How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Mattias]

An interesting look on the Oplot and its crews. Lots of of juicy snippets for the attentive. From the ever productive hromadske

 

 

[alison]

Spotted on the CBC this morning: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-putin-fascism-youth-1.6842657

Quote

Ian Garner, a cultural historian and Russia analyst from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., is touring the United Kingdom discussing his new book, Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth, and his conclusions about the prospects for a lasting peace with Russia are pessimistic, to say the least.

His gloomy message is that with or without Vladimir Putin as president, support for his regime's toxic outlook is deeply pervasive, including among young people, who have typically been seen as the most "Western-friendly" Russians.

Garner said he spent months reaching out and interacting with younger Russians on social media sites, such as Telegram and VKontakte, who support their country's war of aggression against Ukraine. Out of the hundreds of people he tried to connect with, eventually a few dozen agreed to engage with him — and Garner said he came away with the conclusion that fascism is firmly entrenched.

The article also includes comments from people who have an opposing view of the situation. Interesting read.

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

A good read about something that's fairly apparent to this group here... expensive AD vs. cheap mass produced drones isn't workable in a large scale war like this or a Taiwan scenario:

https://taurevanime.substack.com/p/lessons-of-the-ukraine-war-3

And another one by the same author about the importance of maintaining mass:

https://taurevanime0.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-ukraine-war

The only quibble I have with this is his starting numbers for the Russians and Ukrainians seem to be significantly off, however his basic point is still sound.  Which is Russia didn't have the infantry it needed to secure the objectives it set for itself.

Steve

Not buying the mass argument in the least.  Traditional military mass has gone to pieces completely in this war.  I do not think it would have mattered how much infantry the RA could generate - it did nothing for them at Bakhmut.  They had firepower mass at Severodonetsk and it mattered little.  They have overwhelming mass advantage in the North in the first month and it got stopped cold by a much smaller force.  Kherson, Kharkiv, mass ratios all over the place and none I can recognize.

One thing with respect to mass that does seem to matter is it 1) distribution, 2) its connectedness, and 3) its information empowerment.  We have seen again and again where the RA concentrates higher traditional military mass and gets hammered because of the ISR asymmetry.

If I was going to draw a lesson on mass for this war it would be “less physical, more effective information, more AI, more synthetic”.   The author of this piece is drawing exactly the wrong conclusions in my opinion.

[Eddy]

37 minutes ago, alison said:

Garner said he spent months reaching out and interacting with younger Russians on social media sites, such as Telegram and VKontakte, who support their country's war of aggression against Ukraine.

Surely this would mean it's not representative, as he's only selected young people on social media who support the war enough to post about it? Or am I missing the point?

Either way, interesting read.

[billbindc]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The most interesting thing about this is how desperate Prig was to pull off a "victory" in Bakhmut.  No matter if he was really going to give information to Ukraine or not is irrelevant in my mind.  The fact that he thought it was worth trying something so wild and unlikely to succeed means things must really be tough for Prigyboy.

Steve

My mantra has long been that the only way to understand the strategy of the various players in this saga is to accept that their goal is less about winning in Ukraine than it is about winning in Moscow. 

[Pete Wenman]

 

Worth a read as it links into the previous points on "traditional mass" and deployment of such and the problems they will likely encounter in the future given what has been seen in Ukraine

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2023/Graveyard-of-Command-Posts/

P

Edited May 15, 2023 by Pete Wenman

[Huba]

There's a new RUSI article about the Storm Shadow. It is rather short, the most important excerpt below:

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/putting-russias-army-shadow-storm

Quote

The impact of Storm Shadow on the Russians, however, goes significantly beyond the targets struck. Confronting Russian forces with a new system that can evade their defences, which their operators do not know how to distinguish clearly from other targets, and which can be used in combination with existing Ukrainian capabilities – from loitering munitions to GMLRS or HARMS – will create conflicting imperatives for air defence crews. Do they start looking for objects with much smaller radar cross-sections? Doing so risks their being saturated and wasting missiles. If they are receiving a raft of false positives from electronic warfare systems, do they fire when they think they have a target, even though it could be friendly?

Perhaps most importantly, making Russian commanders afraid for their personal safety is a good means of degrading their prioritisation decisions. Employed well, in conjunction with psychological operations and other capabilities, Storm Shadow offers myriad opportunities to cognitively attack the enemy. In this sense, their existence in Ukraine’s arsenal may be as significant as their use.

 

[photon]

5 minutes ago, Huba said:

Employed well, in conjunction with psychological operations and other capabilities, Storm Shadow offers myriad opportunities to cognitively attack the enemy. In this sense, their existence in Ukraine’s arsenal may be as significant as their use.

The Fleet in Being moves to deep strike.

[TheVulture]

BBC reporting Russian defence ministry claims - one to file with a pinch of salt I think. Suddenly Russian air defences are able to intercept everything. I think this is on a par with Russia claiming to have shot down the entire Ukrainian air force twice over already.

Quote

Storm Shadow missile shot down - Russian defence ministry

Russia's defence ministry says it has shot down a Storm Shadow cruise missile fired by Ukraine.

The BBC has not verified the claim, but a defence ministry official quoted in Russian state media said in a statement: "Air defence systems have intercepted seven Harm anti-radar missiles and one Storm Shadow long-range cruise missile, as well as ten Himars rocket rounds".

Edited May 15, 2023 by TheVulture

[Beleg85]

Those guys just can't stop blowing themselves up.

 

[Kinophile]

3 hours ago, JonS said:

That sounds like a variation of olde school sapping ... which makes some(?) sense given that the fighting around Bakhmut really does give off castle/siege vibes.

You forget the Ye

[Vanir Ausf B]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Not buying the mass argument in the least.  Traditional military mass has gone to pieces completely in this war. 

If I was going to draw a lesson on mass for this war it would be “less physical, more effective information, more AI, more synthetic”. 

It's interesting to watch this debate play out in the UK.

________

In 2021 the defence secretary announced plans to reduce the number of tanks from 227 to 148 and shrink the army to 73,000 troops, its smallest size since the Napoleonic era.

The decision was made before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and proved controversial with Tory MPs. General Sir Patrick Sanders, the chief of the general staff, said that pursuing the cuts at a time of war in Europe would be “perverse”.

But with Nato allies including Poland, Germany and Finland increasing spending on their land armies, ministers believe that Britain is not under significant pressure to change course and can modernise the armed forces with investments elsewhere.

Senior figures in the MoD believe the war in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of tanks to shoulder-launched weapons such as Nlaws and Javelins, justifying the original decision in 2021 to upgrade only 148 Challenger 2s to Challenger 3s.

“We have too much infantry — a legacy of the counter-insurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need more artillery. The jury is out on whether you need main battle tanks,” a Whitehall source said.

There are 75,710 full-time and fully trained troops in the army, and Wallace has previously admitted that it is unable to deploy a war-fighting division. In a private meeting last autumn, the US commander of Nato forces in Europe warned that the British army was no longer regarded as a tier-one fighting force. Senior army figures have argued that planned cuts to the number of tanks and troops would be a mistake.

“The main lesson from Ukraine is you need mass,” one army source said. “The truth is we don’t have enough infantry and we don’t have enough artillery.” The source also said it was naive to think that the war in Ukraine justified the decision to cut tanks and suggested poor Russian tactics explained why the Kremlin had lost over half its operational fleet in Ukraine.

“If you’re being hit by Nlaws in an urban environment, your tank is probably in the wrong place,” the source said.
As part of the military overhaul the army is expected to field more assault groups armed with drones, reflecting the important role played by artillery spotters in Ukraine.

_______

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ben-wallace-resist-reverse-british-army-cuts-gd9pzd62j (paywalled)

[Huba]

This made me giggle:

[Kinophile]

@Grigb great work,  thank you.  By your analysis a successful UKR shove SE, from W of Soledar,  and down to Klynova would cinch off Bakhmut.

The precursor to this would need to be the capture/isolation of Krasna Hora. 

[chrisl]

48 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

BBC reporting Russian defence ministry claims - one to file with a pinch of salt I think. Suddenly Russian air defences are able to intercept everything. I think this is on a par with Russia claiming to have shot down the entire Ukrainian air force twice over already.

Of course they can intercept everything.  It's just that sometimes they're intercepting it on the ground using their whole AD system or other random equipment or facilities.  What MoD claims is true, but incomplete.

[kimbosbread]

7 hours ago, dan/california said:

They are still doing most of this with improvised ammunition. I can see large improvements when purpose built munitions get deployed in quantity. In particular a round that dispersed dime to quarter sized hunks of thermite seems like it would be rather useful. Something more or less guaranteed to set a at least  couple of square meters on fire long enough to light off anything flammable.

Strongly agree. Those quarter size hunks could each have a camera on them and a free-spinning rotor on a clutch that can be used for steering.

[Centurian52]

On 5/12/2023 at 2:58 PM, DesertFox said:

Russian held northern part of Bakhmut. Much smoking going on there...

 

 

This definitely emphasizes how incredible thermal optics are.

[chrisl]

2 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

This definitely emphasizes how incredible thermal optics are.

I meant to comment on that yesterday in the context of Steve's post about camouflage.

With the cheap drones, they don't even necessarily need fancy thermal optics, just optics that reach a little outside the visible range.  Most commercial image sensors are sensitive out to to the near IR, a little outside the human visible range, and have a filter to keep from recording that part.  Sensors without the filter can potentially pick up enough to notice differences in properties of things a little beyond the visible, so even if it looks green (or like trash) visually, some things can stand out as being different enough from the background environment to investigate closer.

[Centurian52]

On 5/12/2023 at 3:25 PM, Battlefront.com said:

BTW, if things do break down in Belarus, and there's violence, my guess is the Belarusian volunteers in Ukraine will go back home.  They are small in number, but they could play a key role in what comes next for their country.

That makes sense to me. If violence broke out, and they went home to participate in said violence, they would be able to do just as much good for Ukraine as if they were in Ukraine, while also being able to do some good for Belarus. The pro-Russian regime in Belarus collapsing definitely isn't in Russia's favor. And anything that hurts Russia helps Ukraine.

And that might be the start of the sort of soft-collapse (Russia's alliances and zones of influence, rather than Russia itself, break up) that might appease both @The_Capt, who makes very good points about how bad it would be for loose nukes to end up in a bunch of brand new republics, and people like me who want to see Russia come out of this in as much pain as possible.

[Centurian52]

On 5/12/2023 at 3:44 PM, Battlefront.com said:

There's something I've seen over and over again in these clearing ops.  I'm curious why they throw grenades around a corner or into a bunker and then wait to do something after.  I'm thinking the best time to do something is the second after the grenade has detonated. 

I kept thinking the same thing. After each grenade detonated, I'd think "now is the moment to push in!". But of course we're dealing more more than just military efficacy. We're dealing with human psychology as well (although I suppose that is part of military efficacy). Any sane person knows that corner in front of the entrance is the last safe boundary (relatively speaking), and the moment they push beyond that they are putting themselves in immensely greater danger. Even with the enemy suppressed by a recent grenade blast, that is still a confined space that is swarming with enemy soldiers. The first person in still has a very high chance of getting shot. It would take enormous nerve to shove that knowledge to the side, and push in regardless to seize your best chance of clearing out the bunker.

And of course they managed to route the Russians and seize the position without pushing in anyway. Perhaps these experienced soldiers have learned that it isn't necessary or worthwhile to take that sort of risk. There appear to be other, less dangerous ways of making it untenable for the enemy to remain in a fortified position like that.

[chrisl]

23 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

That makes sense to me. If violence broke out, and they went home to participate in said violence, they would be able to do just as much good for Ukraine as if they were in Ukraine, while also being able to do some good for Belarus. The pro-Russian regime in Belarus collapsing definitely isn't in Russia's favor. And anything that hurts Russia helps Ukraine.

And that might be the start of the sort of soft-collapse (Russia's alliances and zones of influence, rather than Russia itself, break up) that might appease both @The_Capt, who makes very good points about how bad it would be for loose nukes to end up in a bunch of brand new republics, and people like me who want to see Russia come out of this in as much pain as possible.

I think Kazakhstan's "thanks, but we're good" when invited to participate in the SMO was the start of the Russian soft-collapse.  Belarus adding to that would be a major enhancement, though.

Edited May 15, 2023 by chrisl

[Centurian52]

On 5/12/2023 at 4:43 PM, chuckdyke said:

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.

 

 

That was very enlightening. The auto-generated English subtitles were surprisingly good. 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Not buying the mass argument in the least.  Traditional military mass has gone to pieces completely in this war.  I do not think it would have mattered how much infantry the RA could generate - it did nothing for them at Bakhmut.  They had firepower mass at Severodonetsk and it mattered little.  They have overwhelming mass advantage in the North in the first month and it got stopped cold by a much smaller force.  Kherson, Kharkiv, mass ratios all over the place and none I can recognize.

One thing with respect to mass that does seem to matter is it 1) distribution, 2) its connectedness, and 3) its information empowerment.  We have seen again and again where the RA concentrates higher traditional military mass and gets hammered because of the ISR asymmetry.

If I was going to draw a lesson on mass for this war it would be “less physical, more effective information, more AI, more synthetic”.   The author of this piece is drawing exactly the wrong conclusions in my opinion.

I should have outlined my thoughts on the link better, but it was late   You hit upon the central weakness of the premise of mass in that guy's missive.  Which was he didn't separate out the various concepts of mass.  Something, I think, we fail to do in our discussions here.  So I'll try and get that ball rolling.

The premise of the article was mostly on the long held belief that when you go to war in the modern age you pretty much go in with what you have on hand.  This is because everybody, including Russia and China, are relying heavily on expensive and complex things that are difficult to build quickly.  If the enemy is capable of plinking your stuff in quantity, as Ukraine has done, then you're going to be screwed, as Russia is. 

The solution to this is, of course, trying to bring the costs and complexities of your systems down.  The guy's first article an AD capabilities mirrors the AT arguments very closely, but in reverse.  Instead of arguing the merits of a $100,000 ATGM taking out a $5,000,000 tank, with AD you have to somehow argue that shooting down a $50,000 drone with a $2,000,000 missile is a good idea.  Especially if the enemy has 1000 of these weapons to use.

What we see, then, is two problems with the current Western concept of precision.  It does you little good if you can down any 10 targets in the sky at one time if the enemy routinely puts up 20 or, worse, 20 real threats plus 50 cheap decoys.  It gets even worse for the Western concept when this goes on for weeks or months.  It simply isn't sustainable.

So the argument the guy was, I think, trying to make is that you need "mass" in reserves.  If you're going to be at risk of losing 10 tanks a week in a conflict that might last months, you better have hundreds of tanks in reserve ready to go.  And they should be current 1st line quality, not previous gen stuff gathering dust.

This is a good point to make as the arguments since the 1st Gulf War have consistently favored creating weapons that are increasingly more sophisticated and costly while cutting back on "mass" to pay for them.  Add to this not having any plans for ramping up production quickly, which is a separate but related topic.

OK, having said all of that.  People are taking some of the wrong lessons from this war.  If NATO went up against Russia it would not have been a prolonged war.  It would have been over quickly because the starting "mass" of precision would have eliminated pretty much all Russian capabilities within weeks at most.  So when I hear people saying that NATO couldn't survive a prolonged war like we're seeing in Ukraine, that's true except for the fact that it is improbable that the war would last that long.

China, of course, is the wild card.  It is the only nation that might POSSIBLY be able to engage in a prolonged high intensity war with the US and its Pacific allies.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, BornGinger said:

That sounds like one of those conspiracy theories some individuals make up as a way to find an answer to why certain things has happened.

Are there any hard facts to prove that theory or did someone hear it from someone who had read it on a website?

While I don't think there's any evidence that what Dan said factored into the invasion of Ukraine, and in fact the troubles in Belarus might have even delayed plans, it is no doubt connected to Ukraine.  In Putin's mind Ukraine has always been viewed by as a cancer (we'd say an antidote!) that needed to be cut out before it spread.  And he was always correct to think that too, because history shows that good ideas spread over time.  The last thing Putin's regime wanted was its "near abroad" breaking away from its control.

So, to the extent that Putin believed the Ukrainian "cancer" was spreading to Belarus, the more incentive he had to take care of the Ukrainian problem in a decisive way sooner rather than later.  Lots of other factors fed into the decision to invade in 2022, but I am confident that Belarus was one of the things on his mind.  Nobody knows how much influence it had, however, so it's wrong to conclude it was a significant factor at all, not to mention a primary one.

Steve

[Kinophile]

17 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I should have outlined my thoughts on the link better, but it was late   You hit upon the central weakness of the premise of mass in that guy's missive.  Which was he didn't separate out the various concepts of mass.  Something, I think, we fail to do in our discussions here.  So I'll try and get that ball rolling.

The premise of the article was mostly on the long held belief that when you go to war in the modern age you pretty much go in with what you have on hand.  This is because everybody, including Russia and China, are relying heavily on expensive and complex things that are difficult to build quickly.  If the enemy is capable of plinking your stuff in quantity, as Ukraine has done, then you're going to be screwed, as Russia is. 

The solution to this is, of course, trying to bring the costs and complexities of your systems down.  The guy's first article an AD capabilities mirrors the AT arguments very closely, but in reverse.  Instead of arguing the merits of a $100,000 ATGM taking out a $5,000,000 tank, with AD you have to somehow argue that shooting down a $50,000 drone with a $2,000,000 missile is a good idea.  Especially if the enemy has 1000 of these weapons to use.

What we see, then, is two problems with the current Western concept of precision.  It does you little good if you can down any 10 targets in the sky at one time if the enemy routinely puts up 20 or, worse, 20 real threats plus 50 cheap decoys.  It gets even worse for the Western concept when this goes on for weeks or months.  It simply isn't sustainable.

So the argument the guy was, I think, trying to make is that you need "mass" in reserves.  If you're going to be at risk of losing 10 tanks a week in a conflict that might last months, you better have hundreds of tanks in reserve ready to go.  And they should be current 1st line quality, not previous gen stuff gathering dust.

This is a good point to make as the arguments since the 1st Gulf War have consistently favored creating weapons that are increasingly more sophisticated and costly while cutting back on "mass" to pay for them.  Add to this not having any plans for ramping up production quickly, which is a separate but related topic.

OK, having said all of that.  People are taking some of the wrong lessons from this war.  If NATO went up against Russia it would not have been a prolonged war.  It would have been over quickly because the starting "mass" of precision would have eliminated pretty much all Russian capabilities within weeks at most.  So when I hear people saying that NATO couldn't survive a prolonged war like we're seeing in Ukraine, that's true except for the fact that it is improbable that the war would last that long.

China, of course, is the wild card.  It is the only nation that might POSSIBLY be able to engage in a prolonged high intensity war with the US and its Pacific allies.

Steve

The other thing with China is that the domains and distances matter, ie it would be a long range naval/air/space war ranging across the Pacific, a very different beast from a (relatively)  short range land/air war in NATO's front yard.

Short term Force sustainment, and all that. A war in Europe is completely sustainable by NATO. I have serious doubts the US could sustain a E/SE Asia war in the medium term (certainly in the short, and probably the long term). 

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by Kinophile