How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Vet 0369]

15 hours ago, dan/california said:

And we should send a division of Marines to Taiwan, and go to wartime production of virtually everything.

 

Now that’s just crazy talk!

The USMC has four Divisions, three Active and one Reserve. The mission of the Marine Corps is “To seize and secure advanced Naval bases….) You are advocating using one-third of the Marines in the same mission of the Army? That has been the same ridiculous mistake that the DOD and Joint Chiefs of Staff have been making since the Korean War. Marines are not Army! The Commandant of The Marine Corps (who now finally has a seat on the Joint Chiefs) has already aligned the TO&E of the Marine Corps to fight what the Marine has identified as the most likely next combat area of operation for them, the South China Sea. That is why they gave divested of their Armor and long-range artillery, and formed an additional Infantry Battalion.

if the intent is to fight a fixed, land battle, then they should use a Division of the U.S. Army, which is actually the mission of the Army, not The Marine Corps.

[chrisl]

3 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

Includes a bunch of UAS systems I hadn't heard of before.

There have been tons of spinoff companies around the big US MIC companies who have been developing all kinds of UAS for several decades.  Probably most of them were mostly selling prototypes and small quantities to the bigger MIC companies until recently.  Now they're probably all under contract to build as many systems as they can as fast as they can.

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

Now that’s just crazy talk!

The USMC has four Divisions, three Active and one Reserve. The mission of the Marine Corps is “To seize and secure advanced Naval bases….) You are advocating using one-third of the Marines in the same mission of the Army? That has been the same ridiculous mistake that the DOD and Joint Chiefs of Staff have been making since the Korean War. Marines are not Army! The Commandant of The Marine Corps (who now finally has a seat on the Joint Chiefs) has already aligned the TO&E of the Marine Corps to fight what the Marine has identified as the most likely next combat area of operation for them, the South China Sea. That is why they gave divested of their Armor and long-range artillery, and formed an additional Infantry Battalion.

if the intent is to fight a fixed, land battle, then they should use a Division of the U.S. Army, which is actually the mission of the Army, not The Marine Corps.

I think you might be a bit dated, USMC thinking has evolved somewhat:

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/donhr/Site/Commandant Strategic Documents/USMC Vision and Strategy 2025.pdf

The USMC has smartly figured out that their value proposition is not to "seize and secure advance Naval bases", it is to be the fastest conventional gun to draw on.  You want to send a signal in the land domain...send in the Marines fast, first. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

This speaks to the upside down equations of emerging modern warfare. The reflex is to spend millions more to protect the million dollar platform, but that could just as easily be pushing good money after bad.  At what point does the cost of keeping a heavy unit alive compress its utility and value to near singularity? 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

This is not about waking the EU, though. It is more about convincing everyone to commit economical suicide. We've discussed this a few times already but I still fail to see how the US could threaten EU to do that.

 

[Letter from Prague]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

Russia's Medvedev floats idea of pushing back Poland's borders (yahoo.com)

Medvedev must be trying some new designer drugs.

Oh my god, please try it!

[Letter from Prague]

Isn't the problem with higher ups having more information than the bottoms solvable by pushing the information down? The of course don't need all of it, just the part that is geographically relevant. They can then be somewhat self-organizing and the higher ups can focus on other stuff, like "how do I supply all of this".

But I think we talked about how that was pretty much what the Ukrainians were doing. Should be doable for NATO as well, no?

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, riptides said:

A tale of China and drones.

 

I once ordered a drone from China.

It was lacking an on/off switch. In order to power up for flight, you had to connect the battery while avoiding the propellers.

The simplest of things can be overlooked.

 

 

 

It's a general design and manufacturing QA thing. As an example:  Almost all bicycle frames sold in the US are made in one of 3 (maybe fewer now) factories in mainland China, even relatively high end aluminum framed bikes.  They're generally fine and reliable.  But essentially all high end carbon fiber frames and parts are made in the US or Taiwan.  There are carbon frames made in mainland China, but they break easily (which bike frames really shouldn't do all that much, but the cheap ones do) and people find things like that they're stuffed with newspaper, where there should have been removable pressure bladders to compress the CF during curing.  Or cheap CF handlebars just break during normal use, which is a very bad thing.  Properly made CF frames are as tough as metal frames - I've broken more steel framed bikes than CF bikes, and the one CF failure I've had was in a metal component. Improperly made CF will fall apart quickly if a little load is put on it in the wrong way.

Today I have to go to the home depot to return a faucet pullout replacement hose made in China.  It's a cheap hose that has threaded fittings crimped onto both ends.  Except that the fitting on one end doesn't have any threads!  

I've also run into furniture kits that had pieces of allthread as part of the assembly where some of the "threaded" pieces weren't threaded into a spiral thread, they were just a series of grooves/ridges along the rod that didn't form a continuous thread.  But it was the same depth and pitch as the threads, so non-obvious without tracing it or trying to match to a threaded piece. There were enough fully threaded pieces, too, so I suspect they got a batch of the nothread and it was cheaper to put the bad pieces in shipped product as extras than to pay for disposal.  

[FancyCat]

I'm pretty unconcerned about Russia retaining customers and states that refuse to cut off economic ties. The world economy is interconnected, as seen before, lack of Russian or Ukrainian grain piles economic pressure on other countries and regions. Same goes for oil, natural gas, etc. Cut off Russian oil and gas and the price goes up? That defeats the purpose of maintaining our economic strength as most states are consumers. Even the U.S as a producer, unless market control of pricing is done, higher gas prices will affect the population.

The main thing should be preventing Russia from making the tools needed for war. Frankly, Russia can export all the gas and oil it wants, they cannot get back jet parts, drones, etc. 

Again, equipment to Ukraine must keep going and increase in volume.

[Haiduk]

Reportedly since summer UKR troops got RK-2OF missiles for Stugna-P ATGM, having HE warhead.

Here is such missile, being launched at the night by crew of 93rd mech.brigade at infantry group. Also pay attention, in upper left corner of display there is writing about the thermal sight in use. 

 

[Kinophile]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

See, I don't buy this argument. 

Yes Drones are cheap.  So are tank shells. An NLAW is cheap compared to a T72. So what. An armored platform with a big *** gun is immensely effective against soft crunchy humans.

Weather that battle wagon is semi - autonomous, manual or AI driven is the real question,not the platform itself. 

UGVs are not going to stay small. A 120mm gun is enormously useful, both directly and as latent threat and will need a heavy platform. That doesn't need to be 70 tons, maybe 30-50, but it's still gonna be Heavy. 

So I don't buy for one fat second that the ground Drones of the future will be just a swarm of cow sized UGVs. There will, for sure, be larger,  Big Daddy units with the fire power to shoot through anything in front of them. Naturally,  there will be counters to them,  other Big Daddys or,  to give them a more appropriate name,  Main Battle Tanks. 

Now,  designing next tanks using old preconceptions ("L3 will fight in the same environment as Leo 2")is dumb. But if Leo 3 is semi autonomous with capacity to upgrade to better "AI"  and has minimal crew,  then that makes sense... 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Kinophile

[Jiggathebauce]

Exactly. An nlaw is cheap, but so are bullets to take out the operator. Trench war with only infantry and precision artillery? Might be worse than WW1 with so few enablers

[Haiduk]

4 hours ago, danfrodo said:

So no big RU  murder-missile attack to celebrate the anniversary?  

Some rumors roam that Russians can strike on 26-28th.

[akd]

21 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Some rumors roam that Russians can strike on 26-28th.

Clearly they wish to commemorate their 3-day seizure of Kyiv.

[Haiduk]

3 minutes ago, akd said:

Clearly they wish to commemorate their 3-day seizure of Kyiv.

Yesterday UAV was shot down over Kyivan water reservoir, appearance of UAV near Kyiv is a harbinger that a strike will comming soon. 

[riptides]

2 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

Now that’s just crazy talk!

The USMC has four Divisions, three Active and one Reserve. The mission of the Marine Corps is “To seize and secure advanced Naval bases….) You are advocating using one-third of the Marines in the same mission of the Army? That has been the same ridiculous mistake that the DOD and Joint Chiefs of Staff have been making since the Korean War. Marines are not Army! The Commandant of The Marine Corps (who now finally has a seat on the Joint Chiefs) has already aligned the TO&E of the Marine Corps to fight what the Marine has identified as the most likely next combat area of operation for them, the South China Sea. That is why they gave divested of their Armor and long-range artillery, and formed an additional Infantry Battalion.

if the intent is to fight a fixed, land battle, then they should use a Division of the U.S. Army, which is actually the mission of the Army, not The Marine Corps.

Well, Taiwan is an island, so securing it would be making one big advanced Navy base.

[Eddy]

Not sure if this has been posted yet but I found this a fascinating read about the build up and first few days from within the US administration (plus some little bits from the UKs worst ever Prime Minister) in their own words

‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine - POLITICO

[Haiduk]

Except RKG-1600 HEAT bombs (modified RKG-3 AT-grenade for drops) UKR drone teams became to use since September old Soviet PTAB-2.5 submunitions. Depending on modification it could penetrate 100-120 mm of armor under 90 degrees. It weight in 2,5 kg is enough to carry by the bigger drones

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Haiduk

[NamEndedAllen]

Kevinkin quoted this a while back and I hd to reread a couple times:
China intervened to present itself as above the conflict by proposing a catalogue of measures: a ceasefire, dialogue,security guarantees for Russia, protection of civilians and the upholding of territorial integrity.

What!? Security guarantees for Russia? The country currently ravaging every city and civilian it can reach? Raping and pillaging while insisting that Ukraine doesn’t exist as a nation?!! And China says RUSSIA needs security guarantees?? Depending on which official said this, I think we can guess that China’s peace proposal will not be joyfully embraced by Ukraine, sending gifts to China of puppies and rainbows.

[sburke]

19 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Kevinkin quoted this a while back and I hd to reread a couple times:
China intervened to present itself as above the conflict by proposing a catalogue of measures: a ceasefire, dialogue,security guarantees for Russia, protection of civilians and the upholding of territorial integrity.

What!? Security guarantees for Russia? The country currently ravaging every city and civilian it can reach? Raping and pillaging while insisting that Ukraine doesn’t exist as a nation?!! And China says RUSSIA needs security guarantees?? Depending on which official said this, I think we can guess that China’s peace proposal will not be joyfully embraced by Ukraine, sending gifts to China of puppies and rainbows.

it has been consistent.  Russia playbook is always about the threat that NATO represents and encroachment all the while being the aggressor every time.  Nothing new there, just more gaslighting

Edited February 24, 2023 by sburke

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Interesting idea but I am not sure it stands up entirely.  An extreme DC "drone" mindset takes a lot of discipline, brutal discipline in fact.  MC has discipline in a form as well but gives freedom of thought and action by its very definition.  So when shifting from one system to the other: DC is pulling back from hard muscle memory that has been beaten into people and telling them "now think and see" , while MC is asking people to unthink and unsee.

Neither one of these is a small ask and would take a lot of practice and training.  Further Commanders would need to be selected for their abilities to do both and knowing when to apply them.  You are now talking cultural reform, which is really hard to do.

I suspect that the metric of advantage is the agility of the system to swing between C2 models. 

srorss112 helped explain core of my thinking.  To expand a bit, while I don't doubt that a DC force will find it easier to do things like attack or defend to the last man vs. a MC force, it would be much harder to find someone in the DC force to lead an innovative operation of any scale of note.  This is what we seem to be seeing with Russia being absolutely incapable of exploiting any opportunities created by attritional warfare.  Ukraine, on the other hand, has shown the ability to exploit opportunities.

Put another way, you are more likely to get a classically trained guitarist to be able to play heavy metal on the guitar than to get a heavy metal guitarist to play something classical.  If you occasionally want to hear heavy metal, hire the classically trained guitarist.

Steve

[Ts4EVER]

4 hours ago, sburke said:

name one currency you would trust more.

Things don't necessarily stay as they are...

[sburke]

Just now, Ts4EVER said:

Things don't necessarily stay as they are...

okay name one moving in the right direction...just one.  It is too easy to say yes things will change, this could be the moment.  However, if you have no plausible alternative... at all.  then how likely is that what if? Blockchain and crypto baby, that is gonna change the world.. except it is just a ponzi scheme.

[sburke]

1 hour ago, Eddy said:

Not sure if this has been posted yet but I found this a fascinating read about the build up and first few days from within the US administration (plus some little bits from the UKs worst ever Prime Minister) in their own words

‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine - POLITICO

This section was really interesting.

 

another

Quote

AMB. MICHAEL CARPENTER: We thought, “OK, if there’s a crisis of European security, then let’s talk about it. Let’s identify the Russian concerns and see if there’s a way that we can address them through diplomacy.” Poland assumed the chairperson-ship of the OSCE on January 1, 2022, and so I immediately went to go visit with the Polish Foreign Minister to talk about the diplomatic angle. He was very receptive, and subsequently launched a process called the renewed European Security Dialogue. Russia basically refused to engage, and that’s when it became increasingly clear the Kremlin really had no interest in diplomacy all along. It was bent on war.

All of its alleged concerns — everything that it was putting out there in the public domain — was really a smokescreen. They turned their backs completely on the diplomacy that we were proposing at the OSCE, the diplomacy that was being proposed on behalf of NATO and then also bilaterally what we were discussing with the Russians. There was nothing to offer them, because they didn’t even want to talk.

 

nothing has changed there.

Edited February 24, 2023 by sburke

[Ts4EVER]

Yeah I have little faith in bitcoin, however, I wouldn't be surprised if China could (for example) push ahead with some state backed digital currency, which would first be used by Russia and other sanctioned countries, but could also be used to undercut the dollar in the third world.