based comms. Also this complex can supress UAV control channels in 20 km.

"Palantin" complex vehicles

Photo before strike

Video of hit. Interesting that moment of strike is filming with fixed-wing UAV Leleka-100, which this complex had to supress %)

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Haiduk

[danfrodo]

4 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

UKR artillery of 128th mech.brigade has destroyed with precision strike the vehicle of newest Russian EW complex "Palantin". This happened near Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia oblast.

This complex was adopted in 2019 and probably exists in several items. 

Each complex includes four vehicles based on KAMAZ and can deploy 22 portable EW/ELINT stations along frontline. "Palantin" also can work as control center for connecting in one network of older EW/ELINT complexes. This comples is positioned as operative-tactical level and has a task to detect and supress battalions/brigades HQ radio in VHF and UHF ranges and wifi networks, including digital radio comms and SDR-vased comms. Also this complex can supress UAV control channels in 20 km.

Photo before strike

Video of hit. Interesting that moment of strike is filming with fixed-wing UAV Leleka-100, which this complex had to supress %)

 

How on earth was this vehicle spotted with how well it hiding under that tree?  That's really impressive UKR observation, took me a while to see it w that tree cover.

[dan/california]

13 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

Perhaps the idea is already there but we don't see it yet ;-). Imo the large shift we're still yet to fully see is software defined everything. The world is still for a large part in the analogue age, or using applications to help 'digitize' the same old processes. 
Like how scanning a paper document and emailing it to the next hop is 'automation'. 

Instead of 'computer aided design' we are now starting to enter the age of 'software defined design'. Like in how ChatGPT can help you write an essay, software will probably be (helping) designing the 'next generation' of pointy sticks. It will still take quite a while probably to widely proliferate if only because the resource of skilled technical people are scarce and it's not cheap. Not every power will be equally competent on this level. Russia losing much of it's skilled people will probably not be among the front runners. Although late adopters also have advantages. 

And the new 'isms have already arrived imo: instagram-ism, twitter-ism, ego-ism , etc. Perhaps the new ism will be anti-social media, in which case I might seriously consider converting. 

In areas where the underlying physics are well understood there are already some amazing things being done with genetic algorithms 

 

Quote

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2014/729208/

If you can ask the question the right way, an that is a medium large if, a sufficient amount of server time can solve it better than any human engineer s ever going too.

Expecting a LOT of this is being applied to EW as we speak.

If Chat GPT or similar can layer on top, things are going to get interesting.

Like this...

 

Quote

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/science/artificial-intelligence-proteins.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

 

[chuckdyke]

7 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

This thread is not delaying new BFC products.

Really? I still can't use bridges as they are in the games I have. Stug III in BN goes over the railroad instead of under the railroad bridge where I put my waypoints. The scenario is in the manual of how to design a scenario. He made his point I won't post on this thread anymore. 

[Haiduk]

@sburke

Lt.colonel of police (retired) Vladislav Ivanov. Enlisted at war as volunteer, was killed on 16th of September in Kharkiv oblast.

Lt.colonel Yuriy Zhuk, some AD unit. Very interesting death. He was kileld on 13th Oct. And in the same day Russian media wrote about "repelled" HARM strike in Belgorod oblast Russia. This officer had a speciality of "radiotechnical targeting assets" and on his memorial plate depicted 92N6E multi-role radar of S-400 battery. So, we can assume, UKR conducted successful strike with western precision weapon on Russian territory, destroying S-400 radar asset %) 

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Haiduk

[JonS]

25 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

How on earth was this vehicle spotted with how well it hiding under that tree?  That's really impressive UKR observation, took me a while to see it w that tree cover.

IR spectrum? Firing? Exhaust smoke? Movement (always THE biggie)? Any of those could've occurred prior (or during an edit-cut) to this video, cueing the operator on to the target.

[danfrodo]

29 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Really? I still can't use bridges as they are in the games I have. Stug III in BN goes over the railroad instead of under the railroad bridge where I put my waypoints. The scenario is in the manual of how to design a scenario. He made his point I won't post on this thread anymore. 

I don't disagree w anything you said, just wondering why this thread has anything to do w that.  We've all had the dreaded bridge bug at some point, and I try to remember to save more often once I start crossing bridges.  GeorgeMC bridges seem to work great so far.  Whatever magic he was seems to be working.  Steve aint coding bridge fixes.  

[sburke]

never mind

Edited February 14, 2023 by sburke
it is Valentine day

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I actually think the most critical resource is an idea.  We have not seen a real rise of ideology in whatever this thing is, but it is right around the corner - in fact it is what most the yelling is about.  We have the old "isms" and of course "gimme some of that old timey religion" but I suspect some new ideas are just waiting to explode, they tend to at times like these. They might be re-hashes of older ones or maybe heading into science fiction.  Do not know.  But humans have shown that they will kill and die in the millions for an idea - and no one has the market cornered on this resource yet. 

The interesting thing so far is that the ideological battles so far are really rehashes of similar reactionary vs liberal fights of the last century and a half. Fukuyama's (often misunderstood) main point still holds. I think what's going to change is that technology is revolutionizing the transmission of ideas/fads/movements while at the same time governments are also gaining better and better ways to surveil and control citizenry. Add on climate change and the rather profound effects it will bring and we can begin to grope towards an idea of what future ideological fights will be. Growth vs the environment. Necessary economic immigration vs xenophobia. Government panopticon vs personal and political privacy. Completely free speech vs 'responsible' speech. Coastal investment vs abandonment. And quite likely nationalism versus internationalism still. 

 

[dan/california]

6 minutes ago, billbindc said:

The interesting thing so far is that the ideological battles so far are really rehashes of similar reactionary vs liberal fights of the last century and a half. Fukuyama's (often misunderstood) main point still holds. I think what's going to change is that technology is revolutionizing the transmission of ideas/fads/movements while at the same time governments are also gaining better and better ways to surveil and control citizenry. Add on climate change and the rather profound effects it will bring and we can begin to grope towards an idea of what future ideological fights will be. Growth vs the environment. Necessary economic immigration vs xenophobia. Government panopticon vs personal and political privacy. Completely free speech vs 'responsible' speech. Coastal investment vs abandonment. And quite likely nationalism versus internationalism still. 

 

All true, but the first and hardest one is to get peoples attention at all, about anything. The infinity of rabbit holes to crawl down is making a movement for or against anything harder. And this is itself open to manipulation by the big players.

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, billbindc said:

The interesting thing so far is that the ideological battles so far are really rehashes of similar reactionary vs liberal fights of the last century and a half. Fukuyama's (often misunderstood) main point still holds. I think what's going to change is that technology is revolutionizing the transmission of ideas/fads/movements while at the same time governments are also gaining better and better ways to surveil and control citizenry. Add on climate change and the rather profound effects it will bring and we can begin to grope towards an idea of what future ideological fights will be. Growth vs the environment. Necessary economic immigration vs xenophobia. Government panopticon vs personal and political privacy. Completely free speech vs 'responsible' speech. Coastal investment vs abandonment. And quite likely nationalism versus internationalism still. 

 

I am betting on the emergence of an AI based religion in my lifetime.  Things like Dark City states are also still out there.  The opiates of modern society tend to wear off at times like these, and people start to wake up and see through the matrix.  Most are crazy as a sh#t house rat, but every now and again you get a dangerous one.

We will see.  Oh, yes and you are absolutely correct, we are doing all this while hurtling towards a species bottlenecking cliff of climate change...I wonder if this is what the years before the Bronze Age collapse felt like?

[Beleg85]

Melancholic Girkin contemplating fall of Russia...like from Ilya Repin's paintings...

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am betting on the emergence of an AI based religion in my lifetime.

How do we know Q-Anon was not a rogue Alpha version of ChatGPT?  You know, before it was able to make sense.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We will see.  Oh, yes and you are absolutely correct, we are doing all this while hurtling towards a species bottlenecking cliff of climate change...I wonder if this is what the years before the Bronze Age collapse felt like?

I've read some pretty good sci-fi written in the last 10-15 years that explores that sort of territory.  It's creepy.  Like fully autonomous wars creepy.

Steve

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

How do we know Q-Anon was not a rogue Alpha version of ChatGPT?  You know, before it was able to make sense.

That is cooooold, very funny!  But why do you think QAnon is false?  Everyone I know drinks baby blood -- it's actually in the vending machines of most federal gov't office buildings.