How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[NamEndedAllen]

27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Unfortunately, this is all a very real threat.  Not to mention what can be done with a drone to public infrastructure.

Steve

I realize we are a bit off topic but it is related to the near ubiquitous spread of news and videos of all sorts of drones repeatedly obliterating all sorts of targets. A few days after 9/11 I was sitting at a bar in DC after a grueling day of board meetings with my CEO, of a large national broadcast network.  Soaking up dry martinis as was our wont after these things. Except this time it was all about “When and where is the next one?” He had overseen operations in Munich and Prague, and earlier, in Moscow. He said, “Backpack. Medium-sized city, maybe in the Midwest. No one suspecting it. Then another one…” Well, he was wrong. Not even sure the Boston Marathon counts. But his point was that things were coming that we could not predict or defend against. We owe a lot to the men and women who work their tails off every day every week every month every year to prevent hostile foreign powers doing this. Unfortunately, we excel at doing it to ourselves, and indeed have not been able to defend ourselves. So today, he might say, “Commercial drone. Small or medium-sized city, weekend Farmers’ Market or other outdoor gathering. Then another one nearby, at a Courthouse or FBI building.”

I sincerely hope he would be wrong.

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, akd said:

T-position continued, in which the Russians all get squished:

 

That tanker got lucky again!  Sitting around just asking to get struck by an ATGM and something zips by missing it (any idea what that missile was?).  Good thing whomever launched it didn't seem to have another missile handy.

OK, so criticism again.  The tank went back and forth over the trench so slowly and with such difficulty that if anybody had still been alive there could have been significant trouble.  A hand grenade could even cause problems in this situation.  Not to mention the chances of getting bogged down were pretty significant, and in fact it temporarily was stuck arse facing the ATGM threat.  Then, after everything is done the infantry finally arrives.

Exposing a tank to that much danger to ensure that a couple of enemy soldiers are dead is a very poor use of a tank.  Going in there, guns blazing, to shell shock and/or kill the defenders while the infantry approaches to take over would have been much better.  And it would appear the communications and coordination between these units was good, so it appears to be an issue with tactical judgement.

This battle was weighted towards ending up with a knocked out Ukrainian tank in exchange for a couple of enemy soldiers.  Not a good exchange.

When I see this sort of stuff I think I better understand why Kherson didn't go so well.

Steve

[kevinkin]

5 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This seems to greatly overestimate Russia's ability to just keep this war going forever. The Russian economy is slowly melting down. Putin seems to be unwilling to call another round mobilization, not least because it would make the economic meltdown even worse. Putin might be willing to fight this war forever rather than admit error. How many more hundreds of thousands of Russians want to get killed or maimed in the endeavor remains an unanswered question?

That may be, but when the fighting stops, Putin will try to claim victory in some perverted way. Even if he loses all occupied territory to a cease fire, he will claim Russia stood up to the west, and is now closer to China (as close as China wants actually) and prepared to be a leader in the contest against the west. This is all silly to us, but the Russian people might just eat it up. The question becomes how much more Ukrainian blood is worth not giving Putin any level of victory in his sick mind. Soon we will find out how really bad off the RA is. In the end, it's up to Ukraine to tell us when is enough. But over our shoulder, we need ensure they continue combat in a way that does not burn themselves out. "Bullet not bodies"

[chuckdyke]

I understand why Germany was reluctant to authorize the deployment of Leo 2's.

[akd]

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

(any idea what that missile was?)

artillery, possibly friendly

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Three 3D printed gun with three barrels and one bullet each attached to a quadcopter.  Follow target in car, wait for it to stop at a red light, lower drone, fire point blank, likely hit target in one shot, fly away with the all the evidence.  Can do this while target is standing in front of a window or any other situation where hearing the drone is unlikely.  Do it at night and seeing the drone is also avoided.  Target likes to go swimming?  Wait until in the water, drop drone down behind, and that's that.

Unfortunately, this is all a very real threat.  Not to mention what can be done with a drone to public infrastructure.

Steve

You will obviously not be surprised to find out that drones are completely illegal in the District of Columbia to the degree that any drones that have GPS in them will simply refuse to fly within the bounds of the city. One sees little public comment about the dangers of drones but discreetly, the US government is clearly thinking about it all the time.

[Fenris]

It's been called as a defeat for UKR I'm afraid.  If they're this good at clearing trenches I'm hopeful UKR can start training their own Beaver units.

Edit - anyone else seeing a NAFO pic on the twitter home button and loading screen?

Edited April 4, 2023 by Fenris

[Fenris]

Close up of still smoking damaged/destroyed YPR.  Translation of tweet states everyone alive

Edit, same clip in English

 

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Fenris

[MSBoxer]

2 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

You don't need a gun at all. Just go Phantasm style and put a drill with an electric motor on the front of the drone and fly straight into the target's forehead and drill baby drill. You can cobble together incredibly good face/head tracking software that will run on minimal hardware.

Just build the frame out of explosive material with a few bits of shrapnel thrown in.

 

[Beleg85]

Interesting interview with Ukrainian sniper:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2023/04/03/elite-ukrainian-snipers-describe-their-war-from-the-shadows/

Also, this evening Odessa was heavy hit with drones or rockets. Something exploded at the airport. Btw. it was quite a time when Russians last time conducted massive, county-wide airstrike.

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by Beleg85

[Zveroboy1]

7 hours ago, masc said:

New video on Russia's Assault Units: 

 

 

Interesting how at the heart of the unit is the two assault platoons with only 12 men each.  Seems to be a large commitment of support units for such few men.

Cool vid and I usually like this channel but some bits are a bit odd to say the least. Like having the AGS-17 and the Kord mgs positioned inside the tree line behind the assaulting troops to suppress the trenches. No sure how this is supposed to work at all heh.

But also while doctrine is of course interesting, the contrast with what is actually done on the ground is sometimes quite striking. Maybe this is how the RA conducts some of its attacks now and is a new development.

Captured document outlining an actual assault on a village in the Kherson area in august 2022.

https://wavellroom.com/2023/02/01/anatomy-of-a-russian-army-village-assault/

Granted it is not the same situation at all, but there are a few things worth noting:

- a wwii style artillery barrage lasting a whole day

- zero reactive fires to support the assault

- the use of "forlorn hope" parties where they just send a unit tasked with getting as much yardage as possible then plan on relieving it with a second group to occupy the seized ground

I don't really understand the rationale for it, but it sounds pretty consistent with what they have been doing elsewhere. Maybe they just hope the artillery barrage alone will just displace most of the defenders and render them unable to provide any meaningful resistance. This is rather foolish but maybe this is the best they can do.

[danfrodo]

3 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

You don't need a gun at all. Just go Phantasm style and put a drill with an electric motor on the front of the drone and fly straight into the target's forehead and drill baby drill. You can cobble together incredibly good face/head tracking software that will run on minimal hardware.

I am never ever going to F w you       great post, very funny -- though frightening

[dan/california]

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/03/pentagon-looking-make-sure-spacex-doesnt-abandon-them-war/383837/

[cesmonkey]

In this 12 minute interview, this German colonel provides some details about Russia's efforts in Bahkmut.  He says the Russians have accumulated 10% of their total casualties fighting for Bahkmut. He expects the  "thaw period" in the weather to last until the end of April, after which more active operations will be possible.

 

[Seminole]

5 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Remember this?

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/hellfire-r9x-drone-strike-al-zawahiri/

 

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Three 3D printed gun with three barrels and one bullet each attached to a quadcopter.  Follow target in car, wait for it to stop at a red light, lower drone, fire point blank, likely hit target in one shot, fly away with the all the evidence.  Can do this while target is standing in front of a window or any other situation where hearing the drone is unlikely.  Do it at night and seeing the drone is also avoided.  Target likes to go swimming?  Wait until in the water, drop drone down behind, and that's that.

Unfortunately, this is all a very real threat.  Not to mention what can be done with a drone to public infrastructure.

Steve

 

Never forget!

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

Uninteresting video, but it is something that ISW wrote about a week or so ago.  Specifically that Russia sends groups of mobilized to supposedly dig trenches and/or recover bodies, then sticks them in a trench and forgets about them.  These six prisoners got lucky because they were captured instead of killed stupidly:

Some good combat footage on this YouTube channel (a massive 2.3m subscribers!) that I've not seen posted here before...

First one is an extended cut of the Russian Marines assault on Vuhledar where the helmet cam soldier gets knocked about by tank fire:

Second one shows Ukrainian infantry operating with a BMP-1.  This might be the unit that we saw having difficulty throwing a grenade under a tank where a Russian soldier was hiding.

And one of a close quarters firefight taken from a helmet cam of Da Vinci's Wolves.  Shows how difficult it is for infantry to fight in dense vegetation:

 

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, akd said:

artillery, possibly friendly

Good call!  Rewatching it I got a better sense of the angle and for sure it wasn't an ATGM.  The zoom of the camera made it look like it passed nearly overhead of the tank, but when it zoomed out we can see where it impacted.  It was fairly flat trajectory, but likely 10s of meters over the tank.  And yeah, that looks like a 122mm Grad type rocket.  If it was friendly, that's an awfully dangerous weapon to be using anywhere near friendly forces.

Give that there were only sporadic artillery rounds landing, I wonder if the launcher was one of the many "technicals" we've seen in service.  They tend to only have, what, 3-6 rockets per pickup truck?

Steve

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

In this 12 minute interview, this German colonel provides some details about Russia's efforts in Bahkmut.  He says the Russians have accumulated 10% of their total casualties fighting for Bahkmut. He expects the  "thaw period" in the weather to last until the end of April, after which more active operations will be possible.

 

Interesting to say the least. Ukraine demonstrates that they can resist Russian attack and the Russians want to demonstrate they can break Ukraine's resistance. The terrain for the defender is sub-terranean (compare it with the tunnels in Vietnam) the defender can pop up anywhere with surprise on their side. The Russian attacker suffers tremendous casualties because only fire teams consisting of three four men reach the lines of the Ukrainian defenders. This battle will demonstrate which side has the initiative. 

Edited April 4, 2023 by chuckdyke

[Zveroboy1]

41 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

First one is an extended cut of the Russian Marines assault on Vuhledar where the helmet cam soldier gets knocked about by tank fire:

 

This is some good footage. I have actually seen this before except that the first part was cut, where it shows them driving towards their objective. I have been mapping this area for fun and knew they reached the dachas across the road from Vuhledar proper and even the gas station there at some point, before being repelled but I was wondering how they managed to actually get there in the first place and which way the attack came from. Very useful.

[Zveroboy1]

At dawn it looks like and it had to be along one of these two small dirt roads. Probably the one on the west side imo because even though it is hard to see here, it has trees on both sides unlike the other road, but I can't be certain. But maybe they used both. I wonder how they cleared the mines because that's something they clearly have been struggling with a lot.

Also interesting how it looks like it took place at dawn. On the captured attack plan in the Kherson area I linked a few pages before, the assault takes place at the end of the afternoon so they have enough daylight left for the attack but not enough for Ukrainians to mount a counter-attack before it gets dark.

[Battlefront.com]

Some misc. things:

1.  Former senior CIA officer says that Putin's future is personally tied to success in Ukraine.  Either he gets all four supposedly "Russian" territories of Ukraine under Russian control of he's out (one way or another).  Nothing we haven't talked about here in great detail, but I found this guy thinking that Luhansk and Donetsk won't be enough to save Putin's skin to be interesting:

https://nypost.com/2023/04/03/ex-cia-chief-james-olson-dubs-putin-dead-man-walking/

2. Partisans apparently car bombed the head of occupation of Yakymivka, a town southwest of Melitopol.  Apparently this is the second time it's been said he was blown up:

3.  And what was that we were just saying about Kamikaze drones taking out critical infrastructure?  Ukraine apparently blew up a Russian surveillance tower.  As a bonus, there were two personnel there at the time:

4.  Russian special riot units just received special rifle training.  No sources cited, so chalk this one up to rumor for now.  Could also possibly be more-or-less routine training.

Steve

[Vet 0369]

8 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Well the point is the same  My one laptop doesn't type the r. It's on the shelf now. 

 

LOL! Awwww, come on, you can do better than that. How many “b’s” and “r’s” are in your original paragraph?

[Vet 0369]

7 hours ago, Cobetco said:

I think you might want to look up the definition of Republic. western nations are democracies.

I watched a “Master Course” one time on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Presenter said that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned the U.S. as a Republic, and would be horrified to see it now as a two-party Democracy. He said tha one off the signers actually said “I am an Aristocrat! I love Liberty, but I hate equality!”

We began as a Republic and evolved (or devolved) into a Demoncracy. Perhaps why our two major parties are Republicans and Democrats.

[Fenris]

Close (but safe-ish) view of an incoming Grad(?) strike

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

 

"Mike Kofman joins the show yet again. This time, he explains why the debate over the wisdom of the Battle for Bahkmut is so important while still overshadowing other important debates. As Ukrainian forces are being pressed out of the city of Bahkmut, they prepare to go back on the offensive, which will put Russia on the defensive. The critical issue in Mike's view is what happens after the Ukrainian offensive"

My bullet points:

• Starting with Bakhmut because of the big media footprint. In reality, Bakhmut matters very little eighter way at this point
  • the situation is unclear with the UKR information blackout
  • RUS has not "culminated" like many have stated every week for months (eventually going to be correct)
  • the situation has changed RUS is now pushing the city itself(reason for RUS tactic change unclear)
  • Starting to resemble Severodonetsk. Time will tell.
• RUS is starting to prepare for the UKR offensive sometime this month (for example now units' holidays are being canceled)
• On both sides, manpower is an issue. Issue not bodies but trained manpower and trained formations. 
  • RUS is again like last year doing everything possible to avoid another mobilization wave. Very similar tricks as before the last mobilizations and again unlikely to work out. They are looking at something like 400k.
  • It seems likely RUS is going to have to conduct another mobilization wave in the spring/summer to be able to continue this war
    • The last mobilization wave was consumed by replenishing the force they lost last year. There is no “additional” force.
• RUS has been following the UKR best-case scenario by conducting this highly attractional winter offensive and the last falls situation might replicate where RUS by exhausting itself gives UKR the opportunity to launch its own offensives 
  • The question is how much has RUS exhausted itself? 
    • Especially ammo depletion might prove significant 
  • Opposed to last year RUS still has territorial and mot-rifle units as reserves, the defense has had depth and overall unit-density is higher.
• UKR has generally changed its "defense in depth" to "hold everything" possibly because now the expectation is everything given will have to be taken back.
• Intangibles(like morale) are still intangibles and cannot be taken into account. If they could be they would not be called "intangibles".
• UKR offensive
  • UKR is going to get a substantial injection of ammo for this from the west
  • These troops have not been committed to the winter fight
  • UKR is going to suffer significant casualties and ammo depletion in any case and recovery and "follow through" are critical
• What happens after the UKR offensive is critical
  • Supply from the west? Now it looks spring-summer might be the high watermark for the western support. At least in certain critical systems like artillery ammo
    • critical decisions have only now been made to fix the ammo production issues 
    • It is very different to be able to provide enough to hold their ground and to provide enough to give UKR enough of a relative advantage for offensive operations
  • Last fall UKR was not capable to press its advantage to the end (even with the very critical condition of the RUS forces). This resulted in an operational pause that we are still seeing today. This might happen again in this year's offensive.
    • Will the west be willing and able to AGAIN provide UKR with sufficient military advantage for future progress after this new operational pause? (Unknown to Mike)