How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kevinkin]

I wonder if these are being held in reserve for the war and or its aftermath? A lot closer to the battlefield anyway. 

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/05/poland-gets-us-made-himars-early-apaches-in-latest-defense-boost/

[Centurian52]

13 hours ago, zinz said:

Do you know about the Birthday paradox? With spaceX and other future satellite constellations the number of satellites in orbit is already a magnitude higher than a couple of years ago. The current situation is much worse to consider a kinetic take down of satellites than a few years ago. 

The Chinese anti sattelite test in 2007 is still a big problem for all space activity. It knocked out another satellite. 1/3 of all debris pieces tracked to keep the ISS safe originated in this singular event. 

I should have qualified my statement a bit more. The debris from one satellite getting shot down is bad. But it isn't so bad that it would deter anyone from shooting down one satellite in a major war. I suppose it's easy to get the impression that I was saying that it wasn't bad at all in my earlier comment, since you need to read it with the right voice inflection in order to get the right meaning (stress on the "too" in "isn't too bad").

Regardless of the fallout of shooting down one satellite, I think we agree that you can't scale up to shooting down dozens of enemy satellites without knocking out your own satellite network in the process, along with the satellite networks of every neutral party in the world (none of whom are going to be very happy with you). It probably just isn't practical to contest low Earth orbit.

[billbindc]

 

Absolutely asinine. Take Telenko with boulders of salt unless he's talking about wooden pallets.

[Seminole]

17 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

It probably just isn't practical to contest low Earth orbit.

Existing methods are too crude, just the best we could thus far to accomplish the goal.  Near future will see development of lasers for disabling enemy satellites. You don’t need to blow them into a million pieces, just burn holes in it until it doesn’t work.  
We’ll be developing something similar just to do clean up of dead satellites and rocket debris in due course.  

[Taranis]

Interesting video and for deep defence strategy
Pros : 
• High mobility

• small profile (hard to detect) and small target

• high firepower (20mm variant & ATGM variant)

• ideal for flanking surprise

• easy to maintain and refit (and export)

• Easy to camouflage (sunflower, crops field etc)

Cons :

• weak armor → but tank vs tank are not common and Wiesel is superior in mobility in wooded area.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Taranis

[kevinkin]

Interesting article on some tactics to make attack choppers more survivable by using UAVs to screen air corridors. 

https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/with-taiwan-in-mind-china-observes-attack-helicopter-operations-in-ukraine/

[Centurian52]

21 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Interesting video and for deep defence strategy
Pros : 
• High mobility

• small profile (hard to detect) and small target

• high firepower (20mm variant & ATGM variant)

• ideal for flanking surprise

• easy to maintain and refit (and export)

• Easy to camouflage (sunflower, crops field etc)

Cons :

• weak armor → but tank vs tank are not common and Wiesel is superior in mobility in wooded area.

Based on what I've seen of the Wiesel in action in CMSF2, I think they would make a valuable addition to the Ukrainian Army.

[kimbosbread]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

which creates an interesting opportunity for a country that has some space capability and finds itself in a hot war but losing the ISR battle: take out several satellites - it doesn't really matter whose or what they are - and then let physics do the heavy lifting for you. Yes, you'll piss off a lot of countries and make them show their teeth, but they're likely already offside with you anyway. Yes, you'll also likely lose your own space based ISR and comms, but remember you're already losing there, so the relative impact will be less for you than the other guy.

Well, depends on the orbit. The advantage of having tons of smaller, lower cheaper satellites is you can toss them in a bunch of very different orbits, and the US realistically might be able to have more satellites than China has antisatellite missiles (which by their nature have to be very high performance). Also, these small cheap satellites alter their apogee frequently; enough to make targeting less “fun”. If you figure they won’t last that long, you can even do inclination changes every orbit (which is more expensive in terms of fuel). A large part of your constellation could realistically alter their orbit each orbit; tough on the transceiver on the ground but that’s a solved problem.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

One assumes this would be Day 1 of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan but then again, I've seen lunchbox sized satellites at NASA PR events so...

Starlink (and I assume Starshield) are really low, so a lot of debris will burn up fast- worst case a couple years for most of the debris.

[BlackMoria]

43 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Interesting video and for deep defence strategy
Pros : 
• High mobility

• small profile (hard to detect) and small target

• high firepower (20mm variant & ATGM variant)

• ideal for flanking surprise

• easy to maintain and refit (and export)

• Easy to camouflage (sunflower, crops field etc)

Cons :

• weak armor → but tank vs tank are not common and Wiesel is superior in mobility in wooded area.

Free the Weasel!!   A battalion of these mad honey badgers tearing stuff up would be awesome.

[Battlefront.com]

53 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Interesting video and for deep defence strategy
Pros : 
• High mobility

• small profile (hard to detect) and small target

• high firepower (20mm variant & ATGM variant)

• ideal for flanking surprise

• easy to maintain and refit (and export)

• Easy to camouflage (sunflower, crops field etc)

Cons :

• weak armor → but tank vs tank are not common and Wiesel is superior in mobility in wooded area.

I haven't watched the video, but I already know I agree

The Wiesel is, basically, what UGVs are headed towards.  Small, light weight, and heavily armed relative to standard infantry weapons.  There's soooooooooo many advantages to a platform like this in a war as we are seeing play out in Ukraine.

Think back to the K2 "T" videos where a MBT was used to suppress the Russian trench.  It unloaded it's whole store of 125mm ammo on a position that had only a handful of defenders.  It almost got hit by an LATW of some sort and then put itself at huge risk driving over the trench.  Infantry was required to ensure the position was clear.

Imagine if there had been one or two Wiesels chopping up the trenches with 20mm.  Suppression would likely have been as effective as the MBT, but at a lower risk and cost to Ukraine's overall war effort.  Now picture an unmanned version of the Wiesel and it gets even better.

Steve

[chrisl]

6 hours ago, JonS said:

which creates an interesting opportunity for a country that has some space capability and finds itself in a hot war but losing the ISR battle: take out several satellites - it doesn't really matter whose or what they are - and then let physics do the heavy lifting for you. Yes, you'll piss off a lot of countries and make them show their teeth, but they're likely already offside with you anyway. Yes, you'll also likely lose your own space based ISR and comms, but remember you're already losing there, so the relative impact will be less for you than the other guy.

That's exactly what Russia tried in Nov 2021.  They took out a fairly large satellite in a quite messy way.  It was before I was paying close attention to Russian space assets, and it confused a lot of people at the time because it would also threaten Russian satellites. But after Feb 24 when I started looking into Russian space based ISR, they really had nothing substantial to lose and had the potential to create blind spots in US/NATO ISR by "accidentally" taking out western sats.

[chrisl]

double post

Edited May 17, 2023 by chrisl

[womble]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I haven't watched the video, but I already know I agree

The Wiesel is, basically, what UGVs are headed towards.  Small, light weight, and heavily armed relative to standard infantry weapons.  There's soooooooooo many advantages to a platform like this in a war as we are seeing play out in Ukraine.

Think back to the K2 "T" videos where a MBT was used to suppress the Russian trench.  It unloaded it's whole store of 125mm ammo on a position that had only a handful of defenders.  It almost got hit by an LATW of some sort and then put itself at huge risk driving over the trench.  Infantry was required to ensure the position was clear.

Imagine if there had been one or two Wiesels chopping up the trenches with 20mm.  Suppression would likely have been as effective as the MBT, but at a lower risk and cost to Ukraine's overall war effort.  Now picture an unmanned version of the Wiesel and it gets even better.

Steve

An AGL platform (especially with laser rangefinder-timed-airburst fused rounds) would be even better than the AC for clearing trenches, wouldn't it? Or is there an airburst fuse for the 20mm ammo?

UGVs would be even lower profile, since they don't have to provide volume for the meat to sit in. And that would reduce their visual signature, and possible even the thermal visibility, since it wouldn't need to be expending energy to haul the extra superstructure around.

[womble]

2 minutes ago, chrisl said:

That's exactly what Russia tried in Nov 2021.  They took out a fairly large satellite in a quite messy way.  It was before I was paying close attention to Russian space assets, and it confused a lot of people at the time because it would also threaten Russian satellites. But after Feb 24 when I started looking into Russian space based ISR, they really had nothing substantial to lose and had the potential to create blind spots in US/NATO ISR by "accidentally" taking out western sats.

I suspect that, along with cyber attacks on Western infrastructure, was clearly communicated to Putin at the beginning of his criminal misadventure as constituting a red line, the crossing of which would lead to strong measures.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

I should have qualified my statement a bit more. The debris from one satellite getting shot down is bad. But it isn't so bad that it would deter anyone from shooting down one satellite in a major war. I suppose it's easy to get the impression that I was saying that it wasn't bad at all in my earlier comment, since you need to read it with the right voice inflection in order to get the right meaning (stress on the "too" in "isn't too bad").

Regardless of the fallout of shooting down one satellite, I think we agree that you can't scale up to shooting down dozens of enemy satellites without knocking out your own satellite network in the process, along with the satellite networks of every neutral party in the world (none of whom are going to be very happy with you). It probably just isn't practical to contest low Earth orbit.

Just about everybody with substantial space access has done various levels & types of ASAT test - you don't have to break satellites into little pieces to render them inoperable.  And cost-to-orbit is getting low enough that for some players it's very practical to contest earth orbit (not really restricted to LEO).

[sburke]

Russia says hypersonic missile scientists face 'very serious' treason accusations (yahoo.com)

Quote

 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three Russian academics who have worked on hypersonic missile technology face "very serious accusations", the Kremlin said on Wednesday, in a treason investigation that has spread alarm through Russia's scientific community.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was aware of an open letter from Siberian scientists in defence of the men, but that the case was a matter for the security services.

In the letter, published on Monday, colleagues of Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev protested their innocence and said the prosecutions threatened to inflict grave damage on Russian science.

 

3 scientists behind Putin's 'unstoppable' missiles were jailed for treason. Russian researchers say they are now living in fear. (yahoo.com)

Quote

 

Three Russian scientists involved in missile development have been arrested, according to reports.

The scientists are accused of treason, a charge that carries up to 20 years in prison.

The missiles they helped create are among the most prized weapons in the Russian military's arsenal.

Three scientists involved in the development of Russia's "unstoppable" Kinzhal missiles have been jailed on charges of treason, in a case that has spread alarm among Russian researchers.

In an open letter Monday, members of Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian Branch, which is based in Novosibirsk, said the arrests were having a chilling effect on research.

The cases showed that "any article or report can lead to accusations of high treason", the open letter said.

"In this situation, we are not only afraid for the fate of our colleagues. We just do not understand how to continue to do our job."

They said that that the three scientists — Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev — were arrested on false charges.

The scientists had coordinated research to develop Russia's Kinzhal missile systems, Reuters reported. 

The weapons, often falsely described as hypersonic, are a type of advanced air-launched ballistic missile capable of carrying over a 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Russia has long described the Kinzhal as an unstoppable hypersonic weapon that it claims is capable of overcoming all known air defense systems.

But Ukraine said it was able to shoot down six of the weapons when they were fired at Kyiv as part of a wave of air attacks on the Ukrainian capital early Tuesday.

The arrest of Shiplyuk, director of the institute's Siberian branch, was reported by Russian state media last August, and Maslov, its chief researcher, last July.

An investigative source told TASS that Maslov was suspected of revealing state secrets on missile technology.

Monday's letter is the first time the arrest of Zvegintsev, who is described as an expert of aerodynamics, has been made public.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by sburke

[kimbosbread]

10 minutes ago, womble said:

An AGL platform (especially with laser rangefinder-timed-airburst fused rounds) would be even better than the AC for clearing trenches, wouldn't it? Or is there an airburst fuse for the 20mm ammo?

UGVs would be even lower profile, since they don't have to provide volume for the meat to sit in. And that would reduce their visual signature, and possible even the thermal visibility, since it wouldn't need to be expending energy to haul the extra superstructure around.

Is there any reason crew served weapons cannot evolve to be UGV capable of carrying their ammo load and receiving targets from nearby soldiers and drones? It doesn’t seem that hard to make something like a squatter ATV with a AGL and a few cans of ammo, especially if it is driven by remote control by a nearby soldier.

[TheVulture]

3 minutes ago, sburke said:

Russia says hypersonic missile scientists face 'very serious' treason accusations (yahoo.com)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three Russian academics who have worked on hypersonic missile technology face "very serious accusations", the Kremlin said on Wednesday, in a treason investigation that has spread alarm through Russia's scientific community.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was aware of an open letter from Siberian scientists in defence of the men, but that the case was a matter for the security services.

In the letter, published on Monday, colleagues of Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev protested their innocence and said the prosecutions threatened to inflict grave damage on Russian science.

Tends to support Ukraine's claim to have shot down the hypersonic missiles rather than Russia's claim that they all hit their targets. If the missiles were successful and 'uninterceptable' (as per Putin's claim) then they wouldn't be suddenly looking for scapegoats to blame. Instead they seem to be taking the line "our missiles were actually intercepted, so we need to blame these scientists for either a) treasonously exaggerating the missile capabilities or b) treasonously sharing classified details at international conferences which enables the US to develop countermeasures".

[Centurian52]

14 minutes ago, chrisl said:

(not really restricted to LEO)

I know there are satellites well beyond LEO. I specifically restricted my statement to LEO because I know that above LEO large amounts of debris is unlikely to matter (there is just so much volume for things to fly around in without hitting anything at such high orbits). GPS satellites, for example, are unlikely to be terribly concerned with large amounts of debris, since they are way out at geostationary orbit. But the kind of satellites that are most relevant to ISR will tend to be in LEO.

Quote

you don't have to break satellites into little pieces to render them inoperable

This really would make it far more practical to contest LEO. I'm pretty sure that we still have to physically hit satellites with something in order to render them inoperable at the moment. But once we are able to fry them with lasers I can see LEO being much easier to contest without ruining your own ISR at the same time.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Centurian52

[chrisl]

Just now, Centurian52 said:

I know there are satellites well beyond LEO. I specifically restricted my statement to LEO because I know that above LEO large amounts of debris is unlikely to matter (there is just so much volume for things to fly around in without hitting anything at such high orbits). GPS satellites, for example, are unlikely to be terribly concerned with large amounts of debris, since they are way out at geostationary orbit. But the kind of satellites that are most relevant to ISR will tend to be in LEO.

Sure, it takes more debris to be a problem, but that doesn't mean someone might not want to remove someone else's satellite from a higher orbit, or at least render it useless in some way.

GPS satellites are not in GEO - that's not a very good orbit if you want to get high precision globally.  They're in 55 degree orbits at about 10,000 km.  GEO tends to have things like regional weather sats and big comm relays.  ISR stuff tends to be in high inclination LEO, sometimes highly elliptical.

[Centurian52]

3 minutes ago, chrisl said:

but that doesn't mean someone might not want to remove someone else's satellite from a higher orbit

When did I ever say they wouldn't?

[Centurian52]

7 minutes ago, chrisl said:

GPS satellites are not in GEO - that's not a very good orbit if you want to get high precision globally.  They're in 55 degree orbits at about 10,000 km.

I stand corrected. Serves me right for relying on memory

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Grigb said:

It was created by Prig. Girkinites severely criticize him for squandering RU resources on the unimportant town. So Prig came up with the cause: sucking in and crushing UKR reserves.

The concept of Russia grinding down Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut has been around for months.  Destroying the enemy instead of gaining ground is a concept that the average Russian can grasp.  Especially since the pro-Ukrainian side was expressing such concern and alarm over Ukrainian losses.  Of course, the beautifully crafted selective reasoning component of the Russian mindset allowed them to skip over all the evidence that Russia was losing way more than Ukraine.

The new element I saw is that this supposed grinding action is now so successful that the entire Ukrainian counter offensive is ruined.  Like so many Russian propaganda moves, it is designed to satisfy the immediate needs of distracting people from the truth.  Eventually Ukraine will launch its counter offensive and it will be proven false, but the way the Russian mindset works is that they will forget about this and focus on whatever the new message is.

To put it in crude terms, the Russian population can only focus on one thing at a time and it retains very little memory of what came before it.  This allows propaganda to be tailored to a very short and immediate need without (much) concern that people will lose faith when the lies falls apart.  When it does fall apart, instead of questioning what they were told they ask for a new explanation, propagandists invent another short term message, and the cycle continues to repeat.

However, it does seem that there are limits to this strategy.  Every cycle probably loses control over a small percentage of the audience to some degree.  Cumulatively this can create a problem for the Kremlin.  The solution is to completely shift those people to an entirely new paradigm.  We are seeing this happening with the push to have people believe Russia itself is under attack.  The people that have come to understand the war is a disaster now think "OK, I've been lied to repeatedly, but I have to put that aside because our culture is under attack and that is more important!"

Sadly, this has been largely effective in this war.  More so than I thought.  As I said, I gave Russians way too much credit for being able to grasp the truth.  The Internet and foreign travel wasn't as effective at countering this mindset as I had hoped.

5 hours ago, Grigb said:

I presume these are sacrifice troops (including Wagnerites). I believe the majority of RU regulars are well behind (behind the Seversky Donets River). There are speculations that the RU High Command intends to hold the front with as few men as possible, leaving the bulk of regular forces intact for a counter-attack once UKR penetration is foiled by massed artillery and air attacks (a lesson learned from the Izum debacle). This, I believe, is the origin of Prig's antics: he is upset that Wagnerites function have simply to be destroyed in order to preserve the rest of the RU army.

Obviously, UKR command is aware of RU plans. Instead of making a big breakthrough directly into the RU trap, UKR are undertaking several tactical assaults to wear RU frontline troops down and eventually trigger either the destruction of RU reserves or tactical disintegration of RU defenses. The RU command is currently in a pickle: either watch their front line crumble or commit and lose reserves.

And it appears that both are taking place. The RU command does send forces to fend off UKR assaults, but the front line is also trembling. There are rumors that the RU defense at Mariynka is also trembling.

This is a classic dilemma.  A screening force is only useful if the enemy is interested in advancing.  At first the hope is it's strong enough to disrupt the advance to buy time for a new line of defense or counter attack to be prepared.  Then, when the new line is ready, the screening force is withdrawn and the defender continues the fight from a position of greater strength.

This does NOT work if the attacker is more interested in destroying the screening force than it is advancing.  If this happens the second line can't perform its function, therefore it sits around effectively doing nothing while the screening force is systematically dismantled. 

There are two options for the defender.  The first is to withdraw the screening force as soon as the second line is ready, thus giving up ground it was already prepared to lose and saving forces from destruction.  This should be what Russia does at Bakhmut, but Russia built up taking Bakhmut into something huge.  Losing it will be a major problem for it, just like Kherson was, so it is not Russia's "go to move".

The second option is to reinforce the screening force.  This undermines the entire purpose and effort of the second line.  The likely result is Russia reinforces less than is needed to hold Bakhmut and too much for the main defense to afford losing to a lost cause.

The result is that Russia is, once again, pursuing unattainable political goals (i.e. hold/take Bakhmut) at the expense of sound military strategy.  Worse, Russia's ability to successfully execute a sound military strategy is already highly debatable, therefore weakening it's military options in pursuit of an unobtainable political goal is self defeating.  High marks to Putin for being consistent

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Is there any reason crew served weapons cannot evolve to be UGV capable of carrying their ammo load and receiving targets from nearby soldiers and drones? It doesn’t seem that hard to make something like a squatter ATV with a AGL and a few cans of ammo, especially if it is driven by remote control by a nearby soldier.

Yes, and this is exactly where UGV design is being directed towards right now.  It's low hanging fruit and will provide a ton of valuable knowledge and technology for next gen UGVs that can do much more than that.

Steve

[womble]

58 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Is there any reason crew served weapons cannot evolve to be UGV capable of carrying their ammo load and receiving targets from nearby soldiers and drones? It doesn’t seem that hard to make something like a squatter ATV with a AGL and a few cans of ammo, especially if it is driven by remote control by a nearby soldier.

The only reason I can think of not to do this is the concealability of the platform. A tripod mounted weapon is easier to hide "in a bush" than an ATV-class chassis with a tripod-mounted weapon strapped to it. You could make the weapon demountable, but that's additional engineering and potential complexity, if the weapon is automated, on its carrier platform.

But, if the tripod-mounted weapon can operate from full defilade, its concealability matters much less. If all that has to happen is that some "sneaky eyes" get forward and find the target, and feed the coordinates to the weapon system which automatically orients itself and lays its weapon, then the weapon itself doesn't need to be concealable at all; you just need to find a large enough lump to stick it behind. AGL can fit that bill, with the right mount and FCC; I'm sure other systems can be worked that way too.

Edited May 17, 2023 by womble