How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Lt. Col. Igor Shcherbak, 7th Military Base.  He was one of 17 survivors to escape the encirclement of his "brigade" of 140 soldiers in September, only to later be blown up in a car while returning to base.

 

[kevinkin]

31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

PTSD is a serious problem even under the most optimal circumstances, and there's nothing optimal about this in Russia.

While Ukraine is in a much much better position medically and socially to handle the outcomes of this war, it will remain an issue for years. And if the violence continues with no end in sight, the west is going to have to consider re-building mental health and lives as important as re-building physical infrastructure. Rebuilding lives is far more complicated and necessary than rebuilding brick and mortar. You can't just throw money at it either. An imperfect science. Perhaps Ukrainians living aboard now will return with the right attitude to help those that remained in country. 

[sburke]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

Oh, you too, huh?  That happened on my old jeep once back in the day.  Easy to repair at least, once I got it home.  Recovery & logistics systems were in place so didn't have to abandon it to the russians.

you had a tractor handy?

[sburke]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

OK, so by that logic China where the one child policy led to huge numbers of aborted girls and a huge surplus of men should be the angriest horniest country on earth.

OK, I think I'm done with this line of discussion.

you started it.  So this is how the Japanese deal with it.  Keeps their men folk from becoming slobbering attack dogs it seems.  Girl friend lap pillows.

[Artkin]

lol wtf

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Artkin said:

lol wtf

you laugh my friend but at least this is a true physical relationship!  

There is also this

Japanese man who married a Fictional Character doll struggles to bond - Tamil News - IndiaGlitz.com

okay sorry Steve... back to your regularly broadcast thread.

Edited February 28, 2023 by sburke

[danfrodo]

Demographics:  while all the idiots are selectively having boys, the smart ones stick w girls who will be more valued, as per ye olde supply & demand.  

Haiduk is getting indications that Bakhmut is in trouble.  Other than symbolically I know it's not a big loss, but I was kinda hoping it could continue to act as a graveyard for RU.  Looks like its getting expensive both ways.

[The_Capt]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

There's a lot of Crimean coastline and plenty of mainland Russian ports.  They did pretty well without the road and rail capacity that was lost due to the truck bomb, so I'd not count them out so easily.  I thought the Dnepr would be a lot harder on Russia than it turned out to be.

For Ukraine to effectively interdict Russian shipping they will need loitering PGMs and/or a lot more presence on the water itself (suicide boats, anti-ship missiles, etc.).  That may only be possible if they've already established themselves on the western coast and/or deep into the interior.  In either case, Russia would have to already be in big trouble.

Steve

Well the Dnepr was hard enough to get them to give up Kherson.  Crimea does have a lot of coast line, the trick will be sustaining the tonnage required to sustain land forces, which can get pretty high.  So while a lot of people here have been positively gushing over tanks, the UA likely has an anti-shipping/interdiction requirement right now that is much higher priority.  Western ISR will be able to pick up any shipping, but being able to deny this space will get tricky and require different capabilities.  Crimea will definitely extend this war deeper into the maritime domain.  

[sburke]

Putin orders Ukraine border tightening as drones hit Russia (yahoo.com)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered officials to tighten control of the border with Ukraine after a spate of drone attacks that Russian authorities blamed on Kyiv delivered a new challenge to Moscow more than a year after its full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

One drone crashed just 100 kilometers (60 miles) away from Moscow in an alarming development for Russian defenses.

While Putin didn’t refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after drone attacks targeted several areas in southern and western Russia and authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

[hcrof]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well the Dnepr was hard enough to get them to give up Kherson.  Crimea does have a lot of coast line, the trick will be sustaining the tonnage required to sustain land forces, which can get pretty high.  So while a lot of people here have been positively gushing over tanks, the UA likely has an anti-shipping/interdiction requirement right now that is much higher priority.  Western ISR will be able to pick up any shipping, but being able to deny this space will get tricky and require different capabilities.  Crimea will definitely extend this war deeper into the maritime domain.  

Russia supplied Kherson by loading civilian vehicles with military supplies and also mixing them with civilian traffic. I am sure they will do the same to supply Crimea so unless Ukraine wants to starve the whole place out while bombing civilians I am concerned that "choking them out" will be a difficult process. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by hcrof
Clarity

[kevinkin]

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/chinas-ukraine-plan-is-all-about-challenging-the-us/

There are still good reasons China wouldn’t want to get pulled into the war, such as fear of international condemnation, further damage to relations with Europe, and exposure to US sanctions. Yet there is one very compelling reason Xi might nonetheless get involved: He can’t afford to see Putin lose.

A Russia that emerges from this war modestly weakened, internationally isolated, and thus more dependent on Beijing, isn’t such a bad thing from Xi’s perspective. A Russia that has been battered so badly that it hardly qualifies as a great power poses a bigger problem, because it allows the US to concentrate on Beijing.

"Afraid of my own shadow in the face of grace
Heart full of darkness spotlight on my face
There was love all around me but I was lookin' for revenge
Thank God it never found me would have been the end
walkin' the tightrope steppin' on my friends
Walkin' the tightrope (it) was a shame and a sin"

- Song by Stevie Ray Vaughan

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

All depends from level of support, communication capabilities, tasks priority etc. Also this guy says he transmitted data via phone. In theory, if unit has direct communication with artillery via PDA with Kropyva/Delta soft, ETA can be 1 min. And this situation also known. Of course, this is in emergency situationons, but it's possible.  

I see.  Hes mentioned pinning units and targets using phones (never once mentions PDA).  I assume the Kropyva /Delta apps are device agnostic (but Android)? 

I think each time hes asked for fires throughout the blog its been by phone. 

[The_Capt]

29 minutes ago, hcrof said:

Russia supplied Kherson by loading civilian vehicles with military supplies and also mixing them with civilian traffic. I am sure they will do the same to supply Crimea so unless Ukraine wants to starve the whole place out while bombing civilians I am concerned that "choking them out" will be a difficult process. 

We heard the exact same arguments at Kherson...and it went the way it did.

Well using civilians as human shields to protect military logistics is a war crime in itself.  Further it does leave a lot of room for collateral damage calculations.  And of course humanitarian aid is off the hit list, which I am also sure Russia will try and employ etc.  In the end however, it takes lot so sustain a large military organization, even 10-20% attrition of supplies can lead to some pretty stark calcs.  If the UA can deny access to military platforms and military controlled shipping, they are onto something.

In the end, yes there will be human suffering - not sure why we in the west think war is somehow sanitized now.  The UA will likely do everything they can to try and keep this pointed at RA military capability but it will be a siege, and those suck...best to get used to the idea now.

[billbindc]

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We heard the exact same arguments at Kherson...and it went the way it did.

Well using civilians as human shields to protect military logistics is a war crime in itself.  Further it does leave a lot of room for collateral damage calculations.  And of course humanitarian aid is off the hit list, which I am also sure Russia will try and employ etc.  In the end however, it takes lot so sustain a large military organization, even 10-20% attrition of supplies can lead to some pretty stark calcs.  If the UA can deny access to military platforms and military controlled shipping, they are onto something.

In the end, yes there will be human suffering - not sure why we in the west think war is somehow sanitized now.  The UA will likely do everything they can to try and keep this pointed at RA military capability but it will be a siege, and those suck...best to get used to the idea now.

It's a useful point. Virtually everyone in the punditsphere ignoring Bucha now will be screaming to the heavens about the humanitarian effects of a siege of Crimea then. Best to price it in.

[Battlefront.com]

48 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Quote

A Russia that emerges from this war modestly weakened, internationally isolated, and thus more dependent on Beijing, isn’t such a bad thing from Xi’s perspective. A Russia that has been battered so badly that it hardly qualifies as a great power poses a bigger problem, because it allows the US to concentrate on Beijing.

And that's the kicker for China... there are only three ways to prevent Russia from being utterly defeated:

1.  Get the West to back down and abandon Ukraine

2.  Get Russia to back down and abandon Ukraine

3.  Get Ukraine to back down on its own

China has very little influence on making any of these things happen.  Of the three, China has more (but limited) influence in getting Russia to back down and yet the "peace proposal" it floated was certainly not aimed in that direction.  Which means, either China has to take a different approach by pressuring Moscow or it has to just hope for the best.  Some chips, drones, and munitions sent to Moscow won't change anything for the better.

Steve

[hcrof]

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We heard the exact same arguments at Kherson...and it went the way it did.

Well using civilians as human shields to protect military logistics is a war crime in itself.  Further it does leave a lot of room for collateral damage calculations.  And of course humanitarian aid is off the hit list, which I am also sure Russia will try and employ etc.  In the end however, it takes lot so sustain a large military organization, even 10-20% attrition of supplies can lead to some pretty stark calcs.  If the UA can deny access to military platforms and military controlled shipping, they are onto something.

In the end, yes there will be human suffering - not sure why we in the west think war is somehow sanitized now.  The UA will likely do everything they can to try and keep this pointed at RA military capability but it will be a siege, and those suck...best to get used to the idea now.

I'm not saying you are wrong necessarily but I am personally struggling to put together a realistic plan to "do a Kherson" in my head. Because of the narrow choke points, Russia will not have to expend supplies at the same rate as the larger Kherson front. On top of that, even if the whole land bridge is captured to the shores of Azov does that mean that Ukraine fires a harpoon at anything moving in the black sea? How do they stop civilian ferries sneaking across the Kerch straits or even further south? And if they do they have to deal with the bad press of a lot of dead civilians on a civilian vessel which Russia will claim was transporting children and puppies. 

In my mind the long ranges, long shoreline and easier to defend positions make the problem harder, and it was already very hard due to the Russian habit of using human shields in Kherson.

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I'm not saying you are wrong necessarily but I am personally struggling to put together a realistic plan to "do a Kherson" in my head. Because of the narrow choke points, Russia will not have to expend supplies at the same rate as the larger Kherson front. On top of that, even if the whole land bridge is captured to the shores of Azov does that mean that Ukraine fires a harpoon at anything moving in the black sea? How do they stop civilian ferries sneaking across the Kerch straits or even further south? And if they do they have to deal with the bad press of a lot of dead civilians on a civilian vessel which Russia will claim was transporting children and puppies. 

In my mind the long ranges, long shoreline and easier to defend positions make the problem harder, and it was already very hard due to the Russian habit of using human shields in Kherson.

This is my opinion as well.

We also have to keep in mind that in the Kherson scenario there was a massive ground offensive going on concurrent with cutting Russia's LOCs.  And yet Russia managed to keep fighting, very effectively it seems, for a couple of months while they were also under immense pressure in Luhansk.

What I can see being realistic is hitting logistics in Crimea that make it impossible for Russia to hold the land bridge while under the pressure of a high intensity ground campaign to take the western side of the land bridge.  Then once Russia is cleared off the rest of the Black Sea coast, using 200km + PGMs to make Sevastopol and airbases unusable.  Dropping the Kerch bridge is a no-brainer.

This approach neutralizes the practical military value of Crimea for Russia, which is a huge benefit to Ukraine for sure.  All without a risky and involved attack into Crimea by land.  That might still be desirable later, but I've advocated since the start of the war that Ukraine should wait and see how the rest of the liberation goes.

Steve

[Lethaface]

On 2/25/2023 at 5:16 PM, The_Capt said:

The exact opposite actually.  MC provides advantage the less control you have, while DC favours higher control and communications.   That is why as we enter into the totally integrated battlefield DC starts to make a lot of sense.  People are conflating DC with “attritional warfare” but that is not entirely the case.  You can do dislocation warfare with DC, you just have to really be wired in and higher command needs to have full situational awareness.  

You can absolutely achieve annihilation through dislocation this way - proof = air campaigns.  Air power is far more tightly controlled than land power for a lot of reasons, but we have seen deliberate dislocation campaigns work in this domain.  They also have a lot of C4ISR, traditionally far more than land forces, but that is changing. 

MC is specifically designed for losing control but sustaining command, two different concepts.  However as the battlefield becomes digitized higher commanders will lose control less and less (in theory).

While MC provides advantages for less control, imo it doesn't necessarily mean an organization utilizing MC will not benefit from direct communications with higher ups and some form of control. 
Ensuring that authority is delegated to the lowest capable level is probably more a challenge for higher ups than it is for the lower levels, but does still require a 'lowest capable level' for authority to be trusted upon. If you don't have capable cadres for that, more rigid and detailed command and control is required. In my opinion this is the same for any type of organization.

One example of how even fully digitized forces become difficult to command effectively from a DC perspective is playing Combat Mission in 'realtime' with a battalion worth of troops. Sure it would allow for more 'detailed command', but having a better 'TAC-AI' would beat the opposing force given that everything else is equal. 
 
DC as a concept is more brittle compared to MC, not only because of the risk of losing control and the consequences that has for DC, but perhaps even more because favoring DC over MC is imo defacto a choice for an inflexible culture ('system says no', 'tell me what I need to do now') and wasting human potential. Although probably no organization(al unit) is ever pure one or the other in practice, imo for the better. 
 

[Beleg85]

News from Bakhmut by M.Lachowski:

-Situation is dire, Russians are 2,5 km from Khromove road- only stable line of supply

- Ukrainians are still defending the city from behind the river, but katsap firepower is overwhelming- they seem to conserve a lot of ammo for this assault.

-Muscovite airforce intensified, flies 3-4 sorties a day very close to the frontline

-Ukrainian counterattack did happen (note UA fights for Jahidne), but was only temporary and conducted with not enough force

-there is very strict info discipline on defender side; not a lot of info around except it is heavy. Both sides suffering heavy casualties, RU are of course again throwing assaults squads like before

 

Ok, quite frankly I don't know why they hold to this town so stubbornly. Also part of Ukrainian public seem to be questioning reason here- I saw and read many soldiers opinions it is rather pointless at this point to hold Bakhmut with fingers and nails.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Beleg85

[Kinophile]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is my opinion as well.

We also have to keep in mind that in the Kherson scenario there was a massive ground offensive going on concurrent with cutting Russia's LOCs.  And yet Russia managed to keep fighting, very effectively it seems, for a couple of months while they were also under immense pressure in Luhansk.

What I can see being realistic is hitting logistics in Crimea that make it impossible for Russia to hold the land bridge while under the pressure of a high intensity ground campaign to take the western side of the land bridge.  Then once Russia is cleared off the rest of the Black Sea coast, using 200km + PGMs to make Sevastopol and airbases unusable.  Dropping the Kerch bridge is a no-brainer.

This approach neutralizes the practical military value of Crimea for Russia, which is a huge benefit to Ukraine for sure.  All without a risky and involved attack into Crimea by land.  That might still be desirable later, but I've advocated since the start of the war that Ukraine should wait and see how the rest of the liberation goes.

Steve

hmmm.

The suffering of the civilian population is a real issue. A long siege that messes with logistics will need to harm the food supply of almost 2 million people. By contrast Kherson was 250K+ ish, deep in hostile territory and itself under constant attack by someone. In Crimea, the food stocks have been uninterrupted, there's plenty of room to disperse supply points, the civilian supply network is more wide spread and connective with Russia proper, etc, etc.

As noted by others, Kherson fell because the heavy attrition and logistics cost defending it overwhelmed the choked-off GLOCs supplying it.

Per Steve's point, the Crimean coast, while rough and awkward in many parts, is still completely landable at many points on the Azov & Black Sea shores. Dropping the Kherch does a lot to impact battlefield conditions further north, because moving heavy military equipment is not easy, but Crimea's population and garrison itself could be realistically supplied by sea alone. They'd be hungrier, sure, but not starving.

A classic siege of sealing off Crimea from the world is probably not the answer here, from a sheer scale, force absorption and civilian destruction POV.

Seeing as UKR already has a handy-dandy tool in its box, how could they apply corrosive warfare without going Siege of Leningrad?

Edited February 28, 2023 by Kinophile

[The_Capt]

25 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I'm not saying you are wrong necessarily but I am personally struggling to put together a realistic plan to "do a Kherson" in my head. Because of the narrow choke points, Russia will not have to expend supplies at the same rate as the larger Kherson front. On top of that, even if the whole land bridge is captured to the shores of Azov does that mean that Ukraine fires a harpoon at anything moving in the black sea? How do they stop civilian ferries sneaking across the Kerch straits or even further south? And if they do they have to deal with the bad press of a lot of dead civilians on a civilian vessel which Russia will claim was transporting children and puppies. 

In my mind the long ranges, long shoreline and easier to defend positions make the problem harder, and it was already very hard due to the Russian habit of using human shields in Kherson.

Crimea is about 3-4 times the size of the Kherson pocket (7000 sq kms to 27,000 sq kms) and most of that accessible coastline.  So the problem for the RA is much larger than the 150 odd km frontage they had at Kherson.  They will need effective sea control on the Black Sea side, Azov Sea side, air control over the whole thing and will likely concentrate land forces on that bottleneck but will need enough land forces to either post them all along the entire coast or have rapid reaction forces that can quickly counter any landings.   This is a very high logistics bill one way or the other.

Russia sucks at rapid reaction forces but if they go that way those units will be hard to hide and prime targets for a deep strike campaign.  If they go with "conscripts on the beach" their logistics bill goes up dramatically as that kind of real estate will soak up entire divisions to construct defences in any meaningful way.

So as to interdiction.  Yep a lot of coastline and routes to it but they either really spread out logistic nodes on the landing sites - a logistical nightmare, or concentrate them for scale.   So all the boats in the shipping are fair game, but my money is on the landing sites and nodes.  The RA operational logistics at this point is highly visible as it comes over the water - this is not like the Donbas where they can hide trucks in back wood trails, boats are really hot and visible.  Further they have to employ constructed landing sites (which if anyone has studied amphib ops is not easy) and distribution centers for things like re-packaging because putting something on a boat is not the same as a truck...and these are also very hard to hide.

So if the UA is going to do this, based in ranges, we are into ATACMs territory but I am betting planners already know this and might be why we are hearing rumors of training going on.  Basically ISR and any sort of long range denial will really hurt the RA logistical effort. Given the scope and scale of RA requirements I think the system may be more vulnerable and fail faster than Kherson so long as the UA can sustain its fires program.  Self-loitering long range munitions would be very helpful here...or achieving air superiority but that is a big ask.

Is it doable, absolutely.  How long will it take...who knows?  Given the state of the RA, they are not in the same place they were back at Kherson.  Being cut off on a large isolated peninsula is going to do nothing for morale.  

[Beleg85]

Defender who doesn't give a .... about bullets, granades or lasers Russians throw at him. If he survived, I hope he get a nickname "Unsupressed" or something similar:

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Beleg85

[sburke]

personally, I think we are getting way ahead of ourselves.  They have to cut off Crimea first.  If that happens the whole geopolitical and military sphere will be in a different place.  Options may be far different than we expect.  Assuming they do achieve that, there is the question of the state of Russian military forces at that point.  Will Russia be able to withdrawal mostly intact or will there be large units cut off.  If the Russian army loses units having to surrender in large quantities, the pressure on the regime is gonna be heavy.  If they withdrawal largely intact, not as much.

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, sburke said:

personally, I think we are getting way ahead of ourselves. 

As opposed to what?  Watching war-porn as the UA and RA blast away over shattered lands in the mud?  Hand-wringing and pearl clutching at imminent victory/defeat? 

It is pretty clear that if Ukraine wants to get this going back their way they are going to need to dislocate Russia strategically.  Dry humping in the Donbas is a dead end unless the RA collapsed entirely.  So we are at a play down the center to cut the theatres and then taking on the Crimea.

Between the UA and western supporters they have likely got rooms full of guys working this stuff out.

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, sburke said:

personally, I think we are getting way ahead of ourselves.  They have to cut off Crimea first.  If that happens the whole geopolitical and military sphere will be in a different place.  Options may be far different than we expect.  Assuming they do achieve that, there is the question of the state of Russian military forces at that point.  Will Russia be able to withdrawal mostly intact or will there be large units cut off.  If the Russian army loses units having to surrender in large quantities, the pressure on the regime is gonna be heavy.  If they withdrawal largely intact, not as much.

Yes, this is my feeling exactly.  I think we are getting ahead of ourselves because the basic circumstances necessary to take back Crimea are, themselves, so huge that the basic conditions we're making assumptions about now are unlikely to remain effectively the same.

In order to even get close to threatening Crimea, Ukraine will have to collapse pretty much the entire southern front west of Donetsk City.  That's massive.  If they are able to do that, I'm not sure Russia will still be in this war and/or Ukraine will have the strength to do anything with Crimea (from the ground) for a whole year. 

If Russia is able to withdraw its forces from the south, as it did Kherson and (mostly) everywhere else it retreated from, those forces will be excess of what is needed to hold Crimea.  Significant amounts might be transferred to the mainland front, just like happened after Kherson fell, thus making it harder for Ukraine to fight in those areas as is happening now.

At present I don't see any capability of Ukraine to interdict Russian shipping between Crimea and mainland Russia.  I hear what The_Capt is saying, but Russia managed to keep Kherson supplied despite everybody (including us) knowing exactly where it was onloading and offloading supplies.  Oh, and that's an important point too.  Ukraine had the ability to strike either end of the shipping whereas there's no chance of them interdicting the onloading operations in Russia proper as they are out of range.

Could Ukraine somehow acquire the ability to interdict shipping in Russia's portion of the Black Sea?  Well, they have surprised us before!  However, I don't find it likely any time soon.

Ukraine does have a realistic possibility of neutralizing Crimea as an effective base of military operations.  They also have the ability to make life miserable for the people living in Crimea, which is not necessarily something they want to do.  Would make any future liberation not as friendly as it might otherwise be.

Steve