How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Seminole said:

Imagine instead of a tactical nuke on Russian soil they put a city killer into Lvov, with a promise of more to follow if Ukraine refuses to submit.  
Is there an escalatory counter to that?  Or would Ukraine be forced to quit at the risk of literal annihilation?

The reason so much effort has gone into engineering a relatively ‘soft’ defeat for Russia is because if faced with a ‘hard’ defeat they can instead make everyone lose.  Few nations on the planet hold that card, even fewer could ever be imagined to play it.  

 

For sure.  We've been down this discussion road many times before... we want to avoid pushing Putin into using nukes to the extent we can.  I suspect Russia would use a single tac nuke to make it's point clear, but it would most definitely hit something in Ukraine and not on Russia.  Nukes are not military in nature, so the ramifications of one being used is the same no matter where it is used.

Steve

[NamEndedAllen]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

the US effectively won the conflict without direct military collision by forcing their opponent to spend more economy could sustain

It’s an interesting point with more than a grain of truth to it. This explanation is repeated often, but without critical context. Soviet defense spending *was* excessive. But actual Soviet Cold War spending and policy was flat. US policy did not itself strongly affect it. Note also that Taiwan, South Korea and Israel also suffered significant defense burdens, like the Soviet Union.  But they grew their economies. The more fundamental cause? Ideology. And how it distorted and undermined the economy:

“The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense”.  https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. It did not reward individual or collective effort; it absolved Soviet producers from the discipline of the market; and it gave power to officials who could not be held accountable by consumers. Consequently much of the investment that went into the civilian sector of the economy was wasted. The command economy pre-dated the Cold War and was not a response to American military spending. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, but it was not defeated by American defense spending.”  

Another common refrain among conservatives is that Reagan simply “outspent” the Soviets. But Soviet defense spending remained flat throughout the 1980s. More significantly, Gorbachev was unalterably opposed to increasing military spending; he fought a relentless campaign by the Soviet military-industrial complex to spend exorbitant sums in response to Reagan’s buildup...

Despite costing taxpayers billions of dollars, SDI had no significant effect on Soviet strategic decisionmaking. Gorbachev rejected every single proposal to build a Soviet response to Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/478941-lets-stop-revising-history-reagan-didnt-win-the-cold-war/

[dan/california]

40 minutes ago, keas66 said:

The Unit Badge ... pretty much looks like a Polish Eagle I think is the gist of it

In terms of Ukrainian unit badges that is about a 2 on a 10 point scale of misbehavior. 

Edit: And if every officer and NCO in the unit has an accent from "west of Lviv", I won't lose a moments sleep over it.

Edited May 25, 2023 by dan/california

[Vet 0369]

41 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I am missing something...?

 

Yes, the new insignia is very similar, but not identical to the Polish insignia.

[MikeyD]

7 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

SDI had no significant effect on Soviet strategic decisionmaking.

One assumes the Soviets had intelligence assets in place that were assuring them that Star Wars was all smoke-and-mirrors and one failed test after another.

[NamEndedAllen]

4 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

One assumes the Soviets had intelligence assets in place that were assuring them that Star Wars was all smoke-and-mirrors and one failed test after another.

True, although presumably some technological skill was earned for all the wasted billions. FAR scarier was the actual response: The Dead Hand Doomsday Machine! https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/09/22/missile-defense-didnt-win-the-cold-war/
After the Cold War sturm and drang quited down, SDI facts began to publicly emerge, “Russian (and American) scientists knew early on that SDI, which sought to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles with lasers, was a pipe dream. Far more consequentially, the Soviets knew that they could easily defeat Reagan’s “Star Wars” fantasy by launching hundreds of decoys and saturating the skies with more nuclear warheads than the system could handle.” 

[Letter from Prague]

EDIT: missed mod message

Edited May 25, 2023 by Letter from Prague

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, Seminole said:

Imagine instead of a tactical nuke on Russian soil they put a city killer into Lvov, with a promise of more to follow if Ukraine refuses to submit.  
Is there an escalatory counter to that?  Or would Ukraine be forced to quit at the risk of literal annihilation?

The reason so much effort has gone into engineering a relatively ‘soft’ defeat for Russia is because if faced with a ‘hard’ defeat they can instead make everyone lose.  Few nations on the planet hold that card, even fewer could ever be imagined to play it.  

 

If Russia drops a city killer on Lvov, it faces an overwhelming conventional response that would drive it out of Ukraine forthwith, a sanctions regime upped to an out and out embargo and abandonment by China, India, etc. And, of course, the full panoply of American nuclear retaliatory capabilities if it went further up the escalation ladder. 

It could happen. It's very unlikely. 

Edited May 25, 2023 by billbindc

[billbindc]

49 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

One assumes the Soviets had intelligence assets in place that were assuring them that Star Wars was all smoke-and-mirrors and one failed test after another.

Quite the opposite. The contemporary KGB was seeing bogey men and programs everywhere.

[womble]

1 hour ago, Seminole said:

Imagine instead of a tactical nuke on Russian soil they put a city killer into Lvov, with a promise of more to follow if Ukraine refuses to submit.  

What are the chances of the transport system actually delivering a viable nuke to whatever target the Russians pick, given the ABM/AD capabilities currently deployed in Ukraine? Less than 100% I'd suggest, and sending a city-killer and it not going off gets them the same international response as if it detonates, with no intimidation effect whatsoever, just anger and determination turned up from 11 to about 200 on a scale of 1 to 10.

[sburke]

seems like Putin's other allies aren't thrilled with what is going on with Belarus.

Even nuclear weapons are now one for two − Kazakhstan's President Tokayev says Putin and Lukashenko have created a problem (yahoo.com)

Source: Russian propaganda publication RIA Novosti, referring to Tokayev's statement at the plenary session of the second Eurasian Economic Forum on 24 May; Vy slushali maiak (You have been listening to Radio Mayak) Telegram channel

Quote from Tokayev: "We have a union state in the EAEU. In other words, a unique precedent or phenomenon has been created in world political history... the creation of a state based on the formula ‘two countries − one state’ with a single political, legal, military, economic, currency, cultural and humanitarian space, with a single union government, with a single union parliament... And even nuclear weapons are now one for two.

Then there is another level of integration represented by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. And we need to take this reality into account. How we are going to work in these circumstances is a conceptual question. I think we need to discuss this problem at this economic forum as well."

 

Details: At the words about nuclear weapons, Alexander Lukashenko, the self-proclaimed President of Belarus, and Russian President Vladimir Putin began to smile and exchange glances.

Then Putin said something to Lukashenko, who smiled, and the two politicians shook hands.

Background: 

In his address to the nation on 31 March, Alexander Lukashenko spoke about the possibility of deploying Russian strategic nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

In early April, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Belarus already has assault aircraft and Iskander-M missile systems capable of delivering nuclear strikes at its disposal.

In mid-April, Belarusian Defence Minister Viktor Khrenin said that Belarus is already preparing sites for Russian strategic nuclear weapons.

 

[BlackMoria]

3 minutes ago, sburke said:

seems like Putin's other allies aren't thrilled with what is going on with Belarus.

Even nuclear weapons are now one for two − Kazakhstan's President Tokayev says Putin and Lukashenko have created a problem (yahoo.com)

Source: Russian propaganda publication RIA Novosti, referring to Tokayev's statement at the plenary session of the second Eurasian Economic Forum on 24 May; Vy slushali maiak (You have been listening to Radio Mayak) Telegram channel

Quote from Tokayev: "We have a union state in the EAEU. In other words, a unique precedent or phenomenon has been created in world political history... the creation of a state based on the formula ‘two countries − one state’ with a single political, legal, military, economic, currency, cultural and humanitarian space, with a single union government, with a single union parliament... And even nuclear weapons are now one for two.

Then there is another level of integration represented by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. And we need to take this reality into account. How we are going to work in these circumstances is a conceptual question. I think we need to discuss this problem at this economic forum as well."

 

Details: At the words about nuclear weapons, Alexander Lukashenko, the self-proclaimed President of Belarus, and Russian President Vladimir Putin began to smile and exchange glances.

Then Putin said something to Lukashenko, who smiled, and the two politicians shook hands.

Background: 

In his address to the nation on 31 March, Alexander Lukashenko spoke about the possibility of deploying Russian strategic nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

In early April, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Belarus already has assault aircraft and Iskander-M missile systems capable of delivering nuclear strikes at its disposal.

In mid-April, Belarusian Defence Minister Viktor Khrenin said that Belarus is already preparing sites for Russian strategic nuclear weapons.

 

I wonder how the citizens of Belarus feel about Western strategic nuclear weapons will target Belarus territory due to the presence of Russian strategic weapons.  Do they even know the 'Devil's Deal' their leader signed them up for?

[sross112]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

If there had been any semblance of regular Russian Army units in the immediate area of the incursion they would have been used right away.  For almost a day there was no meaningful counter action and it is unclear what forces Russia actually employed because the attackers pulled out ahead of any real fighting.

This provides us with evidence that not only are the borders thinly manned, but heavily reliant upon conscripts for providing border security with very little backup in the event of an incursion.

Imagine what would have happened if Ukraine pushed 2 or 3 of its new Brigades into Russia instead of a couple hundred lightly armed raiders?  Then imagine a tac nuke being used against them because that is really the only thing the Russians could do to put a stop to an action on that scale.

Steve

If they need a playbook on running an insurgency that has bases in neighboring countries with sympathy for the cause, pretty sure the NVA and VC could help them out. They could conduct an almost mirror image campaign with basing, supply routes, and support over the border with safe places to retreat to. Hit where ever the RA is weakest, evaporate, move to next location on list, rinse and repeat. 

If they have repeatable success they might be able to grow into a full blown insurgency or even a civil war situation. If they don't have meaningful success for their cause, it still helps out Ukraine by diverting resources to border defense. I'd think that Russia would absolutely have to commit some serious resources especially if they do a couple more raids in different places to fire up the nats even more.

[womble]

5 minutes ago, sross112 said:

If they need a playbook on running an insurgency that has bases in neighboring countries with sympathy for the cause, pretty sure the NVA and VC could help them out.

Or the Taliban. I'm sure the Ukrainian secret services are at least as competent as the Pakistani ones.

[Seminole]

14 minutes ago, womble said:

What are the chances of the transport system actually delivering a viable nuke to whatever target the Russians pick, given the ABM/AD capabilities currently deployed in Ukraine? Less than 100% I'd suggest, and sending a city-killer and it not going off gets them the same international response as if it detonates, with no intimidation effect whatsoever, just anger and determination turned up from 11 to about 200 on a scale of 1 to 10.

The idea we shouldn't worry about a Russian nuke because we imagine there is a percentage chance it won't work seems to ignore that they possess thousands of these things.  Just doesn't seem like a strong argument in favor of not worrying about them.

Is there really anything except the nuclear war prospect that is keeping the U.S. from being directly involved in this conflict?

If the prospect keeps us out, the reality would draw us in?  To what end?  The World's?

Crazy times.  Hope this all finds the least ugly end remaining.

[DesertFox]

Flurschadengeschwader...

 

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by DesertFox

[Vanir Ausf B]

2 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s.

That, plus the collapse of oil prices.

 

[TheVulture]

Video of Russia air defense apparently shooting something down tonight at an air base in Morozovsk, Rostov oblast (about 120km inside Russia, east of Luhansk). Something went bang and left a trail of fire in the night sky at any rate

https://t.me/rusbrief/120389

Quote

The Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to attack the military airfield in Morozovsk (Rostov oblast). According to preliminary data, the attempt was unsuccessful, the air defense system successfully repelled an attack on a military facility

 

[Centurian52]

On 5/24/2023 at 12:11 PM, Grey_Fox said:

This is the kind of mission that was attempted in 2003 Iraq, and which led to some A-10s being severely damaged before they were forbidden from low-level missions. They became missile trucks restricted to high altitude, and that's a mission damn near any airframe can perform.

Edit: Seems I jumped the gun in thinking I was close enough. I just saw Steve's post 18 hours ago closing off further discussion on the A-10.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for pointing this out.

I'm finally less than 24 hours away from catching up on this thread (or was when I started typing), and I hope that's good enough because I really do want to say a few things about the A-10.

Frankly, I just don't understand why people still think it's a good aircraft. What mission do people imagine it performing that an F-16 couldn't do better? Maybe it was a good aircraft in the 70s. But not today. Sure, it's far from useless. It has hard points, so it can carry missiles. And I'm sure someone will be able to find a use for any airframe that can still carry missiles. But that doesn't set it apart from any other aircraft.

Most of the meme culture around it seems to focus on the cannon, which really has me scratching my head. The cannon is basically useless. No one is getting close enough in any aircraft to make gun runs on a modern battlefield. Even if there are opportunities to use the cannon, the 20mm cannon on the F-16 can take out any target that the A-10's cannon can (neither are likely to take out a tank, both with shred IFVs (if they can somehow get close enough)).

People applaud its survivability. Why? Does anyone really believe that having a tough airframe will protect it against missiles? Being able to take a few hits from a cannon might have helped back when AA guns were the main threat. But against modern missiles? Even if it does manage to survive a hit from a missile (which may be about as likely as an M60 bouncing an APFSDS round, for all the CMCW players out there), wouldn't it be better to have an aircraft that can avoid getting hit in the first place? Don't over-focus on how few A-10s were shot down in the last few decades of operations. Few aircraft of any kind were shot down in the last few decades. Sure, only 5 or 6 A-10s were shot down in the 1991 Gulf War (disagreement between sources on whether it was 5 or 6). But remember that the Coalition only lost 52 fixed wing aircraft in that whole war. The A-10 accounts for 10% of those losses. More A-10s were lost than any other kind of Coalition aircraft (the source which listed 6 A-10s shot down also listed 5 Harriers (making it the 2nd most shot down), with the A-6E Intruder and F-16 tied at 3 each).

And it should be emphasized that flying low and slow is a bad thing. It was designed to fly low and slow because modern sensors didn't exist at the time it was designed. The Mk1 eyeball was the only way to spot ground targets, and that works best if it isn't too far from the ground and has plenty of time to look. But we have modern sensors and ground radar now. You can fly high and fast and still spot, identify, and accurately engage ground targets. Flying low and slow does nothing but make you vulnerable to everything.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Centurian52

[DesertFox]

Berdyansk - something is burning bright...

 

Possible localisation, most likely Storm Shadow strike

 

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by DesertFox

[dan/california]

30 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Flurschadengeschwader...

 

 

If this is the kind of CAS the Russians intend to fly against the main part of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, they won't have an air force left on the morning of day four. A Gephardt would have swatted them like flies, much less a manpad of any kind. 

I have some real question about if this was even filmed during the fighting. Because the most generous thing I can come up with is that this was done for propaganda after the fact, and they missed intentionally because somebody didn't want the buildings knocked down.

[NamEndedAllen]

52 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

That, plus the collapse of oil prices.

 

Excellent point. And interesting to see that ~10 year rise between ‘75 and ‘85. Otherwise more or less flat until around 2003-4.

[Centurian52]

20 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So maybe a dumb question from an outsider but why not curb the powers of the presidency?   The US has a lot of checks and balances but maybe not enough.  I am sure there are a thousand reasons not to do this but seriously haven’t you guys had enough bad presidents to maybe rethink things a bit?

We have two types of pardons in Canada, one is done by the judicial system and the other is a royal pardon by the Governor General - normally ceremonial and rarely used.  The PM cannot pardon anyone - a pardon cannot be politicized.  The PM also has a lot less executive power - we do not have the executive order system in this country.  We have an Order in Council but it is also done be a committee and technically has to go past the GG.  In short there are political systems where one person can only do so much damage.

The ability of one administration to effectively hijack the democratic system is just a disaster waiting to happen.  It would be hilarious except for the whole “empire we all bet on” part.

The downside of being the first modern democracy is that you don't get to learn from the example of other modern democracies. We've made a lot of improvements in the last 250 years. But the underlying structure is still based off of 18th century political science. Credit to the founders, it was the best political science available in the 18th century. But it is astounding how far political science has come since then.

Think of it like the difference between an old tank that has been heavily upgraded, and a tank that's a new design from the ground up. The US government is basically an M60A3 TTS (lots of impressive improvements bolted onto a fundamentally old hull). While something like the modern German government (designed from scratch in the aftermath of WW2 based on the best mid-20th century political science) is basically an M1 Abrams.

[Grey_Fox]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

Thank you for pointing this out.

I'm finally less than 24 hours away from catching up on this thread (or was when I started typing), and I hope that's good enough because I really do want to say a few things about the A-10.

Frankly, I just don't understand why people still think it's a good aircraft. What mission do people imagine it performing that an F-16 couldn't do better? Maybe it was a good aircraft in the 70s. But not today. Sure, it's far from useless. It has hard points, so it can carry missiles. And I'm sure someone will be able to find a use for any airframe that can still carry missiles. But that doesn't set it apart from any other aircraft.

Most of the meme culture around it seems to focus on the cannon, which really has me scratching my head. The cannon is basically useless. No one is getting close enough in any aircraft to make gun runs on a modern battlefield. Even if there are opportunities to use the cannon, the 20mm cannon on the F-16 can take out any target that the A-10's cannon can (neither are likely to take out a tank, both with shred IFVs (if they can somehow get close enough)).

People applaud its survivability. Why? Does anyone really believe that having a tough airframe will protect it against missiles? Being able to take a few hits from a cannon might have helped back when AA guns were the main threat. But against modern missiles? Even if it does manage to survive a hit from a missile (which may be about as likely as an M60 bouncing an APFSDS round, for all the CMCW players out there), wouldn't it be better to have an aircraft that can avoid getting hit in the first place? Don't over-focus on how few A-10s were shot down in the last few decades of operations. Few aircraft of any kind were shot down in the last few decades. Sure, only 5 or 6 A-10s were shot down in the 1991 Gulf War (disagreement between sources on whether it was 5 or 6). But remember that the Coalition only lost 52 fixed wing aircraft in that whole war. The A-10 accounts for 10% of those losses. More A-10s were lost than any other kind of Coalition aircraft (the source which listed 6 A-10s shot down also listed 5 Harriers (making it the 2nd most shot down), with the A-6E Intruder and F-16 tied at 3 each).

And it should be emphasized that flying low and slow is a bad thing. It was designed to fly low and slow because modern sensors didn't exist at the time it was designed. The Mk1 eyeball was the only way to spot ground targets, and that works best if it isn't too far from the ground and has plenty of time to look. But we have modern sensors and ground radar now. You can fly high and fast and still spot, identify, and accurately engage ground targets. Flying low and slow does nothing but make you vulnerable to everything.

Yeah, the whole argument is bonkers.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

It’s an interesting point with more than a grain of truth to it. This explanation is repeated often, but without critical context. Soviet defense spending *was* excessive. But actual Soviet Cold War spending and policy was flat. US policy did not itself strongly affect it. Note also that Taiwan, South Korea and Israel also suffered significant defense burdens, like the Soviet Union.  But they grew their economies. The more fundamental cause? Ideology. And how it distorted and undermined the economy:

“The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense”.  https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. It did not reward individual or collective effort; it absolved Soviet producers from the discipline of the market; and it gave power to officials who could not be held accountable by consumers. Consequently much of the investment that went into the civilian sector of the economy was wasted. The command economy pre-dated the Cold War and was not a response to American military spending. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, but it was not defeated by American defense spending.”  

Another common refrain among conservatives is that Reagan simply “outspent” the Soviets. But Soviet defense spending remained flat throughout the 1980s. More significantly, Gorbachev was unalterably opposed to increasing military spending; he fought a relentless campaign by the Soviet military-industrial complex to spend exorbitant sums in response to Reagan’s buildup...

Despite costing taxpayers billions of dollars, SDI had no significant effect on Soviet strategic decisionmaking. Gorbachev rejected every single proposal to build a Soviet response to Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/478941-lets-stop-revising-history-reagan-didnt-win-the-cold-war/

Lord, this is why we can’t have nice things.  So right off the bat one has to be really cautious.  In this political climate revisionist history cuts both ways.  The reality is a lot less cut and dry.  I will offer this as a period piece analysis from 1989 - kinda hilarious to see projections of the Soviet Union out to 2000s:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA207965.pdf

And then there is this famous meta data site:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a-share-of-gdp-long?time=earliest..2016&facet=none

The reality is that a line of US presidents going back to Truman, along with NATO national leadership “won the Cold War”.  How they did it was in a three prong strategy that was not always pretty but it worked - contain, entice and out-compete.

So details.  Defence spending in the USSR was not flat as much as it was a steady escalation.  They were forced onto a competitive trajectory very early on.  The problem within the USSR was cost versus income/production.  When one looks at the percentage GDP one can see the Soviet Union really was spending far more than it could afford on defence.  Why?  Because it had to, it had to try and keep up with all of NATO.

Now as to “Reagan winning the Cold War”, well not really.  The big jump in US defence spending was actually trying to catch back up.  In the late 70s/early 80s (the setting of Combat Mission Cold War…it is in the lobby gift shop) US defence spending kinda crashed.  Post Vietnam, economic downturns, and that whole OPEC thing played havoc with military spending  so when Reagan jumped in the US was really playing catch-up.  By the mid 80s the fate of the USSR was sealed, and they knew it.  Corruption and misdirection of money, built in inequities and general holes in the communist system lined up with the Afghan War and “plop”.  Russia could not have surge spent on defence if it wanted to:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/31/world/soviet-military-budget-128-billion-bombshell.html

So what?  Well the Cold War was a sustained contest that took decades to win and often went to the brink on several occasions.  It also is a historical example of how an arms race really assisted in deciding a conflict as part of a broader strategy.  A similar strategy with China is problematic because we do not have an iron curtain with China, we have globalization.

Anyway…”bad lies and statistics”, “written by the winners” etc etc.