How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[MikeyD]

'Looking through a keyhole' would be thinking the current trench skirmishes are the whole war. I can safely say nobody here thinks that. If you can point out a group of people more knowledgeable about the full depth breadth and scope of this war than the posters here I'd like to meet them. On this thread alone there has been coverage of this war every single day since Feb 22, 2022. Sometimes approaching minute-by-minute  coverage.

[kevinkin]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So keep posting the keyhole links you post as they are valuable to this discussion.  Just as the drone bombers and PGM strikes are.

Warfare porn provides no actional battlefield information to anyone and just gets the dumb and ill informed jolly's off. Posting a link to the AP or ISW is a different and more meaningful way for people to stay informed. Everyone knows this.

Just some are addicted to watching a mans head blow off. And then giggle like a school girl. 

[kevinkin]

32 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

If you can point out a group of people more knowledgeable about the full depth breadth and scope of this war than the posters here I'd like to meet them.

Let's hope they are in NATO. In the Pentagon. And don't look at Warfare Porn too seriously. 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by kevinkin

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Warfare porn provides no actional battlefield information to anyone and just gets the dumb and ill informed jolly's off. Posting a link to the AP or ISW is a different and more meaningful way for people to stay informed. Everyone knows this.

I for one do not know this to be true.  In fact, I know it to be completely false.  When I watch these videos I am looking for things which I can not get from ISW, AP, or any other source.  Even niche military themed reporting by people like Perun.

Each video shows something useful.  Every.  Single.  One.  The best way to understand something novel is through repeated experimentation and/or observation.  It's a basic tenant of the scientific method. Even seeing the same thing repeatedly has value.

The more videos I watch, the better I get at understanding the range of actions, limitations, effects, outcomes, etc.  If I see 1000 videos of grenades getting dropped right onto people's heads, I'm going to form a different opinion than watching 1000 videos where it only happens once.

For sure few people reading this thread have as much reason to watch everything posted as I do.  However, few people also have a reason to follow the daily details of politics, economics, military procurement, technology, or any of the other topics raised here.  They are all "keyholes" in their own ways.  Even ISW's reports are keyholes as each day's report is nothing more than a tiny window on the war and, taken on its own, largely meaningless.  It is only by reading ISW every day that one starts to build up a bigger picture.

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Just some are addicted to watching a mans head blow off. And then giggle like a school girl. 

For sure there are some people like that, as can be easily seen looking at the comments section where the videos are posted.  However, I do not think that's the sort of crowd we have here.  I know I don't giggle when I see a head blown off.  In fact, I rather not see anybody die at all.  But since dying is a pretty central part of warfare, it really is hard to avoid when studying it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

46 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Let's hope they are in NATO. In the Pentagon. And don't look at Warfare Porn too seriously.

So you don't think there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the Pentagon watching these videos?  You would be wrong.  I interact with these people very frequently and I can tell you that they are watching the same videos and for the same reasons.  And it isn't to giggle.

Steve

[Fenris]

59 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Warfare porn provides no actional battlefield information to anyone and just gets the dumb and ill informed jolly's off. Posting a link to the AP or ISW is a different and more meaningful way for people to stay informed. Everyone knows this.

Just some are addicted to watching a mans head blow off. And then giggle like a school girl. 

 

I disagree with this statement. 

Repeated observation and study is very often how all manner of things are discovered and/or determined.

I very much doubt the people who post here fall into the characterisations you mention.  This thread covers both the macro and micro of this conflict.  The ubiquitous coverage is something I think none of us have been exposed to previously and lends itself a great deal to the discussion of the smallest details and then how these details fit together to build a bigger picture.

[Yet]

 

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/05/weapons-tracing-shows-russia-firing-new-cruise-missiles-at-ukraine-just-weeks-after-production/

Quote

At a wider level, CAR has assessed thousands of Russian weapon components and communication devices recovered in Ukraine, largely it says, manufactured between 2014 and 2021.

“This really indicates that Russia had a very consistent stockpile effort before the invasion, knowing that new export control measures and sanctions would be imposed and trying to be as resilient as they could before starting the invasion,”

 

[Bulletpoint]

Denys Davidov now predicts the offensive will begin on May 15.

I am sure the offensive will go through the Russian lines like a knife through butter.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the temperature of that butter.

 

[Offshoot]

3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Denys Davidov now predicts the offensive will begin on May 15.

Zelensky is pouring cold water on this or dissimulating - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65550427

"Speaking at his headquarters in Kyiv, President Zelensky described combat brigades, some of which were trained by Nato countries, as being "ready" but said the army still needed "some things", including armoured vehicles that were "arriving in batches".

"With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful," he said in an interview for public service broadcasters who are members of Eurovision News, like the BBC. "But we'd lose a lot of people. I think that's unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.""

[Zveroboy1]

Not quite sure how big the Ukrainian counter-attack south of Bakhmut really was, but it is maybe not that significant in terms of territory seized.

It just looks like a local counter-attack really, not so much the beginning of a full fledged offensive there. Time will tell I suppose but it feels a bit premature.

[JonS]

1 hour ago, Fenris said:

I very much doubt the people who post here fall into the characterisations you mention. 

There have been some pretty terrible videos linked here. By terrible I mean things like splicing together entirely unrelated - in time, space, or even war - pieces from various places to ... tell a narrative? Of something? I guess?

It's happened often enough that, by and large, I don't bother with any of them. IMO, at least some of the folks posting links here are - at best - entirely undiscriminating in what they chose to watch and link. Either that or they're addicted to giggling.

This thread might be the single best piece of crowd-sourced OS analysis of the war available, but that doesn't mean that everyone posting here is contributing to that value.

[chuckdyke]

37 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

The only thing I'm not sure about is the temperature of that butter.

I make scrambled eggs with butter right from the fridge. It soon gets soft.

 

[DesertFox]

Finally!

 

 

[chuckdyke]

The Power of Satire.

 

[Huba]

1 minute ago, DesertFox said:

Finally!

 

 

I'd start with launching a few on Sevastopol, then waited till everyone interested moves on the other side of the Kerch bridge, before blasting it off the face of the earth. Massive drone attack serving as a decoy would be a no-brainer too I guess. Anyway, we can expect a confirmation in 15 minutes:

 

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Warfare porn provides no actional battlefield information to anyone and just gets the dumb and ill informed jolly's off. Posting a link to the AP or ISW is a different and more meaningful way for people to stay informed. Everyone knows this.

Just some are addicted to watching a mans head blow off. And then giggle like a school girl. 

So not to pile on and beat up.  I get the position, video after video of Russian saps getting blown up may seem excessive and masturbatory, and for some it is. However, every video gives off information. Some is just noise, or repetitive.  While others are gold and constitute key indicators which when confirmed by other observations can point to trends.  Trends lead to broader deductions and assessments - this is not a single “keyhole” it is thousands of them.  In most keyholes the milk maid is bathing, but then you start to notice the copy of Karl Marx next to the tub.

ISW and other OS intelligence analysts are doing exactly what professional military are doing.  Looking at all the “war porn” and pulling out trends and indicators that tell a larger story.  Oryx is not counting blow up vehicles because people get their jollies seeing blown up Russian tanks.  They are doing it because individual losses sum up to larger attrition trend which chart the course of a conflict.

This is micro-analysis and has pretty much set this group apart - or did, other groups have caught up.  Example: back in the early days of the war the majority of open source assessment (and frankly military as well) were expecting this war to take a predictable course.  A rapid overwhelming Russian invasion, shock and collapse of the UA, and a drawn out insurgency against a puppet Ukrainian political regime.  It was places like this forum where micro-observation first challenged a lot of macro assumptions.  We saw war porn, but it added up to something going very wrong for the RA.  In fact it pointed to something even more fundamental shifting in warfare itself.

This was not a one-shot deal.  Micro-analysis backed up be expertise has kept us well ahead of the pack in all phases of this war.  Phase II did not become a protracted set of urban sieges - the RA logistical losses and Ukrainian resistance demonstrated that.  Phase III did not see an RA “cauldron” despite their use of WW1 levels of massed fires.  Phase IV the UA counter offensive did shock us at its scope but one could see that this was indeed a collapse of the RA operationally on two fronts (one slow, one fast).  Phase V - Op Russian Leg Humping: was going nowhere - one need only follow the famous “battle of the T” to see why.  And we will use it for Phase VI to try and understand how the UA offensive is unfolding.

So while some may only see Russian sods getting blown up.   I see: poor basic field craft in poorly constructed trench lines which suggest basic training shortfalls.  No effective C-UAS counter measures on the RA side.    The evolution of drone warfare throughout.  The big fact that Russia has still not been able to create information denial (let alone control) in the battle space. HVT losses within the Russian operational system - C2 nodes, A2AD platforms, engineering and logistics.  Failures in RA C4ISR…the list goes on.  I do not see this through a single war porn keyhole, I see them through thousands of them.

Are these view’s skewed?  Definitely.  But the fact that we do not see thousand of videos of Russian UAS blowing off UA heads is telling in itself (does anyone think the Russian info sphere would show any restraint in this?).  Open source is “open”.  In the end it is about filtering noise and trying to hear signal - and again, this is exactly what ISW or any other public analysis platform is doing, along with professional military.  We are just doing it in house - this is how the sausage is made.  What bakes my noodle is that in my lifetime a large virtual collective is able to conduct this sort of work, and demonstrate accurate assessments (more than just a lucky once or twice) is game changing.  

In twenty years we will all be old, senile or dead. However an another group of young(ish) folks will do this for another war but they will likely have AI support (we have already seen it here in its infancy).  They will have access to even more raw information but will have a better ability to use it - they may very well be directly involved in the prosecution of the war and not just sitting in chairs on the sideline.  We are at the beginning of an age of Open Source Warfare - all those keyholes are “pixels” in reality.

[beardiebloke]

Quote

UK has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow cruise missiles

Does the UK get teenage boys to name all of their weapons systems?  Storm Shadow sounds extremely cool.  This one even has a HARDBUT version.

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

I'd start with launching a few on Sevastopol, then waited till everyone interested moves on the other side of the Kerch bridge, before blasting it off the face of the earth. Massive drone attack serving as a decoy would be a no-brainer too I guess. Anyway, we can expect a confirmation in 15 minutes:

Good development, Soloviov will undoubtedly raze London to the ground with nukes several times today.

How much damage they can do to Kerch Bridge itself?

Edited May 11, 2023 by Beleg85

[Yet]

7 minutes ago, beardiebloke said:

Does the UK get teenage boys to name all of their weapons systems?  Storm Shadow sounds extremely cool.  This one even has a HARDBUT version.

Shadow Storm was extremely cool for teenagers 40 years ago ;). Nowadays there are new trendwords. I guess the UK fiftyage boys are naming them :). 

[Huba]

8 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Good development, Soloviov will undoubtedly raze London to the ground with nukes several times today.

How much damage they can do to Kerch Bridge itself?

If they get through the Russian AD, I'd say catastrophic. These are guided by a IR camera during the final approach and can easily hit exactly where you want them to hit. Say a support column, pylon, or main cable that the bridge span hangs from. The warhead weighs 500 kg and is two-staged: first is a shaped charge that blows hole in the targeted structure, through which the secondary charge enters and explodes. It's much more effective than a brute force HE charge.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Huba

[Bulletpoint]

12 minutes ago, beardiebloke said:

Does the UK get teenage boys to name all of their weapons systems?  Storm Shadow sounds extremely cool. 

[Yet]

36 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Good development, Soloviov will undoubtedly raze London to the ground with nukes several times today.

How much damage they can do to Kerch Bridge itself?

storm shadow is 2x as powerfull as atacms. The kerch blast was about 5x the power of a storm shadow. (1) however:

- a blast on top (truck with explosives) is much less destructable than a well placed blast at a chosen location 

- storm shadow will penetrate instead of only do a surface blast

- multiple storm shadows can be used 

so yea, my assesment would be that its not so hard to destruct/make Kerch unusable by stormshadows .

 

(1)https://thedebrief.org/destruction-of-putins-bridge-to-crimea-heres-what-we-know-so-far/

Edited May 11, 2023 by Yet

[TheVulture]

37 minutes ago, beardiebloke said:

Does the UK get teenage boys to name all of their weapons systems?  Storm Shadow sounds extremely cool.  This one even has a HARDBUT version.

We should have gone with a US naming convention and called it the M1.

Informally known as "Bloody Large Ordnance to Shoot at Targets Using Firecontrol of Unimaginable Precision", aka BLO-STUF-UP

[Yet]

41 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

first appearance in 1984, I was 1 year off with my 40yrs estimate. 

[Bulletpoint]

20 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

We should have gone with a US naming convention and called it the M1.

 

To be fair, the US also knows how to name stuff in a way that appeals to 14 year old boys.

Reaper drones firing Hellfire missiles. Apache helicopters. Tomahawks.

Not to mention the M1 Humdrum Dumb Bomb.