How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

The CIA launched a Telegram channel to get Russians to spy for them, with one former spook saying now is 'probably the best period of recruiting Russians that we've had' (yahoo.com)

[mosuri]

On the political front, Moldova is leaving CIS

https://radiomoldova.md/p/12495/igor-grosu-the-republic-of-moldova-is-withdrawing-from-the-cis

To be frank I had no idea CIS even existed since the '90s, so learned at least that today!

[Holien]

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-damage-ukraine/index.html

They might have done some damage to a Patriot?

Will be a good test to see how easy to fix if it has been damaged?

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Our discussion of Russia's lost opportunity to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses by sustained and concentrated mass attacks made me think, once again, that we might see Ukraine doing this in the next couple of weeks against select targets in the south.  Russia's air defenses have proven quite incapable against even isolated attacks, imagine would would happen if 2 dozen Storm Shadows, HIMARS, glide bombs, and other things were launched at a specific target?  Probably 90%+ hit rate.  While overkill for something like an HQ or munitions depot, it certainly would make an impact on an airbase or a certain bridge.

Steve

Or an entire fleet including submarines... 

[Centurian52]

 

18 hours ago, kevinkin said:

The conflict between the US and China is not over if one side conquers the other's land mass.

I know. That's exactly what I was saying.

18 hours ago, kevinkin said:

competing economically not kinetically

That's the current situation. But the hypothetical near-future situation I was addressing was a very kinetic competition (a.k.a. a war). A mostly air/naval war, rather than the ground warfare we are used to simulating, but a war nonetheless.

[Kinophile]

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Kinophile

[Centurian52]

18 hours ago, cyrano01 said:

The relatively small size of UK stock piles

Their stockpiles of Storm Shadow aren't that small are they? I thought they had around 800, with plans to replace them within a decade. So that means they could potentially spare hundreds (I'm guessing low hundreds, since I doubt the UK will hand over all of them before they have a replacement) of Storm Shadows for Ukraine.

[Centurian52]

17 hours ago, paxromana said:

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.

They managed to train new tank crews in WW2. In fact it takes months to adequately train any soldier, no matter their specialty (although some specialties take longer than others). And the overwhelming majority of soldiers who participate in any war lasting more than a year were trained from scratch after the war started. The trick is having a pipeline. You train multiple batches of soldiers in parallel. That way you have a constant stream of new, fully trained soldiers every day, even if each individual soldiers takes months to train.

[Battlefront.com]

27 minutes ago, Holien said:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-damage-ukraine/index.html

They might have done some damage to a Patriot?

Will be a good test to see how easy to fix if it has been damaged?

The system is fairly spread out, which makes it highly survivable in total.  If a particular component is completely destroyed it likely means the others weren't damaged at all, or minorly.  Here's a deployment picture from Turkey I dug up for reference:

Steve

[womble]

5 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

Their stockpiles of Storm Shadow aren't that small are they? I thought they had around 800, with plans to replace them within a decade. So that means they could potentially spare hundreds (I'm guessing low hundreds, since I doubt the UK will hand over all of them before they have a replacement) of Storm Shadows for Ukraine.

When it was announced, it was for 200 "now", plus 200 per year ongoing. Sounds like "manufacture rate" to me. Complex things, but should be able to manage 8 a week, surely... So, a quarter of our current stock, and half the factory output for the forseeable.

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, womble said:

When it was announced, it was for 200 "now", plus 200 per year ongoing. Sounds like "manufacture rate" to me. Complex things, but should be able to manage 8 a week, surely... So, a quarter of our current stock, and half the factory output for the forseeable.

Yup, and unlike Russia the UK's military industries are not under sanctions.  Though trying to get a plumber or an electrician got a lot more complicated by Brexit

Steve

[Splinty]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The system is fairly spread out, which makes it highly survivable in total.  If a particular component is completely destroyed it likely means the others weren't damaged at all, or minorly.  Here's a deployment picture from Turkey I dug up for reference:

Steve

I would also expect that the Patriot batteries around Kyiv are reasonably well protected by things like Hesco barriers and concrete T walls and the digging/fortifying process is ongoing.

[Battlefront.com]

Yuck.  I just did a dive down into the pro-Russian commentary rabbit hole.  The attack and intercepts last night have really stirred up the Cope Patrol.  Even saw a US House of Reps member saying the proof that Patriot didn't work last night can be found in the Durham Report.  Unfortunately, I just had a shower before reading this and now I feel all dirty again!

Steve

[Centurian52]

17 hours ago, Halmbarte said:

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

The estimates I heard were about 6 months. The trouble with these sort of estimates though, as Perun has pointed out, is that they assume no one does anything.

[Centurian52]

17 hours ago, FancyCat said:

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

 

Yes. But it's easier to move around now more than ever. And it's easier than ever to find out which areas are populated with people who agree with you.

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, Splinty said:

I would also expect that the Patriot batteries around Kyiv are reasonably well protected by things like Hesco barriers and concrete T walls and the digging/fortifying process is ongoing.

Me too.

Which reminds me of some of the lessons we learned early on in this war when we looked at all the effort Russia put into similar concepts at various bases.  They work well against near misses, but don't do anything for direct PGM or pure luck hits.  Given Russia's lack of success with its targeting systems, it is unlikely they scored a direct hit.  Especially for a hypersonic weapon because mid course corrections just aren't all that feasible during the final approach.  Which is why the commentators that point out that the Kinzhal is more akin to a ballistic missile than a PGM are correct.

Steve

[Centurian52]

15 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is terrible, of course.  It angers me that our nations refuse to label Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and be done with it.

Hopefully the damage and casualties are limited to the debris.  As terrible as that is to say, the alternatives are likely much worse.

Steve

I still don't think that State Sponsor of Terrorism is quite the right label. There is a difference between sponsoring terrorism and conducting terrorism. They may also be sponsoring terrorists. But what we are angry at them for right now is that they are being terrorists.

Edit: But I absolutely agree that we should publicly label them as...something. State Terrorists perhaps?

Edited May 16, 2023 by Centurian52

[Bearstronaut]

30 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Even saw a US House of Reps member saying the proof that Patriot didn't work last night can be found in the Durham Report. 

LOL, what?

[Centurian52]

14 hours ago, kevinkin said:

I would be interested in seeing how South Korea and Israel handle the economics.

South Korea requires all males to serve in the military for 2 years. After they have completed their service they go back into the economy and don't need to be maintained as active reservists. This is pretty disrupting to their lives. But it means that if they are ever invaded they have a truly massive reserve of people who have already been fully trained once in their lives, and only need refresher training in order to be fully combat ready.

[Huba]

That escalated quickly

 

[Centurian52]

14 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

It makes you wonder. They put some effort into this one.

That's very strange. The clear intensity of the attack, and the lack of reported casualties so far (granting that I'm still 15 hours behind the latest posts) are facts that seem to be at odds with each other.

[Bearstronaut]

12 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

South Korea requires all males to serve in the military for 2 years. After they have completed their service they go back into the economy and don't need to be maintained as active reservists. This is pretty disrupting to their lives. But it means that if they are ever invaded they have a truly massive reserve of people who have already been fully trained once in their lives, and only need refresher training in order to be fully combat ready.

They do one day of training per year that consists of showing up to simulate a call-up of the reserves. I used to see them walking around Seoul sometimes in outdated camo pattern uniforms with hair wildly out of regulation. 

[Vanir Ausf B]

This doesn't affect the larger picture, but...

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Splinty said:

I would also expect that the Patriot batteries around Kyiv are reasonably well protected by things like Hesco barriers and concrete T walls and the digging/fortifying process is ongoing.

One of well-informed analysts here several months ago claimed Ukrainians tend to move their pieces as often as possible, with usually much more frequent ratio of repositioning than in NATO armies. Russians pay your weight in gold to traitor who can reliably feed them data about Patriots, in silver for post-Soviet pieces, and there are thousands of homini sovieticii in capital alone. Fortunatelly, their decision chain is so slow regarding strategic attacks that before anything is decided, equipment is usually repositioned.

Kyiv defence most probably keep crucial pieces in some underground garages/inside buldings- it's too risky to stick them in the open in city centers, too many eyes.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Beleg85

[DesertFox]

18 minutes ago, Huba said:

That escalated quickly

Yup. Very good