How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

Supposed JDAM hit, unconfirmed.

 

 

[Grigb]

Fresh video from front line about state of RU arty supply with comment under the video (Kreminna direction):

To one degree or another, the situation is the same all along the front. I just don't understand what's going on. But whatever the reason, as for me, it's SABOTAGE.

quotes from video:

• Ukrainians have no shortage of shells.
• Whole RU front line experiences a shortage of shells (not just Wagnerites)
• There are no shells along the whole front line
• The scale of RU KIA losses - hundreds
• These are most motivated troops
• RU is losing generations of people
• They are attacking along the whole front without arty support due to explicit order to attack
• Semi-official explanation for "conservation" of ammo - before, they shot too much without adequate air recon. [expended all ammo by firing aimlessly without drone support]
• If UKR grinds current Mobiks who hold the line, they [RU military] will fail [to win the war]

[Huba]

A reasonably convincing article, suggesting that the recent strikes against RU SAMs are the work of new drone, perhaps the mysterious Phoenix Ghost:

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Huba

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, Grigb said:

The eastern section is largely made up of village-type areas. They are dominated by urban-type areas from the west. It is extremely difficult for RU to bring reinforcements and equipment required for crossing and urban assaults.

 

I can't believe nobody thought of this one before...

Some (seemingly) nonpropagandised snips of military interest, from pro-Russian Twitter feeds, but season to taste please.

1.  The rocky road to Bakhmut

2.  Wow! on the second tank. Sinkhole or heavy artillery hit? Zabakhmutka (I think that's the Russian name) is east of the river.

 

3.  Purple Heart box.

4. What airdefence doing?

5. This may be the wreckage of that withdrawal that got utterly shellacked a few days ago (second video)

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Maciej Zwolinski]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The presumption at the time was that they would be introduced as new units to reinforce sagging frontlines.  However, I'm wondering if the bulk has already been introduced into Ukraine and that they've been sent in as individual replacements or battalion sized units that an existing unit divides up as it sees fit.

Anybody have an opinion or some information on this? 

Most new opinions from UKR seem to be heading this way. 

[Fenris]

23 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I can't believe nobody thought of this one before...

Some (seemingly) nonpropagandised snips of military interest, from pro-Russian Twitter feeds, but season to taste please.

1.  The rocky road to Bakhmut

2.  Wow! on the second tank. Sinkhole or heavy artillery hit?

3.  Purple Heart box.

4. What airdefence doing?

 

 

There's a comment on UA Weapons or Oryx that the two tanks are new, the M113 has been there a while (apparently since January).

I saw a longish youtube of some UKR TD guys defending that crossroads a few days ago and the M113 is there.  Found the clip, can see the M113 at 10 minutes if it doesn't go there automatically.  The whole time I was watching this I was thinking/saying - "Guys, get behind some cover FFS".  The russians are just down the road to the left as they approach the M113.  You can see the incoming fire hitting the building next to the 113 and one of the TD men gets hit.

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Fenris

[Maciej Zwolinski]

3 hours ago, Grigb said:

It appears that RU are preparing for major pushes all along the front line, from Svatove (really from Kupyansk) to Vuhledar.

Do you think they will wait for the mud season to end, or try to attack in the mud regardless?

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Do you think they will wait for the mud season to end, or try to attack in the mud regardless?

It looks like their intent is to get any results (for propaganda) and improve their positions before the UKR offensive. Also, I do not see any indications that All Out Assault order was stopped. Things are already heating up at Avdiivka for example.

On other hand its RU - their Big Winter offensive to recapture Lyman was so pathetic that we are not sure if it happened at all.

[Grigb]

Regarding interesting posts from UKR regarding RU Mobiks

Mashovets Feb 22

Quote

Q: According to your estimates, how many percent of the Russian army consists of those mobilized after 02/24/12, and how many "seniors" [probably means contract personnel] are there? (Yuri Plisak)

A: If we only consider the typical "mobiks" (i.e. those "recruited" by the decree of their hairless *sshole), the figure ranges from one-third to one-half. But, if we include the "mobiks" recruited in the occupied areas of Donbass and Crimea, the overall number of personnel operating on Ukrainian territory is likely to reach 60-65%. (For the "whole army of the Russian Federation", of course, this is less by an order of magnitude).

Alex Kovalenko (Mashovets collegue) March 7

Quote

Belarus

For the second week in a row, units of the Russian invaders' 6 Moto Rifle Division of the 3 Army Corps (stationed and trained in Belarus) have been withdrawn from the country's territory. The personnel reduction already reaches 5,000 men.

Effectively, units of 6 MRD 3 AK are being sent from Belarus with priority to the Luhansk region in order to bolster the Lugansk RU grouping. But now for something truly astonishing...

Who are they bringing in to replace those?

Let me remind you that Belarus previously hosted 2 MRD of 1 Tank Army, totaling 11 thousand men. These units were likewise taken from the Republic of Belarus after training, but [units of] 6 MRD of 3 AK were brought in at the same time. But for the second week in a row, Russians are only taking [units out].

To put it plainly, this is puzzling. It is puzzling since it raises several questions. Due to a lack of training grounds in Russia, the training grounds in Belarus were utilized to prepare the masses of partly mobilized troops. What has changed? Are there enough training grounds in RU now?

No. Then it appears that there is less biomass to train presently. If this is the case, it indicates that [present] mobilization operations in Russia do not achieve even a fourth of the autumn outcome. Taking into account the losses of the RU grouping, this will result in a shortage of human resources in the future.

Indeed, we are closely following the ongoing process in Belarus, since if a fresh batch of chmobiks is not brought into the Republic of Belarus in the coming days/weeks, it will be possible to draw cautious, but very entertaining, early conclusions.

 

 

[fireship4]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I can't believe nobody thought of this one before...

It looks just like him!

[Lethaface]

13 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

About Revolution - ofc. it was not neutral, it was Revolution after all . But in the meantime, milions of emigrants were coming from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland etc. USA was pretty generous land for them, even if there were tensions you still end up having massively heterogenic society, where people are free to cultivate their own ethnicity generations later, without collision with being American in the same time. Even after 200 years you can be "German American" or "Italian American" (Tonny Soprano et all...;) ), because the "core" is more about legal acts, "way of life"* and other Enlightment factors. It is more a "political nation" Haiduk mentioned than anything met in Europe. Ofc. there is also ethnicity, but it is different enough for us to have even classification problems to appear bewteen Yanks and Continentals.

Not the same thing in Europe, unfortunatelly, which was raged by violent ethnonationalisms fixed on "unifying" everything and everybody.

*Compare it to pathetic "Russian world" and difference is like between top, chromed 18-wheeler and inflated dummy Kamaz truck. US is genuinely attractive across the world (even if we, more cynical Europeans rarely admitt it), because what it is and symbolically represents, even beside entire hard power.

As a European I don't agree.
Sure US has found a better way to incorporate varies cultures and still be 'American', which 'we' in Europe struggle with still; some more than others. It is also logical when looking at the founding of the US, it was a mixed culture society to start with.

 Other than that my experiences differ, but it's rather of topic here so I'll digress.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Lethaface

[billbindc]

14 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

USA based on nationalism? Comme on, up to Civil War there was hardly an "American" nation- it is very different Enlightment project, with massive importance of Constitution, juridiciary, emigration, freedom of speech etc. Ofc. last events on Capitol were indeed troubling, but still US is "different"- in positive way. That's why for example even smart American scholars (like T.Snyder) struggle to understand continental notions and differences between nationhood (which is fairly neutral, sociological process) and nationalism (which is political ideology).

The US is different in a positive way in a general sense but what happened at the Capitol and what led up to it for the two or three years before was specifically much more akin to the more extreme forms of European nationalism. And trust me, having seen all of it just outside my door it was a lot more than just troubling. 

[Butschi]

10 hours ago, sburke said:

mmm count me as one of those skeptical of China's prowess.  Yeah they can create a slave factory to make iPhones but they also build stuff like this....  This is not an Escher drawing, that building is now horizontal.

China has one big advantage: We are still dismissing them as supplier of cheap consumer electronics who can do nothing but copy western stuff and mass produce it with their enormous workforce. Frankly, this kind of western hubris, that at least borders on racism will hurt us in the long run.

Interesting study that sees China in the lead in 37 out of 44 critical technologies:

https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2023-03/ASPIs Critical Technology Tracker_0.pdf?VersionId=ndm5v4DRMfpLvu.x69Bi_VUdMVLp07jw

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Just for fun though, what could we argue to be the world's earliest 'precision weapons'? (let's talk actual battlefield weapons, not kamikazes or bomb dogs, or Viking longships or Mongol horsemen bringing 500 warriors out of nowhere to achieve overwhelming tactical odds).  Rifle musket?

Precision of precision guided? 

First precision guided was this thing apparently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X

Abstractly one could argue that assassins were really the first PGM, but that might be stretching the analogy.

As to unguided precision well it was probably the spear itself.  Hammers, clubs and even axes rely on broad swing arcs, the spear is focused on a very small point.  As to ranged, the sling is good candidate or this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower

What is really interesting is less the technology itself but what it did to combat (well hunting first, then combat).  Once we could focus energy down to a narrow point and project it, everything changed.

 

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

As somebody aptly said a while back, the Arsenal of Democracy is no longer the only kid on the block here and the US Navy's rule of the waves doesn't apply. Nuff said.

***

1.  Sadly, absent an existential WW3 level Clear and Present Danger, resulting in broad societal mobilisation -- and that would take some time, assuming no nuclear fireballs -- I cannot share your optimism about a heavy manufacturing rejuvenation in the US (or Canada), not at the scale we're discussing here. Alas, Russia is not the only one whose social mobilisation capability has withered.

Oh, I am NOT optimistic at all.  There are two reasons why China will retain a disproportional amount of industrial production no matter what the West does to "on shore" manufacturing.  The first is cost.  A tectonic shift in baseline costs would have to happen before normal market incentives lined up to justify domestic production.  The second is capacity.  Even if a Western country could somehow make the cost structure work, it would have to deal with the volume issue.  There's no way a country of a few dozen millions or even a few hundred millions can compete with the capacity of a nation with a billion people.  Not until we get into some seriously different manufacturing processes.

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

2. Ergo, my thought is that the first urgent installation has to take place in 'Greater non-Russian Slavdom', where folks still remember how to manage and work in large industrial combines.  Ironically, thanks to the legacy of Stalinism.

3. I know you live out in the semi rural homelands of 'Yankee ingenuity', where there are small workshops with practical problem solvers, but as you know that hasn't scaled up to support a conventional war machine since 1781.  Anyway, those folks live on the margins of society now.  The credentialed people with all the money and power, whether in the town county clubs (Repubs) or in the Coastal metropoles (Dems) don't even speak the same language as the Doers anymore, not even when their basements flood out. So the folks with the resources to do tangible stuff at scale basically have no connection to those who actually know how.

For sure this is correct.  In fact, I read an article last night bemoaning the major decline in higher education enrollment as a "crisis" and "disaster".  I beg to differ.  The sooner we readjust our labor force to thinking the only jobs are coding or pouring coffee the better.  Of course this requires incentivizing people to take the jobs that are not being fulfilled.  The article said part of the "problem" with the declining higher education enrollment is that industries are now paying people to go to trade schools, offering signing bonuses, and paying them vastly higher wages than even a few years ago.  This is a problem how?!?

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

4. Infra-wise, the 'bones are there', mainly with existing defence and aircraft plants, but even with a Uniparty consensus and some quality technocrats put in charge (big stretch there), we're talking a decade long process....

For most of it, yes.  But for munitions?  No.  That is a problem that can be fixed much sooner.  Especially if money is thrown at the problem instead of trying to do it on the cheap.

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

5. Requiring massive subsidies, with ample opportunity for subversion and diversion, by that same self-involved managerial class that sold 2 generations down the river and overseas, starting around 1990 (That Giant Sucking Sound). 

6.  And even without the waste, fraud and abuse thing, 40 years of 'managers' focused on fluff like marketing, outsourcing and HR toy soldiers and dumb financing tricks are functionally useless: you'd literally need to fire them all and start again.  This are the people who own America (and Canada) today, lock stock and barrel.  They won't go quietly.

Sorry to be a downer.

Having realistic expectations is the best way to avoid being disappointed.

The US can bring chip manufacturing back to its shores fairly easily.  The manufacturing technology, and much of the equipment, is already manufactured here in the US.  Unlike wind turbines, this means existing infrastructure needs to be scaled up rather than started from scratch.  As for costs of doing so, this is where government incentives (i.e. money) can make a huge difference.  As for the labor force, these types of jobs pay well and so it's not going to take a lot to get people to leave their jobs at Starbucks or forego 6 figure student loan debt to get them to apply for a position.

Munitions are similar.  They are already produced here in the US, so scaling that up becomes a fairly straight forward challenge to tackle.  The components for smart munitions, however, will be trickier yet totally doable.  The range of components needed for such weapons are narrow and the cost incentives high.  Free market loves that sort of dynamic. On top of that, volume is very small on the scale of things. 

In general the US defense industry is less dependent upon China than probably any other sector.  Money comes from the government and the people who control spending have a very different cost/benefit calculation than a for profit company does.  Volume is low, which means production capacity is not as problematic as it would be for other things.  And fundamentally the industrial base for producing defense products is already well established.  It won't be easy or cheap, but it is viable and in some ways fairly quick to realize.

The rest of the US economy?  Well, let's just say it's not like what I just described.

Steve

 

[Vanir Ausf B]

I give little credence to crystal balls, but for what it's worth...

_________

The chief of Lithuania's military intelligence said Russia has enough resources to continue the war in Ukraine for two more years at the current intensity.

"The resources which Russia has at the moment would be enough to continue the war at the present intensity for two years", Lithuania's intelligence chief Elegijus Paulavicius told reporters.

Russia uses "long chains of intermediaries" to procure sanctioned Western technologies, and its army is being adapted for long-term confrontation with the West and will prioritize efforts to rebuild its military presence in the Baltic Sea region, where it will remain "a threat and a source of instability".

___________

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-can-fight-ukraine-two-more-years-current-intensity-lithuania-says-2023-03-09/

Edited March 10, 2023 by Vanir Ausf B

[DesertFox]

Nice and spares a lot of flight time...

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1634209920739418114?s=20

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

Those guys in the back got VERY lucky.  Looks like the bulk of the explosion was directed along the back and out the other side.  If the hit had been 1m more towards the middle I don't think they would have survived.

Steve

[Beleg85]

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Age old? not so sure.  Don't take the bait, I'm just being cute.

Just for fun though, what could we argue to be the world's earliest 'precision weapons'? (let's talk actual battlefield weapons, not kamikazes or bomb dogs, or Viking longships or Mongol horsemen bringing 500 warriors out of nowhere to achieve overwhelming tactical odds).  Rifle musket?

My vote would go for early catapults, oxybeles or gastraphetes- these weapons were difficult to handle and use, but could achieve precision, range and penetration that surpassed anything people of Iron Age not accustomed to them expected. Probably in skilled hands they were first dedicated "sniping tools", especially useful during sieges.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1091066

Edited March 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Precision of precision guided? 

Yeah, thanks for that distinction as guidance (the G in PGM) is what sets the Fritz X, V-1, V2, etc. apart from the bow/arrow, sling/stone, catapult, etc.

There is also a third category, which is something like "precision assisted".  The combo of depth charges and sonar is a great example of this.  The munition itself has no guidance, therefore it is not a PGM.  However, a separate system provided targeting information which then allowed for the otherwise dumb weaponry to be aimed "precisely".  Other examples of this are early acoustic counter battery fire, radar directed flak, Norden bombsight, and others.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

First precision guided was this thing apparently:

 

Ooo!  I haven't thought of that one in a long time.

V-1 and V-2 rockets are probably the best known early examples of PGMs.  Both were autonomously guided, even if crudely.

So to answer LLF's question, it would seem PGMs came into being mid WW2.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Abstractly one could argue that assassins were really the first PGM, but that might be stretching the analogy.

As to unguided precision well it was probably the spear itself.  Hammers, clubs and even axes rely on broad swing arcs, the spear is focused on a very small point.  As to ranged, the sling is good candidate or this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower

What is really interesting is less the technology itself but what it did to combat (well hunting first, then combat).  Once we could focus energy down to a narrow point and project it, everything changed.

 

Military historians often cite the English longbow as one of the most consequential weapons of all time.  It is probably what shifted thinking towards finding better ranged weapons as the longbow showed itself devastating, but largely played out as a technology.  It took gunpowder to overcome it.

Steve

[DesertFox]

Who would have thought of Pakistan?

 

 

[Astrophel]

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The US can bring chip manufacturing back to its shores fairly easily.  The manufacturing technology, and much of the equipment, is already manufactured here in the US.

It can be done but it is non-trivial.  Key technology is manufactured in Netherlands but that should not be a problem.  Some key knowledge and IP and people are in Taiwan.  The costs are enormous.  A European CEO of a semiconductor company told me Europe is looking at $500 billion minimum and the US bill will not be less.  Huge amounts of money for no actual benefit if only we could make a lasting peace with China - it is just added cost on our societies.  Timeframe I would estimate is 7 years give or take when we start now.

An open question for me at least is how much of this chip manufacturing is really strategic in a military sense?  The state-of-the-art chips are going into high volume-low power-massive processing-miniature applications like a mobile phone.  Much of the military equipment making a decisive impact in Ukraine is 20 years old technology or older.

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Fenris said:

There's a comment on UA Weapons or Oryx that the two tanks are new, the M113 has been there a while (apparently since January).

I saw a longish youtube of some UKR TD guys defending that crossroads a few days ago and the M113 is there.  Found the clip, can see the M113 at 10 minutes if it doesn't go there automatically.  The whole time I was watching this I was thinking/saying - "Guys, get behind some cover FFS".  The russians are just down the road to the left as they approach the M113.  You can see the incoming fire hitting the building next to the 113 and one of the TD men gets hit.

Before I read this post I had the same thought about the M113.  It looks like it might have hit a mine first and then someone later came upon it and put a large caliber round (tank, most likely) through the front.  The RPG splashes on the side could have been target practice or from an engagement before it got knocked out.

Agreed that the state of the tanks looks fairly recent.  The one in the shell crater... that could have been from an airstrike.  Could have been disabled already.  With so much going on in this sector it's difficult to know.

Steve

[Audgisil]

You'll find soldiers grumbling about the current situation (whatever the situation) in every military on the planet, but this most recent intercept out of Ukraine is maybe an indication in the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup... I hope so.

 

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

It can be done but it is non-trivial.  Key technology is manufactured in Netherlands but that should not be a problem.  Some key knowledge and IP and people are in Taiwan.  The costs are enormous.  A European CEO of a semiconductor company told me Europe is looking at $500 billion minimum and the US bill will not be less.  Huge amounts of money for no actual benefit if only we could make a lasting peace with China - it is just added cost on our societies.  Timeframe I would estimate is 7 years give or take when we start now.

Looks like you and LLF are both misunderstanding what I'm talking about.  I'm talking explicitly about the defense industry's needs.  That is "easy" by comparison to trying to retool the entire economy.  And as I mentioned, and you did as well, there's a massive financial disincentive to try and ween the entire economy off of China, which means either governments mandate it happen or isn't going to happen proactively.  So this is not a discussion about cutting China out of industrial production generally, just where it matters.

And personally, I am fine with half measures.  Cutting out China by partnering with a friendly democracy is at least a better short term solution.  Taiwan, though, is problematic as in the event of a war with China that source becomes very insecure quickly.

16 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

An open question for me at least is how much of this chip manufacturing is really strategic in a military sense?  The state-of-the-art chips are going into high volume-low power-massive processing-miniature applications like a mobile phone.  Much of the military equipment making a decisive impact in Ukraine is 20 years old technology or older.

There's three types of chip based technology that is making a massive difference in this war:

1.  chips used for communications equipment (everything from a hand radio to satellite coms)

2.  chips used for delivery systems (drones in particular)

3.  chips used for PGMs (HIMARs, Excalibur, HARM, Javelin, etc.)

If you took these three types of equipment away from Ukraine, this would be a partisan war on a grand scale.

Steve