How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chuckdyke]

5 minutes ago, Butschi said:

CMBS in particular is in part about living US power fantasies.

Hundred percent correct, enjoy it but don't take it seriously. 

[Seminole]

The German government has approved Poland’s request to export five Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine that originally came from Berlin’s stockpile.

Poland and Slovakia have already delivered some MiG-29s to Ukraine, making them the first NATO countries to provide Kyiv with fighter jets, an escalation of military support that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously warned against.

[Haiduk]

BBC, Mediazona and OSINTers up to 14th of April could identify names of 20 451 Russian militaries killed in Ukraine. Among this number 1090 of mobilized and 3080 convicts. 

BBC also published the same data for 3rd of March, but pointing out loses by branches:

So on 3rd of March were identified names about 16071 killed

Motor-rifles - 2021, tankers - 554, artillery - 411, VDV - 1574, Naval infantry - 574, spetsnaz - 404, Rosgvardiya - 422, some unmarked (Air forces/air defense probably) - 146, mobiks - 1366, volunteers - 1760, PMC - 650, convicts - 1619, other branches - 933, no data - 3637

 

Recently Deep State OSINT resource accumulated official information of so-called DPR about their losses from March of 2022 to 15th of Dec 2022 (there are no updates later). According to this DPR troops lost 4073 KIA and 17374 WIA. Obviously, this is understated data, because many DPR-related milbloggers complained that huge number of persnnel just considered as "missed" or just no any info. Especailly this touches mobiks, so theese 4073 KIA can be mostly "regulars". In 2017 DPR forces had 35 500 of personnel and in 2019 already 20 840. Despite there was info that many DPR fighters retired from service, many also enlisted - army was a single place (except coal mining) where you can get stabIe salary, so I think 35500 is more suitable for "full shtat" number and 20840 is more real 

Losses of LPR is unknown, but some Russian bloggers wrote in November-December that total number of KIA of DNR and LNR is about 6000

Edited April 15, 2023 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, Butschi said:

I guess the answer you can expect is, there is no air denial because of superior SEAD capability and ATGM is countered by (superior) APS.

I am curious: At the end of the day this is still a wargaming forum and, as someone smart once said, a large part of (war) gaming is living our power fantasies. CMBS in particular is in part about living US power fantasies. There's nothing wrong with that, btw. it may just make for a little bias here.

 

Neither of those two factors match up with reality.  

Ukraine is employing a distributed and dispersed C4ISR system linked into western ISR which is outside the theatre.  This means that MANPADs and IADs get cued well out on incoming Russian strike packages early and accurately.  They have enough time to reposition and wait.  We do not have SEAD for passive MANPADs, we have some c-measures but they have not frankly been tested in these environments.  The EW planes cannot blind space-based assets, and OS built on civie IT networks.  And once someone puts a Starstreak on a UAS that MANPAD could hit up past 30k feet.  I am not convinced we could get full air superiority, let alone supremacy, below 20k and might even lose it to denial (A2AD) above that.  Then we are high altitude bombing which comes with so much legal risk as to make CAS nearly impossible.  Troops on the ground would do better with indirect fires and tac UAS to be honest.

ATGMs - “APS will save us”.  Well not from top-down (yet), nor submunitions or decoys.  And last I checked we were not putting those systems on every logistics truck, which is a problem as our tanks need gas too.  I have seen a lot of tank lusters working overtime to show how the tank can be protected and completely ignoring the fact that the tank is just the end of a capability system that reaches back to production lines.

As to western bias, sure.  Almost unavoidable.  But in CMs favour, the battlefield results of Russian armour are not far off how badly they get mauled in CMBS.  In fact the shortfalls in CM are that it was probably too generous with respect to indirect fires and lethality.

[cesmonkey]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

CMBS in particular is in part about living US power fantasies. There's nothing wrong with that, btw. it may just make for a little bias here.

Feeding off of that, if you are an American and want to "feel good" about American support for Ukraine, watch this video:

 

[kevinkin]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-military-loved-discord-for-gen-z-recruiting-then-the-leaks-began/ar-AA19Tw4q

Are you kidding me?

It even runs a 17,000-member chatroom there for service members to talk about first-person shooter games, meet with career counselors and participate in what one sergeant in 2019 called the “Army of tomorrow.”

“Young men who may not feel their life gives them cachet and importance, they’re trying to find that online … often by attaching themselves to the gravitas of war and combat,” said James D. Ivory, a Virginia Tech professor who researches the social dimensions of online communities and video games.

Gee James, thanks the scintillating research. A lot of good it does society. Tressure that paycheck. 

Some people are just not cut out for the military. They are not bad people and can be hugely successful elsewhere. Let's just not go out of our way to recruit them. Should I hire a vegan to cook the line at my steak house? 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

I am curious: At the end of the day this is still a wargaming forum and, as someone smart once said, a large part of (war) gaming is living our power fantasies. CMBS in particular is in part about living US power fantasies. There's nothing wrong with that, btw. it may just make for a little bias here.

Yes, games always reinforce "power fantasies", which includes *all* CM games.  Given the choice between playing a historically typical battle with historically correct command constraints, or playing a game with lots of armor and things that go BOOM without historical constraints, well guess what gamers choose?    This has nothing to do with "US power fantasies" as the probable billion times Tigers have been used in CM games can attest to!

Combat Mission is a tool that was made, deliberately, without bias.  Bias is in the hands of the player and, as I just stated, that bias tends towards tanks and IFVs more than anything else.  In fact, based on this war it is pretty clear that CMBS's stock scenarios are far more "Russian power fantasies" than anything else as the game portrays Russians fighting in coherent combined arms formations using sound tactical doctrine.  The portrayal of US forces in CMBS' stock battles is far closer to reality than fantasy compared to Russian (or Ukrainian for that matter).

A really good example of this is a player could pretty easily simulate a typical March 2022 battle around Kyiv in CMBS, making some allowances for the 8 years of time period difference.  The Ukrainian side would start out with a bunch of disconnected and depleted Rifle units and some ATGMs of some sort or another.  You'd set them to GREEN Experience and very good Morale.  On the Russian side you'd concoct a column of mixed vehicles with very weak infantry support.  These units would all be given GREEN Experience and poor Morale.  Make a map and add weather as appropriate for the time and location.  Ukraine's Victory Conditions are to cause casualties, Russia's is to take a small village.

This is a pretty accurate setup for that time and place, but is this the sort of thing gamers want to play?  Oh, I doubt it very much!  And for those who would find this fun they would not likely play this sort of thing more than once.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Follow up.

I think CMBS is an excellent tool for showing why there needs to be an active and detailed examination of heavy armor on the battlefield of tomorrow.  Follow along with The_Capt's last post about a NATO force going up against Ukraine and see how happy the NATO side is with its losses.  You could even give the NATO side a plethora of air support and I still think there'd be quite a few smoking ruins of expensive tanks scattered around the battlefield and a Ukrainian defender that is still largely intact and functional.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

Re Trophy, I don't think that's a good long term solution, especially against smarter munitions that don't just attack from the sides, let alone a grenade dropped from a drone. It's definitely not gonna handle multiple drones/missiles attacking simultaneously from various angles.

[kevinkin]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

legal risk

Let's hope a US led force never goes into near peer combat, either in the west or east, with this hanging over their heads
(Hi Aussies, want to help with this war we are about to have with China? OK, but one question. Will the full national power of the US be used? Wait a sec, we have to check with the lawyers and get back to you) Analysis of combat between systems deployed by peers (or hypothetically with Ukraine) has to throw out legal ramifications since the systems are design to kill and destroyed stuff in pursuit of a tangible geostrategic objective without interference. Enter politics and legal fights and there is no point to the study. Why stoop to their level if you really want to win? Gloves off, Ukraine could not stand up to the full weight of NATO. If you want NATO to play without 2 rooks and a bishop, there would be battle of sorts. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by kevinkin

[Seminole]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

You could even give the NATO side a plethora of air support and I still think there'd be quite a few smoking ruins of expensive tanks scattered around the battlefield and a Ukrainian defender that is still largely intact and functional.

I think the Ukraine defender might get some ambush kills, but can any of us imagine the NATO side with air support being stymied at a spot like Bakhmut for months and months and months?  I think we’d relish the enemy being willing to sit at a known spot and bring us more forces to kill. 
The AirPower part of the equation is still what makes it so lopsided to conventionally fight the US.  
I think drones are just going to augment that advantage.  
 

It will be interesting to see the breakdowns postwar for what took out Russian and Ukrainian AFVs (ATGMs, drones, mines).  
 

There was a lot of talk pages ago about the utility of AAA in the anti-drone role.  Anyone seen that the European AAA that was delivered has been used that way?  The mention on the leaked documents of encouraging the Ukrainians to not ‘waste’ SAMs on drones brought it mind.

[Seminole]

2 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Let's hope a US led force never goes into near peer combat, either in the west or east, with this hanging over their heads

…
(Why stoop to their level if you really want to win? Gloves off, Ukraine could not stand up to the full weight of NATO. If you want NATO to play without 2 rooks and a bishop, there would be battle of sorts. 

We just put about 500 troops back to Somalia, so while not ‘near peer’ in any regard, history indicates that politics do tend to put combat troops in less tenable positions than purely military considerations would.  

[womble]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

ATGMs - “APS will save us”.  Well not from top-down (yet), nor submunitions or decoys.  And last I checked we were not putting those systems on every logistics truck, which is a problem as our tanks need gas too.  I have seen a lot of tank lusters working overtime to show how the tank can be protected and completely ignoring the fact that the tank is just the end of a capability system that reaches back to production lines.

 

The wikipedia article suggests that Trophy is (now) effective against top-attack munitions too, and mentions two lighter variants of the system, the lighter of which is intended for installation on non-AFVs. So it looks like someone has thought of the wider force-protection implications. Is the top-attack defense capability "wishful Wiki thinking"?

With a bit of tinkering, I'd bet Rafale could produce a "convoy protection" version that only has to be mounted on every third truck to provide an APS umbrella...

But then the anti-vehicle weapons will just have to become EFP-generators that detonate outside the engagement range of the APS; I don't see any physically-aimed defense being able to react fast enough to defeat a threat incoming at Mach 5, launched from 100m. Static mines already have the capability to project this kind of threat, I gather, and if they can be keyed to listen passively for Trophy radar sigs and use 'em for targeting.

[womble]

51 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

It's definitely not gonna handle multiple drones/missiles attacking simultaneously from various angles.

It's claimed to be able to do exactly that.

 

[chrisl]

10 minutes ago, womble said:

The wikipedia article suggests that Trophy is (now) effective against top-attack munitions too, and mentions two lighter variants of the system, the lighter of which is intended for installation on non-AFVs. So it looks like someone has thought of the wider force-protection implications. Is the top-attack defense capability "wishful Wiki thinking"?

With a bit of tinkering, I'd bet Rafale could produce a "convoy protection" version that only has to be mounted on every third truck to provide an APS umbrella...

But then the anti-vehicle weapons will just have to become EFP-generators that detonate outside the engagement range of the APS; I don't see any physically-aimed defense being able to react fast enough to defeat a threat incoming at Mach 5, launched from 100m. Static mines already have the capability to project this kind of threat, I gather, and if they can be keyed to listen passively for Trophy radar sigs and use 'em for targeting.

Or an airburst of tungsten rain well outside of APS range.  

[akd]

Speaking of, Germany just announced they are ordering a 3-digit number of Leopard 2A8 which will include a new version of Trophy APS (possibly with increased top attack protection):

 

 

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by akd

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, games always reinforce "power fantasies", which includes *all* CM games.  Given the choice between playing a historically typical battle with historically correct command constraints, or playing a game with lots of armor and things that go BOOM without historical constraints, well guess what gamers choose?    This has nothing to do with "US power fantasies" as the probable billion times Tigers have been used in CM games can attest to!

Combat Mission is a tool that was made, deliberately, without bias.  Bias is in the hands of the player and, as I just stated, that bias tends towards tanks and IFVs more than anything else.  In fact, based on this war it is pretty clear that CMBS's stock scenarios are far more "Russian power fantasies" than anything else as the game portrays Russians fighting in coherent combined arms formations using sound tactical doctrine.  The portrayal of US forces in CMBS' stock battles is far closer to reality than fantasy compared to Russian (or Ukrainian for that matter).

A really good example of this is a player could pretty easily simulate a typical March 2022 battle around Kyiv in CMBS, making some allowances for the 8 years of time period difference.  The Ukrainian side would start out with a bunch of disconnected and depleted Rifle units and some ATGMs of some sort or another.  You'd set them to GREEN Experience and very good Morale.  On the Russian side you'd concoct a column of mixed vehicles with very weak infantry support.  These units would all be given GREEN Experience and poor Morale.  Make a map and add weather as appropriate for the time and location.  Ukraine's Victory Conditions are to cause casualties, Russia's is to take a small village.

This is a pretty accurate setup for that time and place, but is this the sort of thing gamers want to play?  Oh, I doubt it very much!  And for those who would find this fun they would not likely play this sort of thing more than once.

Steve

Ah, you misread my meaning a bit, I think. I did not (at least not intentionally) chime in with the "US bias! / US OP / you name it" - crowd. I was wondering how likely it is to get an unbiased opinion about NATO/US superiority on a forum like this. You are right, CM is not about US power fantasies specifically, the Tigers, Pathers and King Tigers in favour of more historical setups are a good example. However, making a few possibly too broad assumptions here, given that this thread is about a present day conflict, it is possibly more likely to meet players here who are more into CMBS and CMSF2 than, say, CMBN. Given further that the hardcore Russia fans seem to have left, you are more like to have players with a NATO background than a Russian one. Of course you can play Ukraine or Russia in CMBS and still have fun (I for one do) but, speaking of power fantasies, CM attracts, among other motivations of course, players who like to play the apex predators - in this case, these are clearly the NATO forces. So, as a result, you are likely to have a higher than average fraction of people commenting here who like to see (and play) the dominance of NATO/US kit.

Back to @The_Capt's points about how NATO would struggle in this conflict, I was wondering if replies here may be biased by the fact that we are gamers here who are, as sketched above, probably biased towards NATO superiority.

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, womble said:

The wikipedia article suggests that Trophy is (now) effective against top-attack munitions too, and mentions two lighter variants of the system, the lighter of which is intended for installation on non-AFVs. So it looks like someone has thought of the wider force-protection implications. Is the top-attack defense capability "wishful Wiki thinking"?

With a bit of tinkering, I'd bet Rafale could produce a "convoy protection" version that only has to be mounted on every third truck to provide an APS umbrella...

But then the anti-vehicle weapons will just have to become EFP-generators that detonate outside the engagement range of the APS; I don't see any physically-aimed defense being able to react fast enough to defeat a threat incoming at Mach 5, launched from 100m. Static mines already have the capability to project this kind of threat, I gather, and if they can be keyed to listen passively for Trophy radar sigs and use 'em for targeting.

Even if we could develop APS umbrellas, they are going to be making a lot of noise in protecting our mass, which is hot and highly visible. We manage to create a great ATGM wall - which is a tall freakin ask when one considers sub-munitions, stand-off and decoys.  But let’s say for a second we could do it.  Well it will feel great for about 5 mins before the long range fires come lobbing in.  A combination of unmanned loitering, artillery and high trajectory missiles…we don’t have an answer for that.  And this is before we start talking UGVs, freakin EFPs with legs and a brain.

So in a fight against a comparably UA empowered force we are talking adversaries ISR outside the theatre so “no touchy” or we run escalation.  So we create a force protection dome to protect our combined arms mass. Surprise is dead at that point.  And we would need to load up the FP to the point it starts to get uneconomical to try and protect those same formations.  Logistics and technical support, sustainment etc all stack up really fast to try and build a mobile Iron Dome.  There will come a point that trying to defend our current formations stops making sense.  We are not there yet but I can definitely see it from here.

As to AirPower and “the might of NATO”, c’mon we are at risk of sucking and blowing at the same time here.  On one hand we are 20 minutes from running out of munitions and equipment to support this war, but in a comparable next-war, we now would have bottomless weight?  We would not be stumped at Bakhmut for months…because we likely would have run out of ammo in the first 6 months before we ever got to Bakhmut.

As to AirPower, good lord, Russia had the 3rd largest Air Force in the world and got stumped hard: https://www.wdmma.org/russian-air-force.php

At the higher ends of readiness (always a contentious one for Russia) they have as many fixed wing aircraft as the Gulf War:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign

Orxy has Russia with only 79 aircraft lost, so a pretty small fraction of their fleet.  Yet we are not seeing a lot of Russian air action beyond lobbing well back from front lines.  The reason for this, cited by many, is denial.  Air forces are like navies, extremely expensive and insanely long build times.  No one is going to throw them into a denied space because the costs just get too high.  Does anyone think that if entry costs escalate in a NATO war to the level we see in Ukraine that “national caveat” light are not going to light up like an Xmas tree?

 

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Back to @The_Capt's points about how NATO would struggle in this conflict, I was wondering if replies here may be biased by the fact that we are gamers here who are, as sketched above, probably biased towards NATO superiority.

Oh trust me, it extends well beyond a bunch of gamers.  There are corners of defence going apoplectic right now.  Camps are forming up very much along similar lines we see here:

- Bah, they are Soviet tradition Eastern Europeans, we would crush them no matter which side we were facing.  Let’s buy more hardware and smother it in force protection - double down!!

- Ok, it ain’t great but we just need [insert new tech] and we will be fine.  That and we need more depth, so let’s buy a lot more of what we already have.

- Crap, we are hooped.  That ISR thing just changed ground warfare forever and freakin UAS bent whatever was left.  Now what do we do as we convinced the political level to spend billions on a bunch of scrap metal walking.  Well “fake it til you make it”

- We freakin told you clowns!  Can we start buying the actual capability we need?

- Uh can to you repeat the question?  Hey I think I will retire now.  Good luck and my consulting fee is about 500$ per hour.

[kevinkin]

43 minutes ago, Seminole said:

politics do tend to put combat troops in less tenable positions than purely military considerations would.  

Yeah, but the discussion was hypothetical combat between NATO and Ukraine, not 500 troops, but thousands The key is: "Enter politics and legal fights and there is no point to the study." Can you imagine the US wargaming China with the USN and USAF hands tied? What would be the point? How little damage we can do and still win? I wouldn't trust the results of that study correlating to real life very much. I would rather broadcast what we can do and let others figure out what we will do. 

[kimbosbread]

14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Even if we could develop APS umbrellas, they are going to be making a lot of noise in protecting our mass, which is hot and highly visible.

Yeah do we have a giant moving castle, or should we be a submarine? Or do we go the 3rd way and go full Zerg, since if you can't beat them join them.

14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

On one hand we are 20 minutes from running out of munitions and equipment to support this war, but in a comparable next-war, we now would have bottomless weight?  We would not be stumped at Bakhmut for months…because we likely would have run out of ammo in the first 6 months before we ever got to Bakhmut.

Beyond the cost of adding $500-$Nmillions of APS for each truck, the ammo is such a big problem. The economics just suck if the APS is more expensive than a bunch of munitions. An FPV drone with a bunch of explosives on it is really cheap, and really accurate. And this isn't even touching on munitions that do their thing outside of APS range, or swarms combined with that.

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Seminole said:

I think the Ukraine defender might get some ambush kills, but can any of us imagine the NATO side with air support being stymied at a spot like Bakhmut for months and months and months?  I think we’d relish the enemy being willing to sit at a known spot and bring us more forces to kill. 
The AirPower part of the equation is still what makes it so lopsided to conventionally fight the US.  
I think drones are just going to augment that advantage.  

It's been a while since I've sketched out how I think things would go, so it's probably time to do it again

First, let us imagine parallel universe setup because there's no other way to do this without it.  Picture the US (with or without NATO accompaniment) had magically taken over the Russian frontline positions in January and Ukraine started getting NATO equivalent weapons from China or Russia.  Let's even suppose that the US had pretty much the same flawed battle plan of a quick decapitation attack plus rapid occupation of everything east of the Dnepr and horribly under resourced it as did Russia.  How would things go?

Ukraine's conventional forces would have been neutered at the front and far from the front by airpower.  Any significant attempt by Ukraine to reposition its forces would have been met with disruption, to the point of becoming combat ineffective.  The US led force would have largely accomplished the Russian battle plan, including taking Kyiv.

However, this glosses over several major costs to such a victory:

1. the US would have lost a LOT of stuff on the ground.  Tanks, IFVs, light vehicles, supply vehicles, etc.
2. personnel losses would have been the worst since Vietnam War for sure.
3. logistics would be a mess, though still functional.
4. some units would be so hobbled they would have to reorganize into a smaller task force in order to keep some combat effectiveness operational.

And the most important one?

     5.  there would be a very effective and bloody insurgency

The question then becomes... would the US and its Allies be prepared for such heavy losses and another long term contested occupation?  Against a "minor" country like Ukraine?  No, I don't think so.  Against a long established enemy such as Russia, China, or maybe even Iran?  Maybe.  I think it would have a lot to do with the reasons for the war starting in the first place.  The more the population felt it had been Pearl Harbor'd, the higher tolerance.  The more it felt like Iraq 2003 (funny how Neocon has "con" built right in!), definitely not.

The issues The_Capt raises about deep logistics and replacement applies more to a war against Russia or China more than the parallel universe attack on someone like Ukraine. 

Steve

[MikeyD]

Back in the '80s Cold War think-tankers would often describe the next (conventional) war as very violent and very short. A 'come as you are' war. They could not envision sustaining the effort to prosecute an all-out modern high tempo war without immediately sucking both sides dry of material. If all your high price tag jets get shot down assembly lines can't churn out new ones quickly enough to make a difference. If all you high price tag ships get sunk you just can't build replacements in time. If all your fancy tanks get knocked out more can't be rushed off the assembly line within the timeframe. So, of necessity, future wars just had to be short. I recall reading that 3 weeks into the Iraq occupation the US administration ran themselves to the end of their warfighting contingency plans. They had not thought about what to do after. Because modern combat was supposed to be very violent and very brief.

[Haiduk]

Some today's "cottons"

Kazan', Tatarstan Republic, Russia. Huge expliosion on tank range. RUMINT claims ammo dump has blown up. As if 30 KIA, 70 WIA

Military base was HIMARSed in Rubizhne, Luhansk oblast

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Bakhmut report on 16:30

I retell brielfy long post

Northern and southern flanks outside the city without changes - there was some quietly today. 

Main clashes are inside the city - especally heavy fights in city center and near railroad station. Russians have some success west from railroad station and now intensive skirmishes are going for grain elevator and along Chaykovskoho lane (from railway station to elevator) and Kolpakovoy str.  (embracing elevator). Russians used on this direction Wagners from Syria and VDV. Situation is very fluent for both sides and changes every half-hour. Both sides don't give opportunity to gain foothold for opponents. 

The video just as illustration of small-arms intensity in Bakhmut

And some combat work of 1st mech.battalion of 3rd assault brigade "Azov". Pay attention of small tunnel (drain pipe or under pass ), where soldiers could deploy two pick-ups until Russians shelled them with arty