How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

25 minutes ago, poesel said:

 

Agree and agree. And you both have given the solution to those problems: money. And since this is the Russian state that wants that problem solved, money is of no concern.

Again, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it is possible. And I believe it has and will be done for the Russian nukes.

And to repeat...the experts who are talking are all saying that the Russian nuclear forces are up to date.

[Kinophile]

Nicely timed to contrast with @The_Capt here is a military that is succeeding at all 5 sectors and has a component that is going to town on Development -  not just tech advances but deep rethink of theory,  it's function,  its format and mission profiling. 

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/03/03/how-the-marine-corps-plans-to-remake-its-logistics-personnel/

I've been very interested in this MC rethink, especially due to it being almost 180 degs of its current formatting. The logistics of supporting that new approach have been contentious since Berger startrd prodding things, and fairly so. 

Naturally this article is a skimmer,  not in depth, but the principles for adjustment of the train is very interesting,  as it's driven by the assumption of being vulnerable far further back than is currently assumed for a western force.  Yes things are different for a maritime oriented force,  but per the range of hostile striking abilities,  exposure to ISR, loitering /opportunistic munitions, Berger is looking at the future war from the correct side of Boom - supply. 

For Ukraine,  thus would be a very good mentality to start with,  after the war, because yes the West was here for this invasion. But there's no Guarantee it will be for the next, and functionally all of Ukraine is in range of both Russian munitions and ISR.  They're **** at the latter today,  but blind assumptions are the gravestones of success. 

(Im assuming it will be a long time before UKR is actually in NATO).

Edited March 5, 2023 by Kinophile

[photon]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Regardless, one thing this war has taught me is that strategy in warfare cannot simply be a “theory of victory” in the 21st century, it must also be a theory of defeat for an opponent.  This is a major shortfall in the entire concept.  We have literally been watching Russia figuring out how to lose this thing for about 6 months now. They need to “win at losing”, almost as much as Ukraine does at winning, or none of those policy objectives in this article are going to work.

This is a really fascinating idea. There are different kinds of losing as well:

- Popular Destruction: the winning power exterminates the losing power's people entirely (common in the ancient world, less so today).

- Cultural Destruction: the winning power destroys or remakes the losing power's culture (USA -> Japan)

- State Collapse: the winning power dissolves the state of the losing power (Allies -> Germany)

- Regime Change: the winning power replaces the government of the losing power (USA -> Iraq, round 2)

- Military Defeat: the winning power demolishes the military of the losing power (USA -> Iraq, round 1)

Each side is attempting to impose one or more losses on the other side, and each side negotiates what sort of losses are acceptable for itself. For example, the Romans often targeted their adversaries with a regime change. Local elites will be replaced with Roman elites, or local elites will swear allegiance to Roman elites, leaving all the substrata more or less intact. If an adversary proved faithless in that, the Romans rapidly ratcheted up to imposing a cultural or popular loss.

 

For this conflict, the Russians have projected a wild variety of strategic aims, at times indicating that they want to impose a regime on the Ukranians, but also communicating that they want to impose either a cultural or popular loss. Conversely, Ukraine has to aim for more than just imposing a military loss (which they've either achieved, or are close to achieving), threading a fine line between the collapse of the Russian government and the collapse of the Russian state. The Russians ought to be aiming to contain the loss to the level of a military defeat, but their own rhetoric is making that harder to do, as they've couched Ukranian/NATO objectives as state collapse, popular and cultural destruction.

[Battlefront.com]

50 minutes ago, poesel said:

Agree and agree. And you both have given the solution to those problems: money. And since this is the Russian state that wants that problem solved, money is of no concern.

Oooooo... no   We've seen tons of examples of pretty basic and important things that the Russians should have had in place for this invasion that were not because the money wasn't there.  Why?  Corruption for starters, but generally speaking an over commitment of revenue.  Russia has been short changing all kinds of important things because it simply doesn't have enough to do everything it wants to or is obligated to do.  Witness Russia being desperate to get people to volunteer to die in Ukraine, yet they don't pay them what is promised.

This is not proof that they've under funded their nuclear arsenal.  I'm just point out that Western logic and Russian logic are often very different.

Steve

[kevinkin]

Turing the screws?:

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/two-ukrainian-pilots-are-us-training-assessment-attack-aircrafts-f-16s-rcna73426

Two Ukrainian pilots are currently in the United States undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official.

Range finding study that could have been conducted long ago. Unless the AF knows and this report is for public consumption. 

 

 

[Holien]

@chrisland @womble

You are Spot on - Legacy systems become legacy because they are not maintained or upgraded and Nukes are no different.

Now I would not want to bet that some might work but Russia is in a world of hurt and they don't have the resources to upgrade and I bet they don't have the ability to maintain when key folk disappear...

BTW I have had the joy of trying to replace Legacy computing systems and there are some very old systems still working in critical business - such as banking and logistics.

E.g. COBOL created in the 50's and still in use in around 40% of modern banking systems...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
 

Quote

Testimony before the House of Representatives in 2016 indicated that COBOL is still in use by many federal agencies.^[114]Reuters reported in 2017 that 43% of banking systems still used COBOL with over 220 billion lines of COBOL code in use.^[115]

By 2019, the number of COBOL programmers was shrinking fast due to retirements, leading to an impending skills gap in business and government organizations which still use mainframe systems for high-volume transaction processing. Efforts to rewrite systems in newer languages have proven expensive and problematic, as has the outsourcing of code maintenance, thus proposals to train more people in COBOL are advocated.^[116]

CEO's kick the can down the road as they don't want to face the cost of bringing the kit and code up to date....

I wonder what code they used / use for their Nukes? - I bet it has not been updated...

IMO Don't ever underestimate the word legacy and the impact it has...

Edited March 5, 2023 by Holien

[The_Capt]

25 minutes ago, photon said:

This is a really fascinating idea. There are different kinds of losing as well:

- Popular Destruction: the winning power exterminates the losing power's people entirely (common in the ancient world, less so today).

- Cultural Destruction: the winning power destroys or remakes the losing power's culture (USA -> Japan)

- State Collapse: the winning power dissolves the state of the losing power (Allies -> Germany)

- Regime Change: the winning power replaces the government of the losing power (USA -> Iraq, round 2)

- Military Defeat: the winning power demolishes the military of the losing power (USA -> Iraq, round 1)

Each side is attempting to impose one or more losses on the other side, and each side negotiates what sort of losses are acceptable for itself. For example, the Romans often targeted their adversaries with a regime change. Local elites will be replaced with Roman elites, or local elites will swear allegiance to Roman elites, leaving all the substrata more or less intact. If an adversary proved faithless in that, the Romans rapidly ratcheted up to imposing a cultural or popular loss.

 

For this conflict, the Russians have projected a wild variety of strategic aims, at times indicating that they want to impose a regime on the Ukranians, but also communicating that they want to impose either a cultural or popular loss. Conversely, Ukraine has to aim for more than just imposing a military loss (which they've either achieved, or are close to achieving), threading a fine line between the collapse of the Russian government and the collapse of the Russian state. The Russians ought to be aiming to contain the loss to the level of a military defeat, but their own rhetoric is making that harder to do, as they've couched Ukranian/NATO objectives as state collapse, popular and cultural destruction.

Exactly.  It highlights to requirement to understand an opponents cognitive and conative frameworks.  Further is really underlines that war is not an activity that happens isolated from either pre-war or post-war negotiations.  It shapes both states and engineering an opponents defeat must be part of an overall strategy, as important as engineering victory.  One could even suggest that military power in war is that primary mechanism of an opponents negotiation with defeat.  If you are heading towards victory, and vice versa if you are losing.

All war is: certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice.

[poesel]

17 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oooooo... no   We've seen tons of examples of pretty basic and important things that the Russians should have had in place for this invasion that were not because the money wasn't there.  ...

Going back to the beginning of this argument: you can do everything in a corrupt system, but to deprive the boss from being corrupt.

Without the nukes, this conflict and regime would be over quite fast (and I don't think we have an argument that the US wouldn't know, that the nukes weren't working).

Functioning nukes are the linchpin of this regime. The Russians know that, we know that.
Underfunding the army is no problem. Exhibit A being the continuing existence of the Russian Federation.
But the nukes? No way.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

15 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

In my humble opinion, the U.S./VietNam war resulted from the U.S. wanting to help France retain it’s colony, and a corrupt South VietNam Government refusing to comply with the negotiated agreement to hold free elections in both countries. The North did, and the South refused.

I very much doubt if any elections under a communist regime were ever free. That would be the first time.

[sburke]

4 hours ago, Seminole said:

So when we invaded Panama without a fig leaf from the UN, should we have prosecuted any military members that were ordered to attack their radio station?  ‘Cause that sounds like bull**** to me.

Or is there another reason under the ‘rules based order’ that’s its ok when we do this stuff.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/12/21/us-forces-crush-panamanian-military/53644e38-d493-4042-bc5b-5aad14a58ebd/

Yesterday afternoon, a state radio station that had remained in loyalist hands broadcasting defiance throughout the first day of American intervention reported that it was under attack by U.S. forces. "Alert, alert, we're under attack," the announcer said before the station's signal went silent at 4:50 p.m.

https://apnews.com/article/f968dc18cc41ccc76a33b43baf4018b4

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ The General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. invasion of Panama as a ″flagrant violation″ of international law and called for the swift withdrawal of U.S. troops. 

The vote was 75 to 20, with 40 abstentions.

 

I can’t recall a U.S. invasion, internationally sanctioned or not, that didn’t involve attacking comms.  A giant radio tower in the capital is a dual use military target, isn’t it?

not sure what your point is.  Does/has the US done some fk'd up stuff?  Yep, lots of it.  Does that make it okay, nope.  Waterboarding, deliberately targeting civilians, etc.  In the course of our history, we've probably violated every international norm as has most everyone.  There is however an effort to change that, for everyone.  Progress is slow but it is there and with the advent of mass social media it is easier to show violations.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

21 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

ersonally, I am most excited by the 600x Switchblade 600. 

Is that an equivalent of Russian Lancet 3M? Ukrainians seemed to lack an adequate response to those

[Maciej Zwolinski]

22 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Agree with all but not the bold. In Kherson At least initially,  UKR seemed to go full assault but rapidly bogged down into a very solid defence network,  where the Russians seemed to turn the tables on them,  trading tactical distance for operational time.

A major part of that could be terrain. Kherson region is mostly the same kind of terrain one can see in the films from Vuhledar - flat fields divided by narrow and very conspicuous strips of trees. The only options seem to be a frontal dash across the fields or creep along the strips of woodland, which do not afford sigificantly more concealment or protection than the field between them. 

[kevinkin]

30 minutes ago, poesel said:

Functioning nukes are the linchpin of this regime.

Functioning yes. Accurate no. Accuracy mean nothing unless you are trying to win an all out nuclear exchange where silos and specific hard targets need to be destroyed. But 10 nukes hitting 10 suburbs of 10 major US cities is enough of a threat to be geologically effective. At least in the mad man first strike scenario. Even if Russia is annihilated in response with high accuracy, would anyone want to live in a country that is partially annihilated by MIRVs with terrible accuracy? And we got out of sorts about dirty bombs back in the day. 

[sburke]

12 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

I very much doubt if any elections under a communist regime were ever free. That would be the first time.

I don't think communists have a lock on unfair elections.  At the time they were deciding to not hold elections in Vietnam, the Montgomery bus boycott was just starting.  There are plenty of examples even today where truly free and fair elections aren't fully the norm.

[danfrodo]

54 minutes ago, poesel said:

Functioning nukes are the linchpin of this regime

I think I'd rephrase this as "The possibility of functioning nukes..."    Doesn't matter whether they work or are accurate in reality because the only way to really find out is the bad way.  There's a strong chance they could be and so we all have to behave as if a significant percentage will work properly. 

 

[sross112]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

And to repeat...the experts who are talking are all saying that the Russian nuclear forces are up to date.

We should put our faith in the "experts" on Russian military readiness, training, equipment, and capability? Since all of this has kicked off they have about the same success rate as 19th century meteorologists. Not real sure that anything they say should be given any credence.  

At the same time I totally agree with your point of view. Even if there is a 99% failure rate in the nuclear forces that still leaves more than enough to pretty much get the job done. So it still needs to be respected. Now if rocket fuel could be snorted with the same effect of cocaine I'd bet a body part it had all been sold years ago and replaced with sawdust.  

[billbindc]

Just now, sross112 said:

We should put our faith in the "experts" on Russian military readiness, training, equipment, and capability? Since all of this has kicked off they have about the same success rate as 19th century meteorologists. Not real sure that anything they say should be given any credence.  

At the same time I totally agree with your point of view. Even if there is a 99% failure rate in the nuclear forces that still leaves more than enough to pretty much get the job done. So it still needs to be respected. Now if rocket fuel could be snorted with the same effect of cocaine I'd bet a body part it had all been sold years ago and replaced with sawdust.  

Not the same experts and not the same organization they are looking at. Nuclear weapons complexes are very particular things with a predictable and well understood schedule of activity that is tied tightly to facilities that are highly surveilled by US ISR and have been for some 70 years. It's not an apples to apple comp.

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, womble said:

A very simplistic example:

Land Rover agreed to provide spare parts for the vehicles they sold to the British Army for 30 years after the model went out of production at their assembly lines. In order to do this, they sourced a load of components and put them in storage, specifically earmarked for MoD use.

Then that storage burnt to the ground because of a forklift fire. No more spare parts for old Army Landies. Or, at least, they have to be sourced from the "general market", so are much more expensive and availability is potentially spotty.

Keeping "legacy" equipment maintained is always going to be a bit of a lottery, unless you actually keep the entire production process "live", which is hellishly expensive. Maybe the Russians have had enough to spend to do this for the strategic forces for the last thirty years, maybe they haven't. Still risky to assume a 100% failure rate of the systems, though.

A side question: how much of the Russian offensive missile establishment is based in "core" Russian provinces? If the RF collapsed, what proportion of those 60 Insanities would be under the de facto control of the "successsor" states who'd be in the same position as Ukraine were at independence, i.e. unable to maintain or contain the systems?

Re your last question that's bolded: I didn't know so I had to search, but Russia is the only part of the former USSR that still (openly) has nuclear weapons.  All the other countries disarmed and I don't think any have tried to rearm.  But as far as what fraction ended up in other states?  Ukraine as a modern country had the worlds third largest nuclear arsenal at its formation.

and re the DC-9 example: There are actually 250 still in service with three different model numbers (DC-9, MD-80, and 717).  They share a common parts set and if if they're flying in North America or Europe changes in parts manufacture goes through the same process as it does for newer aircraft (expensive).

And yeah, I agree that even if they're decaying you can't count on 100% failure.  But from the Russian perspective it's potentially a big game of roulette. I think people talk about red lines NATO is afraid to cross a lot without thinking about the red lines Putin is afraid to cross. He's been very, very careful not to hit anything across NATO borders.  And if he really wanted to do some saber rattling he'd do some actual nuclear tests out in the middle of nowhere, but he hasn't.  That would be extremely escalatory.

Edited March 5, 2023 by chrisl

[womble]

11 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Re your last question that's bolded: I didn't know so I had to search, but Russia is the only part of the former USSR that still (openly) has nuclear weapons.  All the other countries disarmed and I don't think any have tried to rearm.  But as far as what fraction ended up in other states?  Ukraine as a modern country had the worlds third largest nuclear arsenal at its formation.

 

I've probably got my polity names mixed up. I know that the other "successor states" of the USSR didn't hang on to any nukes: Ukraine, Khazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia etc which are now sovereign, non-nuclear states. The question I'm asking is, to pose a more specific example "How many nukes would Siberia end up with on its soil, if Russia fell apart tomorrow and couldn't pull them back to Moscow before doing so would need another Special Military Operation?" And the same question for any other successors to the Russian State that Putin rules today.

Edit: Having a bit more time, I did a cursory Google, and it looks to me like there are a few bases that might be retained by Moscow, but others are in the Far East and south of the country...

 

Edited March 5, 2023 by womble

[Simcoe]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

not sure what your point is.  Does/has the US done some fk'd up stuff?  Yep, lots of it.  Does that make it okay, nope.  Waterboarding, deliberately targeting civilians, etc.  In the course of our history, we've probably violated every international norm as has most everyone.  There is however an effort to change that, for everyone.  Progress is slow but it is there and with the advent of mass social media it is easier to show violations.

You're right about everything except for the improving part. There are no good guys here. The US is the hegemonic empire and will do what it needs to maintain that power, we're just conditioned to think otherwise. 

Americans should know the amount of bloodshed required to maintain our standard of living.

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Simcoe said:

You're right about everything except for the improving part. There are no good guys here. The US is the hegemonic empire and will do what it needs to maintain that power, we're just conditioned to think otherwise. 

Americans should know the amount of bloodshed required to maintain our standard of living.

and this has to do with the current struggle to defend Ukraine how?  This is a thread about Ukraine's fight to maintain its existence.  Let's try to keep focus.  Hard enough to start the morning 50+ posts behind and not yet having had coffee.

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Nicely timed to contrast with @The_Capt here is a military that is succeeding at all 5 sectors and has a component that is going to town on Development -  not just tech advances but deep rethink of theory,  it's function,  its format and mission profiling. 

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/03/03/how-the-marine-corps-plans-to-remake-its-logistics-personnel/

I've been very interested in this MC rethink, especially due to it being almost 180 degs of its current formatting. The logistics of supporting that new approach have been contentious since Berger startrd prodding things, and fairly so. 

Naturally this article is a skimmer,  not in depth, but the principles for adjustment of the train is very interesting,  as it's driven by the assumption of being vulnerable far further back than is currently assumed for a western force.  Yes things are different for a maritime oriented force,  but per the range of hostile striking abilities,  exposure to ISR, loitering /opportunistic munitions, Berger is looking at the future war from the correct side of Boom - supply. 

For Ukraine,  thus would be a very good mentality to start with,  after the war, because yes the West was here for this invasion. But there's no Guarantee it will be for the next, and functionally all of Ukraine is in range of both Russian munitions and ISR.  They're **** at the latter today,  but blind assumptions are the gravestones of success. 

(Im assuming it will be a long time before UKR is actually in NATO).

It sounds like it's kind of like what a lot of UA units seem to be doing with drones.  At the smallest unit level (platoon or squad) they may just be pilots, but at only slightly higher levels it's sounded like they have people who do not just repairs, but also mods that add actuators for dropping whatever variety of small explosives are available.  Some are shared designs that anybody can 3D print, but some are "custom" using whatever parts they get through their volunteer supporters/donors. It's a concept that's very alien to US government procurement.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

I don't think communists have a lock on unfair elections.

Me neither.  I do not recall a single instance in history of communists being voted to power without rigging the elections. On the other hand, I am sure there were also many instances of non-communists rigging elections. 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, Holien said:

@chrisland @womble

You are Spot on - Legacy systems become legacy because they are not maintained or upgraded and Nukes are no different.

Now I would not want to bet that some might work but Russia is in a world of hurt and they don't have the resources to upgrade and I bet they don't have the ability to maintain when key folk disappear...

BTW I have had the joy of trying to replace Legacy computing systems and there are some very old systems still working in critical business - such as banking and logistics.

E.g. COBOL created in the 50's and still in use in around 40% of modern banking systems...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
 

CEO's kick the can down the road as they don't want to face the cost of bringing the kit and code up to date....

I wonder what code they used / use for their Nukes? - I bet it has not been updated...

IMO Don't ever underestimate the word legacy and the impact it has...

One last example on legacy (because I think we're at a point where we more or less agree that some might work and some might not, but we don't want to gamble on it).  In graduate school in the mid 90s I had a piece of legacy test equipment from the 60s.  It had been acquired in the 70s, along with I think ten identical siblings, from the Navy as gov't surplus.  I needed to use it for a few weeks at a time a few times a year.  It was all discrete analog electronics, and IIRC didn't have any tubes.  It was the only one left of the original 11, the others having been scavenged for parts over time.  A modern replacement would have cost a few tens of $K, which we didn't have.  Just about every time I turned it on I'd find some new failure mode and have to take it apart and diagnose and repair it.  Fortunately it was used in continuous operation, so I'd typically turn it on, go through the diagnosis/repair cycle, then leave it on for a few weeks before powering it down and stowing it again. Fortunately it was from an era that was post-tube and pre-chip.  Tubes by then were still marginally available, mostly from I think Hungary and then-Yugoslavia for guitar amplifiers, and had it used any logic chips from the early days of LSI I'd probably have had a hard time getting them by then (ebay was just starting up). 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

Going back to the beginning of this argument: you can do everything in a corrupt system, but to deprive the boss from being corrupt.

Without the nukes, this conflict and regime would be over quite fast (and I don't think we have an argument that the US wouldn't know, that the nukes weren't working).

Functioning nukes are the linchpin of this regime. The Russians know that, we know that.
Underfunding the army is no problem. Exhibit A being the continuing existence of the Russian Federation.
But the nukes? No way.

Right now the nukes are functioning exactly as designed.  They're sitting in locked spaces keeping NATO and Russian troops from going directly at each other.  The instant someone tries to blow up someone else with one, they've failed, independent of whether they explode.