How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

38 minutes ago, billbindc said:

What I would describe as a very realistic description of the prospects for Belarus: 

https://jamestown.org/program/belarusian-opposition-preaching-gloom-amid-growing-distress/

Interesting read.  This is why repressive regimes are often doing themselves a favor by letting the grumblers leave.  The remaining population finds it easier to live in the repressive system without someone reminding them every day of how wrong it is.  Whether it's student flyers, a family member at the dining room table, or a coworker on lunch break... it's easier to live a conformist life without non-conformists.

We are seeing this all across the Western democracies.  People are increasingly choosing to live where their view of the world is the most accepted one.  Individuals do this to have an easier and less stressful life, whatever their belief system.  But at a higher level?  It's really not good because neither political extreme has all the right answers to all of the important questions, yet both are convinced they do.  That's not a good dynamic.

That said, nobody should underestimate how quickly things can change when the ruling establishment is so totally corrupt and repressive.  The Arab Spring came about out of nowhere because the price of falafel went up (yes, I'm being flippant!).  The common ground suddenly was there and change happened very quickly.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

37 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

99 problems but Mobiks ain't one

Yup.  It's like a hiker complaining about his footwear.  Well, maybe you shouldn't have chosen to wear flip flops to hike up Mt. Everest?

Steve

[Artkin]

Nice. Looks like Ukraine got a bunch of equipment straight out of an ABCT.

Edited May 15, 2023 by Artkin

[Centurian52]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

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.

One thing that I think is worth keeping in mind is that neither the US or China has the capability to deliver a knockout blow to the other. You can accomplish a lot from the air, but ultimately only ground forces can force one side or the other to give up. And neither the US or China can get at each other with their ground forces*, so long as North Korea stays out of the picture**. So an air/naval war between the US and China has the potential to last for as long as both sides are willing to stick it out.

As we've seen in the past, the war doesn't end just because both sides have exhausted their existing stocks and neither side has made plans for wartime production. You just get 1915.

* And thank goodness for that. That really would result in casualties on the scale of a world war.

** It doesn't matter that their army is definitely worse than the Russian army in every way except manpower. The simple fact that they could create a theater for US and Chinese ground forces to get at each other means they have the potential to cause serious problems.

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

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.

Yes to all your points.  The nature of mass as we know it is likely to change dramatically - what it consists of, how it is distributed and how we manoeuvre it around the battlefield.  In a pan asymmetric fight the side without the best mass (not the most) is going to lose very quickly. 

Now in the case of China, a peer force, the competition will very intense as smart-mass comes up against another smart-mass force.  That is the knife fight we all are wondering about.  When you opponent has C4ISR and PGM parity, then we may have a whole new ballgame.  We could wind up like the Russians with a lot of mass simply not smart enough to compete, no matter how much infantry or tanks we throw at the problem.  Smart-mass combined with information and precision all connected is the future of the battle space.  Spending billions on more infantry and tanks right now could be exactly the wrong way to go, at least until the smoke clears and we can figure out what has really happened.

[The_Capt]

9 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

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)

Heh well we definitely saw this argument coming.  It comes back to how much was a result of “Russia sucking” and how much is due to the impact of modern technology on the battlefield?  Of course conventional militaries are doubling down on what they have, the alternative is truly frightening.  But clearly the politicians can even see what is happening.  

I am not fully in the “abandon conventional stuff” (e.g tanks p, mech etc) we are likely to see what it can still do once conditions have been properly set.  But I am also not a fan of spending billions on more conventional mass when we really have no idea of it will even work, or worse we have to layer so much defence on it that it prices itself out of existence.  

I also would not be looking for deep savings or spending cuts, in fact it may very well take spending increases however that money needs to go into the right capabilities, the ones that can ensure wins up to and including peer opponents.  These arguments are going to continue for some time and each side is going to see what they want in what happens next.  I think it will be some time until things become fully clear, but to my eyes after watching this thing at very high resolution for over a year, it is clear that some fundamentals shifted.  Now how much is just a result of this specific war and how much are enduring?

I will put down very good money that C4ISR, PGM, unmanned and denial systems  are major growth areas no matter what the post game report comes up with.

[kevinkin]

4 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

One thing that I think is worth keeping in mind is that neither the US or China has the capability to deliver a knockout blow to the other.

The conflict between the US and China is not over if one side conquers the other's land mass. It's about keeping international sea lanes open for trade and, via that, competing economically not kinetically. The mass of their armies is irrelevant right now. The US needs to out pace China technically (air/naval) to keep them away from key sovereign soil where mass in the form of ground warfare would be relevant.  

[cyrano01]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Good summary.  I hadn't thought about the targeting complexities for Russian AD in this way.  They have already proven themselves unable to intercept a variety of ranged weapons launched from Ukraine, so Storm Shadow makes it even worse.  The decoy drones only screw things up further as it is now possible for Ukraine to overwhelm Russia's AD in a particular sector at a time of their choosing.

The problem Russia has always had is with counter measures.  It has been able to adapt, to a degree, to Ukraine's precision capabilities, but only at great cost to effectiveness.  Well dug in Ukrainians with good ISR?  Blast them with tons of artillery then assault them in Human waves.  Javelin and NLAW?  Keep vehicles back behind the lines and rush them forward, pop off some shots, then rush them back to cover.  GMLRS?  Move everything further back or harden the crap out of it.  Leaky communications?  Go back to hardwire or do without.  So on and so forth.

None of these responses by Russia are particularly good and they have inherent limitations.  Specific to long range precision guided weapons, how far back can logistics be positioned before they cross the line from inefficient to ineffective?  With Storm Shadow the entire southern theater is now open for business.  Because it is impossible for Russia to do point to point "just in time" deliveries, it will have to leave its logistics pretty much as it is today and that's a double problem because a) Ukraine probably knows where they are and b) now they can hit them. 

The people arguing about what model of what tank should be sent really don't get it.  A 100 Leopard 2s would not make a noticeable difference.  100 Storm Shadows, on the other hand, very much have that potential.  And they cost a fraction of a tank to make, deploy, and maintain.

Steve

The other point that occurs to me regarding Storm Shadow is that it gets Western supplies to Ukraine across another threshold, in this case for longer range precision weapons. The relatively small size of UK stock piles means that while the contributions may be valuable they will be of only moderate impact on their own but it does seems that the UK acts as stalking horse to push the escalation boundaries.

 

We saw it with Challenger, the first current gen MBT pledged,  where the numbers were small but the UK anouncement was followed by the US and other NATO memebers anouncing Abrams and Leopard 2 deliveries. I'm just wondering if Storm Shadow is testing the waters for ATACMS, and giving the Ukrainians the chance to show they can be relied on to use the capability responsibly. Hope so becuase we don;t have all that many Storm Shadows to give.

[paxromana]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

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.

Of course, the unstated problem even with having 'hundreds' of First Line tanks in reserve is ... crews ...

Unless all the crews of all the destroyed tanks survive uninjured ... which is extremely unlikely (with manned tanks, at least, and the issues with 'drone' tanks have been alluded to here already).

How long does it take to train a Tank Crew from scratch? Many months, I expect. Retraining already experience Ukrainian Tank Crews on western equipment seems to have been much quicker.

So those 100s of tanks aren't necessarily as useful as they might seem.

Edited May 16, 2023 by paxromana

[sburke]

Prigozhin suggests granting Navalny Internet access to pursue further investigations (yahoo.com)

 

Prigozhin claimed some "comrades from Rublyovka" were actually behind the leaked information about his alleged meetings with Ukrainian intelligence. Rublyovka is the informal name for a prestigious residential suburb in western Moscow where many of the country’s political, business and cultural elite have luxurious homes.

"Instead of engaging in nonsense, connect Lyosha Navalny to the Internet," Prigozhin said, using the familiar version of Navalny’s first name."

He'll paint you a hell of a picture of f*cking dragons. And he will paint not only me, but also all the other comrades from Rublyovka. So don't try to replace Lyosha Navalny. You're not any bloody good at it. He’s much more professional."

It is difficult to say exactly how to interpret the words of Prigozhin, who is known for his media provocations, but his rhetoric, whatever its actual meaning, is increasingly showing signs of a confrontation between factions in the Kremlin, against the backdrop of the failure of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine and the upcoming counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which, according to some experts, could eventually lead to the collapse of the current Russian regime.

Edited May 16, 2023 by sburke

[paxromana]

8 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

Oh great, as if I wasn't subscribed to enough military history channels already 

Note: The Romans didn't do their business transactions using Roman Numerals ... they had quite an effective Abacus analog ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus

... heck, even the Babylonians and Greeks had abacus analogs!

[Haiduk]

Fu...k!!!! Sh...t!!! Damn!!! What a hell I just heard at 3:00 of night?! 22 loud explosions not far from of us! And about dozen distant boo-boom... Sh...t!!! Reportedly series of Kinzhals on Kyiv, also there were reports about Kalibrs launches. Well, I want to read good news at the morning

Edited May 16, 2023 by Haiduk

[Halmbarte]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

One thing that I think is worth keeping in mind is that neither the US or China has the capability to deliver a knockout blow to the other. You can accomplish a lot from the air, but ultimately only ground forces can force one side or the other to give up. And neither the US or China can get at each other with their ground forces*, so long as North Korea stays out of the picture**. So an air/naval war between the US and China has the potential to last for as long as both sides are willing to stick it out.

As we've seen in the past, the war doesn't end just because both sides have exhausted their existing stocks and neither side has made plans for wartime production. You just get 1915.

* And thank goodness for that. That really would result in casualties on the scale of a world war.

** It doesn't matter that their army is definitely worse than the Russian army in every way except manpower. The simple fact that they could create a theater for US and Chinese ground forces to get at each other means they have the potential to cause serious problems.

How long does the Chinese economy survive w/o being able to import oil and other raw materials by sea? How long does the Chinese economy survive w/o being able to export goods? 

The USN might get into trouble contesting the sea of Japan and the south China sea. The USN can interdict all the naval cargo going to and coming from China.

The overland pipelines delivering gas & oil are sitting targets for precision strikes. Blowing up pipeline pumping stations is easy and the equipment takes a long time to replace. 

H

[FancyCat]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

We are seeing this all across the Western democracies.  People are increasingly choosing to live where their view of the world is the most accepted one. 

Is this not common in the past too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-Eighters

 

[Offshoot]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Holy crap!  There was at least a dozen guys in that one bunker. 

I'm not sure there were that many in the bunker. At about the 2:36 mark you see a guy running from right to left on the screen and a couple of guys already in the scrub under the power pole where they meet. I think half of the dozen had come from another position to reinforce or help with evacuation. These guys certainly weren't like the ones robbing their comrade.

[Vanir Ausf B]

26 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Fu...k!!!! Sh...t!!! Damn!!! What a hell I just heard at 3:00 of night?! 22 loud explosions not far from of us! And about dozen distant boo-boom... Sh...t!!! Reportedly series of Kinzhals on Kyiv, also there were reports about Kalibrs launches. Well, I want to read good news at the morning

 

[Beleg85]

26 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Fu...k!!!! Sh...t!!! Damn!!! What a hell I just heard at 3:00 of night?! 22 loud explosions not far from of us! And about dozen distant boo-boom... Sh...t!!! Reportedly series of Kinzhals on Kyiv, also there were reports about Kalibrs launches. Well, I want to read good news at the morning

Keep safe, mate. Katsaps get crazy with missiles again, debris reportedly fell somwhere near central Kyiv in zoo area. Let's hope some idiot will not post AA stations again online.

[dan/california]

30 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Fu...k!!!! Sh...t!!! Damn!!! What a hell I just heard at 3:00 of night?! 22 loud explosions not far from of us! And about dozen distant boo-boom... Sh...t!!! Reportedly series of Kinzhals on Kyiv, also there were reports about Kalibrs launches. Well, I want to read good news at the morning

Can we grant a profanity exception when a forum member is subject to live fire? 

Edit: are the trying to saturate a Patriot battery?

Edited May 16, 2023 by dan/california

[Vanir Ausf B]

 

[Jiggathebauce]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup.  It's like a hiker complaining about his footwear.  Well, maybe you shouldn't have chosen to wear flip flops to hike up Mt. Everest?

Steve

I think you missed the joke, my comment was referencing the instrumental used in the Ukrainian video(Jay-z's 99 Problems)

[Haiduk]

20 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

 Let's hope some idiot will not post AA stations again online.

People In twitter write,TG already full of videos. Enough of them have uploaded foreigners (

This was most fierce attack on Kyiv for whole war. Even Day 1 was relatively "quiet" %), than THIS.

Some people write that during repelling of attack the sky over Obolon' - northern district of Kyiv (my district on NE) was illuminated like giant fireshow

Edited May 16, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Air raid alarm again. UAV approaches. 

Preliminary Kyiv was under complex simultaneous attack of cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. For now only Kalibr debris were spotted on streets. Kalibrs entered from southern direction, and something, probably Kinzhal/Iskander, fron northern

Edited May 16, 2023 by Haiduk

[MSBoxer]

6 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Air raid alarm again. UAV approaches. 

Preliminary Kyiv was under complex simultaneous attack of cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. For now only Kalibr debris were spotted on streets. Kalibrs entered from southern direction, and something, probably Kinzhal/Iskander, fron northern

An attack of this scope and size should leave an impression of strength and power.  Why does it stink of desperation and weakness?

[chris talpas]

With Zelensky returning home to Ukraine, I hope this isn’t an attempted decapitation strike (could Russia have tracked him returning from UK?)

[Fenris]

In depth interview with UKR infantrymen commenting on their involvement in trench clearing action, all of which was recorded by drones and their go-pro's.  Auto-translate works on this one.