How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

This. 

Rice's biggest handicap is that nobody in DC is particularly impressed with her judgement and it goes back to 2000-2001. When the Bush administration came in, the Clinton folks and the DC policy wonks were telling them incessantly to worry about AQ and terrorism. Rice and her coterie had been out of power for 8 years and still had essentially a Cold War mindset. So they came in talking about missile proliferation and little else while expressing open disdain for the advice they were getting. Then when it blew up in our faces they pretended that none of that happened. So sure, she's not the immortal, immoral husk that Kissinger is but she'd need a buck to get a cup of coffee from actual policy people in DC. 

As a Ministry fan, I am reminded of this on a fairly frequent basis:

 

[chrisl]

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Good lord, the damn things will be knocking on the hatch soon.

I told you that a long time ago.

knock knock

”who’s there?”

”candygram”

“Candygram?”

(land shark chomp)

 

 

[benpark]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Did s/o post this already?

 

I just watched this, and was thinking about how this drone war had evolved over the past year. Footage like this will have a chilling normalcy as miniaturization and mass come into play. 

[benpark]

49 minutes ago, chrisl said:

“Candygram?”

CANDYGRAM FOR MONGO

[Kinophile]

I dread the inevitable mass usage by terrorists against civilian crowds. 

We're not far off Drones being used exclusively in the first wave of a major assault, to suppress and terrify the Ivans in their holes as the main force pushes past. 

 

[Kinophile]

Current list of German vehicles in Ukraine apart from PZH2000) :

18 Leopard 2A6 Main Battle Tanks,

40 Marder tracked armored IFVs 

2 Bergepanzer 3 tracked armored recovery vehicles,

2 Wisent 1 mine-clearing tanks, 

3 Dachs tracked armored engineer vehicles.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/defense_news_march_2023_global_security_army_industry/latest_list_of_armoured_vehicles_delivered_by_germany_to_ukraine_as_of_march_30_2023.html

 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Current list of German vehicles in Ukraine apart from PZH2000) :

18 Leopard 2A6 Main Battle Tanks,

40 Marder tracked armored IFVs 

2 Bergepanzer 3 tracked armored recovery vehicles,

2 Wisent 1 mine-clearing tanks, 

3 Dachs tracked armored engineer vehicles.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/defense_news_march_2023_global_security_army_industry/latest_list_of_armoured_vehicles_delivered_by_germany_to_ukraine_as_of_march_30_2023.html

 

That's enough primary armor for a reinforced mech battalion with some replacements on hand.  Considering the scale of attacks are often less than reinforced company sized, this represents a fairly potent offensive element for Ukraine.

Steve

[dan/california]

18 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

I dread the inevitable mass usage by terrorists against civilian crowds. 

We're not far off Drones being used exclusively in the first wave of a major assault, to suppress and terrify the Ivans in their holes as the main force pushes past. 

 

About six weeks is my guess...

 

[dan/california]

 

These people need to leave Russia, yesterday!

[dan/california]

Handy how to from the WP. 

[The_Capt]

14 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

These people need to leave Russia, yesterday!

Goes some way in explaining why no one is protesting this war in the streets of Moscow. Putin has clearly been building this internal security architecture, and likely using it for years. The difference now is that it is under new levels of strain. Russia is a big country and the potential blowback from this sort of system failing is not small.

[danfrodo]

5 hours ago, Haiduk said:

And about weather. Northern cyclone brough snow to most part of Ukrane and below zero temperature at the night. 

And if in central Unkraine snow already almost gone, that on Donbas situation is next:

 

Looks like heavy, wet snow.  That's gotta be miserable. 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/03/29/better-camouflage-is-needed-to-hide-from-new-electronic-sensors

Good article on the state of hide and seek.

Short version, the camo is getting better, but not as fast as the sensors are.

Edited March 31, 2023 by dan/california

[dan/california]

Any idea of the differential impact on Ukraine vs the relevant parts of Russia? 

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Any idea of the differential impact on Ukraine vs the relevant parts of Russia? 

THis is weird, I checked Bakhmut weather yesterday & saw just one day of light snow and high just above freezing.  Guess I used the wrong weather site.  Gonna really hamper mobility for at least a few days.  Benefits UKR maybe?  Since RU is trying to move across fields & dirt roads around Bakhmut & Adiivka more than UKR.

[kevinkin]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

reinforced company sized, this represents a fairly potent offensive element for Ukraine.

Great start, but given the terrain and wear and tear on AFVs, the company will be difficult to keep in the field even without combat losses. I am not sure where the critical mass lies from a fixing and replacement POV. Perhaps the tactic will be a much higher tech version of the flying columns from last year. And a company like that will become the fist of a lighter force with well stocked trains following behind. Perhaps a sequence: Engineers break in; infantry secure; NATO AFVs breakthrough; T-64s + infantry etc. secure; NATO AFVs exploit and look for juicy gaps in the RA defenses. Rinse and repeat. 

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Great start, but given the terrain and wear and tear on AFVs, the company will be difficult to keep in the field even without combat losses. I am not sure where the critical mass lies from a fixing and replacement POV. Perhaps the tactic will be a much higher tech version of the flying columns from last year. And a company like that will become the fist of a lighter force with well stocked trains following behind. Perhaps a sequence: Engineers break in; infantry secure; NATO AFVs breakthrough; T-64s + infantry etc. secure; NATO AFVs exploit and look for juicy gaps in the RA defenses. Rinse and repeat. 

Interesting thought.  And by the time the ground dries maybe there's a number of the same replacement vehicles so these units don't just dwindle down to nothing due to combat & breakdowns. 

Gonna be fun to watch UKR make Putin's head spin as to exactly where the real counterattack will be.

[cesmonkey]

NATO, US forces join Romania-led Black Sea military drills
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2023/03/30/nato-us-forces-join-romania-led-black-sea-military-drills/

Quote

Romania’s navy said Thursday’s drills in the Mahmudia region of the Danube Delta, which flows into the Black Sea, would demonstrate how the combined forces would “neutralize an enemy air landing” in an area adjacent to such a waterway.

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

 

Good article on the state of hide and seek.

Short version, the camo is getting better, but not as fast as the sensors are.

It's a surprisingly good article for a non-technical audience.

Multispectral sensing that gets integrated and fed to reasonably well trained computers is going to be hard to beat.  

It's tougher on the ground than in the sky in many ways - if you're in the sky and you can eliminate any radar return you just look like the rest of the sky.  But if you're on the ground and eliminate radar (or lidar, or simply optical) return you look like a big hole in the environment and are obviously something interesting.  You can camouflage yourself in one band, but it's likely that at the same time you make yourself stick out like a sore thumb in another band.

Similar with emissions - if you're functioning you're using energy and emitting waste heat. It's not enough to have something that simply reflects your own thermal emissions - that heat has to go somewhere.  It's either heating you up or something outside you (like your camouflage on one side while it keeps the other side cool, or it's slowly conducting itself to the surface of your camo.  You also have to match your external environment across the spectrum so you don't stick out like a sore thumb or a black hole.  That's why battery, or at least hybrid power is going to become more valuable - if you can turn off the heat generating internal combustion engine when you're not actively moving, you produce a lot smaller heat signature. 

[kevinkin]

30 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

make Putin's head spin as to exactly where the real counterattack will be

We might see some increased NATO activity in the far north and in the Black Sea to run interference. At a low but regularly paced level. As much as the west worries about his nukes, Putin's has to have all sorts of "what ifs" on his tiny mind. And more problems Russia faces the more they can't handle them. Out OODA loop the bastards at the operational and higher level. Pretty sure we are almost there now. 

Edited March 31, 2023 by kevinkin

[dan/california]

36 minutes ago, chrisl said:

It's a surprisingly good article for a non-technical audience.

Multispectral sensing that gets integrated and fed to reasonably well trained computers is going to be hard to beat.  

It's tougher on the ground than in the sky in many ways - if you're in the sky and you can eliminate any radar return you just look like the rest of the sky.  But if you're on the ground and eliminate radar (or lidar, or simply optical) return you look like a big hole in the environment and are obviously something interesting.  You can camouflage yourself in one band, but it's likely that at the same time you make yourself stick out like a sore thumb in another band.

Similar with emissions - if you're functioning you're using energy and emitting waste heat. It's not enough to have something that simply reflects your own thermal emissions - that heat has to go somewhere.  It's either heating you up or something outside you (like your camouflage on one side while it keeps the other side cool, or it's slowly conducting itself to the surface of your camo.  You also have to match your external environment across the spectrum so you don't stick out like a sore thumb or a black hole.  That's why battery, or at least hybrid power is going to become more valuable - if you can turn off the heat generating internal combustion engine when you're not actively moving, you produce a lot smaller heat signature. 

I have been promoting the 100,000 dollar ghillie suit as the next big thing for a thousand plus pages on and off. Someone mentioned a refinement some sci fi author came up with, the suit is designed to use external water sources for cooling whenever possible. The bit about being too invisible/quiet has shown up in a few novels as well.

I still think sensors are winning, 10X more so since it is now shockingly clear that real AI is a thing. Finding everything in  multispectral image that might be a person or an AFV is a case study in what it seems to be good at.

 

[chrisl]

6 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I have been promoting the 100,000 dollar ghillie suit as the next big thing for a thousand plus pages on and off. Someone mentioned a refinement some sci fi author came up with, the suit is designed to use external water sources for cooling whenever possible. The bit about being too invisible/quiet has shown up in a few novels as well.

I still think sensors are winning, 10X more so since it is now shockingly clear that real AI is a thing. Finding everything in  multispectral image that might be a person or an AFV is a case study in what it seems to be good at.

 

Sensors will continue to win for those who have the money to develop fancy sensors.  The production cost of fancy sensor systems is generally nowhere near the development cost, and the better/faster your computers the fancier sensing you can do with sometimes rather bad sensors.  So the sensing benefit is always going to go to the side with the advanced microfab capability.

Real AI is a thing, and it can do real detection and tracking, but it's also not trivially available to everybody, either.  I've had people working on low SNR detection and tracking for very different applications (all imaging problems are the same once you get them onto the sensor array) and even with getting people from the black world the detection and tracking can be inconsistent.

[dan/california]

6 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Sensors will continue to win for those who have the money to develop fancy sensors.  The production cost of fancy sensor systems is generally nowhere near the development cost, and the better/faster your computers the fancier sensing you can do with sometimes rather bad sensors.  So the sensing benefit is always going to go to the side with the advanced microfab capability.

Real AI is a thing, and it can do real detection and tracking, but it's also not trivially available to everybody, either.  I've had people working on low SNR detection and tracking for very different applications (all imaging problems are the same once you get them onto the sensor array) and even with getting people from the black world the detection and tracking can be inconsistent.

It is the base line quality of even upper end consumer stuff that is the curve you can't beat.

Quote

12 MP, f/1.6, 26mm (wide), 1.7µm, dual pixel PDAF, sensor-shift stabilization (IBIS), 12 MP, f/2.0, 65mm (telephoto), 1/3.4", 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS, 2.5x optical zoom, 12 MP, f/1.8, 120?, 13mm (ultrawide), AF, TOF 3D LiDAR scanner (depth)

This is the ~specs for the iphone 15. a decade ago this would have been a stretch for DARPA to fit on helicopter, much less a drone. 48 megapixels in the actual sensor, mind you this comes with a bonus phone....

People and AFVs still haven't changed much.

[Battlefront.com]

Various things of interest:

1.  Another psyops video of Ukrainians with Western equipment (Strykers in this case) "preparing" for battle:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/126live/somewhere_in_ukraine/

2.  Problems already mounting for Russians unlucky enough to have some of the 5000 pardoned criminals filtering back into their communities.  I recently read an article about conflicts already arising, but it seems a killer has already killed again:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/convicted-killer-freed-by-wagner-comes-home-from-ukraine-and-kills-again

And the video referenced in the article that showed residents already scared it would happen just before it did:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/126tl5t/ivan_rossomakhin_a_resident_of_the_village_of/

3.  More loud explosions detected in Belgorod area:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/126zehe/belgorod_9_powerful_explosions_heard/

4.  Khodakovsky got a promotion to Deputy Head of Rosgvardia in DPR.  Girkin is not happy:

 

5.  Reported Russian attack number has stabilized a bit higher than the low but quite a bit lower than the high:

6.  First batch of Ukrainians trained on Patriot leave the US for Europe to get training specific for integration into Ukraine's air defenses:

https://censor.net/en/news/3409127/ukrainians_completed_training_on_patriot_sam_pentagon

7.  Bustusov's take on the problems at the highest levels of the Ukrainian MoD generally and Reznikov specifically.  His criticism of Reznikov boils down to being a deal maker type, not a work hard to fix problems type.  And apparently not someone who can delegate effectively (my read on it).  Of course Bustusov is heavily influenced by the lower levels of command and frontline soldiers, but he also has plenty of sources throughout the government.  He's likely more right than wrong:

https://censor.net/en/resonance/3400525/conflict_surrounding_ministry_of_defense_is_multilevel

Steve

[The_Capt]

27 minutes ago, dan/california said:

It is the base line quality of even upper end consumer stuff that is the curve you can't beat.

This is the ~specs for the iphone 15. a decade ago this would have been a stretch for DARPA to fit on helicopter, much less a drone. 48 megapixels in the actual sensor, mind you this comes with a bonus phone....

People and AFVs still haven't changed much.

This is fundamentally the modern warfare problem.  We have a lot of our military capabilities on things that have evolved too slowly in comparison to the technology able to find them and hit them.

We have ISR systems that can see far better than we can hide, and shooters that hit much farther away with greater precision.  Worse, the things that can still hide the best are also the things that can do the seeing and hitting.  This puts us into a massive Denial dilemma with current capability.

Now I think the RA has been so eroded (or will be) that traditional conventional mass may work, but we cannot count on this for the next war.  The tank being dead or not is irrelevant - concentration of mass has become toxic which shifts some pretty fundamental concepts of warfare.

Edited March 31, 2023 by The_Capt