How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, GAZ NZ said:

Hi everyone 

What's the Russian vehicle at 2.22 on the video

An armoured car with cannon? 

Seemed a bit different 

Trying to identify all the improvised armour lol

Cheers 

 

Well, the Russians still manage to make me laugh after all this time   We all know that Russian attacks to take Vuhledar failed, so objectively the entire premise of the video is a joke from the start. 

But what really made me laugh was the segment of the Russian soldier inside a building with the PKM in front of him.  We saw the rest of the video where he was stunned from tank fire and couldn't move before the unit had to retreat out of their position, probably leaving behind one dead.  Yet it was in the video with this caption:

"Russian forces in the Donetsk region have issued a warning to Ukrainian soldiers.  After Bakhmut, the advancing Russian troops will encircle the city of Avdiivka"

Well, if getting shell shocked and retreating is considered a "warning to Ukrainian soldiers", I say let's see some more warnings

As for your question about the vehicle, it is a Ukrainian BTR-4 by the looks of it.  Russia apparently needs to show Ukrainian footage as their own in order to impress people.  Same with the prolonged shots of the M-777 artillery being fired by crews obviously not afraid of Russian counter battery fire, yet then they claim they destroyed two of them.  You'd think it would be more convincing to show the knocked out guns than ones that are operational

Steve

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.yahoo.com/now/ukraine-army-commander-warns-russian-150300537.html

The New Voice of Ukraine

December 15, 2022·2 min read

 

 

“A very important strategic task for us is to create reserves and prepare for the war, which may take place in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January,” he said.

Read also: Ukraine needs to exploit winter conditions to beat Russia, says ISW

“It may start not in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv, in the direction of Belarus, I do not rule out the southern direction as well.”

According to Zaluzhnyi, it is important for Ukraine to hold the line and not lose any more ground, because it is 10 to 15 times harder to liberate it than not to surrender it.

“Our troops are all tied up in battles now, they are bleeding,” he said.

 

Read also: War will continue through winter, with more Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, White House says

“They are bleeding and are being held together solely by courage, heroism and the ability of their commanders to keep the situation under control.”

Zaluzhnyi noted the Ukrainian side had made all the calculations – how many tanks and artillery Ukrainian troops need.

“This is what everyone needs to concentrate on right now,” the commander said.

Read also: New wave of mobilization in Russia to begin in January, intelligence says

“May the soldiers in the trenches forgive me, it’s more important to focus on the accumulation of resources right now for the more protracted and heavier battles that may begin next year.”

 

Zaluzhnyi explicitly stated what his plan was months ago. I have seen nothing that makes me think he isn't following it. And the only question is are we sending enough help to make it work.

47 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, massed precision beats everything.  

When it comes to the NATO/western way of warfare question, in this war if NATO showed up and fought Russia, totally agree.  Would have been bloodier, likely much bloodier than the Gulf War but outcome would have been pretty much as you describe.  This is because NATO has both quantitative and qualitative overmatch on the Russian military.

The UA only has qualitative overmatch, so its road to success is much longer.  What is blowing minds is just how impactful qualitative overmatch is on the modern battlefield.  By all conventional metrics this thing should have ended in favour of Russia in the first month.

For the west the concern is not fighting an opponent who fights like Russia, it is fighting one who fights like Ukraine.  So we need to do a military intervention op in country X.  But they are supported by China, so a lot of the same stuff we gave Ukraine - NLAWs are pointed at us.  They have ISR we cannot blind.  They have unmanned all over the place. That is the scenario that worries me.

Right from the start is changes things.  We could not send in the same force size we would have a decade ago.  We would need much higher levels of overmatch, which takes time to build and project, which in turn gives more time for China to put in deeper support.  We go in and the opponent fights like fog - hybrid distributed on a civilian backbone IT network.  We target that network, and then get told by the lawyers we can’t because it is what they use for their entire civilian commercial and medical systems.  So now we have to do precision cyber and EW to try and only hit the military support sub-networks (which keep re-wiring themselves because everything is a freaking hotspot because the entire nation is on Chinese built 5G) and then China gives them a sat backbone we cannot touch because it basically means war in space, which the lawyers also remind us is out of bounds.

So while all that is going on, our F echelon is getting mauled by distributed light infantry, SOF and uncons armed with the Chinese knock off Javelins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HJ-12), along with IEDs and mines because classic rock never dies.  They have UAS all over the place, dropping shaped charges and playing merry hell in our rear areas - we basically lose air superiority below 2000 feet.  Our LOCs are hot, long and visible, so now we have to roll a lot of combat power just keeping other combat power fueled…and we need a lot of fuel (see larger force requirement to start with).  They keep hitting us in the a$$ while ghosting us in the front.  They are a lot harder to see because they are in small fast moving dispersed teams while we are in big fat western formations.

We now need to worry about every tree line for 4kms out, so that is going to slow us down.  Hard to “shock and dislocate” when you are moving at a crawl while trying to secure 4kms either side of your advance.  We have APS but not mounted on every vehicle.  We try EW to jam UAS but the damn things are fully autonomous with no direct link to a human operator because no one in China wailed about “killbots = landmines” for the last 10 freaking years.  So we have to go with direct kills on something the size of a seagull flying in the trees.  We are shooting all over the place, which of course lights us up in the process.  Ammo expenditures go through the roof putting more strain on our LOCs.

We still advance deep into this country, taking a lot of hits as we do.  We get to urban areas and the politicians say “nope” when we give them the cost estimates for fighting in that terrain, and then say “nope again” when we suggest using firepower.  Arguments within the coalition ensue as half the force plays the national caveat card because “there is an election next year”.  So we bog down some more.

We sit outside major urban areas, while watching out multi-million dollar aircraft getting downed by cheap Chinese next-gen AD, mounted on some UCAVs.  We get told to go attack their AD infrastructure, but find out it is basically in garages and barns all over the place…enter lawyers and a “proof of righteousness” targeting requirement for the ages.  

And then China flies in whatever knock off HIMARs system they have developed into a neighbouring “neutral” country.  These systems are given to our opponent but are directly linked into Chinese ISR.  They drive them just over their border and fire a missile with a 400km range that goes up 120,000 feet and comes down at Mach 5.  They then dip across the border to reload, we go to engage…but lawyers.  That missile is about 24 inches across and we simply cannot hit them easily…stuff starts blowing up way back on our LOCs, they hit airfields and sea SLOC nodes.  They of course employ good old terrorism as well.

So there we are in all of that and suddenly this guy shows up with a 40mm AGK on its back:

Not so freakin cute now.  This all blows up all over social media because soldiers are on Tik Tok telling it as it is, and our opponents are blasting gory evidence of our losses all over the place.  We have bad shoots and now dead children are on the news. China scolding us at the UN while inflicted trade pain and punishment.

So how long do we think the deep resilient western will is going to last in all this?  How quickly is this going to get turned off, or worse we do the math and are told to not even bother with the mission in the first place, the entry costs are too high.  Outcome, Chinese influence in Nation X solidifies, nation X regional power grows - while we sit around and blame each other.

That is the emerging 21st century military problem.

As the Capitan has eloquently stated the West has adopted a set of self imposed rules that make anything resembling a large scale military intervention impossible and/or un-winnable. I would only add that we have done that in large part because of an info op that goes all the way back to whoever convinced Jane Fonda to go to Hanoi. At least Amnesty International's ham fisted idiocy in this war has discredited some the organs of said operation, at least for a little while.

The geopolitical mistakes we made ten and twenty years before that were discussed however many pages ago...

The West is winning in Ukraine because Putin's so called SMO violated all of the long established rules of that information operation, and was then executed with both incompetence and barbarity that have made a recovery from that mistake impossible.

Unless Xi really has lost his marbles we won't so lucky the next time.

 

 

 

[CHEqTRO]

7 hours ago, GAZ NZ said:

Hi everyone 

What's the Russian vehicle at 2.22 on the video

An armoured car with cannon? 

Seemed a bit different 

Trying to identify all the improvised armour lol

Cheers 

 

The same as the one that can be seen in its entirity at 2:02, a Typhoon-VDV armored car armed with a 30mm RWS system.

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2023/03/counting-down-list-of-russian-army.html

You can see this particular model listed on this list made by Oryx under the AFVs section.

Edited March 18, 2023 by CHEqTRO

[Haiduk]

It's claimed 110th mech.brigade assaulting near Bakhmut, but as I know 110th fought in Avdiivka sector. There is opinion also on the video is some sort of tarining, but commader in the trench says to machine-gunner: "Don't shoot! Shoot only if you have seen a target!"

Also when YPRs approached to treeplant in first time he says "Now infantry will disembark", then after second approaching he asks "Aren't infantry inside APCs?"

Looks like APCs just made supressive fire at positions in tree-plant and Russian either hadn't RPGs or got enough moral supression. 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[Butschi]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

Helmut Schmidt was defense minister from '69-'72 and then chancellor from '74-'82 - AFAIK the only one. Strauss tried...

Yeah, that's what I thought. Somehow the idea remained, though.

[akd]

Son of Goliath:

 

[Haiduk]

Mobiks from St.Peterburg and oblast are appealing to Putin, that their unit of 138th motor-rifle brigade of 6th CAA, Western miliitary district was attached to some DPR brigade (alas, soldier said it indistinctly) and directed to assault of UKR positions near Avdiivka without armored vehicles, recon and artillery support (hm... guys, you are were this recon! welcome to real world!) and unit lost in this assault 70 % of personnel killed and wounded. After this DPR unit command anyway ordered them to be ready for new assault and threatened them if they refuse.

 Interesting that Russian command now "lease to slavery" to LDPR units not only mobiks from "territorial defense" regiments, but from regular units %)

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

(hm... guys, you are were this recon! welcome to real world!)

They always sound shocked by this....

[sburke]

one thing that kind of catches me in the last few dozen pages or more (okay a lot more at how fast this thread grows) is how laser focused we are on the frontline battles in a few locations trying to analyze force loss ratios etc and watching videos of folks at the squad level and how intense the fighting is.  From that we seem to be trying to extrapolate a whole strategic scenario.  

This seems to be a pretty poor way to try and build a picture knowing as we do that Ukraine has been given a lot of long-distance strike capability to target Russian logistics, command infrastructure and critical nodes for defensive capabilities (AD, EW, comms etc).  The reporting on this would have to come from higher level sources which to credit the UA are very quiet.  If Kharkiv taught us anything it should be that the UA is not going to telegraph their real plans.

Personally, I am more of the mind to be patient, not try and analyze how each and every individual squad size confrontation has gone or how many inches of progress the Russians might have made today.  We likely have a couple of months for both the weather and UA preparations to reach a point they feel they are ready.  in the meantime, they'll continue to hit RA critical infrastructure degrading the RA capability to respond when an offensive does get launched.

While China may be looking to provide the RA with military supplies, as @The_Captkeeps pointing out, the ability to integrate a lot of the technical stuff simply doesn't exist within the current Russian forces.  Yeah they might impact some local capability, but if and when the UA dislodges the front, I don't expect that to help RA do much more than what they did in Kharkiv- run for the border.  Trying to organize those mobiks in a counteroffensive seems to be really far-fetched.

[Haiduk]

R18 drone in action - one armored company for a night to scrapyard or to repair.

 

[Haiduk]

About motivation in "Honor" company %):

My soldier killed for today 8 moth...rs with a rifle. With your permission I will buy AR-10 for him from your donates

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Sorry Steve, your analogy is more confused than helpful here.

Nobody has claimed the passage of time had to be net bad, or good, or that it had to be evenly bad (or good) for both sides.

Both sides are using that time, in their own way, not simply 'buying' (or spending) time.

The implication by you, and others, is that Ukraine is burning through its time faster than Russia's.  The evidence is very much to the contrary.  Ukraine doesn't have endless time, but it has more than Russia.  Time, therefore, favors Ukraine and not Russia.

Russia, however, is "buying time".  Or attempting to.  It seems to understand that time is not on its side and therefore is trying to create a decisive result NOW instead of in a few years.  The evidence of this is the extremely costly and nearly pointless (from a military standpoint) battles it has continually fought since their initial plan collapsed.  If they thought time was on their side more than Ukraine's then they would have kept such stupid wastes of resources to a minimum until it was better prepared to use them correctly. 

Either that or the Russian leadership is brain dead stupid.  Even after all of this, I'm giving them credit for being smarter than that.  I see the fruitless battles as a deliberate, calculated act of desperation.  That's not the same as being stupid.
 

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Nice strawman you're ripping to bits there. Does it taste nice? 

Nobody at all claimed Russia is stronger today than it was on day 1. 

But UKR = stronger + RUS = weaker does not allow us to conclude "The Russian is finished." It's an empty proposition, implying rates of change without defining or relating terms.

Right, but I was responding to you doing exactly what you said shouldn't be done.

"Western militaries are in love with the Big Buildup, followed by the Big Push. But that presupposes Very Large resource dominance (materiel AND manpower), which I do not concede is the case in this war (cuz RU:UKR population 3.5x, and cuz China/Iran).  Remember, the 'Yanks Aren't Coming' (just some of their stuff). "

You have posited that "Very Large" resources are a prerequisite, I say they are not.  I supported this with the qualitative vs. quantitative importance on today's battlefield and that Ukraine has a demonstrated edge in that equation.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Nor does the course of the first year dictate what happens in the second. That is the mother of all logical fallacies (and leadership self-owns all through history).

No, the mother of all logical fallacies is dismiss last year because it was last year.  As if there's nothing to be learned from it.  Might as well dispose of the entire discipline of historical study.

Right up until today Russia has not shown it is able to defeat Ukraine's method of warfare.  Not even when it had lots more going for it, such as massive artillery overmatch.  So it's pretty simple logic... Russia had X last year and Ukraine had Y last year.  Russia did not win. 

This year Russia has X- and Ukraine has Y+.  We have also seen Russia's winter offensive go almost nowhere, despite massive investments, which reinforces the simple logic that Russia doesn't have a magical solution to the fundamental problem that it is losing this war.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

So you are wayyyyy premature in saying 'losing', unless you insist on defining it as 'achieve the original goals of Putin's SMO', or some other goal that the Kremlin does not now care much about.

I stated that Russia lost this war in the first 2 days of it starting.  Not because I'm some brain dead ra-ra-Ukraine or boo-Russia type.  Instead, my opinion came from decades of study and having, apparently, a better read on the tea leaves than many professionals.  I stand by that assessment now, except I think Russia lost even worse than when I first made the call.

I don't want to go over all the reasons Russia lost this war for the 100th time.  I've enumerated them more times than I care to.  It's in this thread and you've most likely already read them.  So repeating it again doesn't seem a good use of my time.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

These guys who have 'already lost' are still sitting on 20% of Ukraine and aren't going to 'Lose' themselves out of it on their own unless shoved, very hard.

I am not seeing a collapsed or failed army or nation state here, not yet. You are extrapolating a long expected and hoped-for collapse in the future, saying here are the reasons, and 'banking it' today. And smugly talking down to those who want to question that.

I do not "smugly" talk down to you, but I do find it frustrating when I list explicit reasons for my conclusions only to have you belittle and offhandedly dismiss them as empty headed regurgitation of groundless optimism cheering from the sidelines.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Here are the facts on the ground, today.

1. Russia still holds the south Kherson land bridge, which permanently menaces all of southern Ukraine (c.1/3 of Ukraine's population and economy). The UA has no credible option to reinvade across the Dnepr.

At one point Russia "permanently" menaced all of Ukraine through direct occupation for centuries.  Do not be so definitive with your statements because "permanent" means forever, and forever is a very long time. 

My initial concept of Russia losing this war (prior to it starting and soon after) was that Russia would occupy these lands for a long time before being obligated to yield them.  That was before I found out how absolutely bad Russia is at conducting wars on this scale.  Which means Russia currently occupies maybe 15% of what I thought they would have by now, therefore my feelings of what comes next are amplified instead of adjusted downward.

As for credible scenarios for Russia losing hold of this ground in the near term (this or next year), there are two separate but possibly inter-related ones:

1.  Ukraine launches an offensive from Zaporizhzhia (i.e. not over the Dnepr)

2.  Russia has a systemic collapse either on this front or elsewhere which creates an opportunity in the south, just like what Ukraine did with Kharkov and Kherson last year.

You'd have to forget everything we've learned from this war to dismiss either of these.  Which is perhaps why you have directly argued we should just toss 2022 over our shoulders and not look back upon it.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

2. Russia is slowly retaking northern Luhansk (Kupyansk-Torske), which is a defensible zone of complex terrain. The reason it lost it last time was because the UA hit (brilliantly) with light mobile forces while its army was pulling out. Don't rely on that mistake being made again.

This is incorrect.  Russia was not pulling out of Luhansk when Ukraine hit it.  Russia had stripped its forces from there to keep Kherson and to continue it's attacks in the Donetsk area going.  It needed to remove those forces from Kharkiv region because it was losing forces in the other areas at unsustainable rates.

Russia is making the same mistake now.  It could have invested the 10s of thousands of now dead and wounded Russian soldiers, hundreds of now burnt out AFVs, and 100s of thousands of expended rounds in a more productive way.  Instead, it blew them and now indications are it is running out of replacements.  It has opened up the possibility that it can not withstand another determined Ukrainian attack.  Whether that turns out to be the case, we will have to see.  Nobody here saw Kharkiv coming until it happened.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

3. Russia is also dismantling the last fortress towns in the 2014 UA fortified line (Bakhmut, Adiivka). We can certainly ask, 'is getting Donetsk airport out of shell range worth that carpet of shattered flesh?', but to Putin that isn't Losing. Not yet. 

It took Russia so long to do this that Ukraine has had the time to set up new lines of defense.  There is no military expert, even ones that are decidedly sour on Ukraine's prospects, that think the military value of Russia's attacks were anything other than a mistake.  The real debate is whether Ukraine was right to hold onto it as long as it has.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

We can certainly ask 'how long can they keep this up?'  Longer than we thought, it seems. But simply sitting and assuming current trajectories and rates of change are set and unchangeable is... folly of a type all too common in history.

This is where my frustration comes in.  There is no blind assumptions built into my statements.  Calculations based on how this war has gone on so far coupled with an obviously good grasp of the fundamentals before the war started is not the same as a wild assed assumption.  You, on the other hand, are the one making wild assumptions, which boils down to "everything is unknowable therefore we know nothing, which means presuming the worst is just as valid as anything else".

It is easy to play the Devil's Advocate if you set up a different set of rules.  In this case, your position that arguments based on relevant past history is to be dismissed out of hand because the past is past.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Strawmen again, with a thick coating of 'all or nothing' absolutes which also happen to be false.

You made an unsubstantiated claim that Russia is learning fast enough for it to matter.  I do not see any evidence of that.  Since you disagree, you should make a cohesive argument that Russia has the time and resources necessary to turn this war around.  Thus far you have not done that.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

And as you yourself agree, the most important thing the Russians have to do to help themselves is stop losing men, especially trained specialists, by the bushel each month. They haven't yet, but there's nothing that says they can't stop (see hypothesis above).

Here it is again.  You are once more taking "possibility" and applying it without much of any analysis of "probability".  Can Russia improve it's ability to fight and change the course of this war?  Sure, the possibility exists.  Is there anything in the last year of fighting, or Russia's long history of its approach to warfare, giving any indications that is is probable?  That is the point that should be debated, and I've made the case over and over again that the indications are that it is not probable.

I feel I have to remind you that I've always argued that the Soviet method of warfare is vastly underrated and the German method overrated in WW2.  I actually would go so far as to say I admire the system the Soviets developed in the last two years of the war.  Yet I still think that Russia Sucks at War™ because that's what an objective analysis indicates.

I am also one of the few people who looked at Russia's performance in 2014-15 Donbas and was decidedly unimpressed.  This, along with other factors, led me to conclude a couple of years ago that Russia would lose this war while the dominant theory sounds a lot like the one you are proposing now.  Which boils down to Russia is bigger and therefore will win.

I don't see any "smugness" in making an argument and backing it up.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Improving RU fieldcraft is widely noted in Ukrainian field reports. You can denigrate these as unscientific all you like, but this is simply not the roadbound, vehicle tied, not enough rifles to pull security or patrol army it used to be. Its missions are also less ambitious today.  Is this 1940s+ army actually 'stronger' at defending fixed positions than it was a year ago? It definitely has more bodies now, and hasn't replaced them. And seems to be killing a worrying number of Ukrainians, with far fewer shells. What else might they shore up if they get a breathing space? Do we want to find out?

Skilled cadre and modern equipment and a host of other resources were squandered in 2022, and there's a massive price to that, impossible to replace in kind, and very possibly too great to overcome. You prefer to argue, fallaciously, that I deny that, just because I haven't joined you in declaring inevitable victory, why worry, lie back and think of England. Here's some more dead mobiks.

...But that's what we call 'sunk cost' in business. You can't change the past. You evaluate, move on and find workarounds and replacements.  Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But if the enemy leaves you time (and you quit slicing off your own digits), your chances can improve.

You still don't understand why I reject your doom saying.  You continually dodge the primary argument about why Russia is doomed to fail.  Boiled down is that it blew through its advantages and now it doesn't have them any more.  "Sunk costs" are only something that can be recovered from if there's enough assets remaining to continue on.

In my chosen industry, gaming, this is a huge reason why so many companies fail.  They make a game, it cost them way more than they expected, it earned way less than estimated, and as a result they go out of business because the economics don't work.  Did they learn a lot?  Yes.  Would they do things differently if they had it to do all over again?  No doubt.  But they overspent and under earned enough to deny them that possibility of applying that knowledge.

Russia has simply lost too much to make a recovery given what Ukraine has going for it.  If Russia had instead learned lessons from March and April 2022 and paused until they were ready to implement those lessons, for sure we'd be facing an entirely different landscape of this war.  Instead, they continually flushed away resources pursuing the same flawed strategies.  Which is not surprising because that is what usually happens in these situations.  The Soviets certainly did it in 1941 and 1942, only beginning to get a handle on things in 1943.

To the best of my knowledge you have premised your arguments on the "possible" without a case for them being "probable".  I suggest focusing on arguing about probability with sufficient supporting arguments for whatever you propose.

For me, the probable outcome this year is that Ukraine lands a significant blow and makes commensurate gains.  If it fails to do that, then I suspect the war will freeze at whatever it looks like at the end of the Fall for at least another year.  Even in that scenario Russia has still lost this war big time.  Temporarily retaining Ukrainian territory does not change that assessment.

12 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

That was my main point, and it didn't need this kind of highhanded reply. You could really use a little less collegiate smug and a little more good faith in your debating style, Steve. We're not exactly morons here in your community.

I respond to the style in which the argument is presented.  You should re-read your responses to me with that point in mind.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

29 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

R18 drone in action - one armored company for a night to scrapyard or to repair.

 

This shows us, yet again, the difference between a drone bomber that drops grenades vs. shells (mortar rounds?).  Grenades are unlikely to cause catastrophic damage with even a direct hit, but dropping a larger munition seems highly likely to destroy the target with one good hit.

Steve

[ASL Veteran]

 

[dan/california]

46 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

R18 drone in action - one armored company for a night to scrapyard or to repair.

 

If you can't keep even big drones off your mech forces it is time to go home. I mean even if that video was actually three drones working for week the effectiveness is just nuts. And some smart people somewhere have to working on a munition whose aerodynamics are not referred to as the flop, so that is merely one way the next version will be better...

Dumb mass is dead is The_Capt's phrase, yes?

[chrisl]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This shows us, yet again, the difference between a drone bomber that drops grenades vs. shells (mortar rounds?).  Grenades are unlikely to cause catastrophic damage with even a direct hit, but dropping a larger munition seems highly likely to destroy the target with one good hit.

Steve

Probably the little shaped or EFP charges that they were showing off in a video a few pages ago.  If they know they're tank hunting they know exactly what they need to penetrate and can pick the optimized explosives to drop.  Drones have little enough payload capacity that it's worth the effort to do that, rather than carry all the extra frag mass of a mortar round.

[Haiduk]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

This shows us, yet again, the difference between a drone bomber that drops grenades vs. shells (mortar rounds?).

@chrisl

RKG-1600 bombs (modified for drops RKG-3 HEAT grenades)

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

The implication by you, and others, is that Ukraine is burning through its time faster than Russia's.  The evidence is very much to the contrary.  Ukraine doesn't have endless time, but it has more than Russia.  Time, therefore, favors Ukraine and not Russia.

Russia, however, is "buying time".  Or attempting to.  It seems to understand that time is not on its side and therefore is trying to create a decisive result NOW instead of in a few years.  The evidence of this is the extremely costly and nearly pointless (from a military standpoint) battles it has continually fought since their initial plan collapsed.  If they thought time was on their side more than Ukraine's then they would have kept such stupid wastes of resources to a minimum until it was better prepared to use them correctly. 

Either that or the Russian leadership is brain dead stupid.  Even after all of this, I'm giving them credit for being smarter than that.  I see the fruitless battles as a deliberate, calculated act of desperation.  That's not the same as being stupid.
 

Right, but I was responding to you doing exactly what you said shouldn't be done.

"Western militaries are in love with the Big Buildup, followed by the Big Push. But that presupposes Very Large resource dominance (materiel AND manpower), which I do not concede is the case in this war (cuz RU:UKR population 3.5x, and cuz China/Iran).  Remember, the 'Yanks Aren't Coming' (just some of their stuff). "

You have posited that "Very Large" resources are a prerequisite, I say they are not.  I supported this with the qualitative vs. quantitative importance on today's battlefield and that Ukraine has a demonstrated edge in that equation.

No, the mother of all logical fallacies is dismiss last year because it was last year.  As if there's nothing to be learned from it.  Might as well dispose of the entire discipline of historical study.

Right up until today Russia has not shown it is able to defeat Ukraine's method of warfare.  Not even when it had lots more going for it, such as massive artillery overmatch.  So it's pretty simple logic... Russia had X last year and Ukraine had Y last year.  Russia did not win. 

This year Russia has X- and Ukraine has Y+.  We have also seen Russia's winter offensive go almost nowhere, despite massive investments, which reinforces the simple logic that Russia doesn't have a magical solution to the fundamental problem that it is losing this war.

I stated that Russia lost this war in the first 2 days of it starting.  Not because I'm some brain dead ra-ra-Ukraine or boo-Russia type.  Instead, my opinion came from decades of study and having, apparently, a better read on the tea leaves than many professionals.  I stand by that assessment now, except I think Russia lost even worse than when I first made the call.

I don't want to go over all the reasons Russia lost this war for the 100th time.  I've enumerated them more times than I care to.  It's in this thread and you've most likely already read them.  So repeating it again doesn't seem a good use of my time.

I do not "smugly" talk down to you, but I do find it frustrating when I list explicit reasons for my conclusions only to have you belittle and offhandedly dismiss them as empty headed regurgitation of groundless optimism cheering from the sidelines.

At one point Russia "permanently" menaced all of Ukraine through direct occupation for centuries.  Do not be so definitive with your statements because "permanent" means forever, and forever is a very long time. 

My initial concept of Russia losing this war (prior to it starting and soon after) was that Russia would occupy these lands for a long time before being obligated to yield them.  That was before I found out how absolutely bad Russia is at conducting wars on this scale.  Which means Russia currently occupies maybe 15% of what I thought they would have by now, therefore my feelings of what comes next are amplified instead of adjusted downward.

As for credible scenarios for Russia losing hold of this ground in the near term (this or next year), there are two separate but possibly inter-related ones:

1.  Ukraine launches an offensive from Zaporizhzhia (i.e. not over the Dnepr)

2.  Russia has a systemic collapse either on this front or elsewhere which creates an opportunity in the south, just like what Ukraine did with Kharkov and Kherson last year.

You'd have to forget everything we've learned from this war to dismiss either of these.  Which is perhaps why you have directly argued we should just toss 2022 over our shoulders and not look back upon it.

This is incorrect.  Russia was not pulling out of Luhansk when Ukraine hit it.  Russia had stripped its forces from there to keep Kherson and to continue it's attacks in the Donetsk area going.  It needed to remove those forces from Kharkiv region because it was losing forces in the other areas at unsustainable rates.

Russia is making the same mistake now.  It could have invested the 10s of thousands of now dead and wounded Russian soldiers, hundreds of now burnt out AFVs, and 100s of thousands of expended rounds in a more productive way.  Instead, it blew them and now indications are it is running out of replacements.  It has opened up the possibility that it can not withstand another determined Ukrainian attack.  Whether that turns out to be the case, we will have to see.  Nobody here saw Kharkiv coming until it happened.

It took Russia so long to do this that Ukraine has had the time to set up new lines of defense.  There is no military expert, even ones that are decidedly sour on Ukraine's prospects, that think the military value of Russia's attacks were anything other than a mistake.  The real debate is whether Ukraine was right to hold onto it as long as it has.

This is where my frustration comes in.  There is no blind assumptions built into my statements.  Calculations based on how this war has gone on so far coupled with an obviously good grasp of the fundamentals before the war started is not the same as a wild assed assumption.  You, on the other hand, are the one making wild assumptions, which boils down to "everything is unknowable therefore we know nothing, which means presuming the worst is just as valid as anything else".

It is easy to play the Devil's Advocate if you set up a different set of rules.  In this case, your position that arguments based on relevant past history is to be dismissed out of hand because the past is past.

You made an unsubstantiated claim that Russia is learning fast enough for it to matter.  I do not see any evidence of that.  Since you disagree, you should make a cohesive argument that Russia has the time and resources necessary to turn this war around.  Thus far you have not done that.

Here it is again.  You are once more taking "possibility" and applying it without much of any analysis of "probability".  Can Russia improve it's ability to fight and change the course of this war?  Sure, the possibility exists.  Is there anything in the last year of fighting, or Russia's long history of its approach to warfare, giving any indications that is is probable?  That is the point that should be debated, and I've made the case over and over again that the indications are that it is not probable.

I feel I have to remind you that I've always argued that the Soviet method of warfare is vastly underrated and the German method overrated in WW2.  I actually would go so far as to say I admire the system the Soviets developed in the last two years of the war.  Yet I still think that Russia Sucks at War™ because that's what an objective analysis indicates.

I am also one of the few people who looked at Russia's performance in 2014-15 Donbas and was decidedly unimpressed.  This, along with other factors, led me to conclude a couple of years ago that Russia would lose this war while the dominant theory sounds a lot like the one you are proposing now.  Which boils down to Russia is bigger and therefore will win.

I don't see any "smugness" in making an argument and backing it up.

You still don't understand why I reject your doom saying.  You continually dodge the primary argument about why Russia is doomed to fail.  Boiled down is that it blew through its advantages and now it doesn't have them any more.  "Sunk costs" are only something that can be recovered from if there's enough assets remaining to continue on.

In my chosen industry, gaming, this is a huge reason why so many companies fail.  They make a game, it cost them way more than they expected, it earned way less than estimated, and as a result they go out of business because the economics don't work.  Did they learn a lot?  Yes.  Would they do things differently if they had it to do all over again?  No doubt.  But they overspent and under earned enough to deny them that possibility of applying that knowledge.

Russia has simply lost too much to make a recovery given what Ukraine has going for it.  If Russia had instead learned lessons from March and April 2022 and paused until they were ready to implement those lessons, for sure we'd be facing an entirely different landscape of this war.  Instead, they continually flushed away resources pursuing the same flawed strategies.  Which is not surprising because that is what usually happens in these situations.  The Soviets certainly did it in 1941 and 1942, only beginning to get a handle on things in 1943.

To the best of my knowledge you have premised your arguments on the "possible" without a case for them being "probable".  I suggest focusing on arguing about probability with sufficient supporting arguments for whatever you propose.

For me, the probable outcome this year is that Ukraine lands a significant blow and makes commensurate gains.  If it fails to do that, then I suspect the war will freeze at whatever it looks like at the end of the Fall for at least another year.  Even in that scenario Russia has still lost this war big time.  Temporarily retaining Ukrainian territory does not change that assessment.

I respond to the style in which the argument is presented.  You should re-read your responses to me with that point in mind.

Steve

I am really glad you took this one, needed a coffee break.  One thing that is starting to grate on these drive bys is the complete lack of effort or accountability.  And not to beat up on poor ol LLF here because we tend to get these every 50 pages or so.  Someone waltzes in here and interjects some sort of off-note counter-argument, sticks around to get mauled up a bit and pulls back.

I think we need counter-arguments and counter-factual discussion or we risk becoming a true echo chamber.  However, those who are offering counter-narratives need to do at least a much work as we do in our ongoing analysis/assessment, and at least be as thorough in the back and forth.  We get "Russia is winning, here is a single report from the IMF that proves it!".  We write a half forum page counter with about a dozen links and refs and get "Yadaa yadda...info and stuff...but Russia is going to win!"

So the bar for counter-arguments is nowhere near high enough in my opinion, and I have yet to see a lot of it being delivered on anything that resembles to level we are actually conducting analysis of this war.  To be honest LLF is probably one of the better ones, as at least he appears to actually be following what is happening - if applying a somewhat cracked lens at times.

And then there is accountability.  We called it back last Feb within a week of this thing starting - almost everyone else was getting ready for the end of Ukraine and we said "hey wait a minute, what about all those abandoned vehicles?"  We then saw the Northern Front collapse before it happened.  Everyone was preparing for the "Siege of 100 Ukrainian cities" and we were counting the actual guns the RA had and quickly noted that there was no way they could keep this up.  Operational collapse was inevitable.  Last summer, we heard all about "Russia has re-framed this war to their strengths" and pincer movements everywhere with bold red arrows.  We looked at the ground, what was left of the RA and said "nope, not likely".  Last Fall, Kharkiv surprised me, Kherson did not and the whole UA taking back offensive initiative and kicking an overstretched RA that had burned itself out at Severodonetsk was a surprise to no one here. 

For this winter we had hoped for a UA winter offensive but it didn't work out.  So if we want to be really nasty we are 4-1 so far in that the winter offensive did not happen.  The failure of the Russian offensive, which barely qualifies as operational as it is really focused on a few tactical areas, is another one we have been calling and now it looks more and more likely that the RA is running out of gas, so 5-1 scorecard (and I am probably missing stuff). 

The UA is signaling a spring offensive, that is no secret. The strategic and operational conditions have not fundamentally changed - the RA has not established air superiority, they do not have ISR superiority, and last I checked their logistics services have not somehow magically been reconstructed.  They have not demonstrated any new capability sets that would lead one to believe the metrics of this war have fundamentally shifted in their favour or that they have re-framed this thing in any way.

So here is what is going to happen.  The UA will go on the offensive and it is very likely the RA line will collapse where they do.  The RA will fall back and cling on somewhere else while the UA keeps the pressure one. How far the UA gets will determine what happens next - no one is predicting that.  We will end up being 6-1 after spending a lot of time and effort answering these weak drive bys, the sponsors of these counter-narratives will evaporate like the Russian members of this forum, will simply shrug and go "oh well, watcha gonna do?", or pull a Kherson and point out that the UA spring offensive did not push the RA back to Moscow so "Russia is gonna win".

I would like the drive-bys to put at least a little effort into this and actually do some work for a change.  At this point I think I could argue their points better than they can, which is a clear sign we either need a higher counter-narrative bar or may get some better counter-thinkers in here.

Edited March 18, 2023 by The_Capt

[Battlefront.com]

Another piece of information about clothing shortages with the RU supply system.  In this case, Wagner has been getting uniforms at the expense of mobiks, but now that Wagner isn't getting cannon fodder it isn't needing as many uniforms:

Steve

[Haiduk]

Here R18 octocopter. It was developed by "Aerorozvidka" ("Aerorecon") volunteer unit in 2017 and launched to produce in 2019. Now these drones cost 45 000 $ each and are produced with donations

Each R18 can carry up to 5 kg of load, but usually it takes two, rarely three RKG-1600 bomblets (about 1,1 kg each), dropping from 100-300 m over the target. The drone has a range up to 8 km and 40 minutes of flight duration. Drone is equipped with thermal camera

You can donate on R18 fleet if you like to see such videos: https://aerorozvidka.ngo/r18/ (ENG page)

Except "Aerorozvidka" group, most skilled user of these drones is Special Forces of SBU

Because of this drone has limited range (first version had only 4 km), operators forced to launch them from "zero line" or even in grey zone to reach as far as possible, so they have great risk during their night missions.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[NamEndedAllen]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, massed precision beats everything.  

When it comes to the NATO/western way of warfare question, in this war if NATO showed up and fought Russia, totally agree.  Would have been bloodier, likely much bloodier than the Gulf War but outcome would have been pretty much as you describe.  This is because NATO has both quantitative and qualitative overmatch on the Russian military.

The UA only has qualitative overmatch, so its road to success is much longer.  What is blowing minds is just how impactful qualitative overmatch is on the modern battlefield.  By all conventional metrics this thing should have ended in favour of Russia in the first month.

For the west the concern is not fighting an opponent who fights like Russia, it is fighting one who fights like Ukraine.  So we need to do a military intervention op in country X.  But they are supported by China, so a lot of the same stuff we gave Ukraine - NLAWs are pointed at us.  They have ISR we cannot blind.  They have unmanned all over the place. That is the scenario that worries me.

Right from the start is changes things.  We could not send in the same force size we would have a decade ago.  We would need much higher levels of overmatch, which takes time to build and project, which in turn gives more time for China to put in deeper support.  We go in and the opponent fights like fog - hybrid distributed on a civilian backbone IT network.  We target that network, and then get told by the lawyers we can’t because it is what they use for their entire civilian commercial and medical systems.  So now we have to do precision cyber and EW to try and only hit the military support sub-networks (which keep re-wiring themselves because everything is a freaking hotspot because the entire nation is on Chinese built 5G) and then China gives them a sat backbone we cannot touch because it basically means war in space, which the lawyers also remind us is out of bounds.

So while all that is going on, our F echelon is getting mauled by distributed light infantry, SOF and uncons armed with the Chinese knock off Javelins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HJ-12), along with IEDs and mines because classic rock never dies.  They have UAS all over the place, dropping shaped charges and playing merry hell in our rear areas - we basically lose air superiority below 2000 feet.  Our LOCs are hot, long and visible, so now we have to roll a lot of combat power just keeping other combat power fueled…and we need a lot of fuel (see larger force requirement to start with).  They keep hitting us in the a$$ while ghosting us in the front.  They are a lot harder to see because they are in small fast moving dispersed teams while we are in big fat western formations.

We now need to worry about every tree line for 4kms out, so that is going to slow us down.  Hard to “shock and dislocate” when you are moving at a crawl while trying to secure 4kms either side of your advance.  We have APS but not mounted on every vehicle.  We try EW to jam UAS but the damn things are fully autonomous with no direct link to a human operator because no one in China wailed about “killbots = landmines” for the last 10 freaking years.  So we have to go with direct kills on something the size of a seagull flying in the trees.  We are shooting all over the place, which of course lights us up in the process.  Ammo expenditures go through the roof putting more strain on our LOCs.

We still advance deep into this country, taking a lot of hits as we do.  We get to urban areas and the politicians say “nope” when we give them the cost estimates for fighting in that terrain, and then say “nope again” when we suggest using firepower.  Arguments within the coalition ensue as half the force plays the national caveat card because “there is an election next year”.  So we bog down some more.

We sit outside major urban areas, while watching out multi-million dollar aircraft getting downed by cheap Chinese next-gen AD, mounted on some UCAVs.  We get told to go attack their AD infrastructure, but find out it is basically in garages and barns all over the place…enter lawyers and a “proof of righteousness” targeting requirement for the ages.  

And then China flies in whatever knock off HIMARs system they have developed into a neighbouring “neutral” country.  These systems are given to our opponent but are directly linked into Chinese ISR.  They drive them just over their border and fire a missile with a 400km range that goes up 120,000 feet and comes down at Mach 5.  They then dip across the border to reload, we go to engage…but lawyers.  That missile is about 24 inches across and we simply cannot hit them easily…stuff starts blowing up way back on our LOCs, they hit airfields and sea SLOC nodes.  They of course employ good old terrorism as well.

So there we are in all of that and suddenly this guy shows up with a 40mm AGL on its back:

Not so freakin cute now.  This all blows up all over social media because soldiers are on Tik Tok telling it as it is, and our opponents are blasting gory evidence of our losses all over the place.  We have bad shoots and now dead children are on the news. China scolding us at the UN while inflicted trade pain and punishment.

So how long do we think the deep resilient western will is going to last in all this?  How quickly is this going to get turned off, or worse we do the math and are told to not even bother with the mission in the first place, the entry costs are too high.  Outcome, Chinese influence in Nation X solidifies, nation X regional power grows - while we sit around and blame each other.

That is the emerging 21st century military problem.

This is certainly a detailed and disturbing scenario! And I’m not disagreeing with it at all. But are you describing how a future conflict between two equally advanced adversaries might play out? Or the result for an attacker well-equipped but only in the manner of pre Russian-Ukrainian War Western militaries? Not having absorbed the lessons of this war and not having developed any of Ukraine’s and the West’s doctrines, methods and technologies? NATO or USA of say 5 years ago or slightly more?

Put another way, wouldn’t the Chinese face the same problems you describe, while trying to fight a nation fighting like Ukraine? Especially if that nation is supported by the Western Allies? This seems in abstract to be a symmetrical situation. Aren’t these the general challenges any opponent would face if attacking a country fighting like Ukraine? Or are you suggesting the Chinese have already learned all the lessons, developed and equipped the new technologies, while the USA military, NATO nations are woefully behind? Or willfully ignoring the lessons, and have not applied doctrine and equipped the advanced technologies already owned or in the pipeline?

[Battlefront.com]

  After seeing the unintended length of my previous response, I'm reminded why I try not to go point for point in a detailed discussion   So I'll lump all my comments into one...

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think we need counter-arguments and counter-factual discussion or we risk becoming a true echo chamber.  However, those who are offering counter-narratives need to do at least a much work as we do in our ongoing analysis/assessment, and at least be as thorough in the back and forth. ...

And then there is accountability.  We called it back last Feb within a week of this thing starting - almost everyone else was getting ready for the end of Ukraine ...

I would like the drive-bys to put at least a little effort into this and actually do some work for a change.  At this point I think I could argue their points better than they can, which is a clear sign we either need a higher counter-narrative bar or may get some better counter-thinkers in here.

Yes.  I for one very much like a debate.  I like my points to be challenged.  I don't like my points being dismissed without a commensurate challenge.

From the very start of this war the main counter argument to detailed analysis as to Russia's failings pretty much boils down to one of two arguments (often both):

1. Russia is bigger than Ukraine and only needs to make some adjustments in order to successfully overcome its initial failings
2. Ukraine is fragile and only exists because the West supports it, and the West is fickle so will eventually pull out

We've been hearing this since the war started.  The analysis of why Russia is losing has evolved to accommodate new information and outcomes, but the fundamental conclusion has not been challenged.  In fact, it has been reinforced and in some ways expanded.  The arguments for Russian success were never well formed and have remained largely unchanged.

Track records should matter.  As The_Capt says, those who have been calling this war as a Russian loss from the start have had their theories put to the test and found sound.  Those who think Russia can pull off even a stalemate have not, thus far, had much to support their positions.  At this point why should we presume parity between these two points of view?

For sure this doesn't mean all prognostications on the "Russia has lost" side have not all panned out.  Nobody has a crystal ball.  But the "Russia can still win this" camp has thus far come up with little to crow about.  This should matter.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Put another way, wouldn’t the Chinese face the same problems you describe, while trying to fight a nation fighting like Ukraine?

That is the hope from the West's perspective and the fear from China's.  Russia has been wrecked by this war and yet on paper it shouldn't have.  Chinese leadership must be concerned it could happen to them in Taiwan.

The big unknown is how receptive Chinese internal systems are to objective and critical analysis.  I for one have no idea if it is better or worse than Russia's.  From what I've read it seems, not surprisingly, that China suffers from many of the same administrative deficiencies as Russia does as they are kinda standard for authoritarian states.  Whether Chinese leadership recognizes this or not is outside of my area of expertise.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Dmitriy Medvedev, deputy of the head of Russian Federation Security  Council, after several bottles of vodka and drugs:

Jerks in Europe have wanted to arrest foreign [president] and on 21st of March will arrerst In America own one. Take back the country, Americans! To the battle! Destroy the tyranny of Washington! Send to stinky dump of history corrupted clique of madness pig-ukie-fils - father and son Baidens! MAGA!

P.S. This post was placed on request of the USA presidental candidate colonel Daniil Fyodorovich Trump (he plays on Russian manner the name Donald and the name of his father Fred)  

Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

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Edited March 18, 2023 by Haiduk