How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

But despite all that, despite all the rework and despite never quite being able to deliver the dream, one of the most frustrating and wasteful components of the whole programme was the extraordinary amount of time and effort we spent proving that we weren't wasting either time or effort. And that was necessary primarily because of all the people out there who think that "the bureaucracy" is the problem.

Now that is poetry. Sad poetry but that usually is the best kind.

[Lethaface]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

But despite all that, despite all the rework and despite never quite being able to deliver the dream, one of the most frustrating and wasteful components of the whole programme was the extraordinary amount of time and effort we spent proving that we weren't wasting either time or effort. And that was necessary primarily because of all the people out there who think that "the bureaucracy" is the problem.

Aren't those people the actual bureaucrats? 

[Lethaface]

52 minutes ago, cyrano01 said:

Right. No suppressive MG fire, no supporting infantry. Tanks pushing up close to occupied enemy infantry positions. Even if they were confident that the target position was well suppressed that's a high degree of reliance on there not being any wild-card bad guys out there in unidentified positions.  That sort of thing has pretty much never ended well for me in CMBS but the Ukrainians seem to go in for it and get away with it. Haiduk makes a good point about getting inside the ATGM's min-range though.

 

Is it just my eyesight or was the commander operating with his head out of the hatch at least some of the time?

I guess the TC was in comms with the drone camera operator.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

You see what you're doing there, right? Compromising the design to meet conflicting operational requirements, and you still haven't gotten away from the need for bulk liquid fuels moving about the battlespace to each of those recharging pads.

Guys, guys-  Warhammer 40k solved this already. 

 

[dan/california]

T

1 hour ago, kimbosbread said:

Rechargeable means only using half of your battery charge every flight, unless you are find junking that battery in 100-200 use cycles. If you have small drones (fixed wing, at least not power hungry quadcopters) with longer ranges they can make their way much further back to find a recharge pad (let's say no battery swap) or for a refuel. Nice thing about sealed rechargeable battery is you could just slap an induction pad on it and although charging is slower, there is no port for dirt to get into. It also means you could just drop a bunch of passive self contained recharge pads on the battlefield that would be good for 100 charges and you consider them a consumable (a nasty, toxic lion one though). Swapping batteries is much faster if you can figure out a good autonomous way to do it.

There are a lot of different technologies out there. JonS is correct that the ideal way to run an army is to use the same battery tech across as much of the force as humanly possible. He also highlights the difficulty of picking a technology and sticking with it when the tech itself is advancing so quickly. So maybe you try to at lest standardize everything in single brigade. He is also correct that you have to take a hard look at the entire use cycle. To use my favorite example there are a lot of jobs in the kitchen I can do much faster with food processor than a knife, but this advantage is totally overridden by the hassle of cleaning the food processor.

In terms of the technologies that are currently at least somewhat mature, I emphasize somewhat, I think hydrogen fuel cells, and reforming diesel into hydrogen at the drone servicing unit are probably the most robust tech combination. You just need to standardize the hydrogen fueling connections across as much of the fleet as possible. One of the bigger issues with fuels cells is contamination overtime if the fuel isn't perfectly pure, and/or there are imperfections in the materials of the actual cell. The average life of drones Ukraine would argue that 99% of them would be lost before this became a problem, and you could live with less than perfect performance in the whole system. The great advantage of this system are most of the logistics  train just has to worry about delivering the same fuel they are delivering to everyone else, even sub par fuel cells probably have a performance edge of current battery tech, and drones could be refueled very quickly relative to recharging, at least to the limits of the charing vehicles hydrogen storage. All though at a three mission average life span there is an argument for regarding drones as one hundred percent disposable. Just acknowledge that drones are a munition and let the aforementioned bureaucracy take that into account in advance, if you admit they are single use you could probably power them with a non rechargeable lithium /air battery that would have considerably higher performance . After the war we should be able to get a better handle whether that is an overall figure, or just the bad parts of the front on a bad day.

The number of missions you think the average drone of a given class is going to live through really drives the entire process here. If you optimize for a three mission life span, and get ten or twenty mission lifespans you have wasted a lot of money, the inverse is also true. Am I making Jons cry, or is he about to agree with me for the first time ever?

 

 

[Kinophile]

There's a mirroring parallel in my industry,  TV Film. By mirror,  I mean direct opposite. 

For years A cinematographer (Director of Photography ") would almost always have their own video Camera, at high cost. This was recouped by rental to Production for shoots. The release of the RED cam, despite its teething woes,  drastically reduced the entry cost and was quickly followed by similar offerings by the usual big players (notable Arriflex). But,  funnily,  it didn't mean that DPs suddenly could have a bunch of personal cameras. Instead, Rental Houses could now have a much larger quantity of bodies available to rent, for much cheaper. DPs didnt have to deal with the headache of maintenance or availability. If a body broke on set the Rental House could easily send out a whole new one, pronto (it would be unlikely a DP would have two bodies). Also,  the sudden rapidity in upgrade cycles and product development meant that DPs couldn't keep up with the newest trend -  but RHs could. Soon there was also a whole lot more "DP"s. 

The parallel here is that the Military are trying to track tech trends that are accelerating,  with procurement systems and mentality that aren't. In Film Tv there was no barrier to DPs shifting their model in response to tech jumps in their equipment.  They faced no beaurocracy, vested interests or politics to stop them Adjusting. They weren't held into a lock-step,  hierarchical organization. 

How can an institution as solid as a Military flow as smoothly as a single operator,  in response to technology jumps? It's oxymoronic but how else can a military adapt and implement as quickly as is going be needed? 

AI,  AI, AI,  sure sure sure. But it's humans working humans, so I'm leery how much impact AI can have on that. 

Interestingly,  now most DPs have their own easy rig, a sort of basic steadicam without the steadi. The rigs are personal to them and are considered defacto requirements. 

Edited April 1, 2023 by Kinophile

[Zveroboy1]

2 hours ago, Offshoot said:

Surely tank 2's job was to protect tank 1's left flank? Although they weren't shown, I don't think the trench on the cross-point of the T was the only Russian position they were worried about (are the Ukrainians suppressing a third in the distance with artillery?). At the end, tank 1 gets close enough to the trench that it could easily have come under fire from the position tank 2 is suppressing.

This is my take on it too. The second tank veers to the left of the cistern or reservoir to protect the flank against a potential threat from that direction.

And I agree, it is not shown in this vid or the previous ones but I am almost certain there must have been a second Ukrainian trench elsewhere that was captured, probably further east along the treeline. When you look at the terrain it makes very little sense to have this single position sitting there alone in the middle of nowhere even for an observation post; it is too easy to outflank.

And you can see arty hitting the treeline in the distance at the beginning of the vid. If I was to guess, I'd say the flanking Russian squad which came at a perpendicular angle to the trench in the first vid might have overrun that second position before it attacked the T-shape and this might be the reason why it wasn't shown in the previous vid.

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

There are a lot of different technologies out there. JonS is correct that the ideal way to run an army is to use the same battery tech across as much of the force as humanly possible. He also highlights the difficulty of picking a technology and sticking with it when the tech itself is advancing so quickly. So maybe you try to at lest standardize everything in single brigade.

I suspect standarization is key. If it's a built in battery at the factory, at least same charging interface. If it's a fuel, same fuel. I wonder if otto fuel (from torpedoes) would be useful, especially for single use drones?

 

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

The number of missions you think the average drone of a given class is going to live through really drives the entire process here. If you optimize for a three mission life span, and get ten or twenty mission lifespans you have wasted a lot of money, the inverse is also true.

Yeah if your per drone cost is $1000, but you have a good kill/useful intelligence ratio every time you consume a drone, maybe it's not even a driving consideration. So for example if you decide to deploy your drone swarm in area X, do you consider that to be the same as CAS where let's say you've burned $300k of fuel, maintenance and airframe (or the equivalent in humvee hours and associated back surgery/physio for the crew), so you just say whatever, all the drones are considered consumed?

 

3 hours ago, JonS said:

You see what you're doing there, right? Compromising the design to meet conflicting operational requirements, and you still haven't gotten away from the need for bulk liquid fuels moving about the battlespace to each of those recharging pads.

It's really about the choosing which of those conflicting requirements are the most important. Do you care about reuse? For micro cruise missiles, I suspect not. It's basically a flying smart mine that can coordinate with all the other smart flying mines without phoning home. For Mr Robotank, I suspect reuse is much more important, as well as maintability and fitting into the supply/maintenance organization with wheels, ammunition, fuel, poorly applied reactive armor tiles etc.

 

[chrisl]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I agree that distribution has a large number of headaches and needs for change all on its own.  Coordinating a "flash" requires another even more.  See next point.

I think any sort of massed ground attack will require an equal, if not greater, pre-battle effort to clear the battlespace of enemy sensors ahead of any ground activity.  When the area is largely sanitized, even if temporarily, the distributed forces are activated and deployed.  They hit hard and withdraw when their mission is successful or the enemy reconstitutes its ISR capability.

The effort and specialization for this to be possible is extremely expensive.  It's akin to creating a carrier strike group to take a single beach.  Which means someone is going to have to reinvent how wars are fought, because this sort of thing is not going to win a war like what we have going on in Ukraine.  Think operational and strategic impact, not tactical.

Yup.  Far more cost effective as well.  However, if you're counting on corrosive warfare to save your country from domination, you had better be prepared to fight for years with all the suffering that goes along with it.  Not really an attractive Plan A for when the poop hits the rotating air mover.

Steve

I agree that the bolded part is key.  It's about creating an asymmetric environment for the uncrewed systems to work in (and using uncrewed systems as part of creating that environment.  Hello, Skynet!).  

 

re: The_Capt's comments on EW: Current EW uses a ton of energy because it's very crude - basically put a lot of noise in the air and saturate the receivers with ABBA songs at levels many orders of magnitude higher than they can tolerate.  A fleet of EW drones might be more subtle, and rather than saturating the receivers with a ton of noise, they might detect the various carrier signals and inject spoofed signals  that look like the real thing (and are synced with the real thing) but are garbage.  That's one of the ways that GPS denial works - you don't have to swamp the GPS signal, you just have to inject lies into the data stream that the receiver is expecting.  Until recently this was difficult and expensive and likely took large pieces of hardware.  With the proliferation of software defined radio I suspect that it's gotten very small, low energy, and cheap, particularly if you know the general operating parameters of the signals you're trying to mess up.

Countering sensors is similar - the hardware with the sensor has to transmit signal for it to be useful. If you can triangulate to locate all the transmitters, you can saturate their input sensors with lower energy, more focused beams so that you aren't melting m&ms all over the battlefield.

[JonS]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

whether or not the F-35 belongs in the winners column is a matter of some debate. Especially at $80 million  per copy.

Perhaps. Imagine if someone tried to pimp a pair of pants and a t-shirt for $100k?

Edited April 1, 2023 by JonS

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, chrisl said:

I agree that the bolded part is key.  It's about creating an asymmetric environment for the uncrewed systems to work in (and using uncrewed systems as part of creating that environment.  Hello, Skynet!).  

 

re: The_Capt's comments on EW: Current EW uses a ton of energy because it's very crude - basically put a lot of noise in the air and saturate the receivers with ABBA songs at levels many orders of magnitude higher than they can tolerate.  A fleet of EW drones might be more subtle, and rather than saturating the receivers with a ton of noise, they might detect the various carrier signals and inject spoofed signals  that look like the real thing (and are synced with the real thing) but are garbage.  That's one of the ways that GPS denial works - you don't have to swamp the GPS signal, you just have to inject lies into the data stream that the receiver is expecting.  Until recently this was difficult and expensive and likely took large pieces of hardware.  With the proliferation of software defined radio I suspect that it's gotten very small, low energy, and cheap, particularly if you know the general operating parameters of the signals you're trying to mess up.

Countering sensors is similar - the hardware with the sensor has to transmit signal for it to be useful. If you can triangulate to locate all the transmitters, you can saturate their input sensors with lower energy, more focused beams so that you aren't melting m&ms all over the battlefield.

This is interesting but I am really not sure how it would work.  For example, I have an ISR platform out there sniffing around.  I can jam the link between platform and ISR architecture, the link between operator and platform or the link between operator and architecture.  The aim here is to effectively stop the information flow be it platform guidance or intel feedback. 

So spoofing is feeding false signals within that triangle.  But every modern military operates with encrypted systems.  So you can either insert enough noise into the signal (high energy) to jam or break the encryption and insert a false signal (low energy).  I get the point on low energy being more precise and that would be very cool on a unmanned platform but I do not understand how a low energy EW system could spoof or confuse unless it had access to the encryption.  It would simply be filtered out as low level noise.  “Looking like the real thing” would mean breaking an opponents encryption completely.

This would basically mean hacking the signals of an opponent, which is also a cool idea but these are hardened self-contained military grade systems so that is easier said than done.  Beyond that is basically massive EM surges (which I am not even sure are EW) but these can also be shielded against.

GPS is also an odd example. Open GPS, sure but militaries also all have encryption backbones.  So if you are posing as a false GPS signal trying to throw off a guidance system, you need to be pinging as a positive encrypted device.

Now of one had Quantum decryption in play (and everyone is chasing that) then it is a different game, but we are not there yet.  And of course they are working on the next bound - too much at stake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

Or is there a third way I am missing here?

[edit. Thought of one, cyber infiltration and exploitation operations in support could break encryption and then hand off to EM.  Of course cyber has to actually be able to pull it off.  And frankly if one can get that deep into a system one could hijack platforms without bothering with all the EW stuff in the first place.]

 

Edited April 1, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

50 minutes ago, JonS said:

Perhaps. Imagine if someone tried to pimp a pair of pants and a t-shirt for $100k?

 It depends on what war you end up in. One plane=one reinforced battalion.  It depends on what war you end up in. And I have no access to the classified info that would let me judge the planes performance. 

[chrisl]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This is interesting but I am really not sure how it would work.  For example, I have an ISR platform out there sniffing around.  I can jam the link between platform and ISR architecture, the link between operator and platform or the link between operator and architecture.  The aim here is to effectively stop the information flow be it platform guidance or intel feedback. 

So spoofing is feeding false signals within that triangle.  But every modern military operates with encrypted systems.  So you can either insert enough noise into the signal (high energy) to jam or break the encryption and insert a false signal (low energy).  I get the point on low energy being more precise and that would be very cool on a unmanned platform but I do not understand how a low energy EW system could spoof or confuse unless it had access to the encryption.  It would simply be filtered out as low level noise.  “Looking like the real thing” would mean breaking an opponents encryption completely.

This would basically mean hacking the signals of an opponent, which is also a cool idea but these are hardened self-contained military grade systems so that is easier said than done.  Beyond that is basically massive EM surges (which I am not even sure are EW) but these can also be shielded against.

GPS is also an odd example. Open GPS, sure but militaries also all have encryption backbones.  So if you are posing as a false GPS signal trying to throw off a guidance system, you need to be pinging as a positive encrypted device.

Now of one had Quantum decryption in play (and everyone is chasing that) then it is a different game, but we are not there yet.  And of course they are working on the next bound - too much at stake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

Or is there a third way I am missing here?

[edit. Thought of one, cyber infiltration and exploitation operations in support could break encryption and then hand off to EM.  Of course cyber has to actually be able to pull it off.  And frankly if one can get that deep into a system one could hijack platforms without bothering with all the EW stuff in the first place.]

 

You don't (and can't without a lot of work) spoof the data, but you can spoof the carrier and put garbage on it - there will be patterns to make the radio sync properly and modulate data bits.  You won't know what the bits are, but you can probably see the patterns in how they're framed and turn the radio signal into garbage by sending appropriate garbage in sync.  Encrypted signals are much more susceptible to noise than unencrypted systems.  They'll have a lot of error checking in them, but it takes a lot less noise to mess up an encrypted signal than an unencrypted one.  It's like the radio equivalent of noise cancelling headphones - you can flip bits without having to interpret the content.

If you had quantum computers for decryption you might actually be able to feed fake data, but that's a ways off.  

Edited April 1, 2023 by chrisl

[dan/california]

9 hours ago, akd said:

Part 3 of "Battle for the T" (UKR armor counterattacks position that was lost to Russians during night following previously repelled Russian assault):

 

The number of point detonating shells it took to take out that trench implies that the efficiency gains of the new rounds that detonate at the programmed distance would be large.

Quote

https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2020/army/2020_120mm-amp.pdf?ver=SPTvLIk0uiFxSsopP243RQ%3D%3D

 

Spec sheet for the new round.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, chrisl said:

You don't (and can't without a lot of work) spoof the data, but you can spoof the carrier and put garbage on it - there will be patterns to make the radio sync properly and modulate data bits.  You won't know what the bits are, but you can probably see the patterns in how they're framed and turn the radio signal into garbage by sending appropriate garbage in sync.  Encrypted signals are much more susceptible to noise than unencrypted systems.  They'll have a lot of error checking in them, but it takes a lot less noise to mess up an encrypted signal than an unencrypted one.  It's like the radio equivalent of noise cancelling headphones - you can flip bits without having to interpret the content.

If you had quantum computers for decryption you might actually be able to feed fake data, but that's a ways off.  

I think I would need to see an example of this fielded.  As I read this we are talking low energy precise signal jamming.  It has to defeat anti-jamming (eg frequency hopping) and somehow remain undetected or be mounted on a light unmanned platform.  This would mean basically jamming at an individual level - so one jammer per system being attacked, as opposed to the broad area jamming now.  I would like to see what that looks like.

And then there is direct LOS systems - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44037/the-air-force-wants-laser-communication-pods-to-securely-link-fighter-aircraft-with-satellites

I mean I like the idea but I see a lot of counter moves and hurdles.

[chrisl]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think I would need to see an example of this fielded.  As I read this we are talking low energy precise signal jamming.  It has to defeat anti-jamming (eg frequency hopping) and somehow remain undetected or be mounted on a light unmanned platform.  This would mean basically jamming at an individual level - so one jammer per system being attacked, as opposed to the broad area jamming now.  I would like to see what that looks like.

And then there is direct LOS systems - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44037/the-air-force-wants-laser-communication-pods-to-securely-link-fighter-aircraft-with-satellites

I mean I like the idea but I see a lot of counter moves and hurdles.

You actually need multiple (at least two, more to be more effective) jammers per system being attacked, or more like multiple antennas in a phased array, but the array can be a bunch of drones scattered around if you can sync them up.  You would have multiple drones, each with multiple transmitters on it, and phase them so they mess up the signals at your target locations.  But we have $$$ to impose an asymmetric environment.

Not easy (and harder to do with everything moving), but doesn't violate any laws of physics.  You can do it with a speaker system where you have a bunch of speakers in a space and put a microphone at some point where you want to cancel the sound (where someone's head is in their workspace), then send phased signals from the speakers to cancel all the sound in that small space.  Outside that cone of silence there will be all sorts of crazy noise where the speakers' sounds add up in weird ways.  And with a bunch of speakers you can do it in multiple locations at once if you're careful.  Same thing, but with RF.  

[Yet]

47th assault brigade using tanks as ehhh mobile guns. Insight in the functioning and what this brigade might be up to. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/03/28/ukraines-super-upgraded-m-55s-tanks-are-urban-demolition-vehicles/

[cesmonkey]

Ukraine Victory Unlikely This Year, Milley Says
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/03/ukraine-victory-unlikely-year-milley-says/384681/

Quote

Zelenskyy has publicly stated many times that the Ukrainian objective is to kick every Russian out of Russian occupied Ukraine. And that is a significant military task. Very, very difficult military task. You're looking at a couple hundred thousand Russians who are still in Russian-occupied Ukraine. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying it's a very difficult task,”

 

[DesertFox]

Hahaha...great 1st April all...

 

 

[Haiduk]

Donbas in deep snow again now. This is Bakhmut

Though, Russian territory also affected with snowfall - "Don" highway in Rostov oblast was paralized with 60 km traffic jam.

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, Yet said:

47th assault brigade

Recently their name was changed to "mechanized". Though "frontmen" of brigade don't hide they are trianing like "breakthrough brigade"

[Haiduk]

UKR soldier about YPR-765 and in whole about M113 series

Our "yupik" (YPR) was fu..d, there is a hole near the driver, the engine is burning, crew is alive. It's a big vehicle.

With BMP this, of course, wouldn't have happened. There each fu...g hit was with KIAs. Soviet engineers knew how to care about untilizing of population surplus. 

Its [YPRs] hulls also better. After blowing up by mine, there are no penetrations inside a compartment, when BMP-1 is just teared off. 

[The_MonkeyKing]

 

 

 

[Huba]

32 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

 

 

 

Announcing that on April 1st is definitely a kind of meta-humor, given that it is not a joke in any way. Some clarification/ details:

- vehicles will come from PL army stock, and the new-builds will backfill the stripped units in due time
- there was no info about the versions being sent, but the PL milnet seems to agree that it will be the IFV versions mostly. These sport a two-man OTO Melara turret with 30mm Bushmaster. It has thermals, but not a full hunter-killer setup usually  found in more contemporary IFVs. These vehicles were initially purchased as urgent need during GWOT period and were liked so much that finally we got almost a 1000, including 300 IFVs. Unfortunately the initial deal with OTO was, let's say, suboptimal, and the army  beancounters would surely be happy to get rid of them. Rosomaks are still being purchased, but armed with indigenous unmanned ZSSW30 turret.
- given the announced number, it will probably mean equipment for 2 or 3 UA battalions with some support vehicles. I'd love to see a Rak company to be sent with them, to combat prove the whole concept of turreted  120 mm mortar and the PL implementation of it:

 

[Beleg85]

31 minutes ago, Huba said:

Announcing that on April 1st is definitely a kind of meta-humor, given that it is not a joke in any way. Some clarification/ details:

- vehicles will come from PL army stock, and the new-builds will backfill the stripped units in due time
- there was no info about the versions being sent, but the PL milnet seems to agree that it will be the IFV versions mostly. These sport a two-man OTO Melara turret with 30mm Bushmaster. It has thermals, but not a full hunter-killer setup usually  found in more contemporary IFVs. These vehicles were initially purchased as urgent need during GWOT period and were liked so much that finally we got almost a 1000, including 300 IFVs. Unfortunately the initial deal with OTO was, let's say, suboptimal, and the army  beancounters would surely be happy to get rid of them. Rosomaks are still being purchased, but armed with indigenous unmanned ZSSW30 turret.
- given the announced number, it will probably mean equipment for 2 or 3 UA battalions with some support vehicles. I'd love to see a Rak company to be sent with them, to combat prove the whole concept of turreted  120 mm mortar and the PL implementation of it:

Great news, another Red Line of support was breached. Worth to add though, that so far there is no information about timing of the deal (unless you found it)- realization seems rather distant in time, at least according to current info.