How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chuckdyke]

The German Bundeswehr Q&A talks a lot about the Leo 1. Easier to maintain and easier to train the crew. Also far more are available. I translate Nachgefragt as Q&A literally it is not correct.

 

 

[zinz]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/south-africa-summons-us-ambassador-over-claims-it-armed-russia

Russia is further getting isolated in the world. 

It's great for Ukraine that a proper follow up to arming Russia is given. This also decreases the likelihood of other countries helping Russia

[Huba]

Some more maps of alleged positions around Bakhmut. Multiple RU telegrams suggest that RU has been pushed out from some/ all positions east of the water reservoir north of the city. If this trend continues, UA might soon reach Soledar, negating whole quarter of RU advance.

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by Huba

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

I know I said I wouldn't comment further but I'm home and I do think I owe you a response.

A 5km breakthrough would be perfectly believable in WW2 when you didn't have drones flying around. One Russian drone can easily recon a 5km frontage for signs of movement.

We know Russian artillery is more than capable of coming down extremely quickly on target. How far will they advance by the end of day 1? If it isn't far they will be prone to shelling. A 5km front is not a lot for a single brigade. If you're using two brigades for the 5km - that's a lot of targets in a small location. There are multiple instances of schwerepunkts working in ww2, but this is a totally different fight. This isn't 1942 when panzer divisions were the king of organizations... (Until the 2nd formation of 5th TA). It worked in ww2 because the Germans were mostly facing infantry divisions with mediocre support assets and rogue tank corps/brigades that completely failed to cooperate with the infantry. Pair that with fog of war and you get some pretty interesting stories of armored knife fights (I.e. Carius, Prokhorovka)

Understandably Ukraine has limited heavy vehicles. Most donated vehicles are Mraps or APCs as opposed to IFVs or tanks. It would make sense that the heavier formations will exploit the breakthrough. But even still 5km is too small of a frontage for this. I can almost see 5km down the very road I live on. I used to be able to run 5km in ~21 minutes (We're getting back at it don't worry ). It's not a far distance at all.

As Chibot mentioned, the logistical trail would get hammered. If the operation fails and the troops become stuck, they really better hope another two brigades are ready to leapfrog over them. Even still, I can't see it working out. Too many troops in one spot. It totally contradicts Ukrainian tactics from 2014-2023.

Maybe they will employ cruise missiles and GMRLS against long range artillery assets during the counteroffensive. Not sure if it would be a waste, but it would help with the momentum. I expect Ukraine will attack in a sector which has very weak artillery.

But as you say, don't underestimate your enemy, Russians like their maskirovka. Of course the Soviet generals of 1944-1945 were hardened professionals that survived the purge, commissars (Like Lev Z. Meklis), and demotion/reassignments during the tough years (41-43). The Russian leadership of 2023 has clearly failed to prove themselves.

I am not too hung up on exact frontages.  If the UA has 18 fighting Bdes they can do multiple 5km frontages - I think the tweeters point was it is a lot of horse power to drop and if concentrated the RA will crack.

Whether or not the UA is able to concentrate forces and conduct an old school manoeuvre break-in, break out offensive relies heavily on just how badly eroded the RA is at the time of the assault.  The RA has tac UAS but if they do not have any C2 nodes to plug them into then those fires will not able to respond in time.  What is the state of the RA artillery?  They have been suffering the dual corrosive effects of gun wear out and UA counter battery for months, not to mention ammo production.  We have seen a steady drop in RA effective fires as was noted on multiple separate occasions during their winter offensive.  As to RA deep strike, well unless AirPower suddenly comes on line and can overcome Ukrainian air denial the RA’s ability for deep strike will be limited to those Iranian drones and whatever their AF can lob from afar.

RA would need to solve for all this before it could effectively start hammering the UA logistics tail.  We have been seeing a WW1-style defence dominated battlefield for most of this war.  Only through rapid and precise corrosion has one side been able to create significant operational gains.  The question is, has the RA burned itself out so badly over the winter that conditions have changed fundamentally? If so, then traditional mech manoeuvre and assault is possible for one side in this - the UA.  If not then we will likely see a lot more corrosive strategies in play.  Between RA erosion and UA force generation has the battlefield become so asymmetric that we might see some warfare we recognize before the year is out?

If the UA really has 18 full brigades (a number I doubt, in fact I believe half that may be more realistic) and the RA is blind, brittle and in shock, then yes we could see some significant breakouts and exploits.  But “are we yet?”

[akd]

Wagner needs more ammo to shoot retreating RU Army soldiers:

 

[sburke]

Ukraine Is Preparing For Drone Attacks By Dropping Training Grenades On Its Troops (yahoo.com)

[dan/california]

 

 

59 minutes ago, akd said:

Wagner needs more ammo to shoot retreating RU Army soldiers:

 

Have the drones drop a decent sandwich and a note that the Ukrainians will cheerfully feed them instead of shoot them if they surrender.

Edited May 13, 2023 by dan/california

[Artkin]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not too hung up on exact frontages.  If the UA has 18 fighting Bdes they can do multiple 5km frontages - I think the tweeters point was it is a lot of horse power to drop and if concentrated the RA will crack.

Whether or not the UA is able to concentrate forces and conduct an old school manoeuvre break-in, break out offensive relies heavily on just how badly eroded the RA is at the time of the assault.  The RA has tac UAS but if they do not have any C2 nodes to plug them into then those fires will not able to respond in time.  What is the state of the RA artillery?  They have been suffering the dual corrosive effects of gun wear out and UA counter battery for months, not to mention ammo production.  We have seen a steady drop in RA effective fires as was noted on multiple separate occasions during their winter offensive.  As to RA deep strike, well unless AirPower suddenly comes on line and can overcome Ukrainian air denial the RA’s ability for deep strike will be limited to those Iranian drones and whatever their AF can lob from afar.

RA would need to solve for all this before it could effectively start hammering the UA logistics tail.  We have been seeing a WW1-style defence dominated battlefield for most of this war.  Only through rapid and precise corrosion has one side been able to create significant operational gains.  The question is, has the RA burned itself out so badly over the winter that conditions have changed fundamentally? If so, then traditional mech manoeuvre and assault is possible for one side in this - the UA.  If not then we will likely see a lot more corrosive strategies in play.  Between RA erosion and UA force generation has the battlefield become so asymmetric that we might see some warfare we recognize before the year is out?

If the UA really has 18 full brigades (a number I doubt, in fact I believe half that may be more realistic) and the RA is blind, brittle and in shock, then yes we could see some significant breakouts and exploits.  But “are we yet?”

I would expect multiple breakthroughs as well. It's a lot easier to defeat armies with pincers. 

My worry is long range artillery being employed against UA advances. 300mm Uragan sort of artillery. MRLS are probably best suited for this application. Cannon type artillery would probably be smashed within the first few days considering its low manueverability and range. It would be brainless for the Russians to not mass their remaining long range heavy assets against these forces. It wouldnt even need to be all that accurate to do damage - physically or morally - IF the breakthrough was as small as 5km. 

[kevinkin]

 

25 minutes ago, dan/california said:

decent sandwich

I know a place with really savory (fatty) and scrumptious corned beef. Might not make their cardiologists happy, but at this point RA troops live's are short anyway. I might drop them soft shell crabs, but they might think they are a new UA drone and run back into their trenches. 

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, akd said:

Wagner needs more ammo to shoot retreating RU Army soldiers:

 

Funny how all these guys dress American. 

His jacket looks exactly like my Wild Things soft shell. 

I doubt he has the real thing.

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Funny how all these guys dress American. 

His jacket looks exactly like my Wild Things soft shell. 

I doubt he has the real thing.

His cheery little screed needs to be spammed/blasted all over Russia with a reminder to run like bleep when they come to grab you for the army. I would recommend getting at least one country away, two to be safe.

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Lurb said:

I had noticed that too... My (non pro) impression is that you cannot really be sure about what the grenade has actually done around the corner, so if you follow it you might jump into unharmed and ready enemies that you just put on higher alert. So things look a lot more hesitant/methodical than the theoretical usage of grenades to quickly clear areas.

Thanks.  That's the only theory I came up with on my own, at least for experienced units.  And for sure you can see that the grenades, even when lobbed around the corner, can bounce around quite a bit.  So hesitation is a good theory and could very well be correct.  However...

A soldier having a grenade thrown at him will either not know and react when it goes off or will see it and take an evasive action because grenades have a tendency to kill people who don't.  The soldier throwing the grenade knows this AND knows to expect the bang and (at least roughly) where.  So while the enemy soldier is reacting in some way, the soldier throwing the grenade can act.  Or in the case of coordinated attacks, others can act upon the same information.

So this is where I scratch my head.  I would expect experienced soldiers to take advantage of this.  I'm sure some do, but I've not really see it in these videos.

Anyway, minor point of interest from one of the guys that has to defend TacAI behavior

Steve

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Thanks.  That's the only theory I came up with on my own, at least for experienced units.  And for sure you can see that the grenades, even when lobbed around the corner, can bounce around quite a bit.  So hesitation is a good theory and could very well be correct.  However...

A soldier having a grenade thrown at him will either not know and react when it goes off or will see it and take an evasive action because grenades have a tendency to kill people who don't.  The soldier throwing the grenade knows this AND knows to expect the bang and (at least roughly) where.  So while the enemy soldier is reacting in some way, the soldier throwing the grenade can act.  Or in the case of coordinated attacks, others can act upon the same information.

So this is where I scratch my head.  I would expect experienced soldiers to take advantage of this.  I'm sure some do, but I've not really see it in these videos.

Anyway, minor point of interest from one of the guys that has to defend TacAI behavior

Steve

There is a great vid I couldn't find again of Ukrainian soldiers hanging demo charges on cords so they could throw them from a blind spot relative to the bunker, and hopefully go off above the floor. They seemed pretty sure those were solving the problems.

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Not really a pro, however...There were 5-7 guys crawling out of that bunker at the end of the vid which tells me that bunker was constructed with grenade/splintercover inside (as it should be), basically a bent of the slittrench after the entrance with ideally a firingslit to aim at the entrance. Now imagine what would happen if you storm the bunker 1 sec after the grenade right in front of the splintercover detonated in the entrance area of the bunker. Really not a good idea. You need something with more "Oomp" than a handgrenade fired or thrown into the entrance which really drives the rats out,

For sure storming the thing would be a really bad idea.  But that is just one (not good) thing that could be done.  In the K2 example we just saw, one guy could chuck a grenade into opening (as he did) while another guy was ready to lean into the path to the bunker with an LATW.  A straight shot in there would likely incapacitated everybody anywhere near the entrance.  Then, have a guy rush up and chuck a grenade in and to the left so it goes into the main chamber.

Monday morning quarterbacking, I know, but the Ukrainians in this case had EXCELLENT intel on this position before they assaulted it the first time, not to mention subsequent times.  Yet it doesn't look like had a workable plan even after having gone in and lost a comrade.

I'm really not trying to be critical.  I'm trying to understand why something that seems obvious to me isn't what happened.  Again, from a sim standpoint I need to understand the whys like this so things work the way they should.

Steve

[Fenris]

From todays ISW

Quote

The overall Russian information space response appears to be focused on the idea of avoiding spreading panic.

I take this to mean that they are very much ready to panic and it'll only take a little nudge to start it off.

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, dan/california said:

There is a great vid I couldn't find again of Ukrainian soldiers hanging demo charges on cords so they could throw them from a blind spot relative to the bunker, and hopefully go off above the floor. They seemed pretty sure those were solving the problems.

 

Yup, that was an instructive video.  For sure those guys had a solid plan ahead of time.  Which the K2 guys didn't, by the looks of it.  That's puzzling, as I just said, but hey... things happen.  The sort of things I'm talking about, however, are designed for improvisation.  Kinda universal to say "I will throw a grenade, when it goes boom do something aggressive".

Steve

[dan/california]

20 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

For sure storming the thing would be a really bad idea.  But that is just one (not good) thing that could be done.  In the K2 example we just saw, one guy could chuck a grenade into opening (as he did) while another guy was ready to lean into the path to the bunker with an LATW.  A straight shot in there would likely incapacitated everybody anywhere near the entrance.  Then, have a guy rush up and chuck a grenade in and to the left so it goes into the main chamber.

Monday morning quarterbacking, I know, but the Ukrainians in this case had EXCELLENT intel on this position before they assaulted it the first time, not to mention subsequent times.  Yet it doesn't look like had a workable plan even after having gone in and lost a comrade.

I'm really not trying to be critical.  I'm trying to understand why something that seems obvious to me isn't what happened.  Again, from a sim standpoint I need to understand the whys like this so things work the way they should.

Steve

I don't know the answer to the question now, but I will bet a lot of money little expendable robot dogs are going to be a thing

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, akd said:

Wagner needs more ammo to shoot retreating RU Army soldiers:

 

Maybe, just this once, Ukraine could lend Prig some ammo?

Steve

[MikeyD]

Some posts back there was a mention of 'offensive' and 'defensive' (or fragmentation) grenades. Offensive grenades are concussion types designed to not have a kill radius large enough to harm an exposed thrower, a defensive grenade means you get yourself under cover because big chunks of metal are going to be flying past your head. A WWII German 'potato masher' was considered an 'offensive' grenade, a US 'pineapple' was a 'defensive' grenade. Ukrainians throwing grenades into trenches may result in concussed enemy but not necessarily dead ones, depending on what they're throwing.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not too hung up on exact frontages.  If the UA has 18 fighting Bdes they can do multiple 5km frontages - I think the tweeters point was it is a lot of horse power to drop and if concentrated the RA will crack.

Whether or not the UA is able to concentrate forces and conduct an old school manoeuvre break-in, break out offensive relies heavily on just how badly eroded the RA is at the time of the assault.  The RA has tac UAS but if they do not have any C2 nodes to plug them into then those fires will not able to respond in time.  What is the state of the RA artillery?  They have been suffering the dual corrosive effects of gun wear out and UA counter battery for months, not to mention ammo production.  We have seen a steady drop in RA effective fires as was noted on multiple separate occasions during their winter offensive.  As to RA deep strike, well unless AirPower suddenly comes on line and can overcome Ukrainian air denial the RA’s ability for deep strike will be limited to those Iranian drones and whatever their AF can lob from afar.

RA would need to solve for all this before it could effectively start hammering the UA logistics tail.  We have been seeing a WW1-style defence dominated battlefield for most of this war.  Only through rapid and precise corrosion has one side been able to create significant operational gains.  The question is, has the RA burned itself out so badly over the winter that conditions have changed fundamentally? If so, then traditional mech manoeuvre and assault is possible for one side in this - the UA.  If not then we will likely see a lot more corrosive strategies in play.  Between RA erosion and UA force generation has the battlefield become so asymmetric that we might see some warfare we recognize before the year is out?

If the UA really has 18 full brigades (a number I doubt, in fact I believe half that may be more realistic) and the RA is blind, brittle and in shock, then yes we could see some significant breakouts and exploits.  But “are we yet?”

Adding to this...

Whatever Russia's artillery capacity was at the start of the war it was never as good in reality as it was on paper.  Massed fires against preplanned targets?  It could do that.  But nimble responses while on the move?  There's been precious little examples of them being very good at that even when they were on the attack.  Their artillery would deploy and provide covering fire until range meant they had to move again.  On the defensive, with their lines in tatters, this won't be practical.

Arkin correctly stated that Russia has shown some decent response times and accuracy, but all of the circumstances I am aware of were situations that had largely static frontage.  Which makes sense because artillery on the defense has all kinds of advantages.  NATO has spent billions to have similar advantages while on the move.  Russia hasn't.

So, once Ukrainian forces breakthrough Russian lines the ability for effective strikes on Ukrainian units will be very limited.  More-or-less the sort of thing we've seen in places like Bakhmut where by simple odds they are eventually going to hit something on the road.  This won't be good enough.

On top of that, the longer Russian artillery stays in place the greater the chance it will be visited by something that goes boom.  Which will likely obligate its artillery to keep moving and reestablishing its communications with frontline units which are (we hope) disorientated and disorganized.  Under ideal conditions Russia sucks at keeping itself cohesive, so I don't expect they'll do better under highly stressful conditions.

Once Ukraine gets to about 10km pretty much all of Russia's artillery prior to the counter attack will have been destroyed or obligated to move.  This will give Ukraine some respite and ability to move without too much fear of getting clobbered by artillery.  The faster and further they move, the more problematic coordinated counter actions (including artillery) becomes.  Again, Russia isn't great at this sort of stuff.

To sum up... Ukraine's biggest challenge is to get through the lines.  After that, I think Russia's artillery won't be a decisive element on its own.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

Their C2 were on horseback and runners. They did their calculations with Roman Numerals. Still the Russian Army can't equal them in administration.

 

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

I don't know the answer to the question now, but I will bet a lot of money little expendable robot dogs are going to be a thing

A robot snake would be way better (ur-77 but 1m long) but all of these things really depend on decent artifical muscles existing. More realistic is a remote control barbie corvette with a gopro, mr hanky plush and a brick of explosive and some ball bearing riding shotgun driving down the trench.

[FancyCat]

Someone on twitter pointed out Wagner has explicit interest in showing MoD failures, whether or not they are true, Rybar is affiliated with Wagner no? Remember that as RU mil bloggers complain about the retreats. 

[chuckdyke]

What is the difference? We didn't do as well as we did yesterday, but it was terrific compared with tomorrow. 

Edited May 13, 2023 by chuckdyke

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

Someone on twitter pointed out Wagner has explicit interest in showing MoD failures, whether or not they are true, Rybar is affiliated with Wagner no? Remember that as RU mil bloggers complain about the retreats. 

Rybar is for sure Wagner.  However, it is the fact that it is a pro-war, pro-Putin Russian source that is why it should always be taken with a grain of salt.  And because it is pro-war, pro-Putin they have a competing interest to not sow panic and undermine the war generally.  Must be tough to balance those incompatible biases.

That said, Rybar tends to be more-or-less accurate in terms of general activity.  Last year during the catastrophic Donets river crossing there was good info there before anywhere else.  In fact, Rybar was one of the sources I initially used to identify 2 crossings that most people didn't know about.  Ukrainian OSINT sources seem to use Rybar in a similar way.

Whether Rybar is being accurate right now about Bakhmut... too soon to say.  However, there are Ukrainian sources that seem to be saying the same things.  So there is that.

Steve