How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chrisl]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

2. We are bringing both the eggs and the bacon. Ukraine is supplying the staff, setting the table and cooking the meal.

I think he was referring to the relative involvement of the Chicken and the Pig in a bacon and eggs breakfast.  The Chicken is involved, but the Pig is committed. It's not all that common of an analogy, but I've heard it come up a few times. Except many of the NATO Chickens are committed to support because they're worried that dinner will be Chicken & Waffles.

[alison]

10 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Which is why I saw strategic ambiguity on Taiwan has Run its course. Put enough of a U.S. military presence on the island to make things crystal clear. 

Sorry for off-topic, but this proposal keeps coming up on this thread so I feel I should address it from perspective of someone who lives in Taiwan.

Something most "put a bunch of marines of Taiwan" takes are missing is the voices of the Taiwanese people.

Even though most Taiwanese do not consider themselves Chinese, also most Taiwanese do not favor changing the status quo. The country is in a bizarre place because it's plainly evident to everyone - including China - that Taiwan is already an independent country with its own government, laws and military... but nobody can actually say that out loud. Any time other countries try to engage with Taiwan, politically or militarily, both that country and Taiwan gets punished. Which maybe doesn't faze the US, but they're the richest and most powerful country in the world! Taiwan is a small island located right next door to the second richest and second most powerful country in the world, who also happens to be their biggest trade partner - the ultimate frenemy.

Putting marines on Taiwan is just moving a chess piece for America, but for Taiwan it is a major change to the status quo, something that could affect the lives of everyone in the country - potentially for the worse. As a democratic country, there are a lot of different opinions on this, and with the presidential election coming up in 2024, no candidate wants to be shown as the one who let the Americans mess up the economy. This is probably why the meeting with Speaker McCarthy happened in California and not in Taiwan, because the Taiwanese government doesn't want to escalate tensions, especially not ahead of a political campaign.

[danfrodo]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

This entire war is not the result of anyone’s foreign policy other than Russia and Putin.  Every nation that joined NATO did so of its own free will - you know, the thing we are supposed to be protecting?  Anyone who suggests that we should live in a world where we let regional dictators pull of nonsense like this war - “to avoid war” is deluded.  Or, as I suspect is in this case, is that kid in the class who is just clever enough to be contrary and get attention but has no real solutions to offer.

The huge #1 hit song for over a year now.  Covered, recorded & released by a huge number of forum singers.  Yet still seems some folks haven't heard it.

Beleg85:  thanks for the Hugh Laurie song, brilliant.  A quick comedy skit is often worth 10,000 words of rational discussion. 

Could y'all slow down?  New job keeping me busy and takes me an hour every night to catch up! 

I heard rumor (Denys Davydov today) that UKR attacking northern Andiivka salient.  I hope this turns out to be true, hopefully this rumor will turn out to be true over next couple days w some success.  THere's no way the new RU salients could have solid defenses w such worn out forces in those new territories when every warm body is attacking, not digging defense in depth. 

[danfrodo]

Summary here for today.  Discusses artillery ammo usage rates & current & projected production rates.  But also points out that there's a lot of RU shells that get destroyed behind the lines that are much harder to count.  We've all heard front line soldiers complain of lack of artillery.  Either UKR is short or it's hoarding, hopefully the latter.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/5/2162186/-Ukraine-Update-What-happens-next-in-Russia-s-invasion-of-Ukraine-may-be-down-to-a-single-word-Ammo

 

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, alison said:

Sorry for off-topic, but this proposal keeps coming up on this thread so I feel I should address it from perspective of someone who lives in Taiwan.

Something most "put a bunch of marines of Taiwan" takes are missing is the voices of the Taiwanese people.

Even though most Taiwanese do not consider themselves Chinese, also most Taiwanese do not favor changing the status quo. The country is in a bizarre place because it's plainly evident to everyone - including China - that Taiwan is already an independent country with its own government, laws and military... but nobody can actually say that out loud. Any time other countries try to engage with Taiwan, politically or militarily, both that country and Taiwan gets punished. Which maybe doesn't faze the US, but they're the richest and most powerful country in the world! Taiwan is a small island located right next door to the second richest and second most powerful country in the world, who also happens to be their biggest trade partner - the ultimate frenemy.

Putting marines on Taiwan is just moving a chess piece for America, but for Taiwan it is a major change to the status quo, something that could affect the lives of everyone in the country - potentially for the worse. As a democratic country, there are a lot of different opinions on this, and with the presidential election coming up in 2024, no candidate wants to be shown as the one who let the Americans mess up the economy. This is probably why the meeting with Speaker McCarthy happened in California and not in Taiwan, because the Taiwanese government doesn't want to escalate tensions, especially not ahead of a political campaign.

Every single point you make is correct. No one has more to lose in this than the Taiwanese. I sincerely hope Xi decides he has enough problems ,and Taiwan just gradually fades out of the news. But if Xi has all but decided to go for it and the planning process is under way, nothing short of an ironclad guarantee that attacking Taiwan means war with the U.S. and all our Asian allies is going to dissuade him. Two U.S. brigades parked outside of Kyiv in January 2022 might have averted the entire tragedy in Ukraine. I assume Taiwan probably has better intelligence sources in China that anyone else. I would simply state that if the Taiwanese Government asks for U.S. forces to be stationed there, The U.S. should have them the in days not weeks. Which implies all the prep, and all the planning have already been done, on both sides. Because we have seen Ukraine, we have seen  Hong Kong, and we have seen Xinjiang. We all really want war in the Taiwan straight to remain a fictional scenario. Taiwan most of all.

Edited April 6, 2023 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, chris talpas said:

This war game has China doing just that

Thanks for posting that.

OK, let me say that I don't spend much time analyizing what is going on with the military situation in the Pacific.  It is not my cup of jasmine tea (though I do love me some jasmine tea!).  It is why when customers ask for a WW2 PTO game or something with modern Chinese forces I try to worm out of it.  The simple truth is that my nearly 40 years of military study has been European based, predominantly Eastern Front and more recently post WW2 Soviet/Russia.  I have the depth of understanding to make a meaningful contribution to that sort of wargame.

Yet, within a few minutes of thought I came up with almost the same strategy that the Red Team in this video came up with.  Put very well in the segment... "if we are going to go to war with the US anyway, might as well try and hobble them before they hobble us".  That was Japan's thinking in WW2 and it is completely sound.

My point here is that China's opening move may not be knowable in detail, but I think it will be all out.  In fact, I think they would likely egg North Korea into attacking South Korea.  I sure as Hell would.

If I were China the #1 lesson to learn from Russia's war in Ukraine is "do it full arsed or not at all, because half arsed holds little chance of success".  The experts playing out the game seem to agree and made it very clear that is why we have to do as much as we can to convince China to not do it at all.  We know nobody can afford this sort of war, so let's make sure China is on the same page as us.  And if that's not possible, we need to be ready to go all in and not think we have time to ramp things up.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

PS. I really am pleased at how the West has helped out. I just don’t think it’s been soon enough with enough of the right stuff to end it before the political rot sets in. So I’m ventilating how it might feel. While I am grieving.

This is very understandable and I think very few people participating in this thread since it started are of the opinion that NATO is doing things fast, either in pledged or in deliveries.  The thing you left out of your narrative is actually the most crucial reason why things haven't moved the way we would like:

"We didn't see this coming, our people don't understand its importance, we have just come off of 20+ years of fruitless warfare, and if we push things too hard too fast we might find ourselves politically unable to deliver even what we are already delivering.  We are democracies, after all, and if the voters decide to withdraw support then that's what will happen".

The good news is that Russia behaved so brutally and so incompetently that support has been stronger than it might otherwise have been.  Once again we have to thank Putin, forever the master strategist for this.

Where I even quibble with the above is about not being proactive enough, even for signalling purposes, about certain systems.  The two Ukrainian pilots invited to Texas to take F-16s for a test... that should have been done 6 months earlier.  ATACAMS should be in theater already, unless there's some behind-the-scenes reasoning we're not privy to.  Abrams and Leo 1s should have been prepped long before they started to be prepped.  Training of more Ukrainian forces in more disciplines should have been expanded sooner.  And the f'n lengthy discussions about ammo production increases should have been ended with a plan last Spring and implemented starting in the summer of 2022.  And more things like that.

So yeah, I've got plenty of criticism of the West's response.  However, by-and-large the West has been plowing ahead with more support and faster pace than was ever envisioned prior to this war starting (the Day 1 sanctions were unprecedented).  Which is, of course, the big lesson for the West... we need to be better prepared for this sort of thing well ahead of time.  Because whatever good planning we had in place for this possibility was clearly not enough.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

More thoughts on the assassination plot in St. Petersburg:

The important bit here is that cameras were disabled in many critical locations, but someone hand filmed Trepova specifically as she entered the cafe.  Looks to me like the FSB wanted to control the narrative a little bit

Steve

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, alison said:

There have been several posts here recently like this. But there have also been posts from military specialists expressing uncertainty around how quickly a NATO-like force could resolve a war of this sort because they have never fought one. I am curious to find out what exactly the AFU is lacking right now that would allow them to turn the current situation into "decisive results". Maybe the first point is to define what "decisive results" means. Let's say it means getting back to February 2022 borders during the summer campaign of 2023. What kinds of military assets are a) not existing in Ukraine right now, b) able to be delivered immediately from the West, and c) can immediately be put into service in order to achieve these results?

I am not opposed to providing more material support to Ukraine in principle, I am just finding it difficult to understand exactly what the "more support" contingent expects. Is there really a list of kit that could be procured by this military - or any military - that would result in the ability to immediately push back a still-numerous opponent that is dug in and throwing everything they have at you? Most wars that happened in my own lifetime have been measured in years, not in months. Granted, some wars involving the West were on the shorter end of things - like the Falklands War or the Gulf War - but they are still outliers, and were over much smaller pieces of land than what we are now dealing with. I know that war sucks and it is frustrating to see so many people dying thanks to the whims of a dictator, but I also am not sure that - outside of WMD or top secret wunderwaffe - there is any kind of asset that could resolve it overnight. If there was, I believe it would have been deployed already, because nobody wants a war to drag on.

Short answer to a very good question - nothing viable.  To shorten this war dramatically - like in a month, NATO would need to establish air supremacy (and sea control of the Black Sea but let’s stay focused).  If the Ukrainian had that then I believe that land power mass would work again.  This would include an epic history making SEAD campaign linked to a C-ISR campaign, again of historic scope and scale.  It would include strikes into Russia at air and C4ISR infrastructure, followed by massive strikes on Russian logistics and strategic capacity.

Without that, this war will continue to unfold at its current speed…until it can go fast.  And we all know that is not going to happen unless there is a major strategic shift.

The West could supply the UA with 1000 tanks but they would need a lot of logistical support and literally years to train up crews/units/formations at that scale.  Essentially I strongly suspect that we are pumping about as much into Ukraine as they can realistically absorb and support.  We could definitely up the scales in some areas like deep strike but I suspect there is a logic for that one too.

People do not want to believe just how hard and how long it takes to build a fighting formation that can do a deliberate assault.  This is near the high water mark of land warfare - maybe only amphib or heavy airborne is a higher bar.  So the penny packets we are seeing being pushed in are not like there are 500 trained crews waiting for western tanks and we are only sending 100.  There are likely only enough crews for the tanks we are sending and the force generation pipeline is only so wide.

So this is going to take time and a lot of effort, and sacrifice.  No shortcuts, no magic US bullets (we have spent a lot of these already).  But my money is still on a UA breakthrough and breakout in the spring/summer.  There will likely be another Russian operational collapse, or two.  And then we will have to see what Phase VI brings.  I get everyone being edgy but I cannot stress how much of warfare is exactly this, sitting around waiting while listening to artillery.  You gotta breathe through it and be patient cause it will get exciting enough, soon enough.

[Battlefront.com]

Mick Ryan's assessment of what Ukraine's 2023 offensive might look like:

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-coming-fight-will-be-different

Lots of good thoughts here.  One in particular that has been mentioned here, but not discussed, is the new higher level divisional level structure that Ukraine is implementing.  This is the sort of higher level coordination of tactical assets that has not been seen in this war so far.  Not by Ukraine and certainly not by Russia.  It hints that Ukraine is preparing something big and bold.  Which is in part because of this:

Quote

A final reason the coming offensives will be different is because of the strategic stakes involved.  The Russians seek to draw out the conflict (I actually think this is a flawed assumption on Putin’s part, but that is another article). The Ukrainians know that the strategic clock is possibly ticking in Washington DC. With an election year likely to distract the war principle aid provided in 2024, this year will be decisive for Ukrainian battlefield operations.

Not only do they need to demonstrate decisive victories over the Russians, they must show they are effective users of all the military assistance provided in the past six months or so. The fickle politics and public’s in western nations have become less engaged in the war’s progress. The Ukrainians understand that the offensives to come must once again show the people of the west that not only is Ukraine worth supporting, but with ongoing military assistance in 2023 and beyond, they can defeat the Russian invasion.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Steve

[Peregrine]

2 hours ago, alison said:

I am curious to find out what exactly the AFU is lacking right now that would allow them to turn the current situation into "decisive results". Maybe the first point is to define what "decisive results" means. Let's say it means getting back to February 2022 borders during the summer campaign of 2023. What kinds of military assets are a) not existing in Ukraine right now, b) able to be delivered immediately from the West, and c) can immediately be put into service in order to achieve these results?

NATO would have had an air campaign that if successful would have been unrelenting and hideous for those on the ground. The interdiction that would have happened after this would have been super ugly.

When Ukraine won land battles outside Kyiv, then Kherson, Kharkiv that resulted in significant withdrawals the Ukrainians didn't have the interdiction capabilities to turn these wins into routes or multiply the casualties many fold with Falaise or Highway of Death style violence. I suspect they may still not have them and any delays to the expected offensives will be to make sure as much of this capacity is available.

None of these assets are immediately available in a volume that would make a significant difference in terms of air power. ATACMS would be something that is in the ballpark but I don't really understand it's effectiveness in this context well.

More tanks as well. Difficult to judge but at times the impression exists that Russian AT defense is inconsistent.

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Peregrine
Slight rewrite after getting Ninja'd by The Capt

[Peregrine]

12 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Tankers had an order completely supress enemy in order to do not allow direct engaging of UKR infantry with Russian entranched infantry, so he received an order from operation commander to crash the enemy by tracks.

No quite the same but "gamey" similar things happen when playing CM battles (more so WWII).

My infantry has bled too much it is time to do something risky/stupid with a tank and see what happens.

[Doc844]

Some people on here will have probably see this already but for those that haven't its worth a watch.  The 'operations room' on you tube, Desert storm, the air war.  I found it massively interesting, the planning, the thousands of moving parts and some of the off the wall ideas that they used.  Kinda gives you an idea on the undertaking that would be required in Ukraine.

[Yet]

6 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Bravo! Nominate the last sentence as the revised name of this thread.

might be a better name..

with the topic "How hot is Ukraine gonna get" everything posted past feb '22 is actually off-topic . 

 

[Elmar Bijlsma]

22 hours ago, DesertFox said:

What's that IFV? YPR from the Netherlands armed with Oerlikon 25mm cannon?

It's been correctly identified, but after that, incorrectly identified, so I'll add my 2 cents.

But I'd be shocked if it wasn't a YPR-765 PRCO C (or possibly PRI.50, no idea what we had left) the command version of YPR with just a .50 cal. Sadly we don't have the 25mm version, typically YPR-765 PRI, to give any longer. Sold those to Egypt and Jordan.

 

Easiest ways to ID it is to look for the slanted roof corners on the back and the turret that is slightly to the right of the vehicle.

 

[DesertFox]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

Which is why I saw strategic ambiguity on Taiwan has Run its course. Put enough of a U.S. military presence on the island to make things crystal clear. 

Exactly. And blast everything out of the air that even comes close to violating Taiwans airspace. There has to be a line drawn.

[Huba]

4 hours ago, Peregrine said:

None of these assets are immediately available in a volume that would make a significant difference in terms of air power. ATACMS would be something that is in the ballpark but I don't really understand it's effectiveness in this context well.

More tanks as well. Difficult to judge but at times the impression exists that Russian AT defense is inconsistent.

The real elephant in the room here is that UA is both not allowed to, and no getting weapons that would allow striking at RU proper. We could easily provide them with such capability and RU would be really hard pressed to continue with the war effort with air bases, but also refineries, major armament plants, training centres etc. taken out. 
We don't do that cause the potential nuclear escalation risk is too high to accept, not due to any particular technical reasons.

[chuckdyke]

8 minutes ago, Huba said:

We don't do that cause the potential nuclear escalation risk is too high to accept, not due to any particular technical reasons.

IMHO if Ukraine carries over the war inside Russia the boot is on the other foot. Russia would be capable defending its home turf. If it happens and it goes wrong NATO would be forced to have boots on the ground inside Russia. Their objective strategy is not so much nuclear escalation but avoiding also a conventional WW3.

[poesel]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The presumption is that Chinese land forces will engage in a long and protracted land war on Taiwanese soil at a minimum.  Worse case is that China mimics Japan in 1941 and decides it has to fight a much larger scale war in order to get what it wants.  Attacking Vietnam (again), Japan, US bases in the Philippines... you name it.  The specifics of the scenario dictate what is needed for the response.  Since all of this is unknown, the best strategy is to have as much of every capability ready to go.

 

8 hours ago, chris talpas said:

This war game has China doing just that

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of the size of an attack on Taiwan. I thought it would mainly be a fight for the Taiwan strait. If China had won that (long enough) it could pour enough resources into Taiwan to end this quickly. If China were denied (or cut early enough) this path, then that would be the end of this war.

Let's hope that Russia breaks up early enough and China will be busy with populating Siberia.

[DesertFox]

OT: Dont tell me germans have no sense of humor...No belated April fools joke...

 

[Grossman]

 

The BBC have been tracking Russian fatalities in the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, often called the Kostroma Airborne Regiment. Apologies if already posted

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65179074

 

[poesel]

2 hours ago, DesertFox said:

OT: Dont tell me germans have no sense of humor...No belated April fools joke...

 

- thanks! This made my day. Choosing the music from "Raumpatrouille Orion" (*) as the official marching song is such a great idea that I would never ever think the Bundeswehr would do that.
That is more "Zeitenwende" than anything else!

 

(*) this:

 

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, Doc844 said:

Some people on here will have probably see this already but for those that haven't its worth a watch.  The 'operations room' on you tube, Desert storm, the air war.  I found it massively interesting, the planning, the thousands of moving parts and some of the off the wall ideas that they used.  Kinda gives you an idea on the undertaking that would be required in Ukraine.

This is exactly why nobody should have been surprised by the terrible performance of the Russian Air Force at the start of this war.  The amount of time, effort, and equipment necessary to pull something like Desert Shield off is something Russia was never, ever interested in doing.  Anything less than that is the seemingly haphazard, ineffective campaign that the Russians were able to pull off.  And "campaign" is being kind.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Grossman said:

 

The BBC have been tracking Russian fatalities in the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, often called the Kostroma Airborne Regiment. Apologies if already posted

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65179074

 

Thanks for that!  The earlier reporting has been posted here, but not this latest update.  There's some really good reporting in this article.

This did give me a bit of a sarcastic chuckle though:

Quote

One tearful mother of a dead paratrooper from the 331st remembers the Great Patriotic War, and adds, "I hope there will be stories written about our guys".

Oh, the stories are already being written.  It's just that either she doesn't want to read them or they haven't been published by the ICC yet.

Steve

[billbindc]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yet, within a few minutes of thought I came up with almost the same strategy that the Red Team in this video came up with.  Put very well in the segment... "if we are going to go to war with the US anyway, might as well try and hobble them before they hobble us".  That was Japan's thinking in WW2 and it is completely sound.

Both sound and it suffers from the same strategic problems Japan had. First, it cannot control the security of its energy supplies and it cannot solve that problem in any conceivable way. Second, it can't really gain the assets it might seize (the semiconductor factories) without effectively destroying them.  Perforce, while China would prefer an anaconda strategy it will instead be driven towards a quick strike strategy that is unlikely to succeed. 

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Edited April 6, 2023 by billbindc