How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Centurian52]

Just now, Maciej Zwolinski said:

That is quite traditional for Russian defence, e.g. Kursk

Except that at Kursk the Soviets were the ones that were more capable of absorbing higher casualties. I don't think that's the case for the Russians here.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

6 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Will the report of the russian commander that "our artillery was engaged in counter battery operations during the early stages of the attack" offer a small alternative hint? If we can trust the russian commander...that is.

In order to explain why the combat team of 47 Mech was not clobbered with RUS artilllery you would still have to understand the above in reverse of what the RUS was saying. I.e. not his artillery firing CB on the Ukrainians, but Ukrainians firing CB on Russian guns could be a plausible reason for the team in the minefield to be spared

[Centurian52]

9 hours ago, Grigb said:

The prevalent RU viewpoint is that cowardice is the primary RU problem

Why does that sound so familiar? It's almost like there was a major war last century in which the losing side blamed their failures on the cowardice of their troops.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 minute ago, Centurian52 said:

Except that at Kursk the Soviets were the ones that were more capable of absorbing higher casualties. I don't think that's the case for the Russians here.

Hopefully so, especially as the Ukrainians are attacking over a wider front to prevent the RUS from massing reserves immediately behind the attacked area necessary to absorb those losses.

I was merely making the point that with any luck, we may see the traditional defender: attacker casualty ratio reversed even before the UKR manage to break through.

[DesertFox]

If true, they effectively denazified their own orc column. I wouldn't mind if they carry on with this.

 

 

[riptides]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Delicate situation:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/14/nato-stoltenberg-ukraine-membership-vilnius-summit/70317400007/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d4

The NATO chief said the alliance is working on a multi-year package that is likely to be agreed upon at the summit. The support package will help Ukraine meet the organization's standards for membership, he said.

From what I remember, NATO membership requires the new entry not to be in an active war. 

Well one party considers the action to be a Special Military Operation.

Therefor I see no hold up with membership for Ukraine.

[Vet 0369]

14 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Qualifying is under ideal conditions. Squads have marksmen that are held outside of close combat.  NATO squads are trained at fire and movement and the idea of entrenched warfare where sniper ranges might matter is frowned upon. These squads are armed for offensive operations. Once they are static their advantage over a poorly equipped and trained enemy is minimized aka fire bases in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. So in a war of movement, squads armed with shotguns would be better off than squads armed long range rifles. The shock effect matters. Tactics place those shotguns in position against the enemy where after a few booms, the enemy gives up. 

We had a saying that anyone can hit a target when no one is shooting back. Since my entire service was as a MarineI can’t speak to U.S. Army TO&E, which apparently has a dedicated Marksman in every squad. Every Marine is a Rifleman first and foremost  before his or her primary job, including Mechanics, Clerk Typists, Admin Personnel, Pilots, Aircrew, etc, in fact, one of the ratings for a Marine’s promotion is their rifle qualification score. Basically every Marine is a “dedicated Marksman.” 
I don’t know if it still does, but the U.S.M.C. used to have an MOS for “Scout/Sniper.” Those Marines were usually initially earmarked in Recruit Training as having initially Qualified as “High Expert” on the rifle range.

One of the reasons for the U.S. Army adopting the M16 (other than their abject terror of the AK-47) was because it allowed “every” Soldier to be an “Automatic Rifleman” to “spray and pray” in the thick  jungle flora. Marines have always had a single Marine in each Fire Team designated as an Automatic Rifleman. That individual was the the only one with an M14 that had selective fire capabilities.

Usually, the Point man of every patrol was armed with a shotgun, even if he had to have one mailed from home.

The Procurement Branches are primarily concerned with logistics rather than terrain and how effective a weapon is for a number of different environments.

[Battlefront.com]

  

55 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Will the report of the russian commander that "our artillery was engaged in counter battery operations during the early stages of the attack" offer a small alternative hint? If we can trust the russian commander...that is. But makes some sense there could be busy in a heavy CB duel that we just couldnt realize from the short video. For what is worth, some of their guns could have been even out of action or supressed by the time of the video as well.  

To me this sounds like typical Russian excuse.  Remember, these are guys that have a track record of shooting artillery at empty fields and claiming they destroyed something other than good soil.  See previous advice on adjusting your expectations for the Russians telling the truth.

But let's take this officer's word at face value just for the sake of argument.  It still indicates one or more major deficiencies on the Russian side.

Standard doctrine is that CB is done by only a portion of one's artillery.  Let's take a typical organization where there's 3 batteries.  One or two would be engaged in CB at most, the rest available for direct support.  All three would not be engaged in CB unless the entire formation was dedicated to CB and other formations were available for direct support.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should the frontline be left without support.  That's standard doctrine for pretty much everybody for all the reasons that should be obvious.

Yet the Russian artillery played no meaningful role in challenging the Ukrainian assaults.

Clearly, something on the Russian side didn't go as it should.

I'll continue this point...

51 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

How about a CB mission forcing Russians to abort and displace? or RUS helicopters forcing the artillery to shut down to deconflict?

The Ukrainian attacks happened over a couple of hours in separate actions.  If Russian artillery was deliberately distracted by doing CB or deconflicting for air attack purposes, that explains only a small slice of the entire battle.  At a minimum they should have plastered the entire area *AFTER* the battle calmed down so as to ensure Ukraine couldn't recover the vehicles.  It did NOT do that.

So we are left with some rather obvious options... Russia deliberately did not engage its artillery in contradiction to doctrine and common sense, or it was obligated to do almost nothing by circumstances outside of its control. 

51 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

I must say I am not convinced by the Russians just electing to conserve ammo/guns,  with such a juicy target, in their place I would keep shooting even I had only practice rounds left and/or the barrels actually burst

Exactly this.

What are the possibilites for the lack of Russian artillery activity?  There are many:

• Gun density below what doctrine and need called for
• Incoming CB fire from Ukraine
• Outgoing CB fire from Russia
• Deconflicting for reasons of friendly helicopters
• Ammo shortage (didn't want to expend rounds on something already effectively neutralized)
• Fear of being CB'd (didn't want to risk guns revealing themselves for targets already effectively neutralized)
• Poorly times gun relocation to avoid Ukrainian CB
• Incompetence
• Structural problems with responsiveness and decision making

I believe no one of these things is 100% responsible for what we saw (or more accurately didn't see), but I think the last two (incompetence and structural problems) should be ruled out as significant factors.  These are STANDARD for Russian artillery and yet traditionally Russian artillery would have plastered the columns.

The one I think is most responsible is the first one; low gun density.  If you start out with less than is needed, then any of the other factors are going to make things exponentially worse.

Steve

[DesertFox]

Official ukrainian loss ratio figures. Corrosive warfare seems to be working. Not too shabby if true...

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

Guys, please... let's stop the tangential discussion of small arms.  It's the sort of great conversation to have when there's not a lot else going on.  I call the beginning phase of probably the largest scale combat operation in Europe since the end of WW2 "something else going on" at the very least

Steve

[Centurian52]

2 hours ago, Concrete said:

Noting Putin claims 160 Ukraine tanks destroyed but also 54 Russia tanks destroyed. The 160 number sounds like wishful thinking but why would he say they've lost 54 tanks themselves. That's a huge number for a week's fighting isnt it ? 

It's all relative. I'm used to studying WW2, so I'm conditioned to think that only losing 54 tanks is pretty light for a single day's fighting. But 54 tanks is also around 1/3rd of what the Soviets lost in the entire 10 year war in Afghanistan. So if your starting point is Afghanistan, then losing 54 tanks in a week is massive. WW2 and Afghanistan are the two extremes. For this war, losing 54 tanks in a week is just a hair above average.

[Grigb]

Ok, guys,  crude map for the actions 12-13 June based on UKR Mashovets post.

 

[Harmon Rabb]

A little special clip for those folks here who kept talking about killing the trucks.

Truck go boom.

[Kraft]

2 hours ago, Concrete said:

why would he say they've lost 54 tanks themselves. That's a huge number for a week's fighting isnt it ? 

Its higher than Oryx data

Edited June 14, 2023 by Kraft

[DesertFox]

Since we talked about russian ammo quality some pages back. These are tank rounds (115mm if Im not mistaken) allegedly delivered to the orcs in Luhansk. If their arty-ammo is in an equal state of "preservation", then we might be able to draw some telling conclusions. Seems like they are scraping the barrel...

https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1669034142061797411?s=20

 

[Harmon Rabb]

AFU PzH2000 crew in action and enjoying some java.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[Grigb]

Second UKR Mashovets post

Quote

Thus, we can state that the enemy command failed to stop UKR successful breach in the defense areas of the 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment (MRR) (127th MRD) and 71st MRR (42nd MRD of the 58th CAA of the Southern Military district) a few days ago...

Furthermore, it is apparent that the breakthrough of the supporting line and first line of defense in the aforementioned areas causes great trouble for the enemy.

As a result, we should not expect it to abandon its efforts to push back the advancing Ukrainian soldiers in this direction. For it is obvious that their continued advance to the south will most likely result not only in the completion of the first line of defense breakthrough, but also in UKR direct exit to the main line of defense of the GV "Vostok" (located south of S. Staromlinovka). As a result, the potential zone of destruction of the AFU's weapons, including long-range and high-precision artillery, will be expanded in a radically undesired direction for the enemy.

In this regard, the main "complication" element for the Russian command is that the Ukrainian command has not yet deployed main operational and tactical forces in this direction.

Simply put, the Russian command is concerned that as a result of this, its own reserves would be sent "too soon" and "in the wrong place." So, for the time being, we witness just limited forces and weaponry in the enemy's counterattacking efforts.
But, in any case, the development of the operational situation requires the enemy to progressively "activate" their reserves in ever-increasing volumes... This week, I believe, will provide answers to the majority of the questions.

In my opinion, the success of Ukraine's Armed Forces in the near future should not be measured by the liberation of any areas or settlements, but rather by "getting into battle" the majority of enemy reserves.

 

 

[Sekai]

15 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Since we talked about russian ammo quality some pages back. These are tank rounds (115mm if Im not mistaken) allegedly delivered to the orcs in Luhansk. If their arty-ammo is in an equal state of "preservation", then we might be able to draw some telling conclusions. Seems like they are scraping the barrel...

https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1669034142061797411?s=20

 

Heh, Russian roulette, but with tank ammo. Good luck, boys

Edited June 14, 2023 by Sekai

[Battlefront.com]

10 hours ago, Pete Wenman said:

The Wavell Room is always worth the read. Nothing really new in the article, but it is well laid out.

 

 

I did not find that particularly insightful and, in fact, a little less than what we've seen here and on some of the Twitter channels:

"It is not clear what happened between dawn and mid-morning. "

Well, it was a lot clearer than he stated and those details could have (I would argue should have) changed some of the analysis that followed.  Specifically, the destruction did not happen all at once.  This undermines his point that the Ukrainian prep bombardment was a significant factor to Ukraine's detriment.  Perhaps it did tip off the Russians to the initial assault, but that initial assault seems to have made the most progress.  It was the follow ups, with Russia already well alert to the threat, that didn't go well in the least.

Another bone of contention I have is the Russians devalued the impact the mines had to play in favor of active measures taken by air, artillery, and special forces.  The author went along with it instead of questioning to what degree it was true.

Additional problems with his conclusions:

"Tactical Lesson 3. Dismounted Troops’ vulnerability in the open, exacerbated today by the ubiquity of surveillance capabilities such as mini-drones.  Once the Ukrainian armoured infantry company became strung out, in single file, in an open field, it was inviting trouble."

True, but only if the Russians had used artillery to pin down and destroy the dismounted troops.  Since Russia did NOT do this, Ukraine was very lucky that Russia wasn't able to teach this lesson.

"Tactical Lesson 4. An obstacle belt must be covered by fire, in this case, artillery and ATGMs.  On-call attack helicopters (Ka-52s) and close support aircraft (Su-25SMs) can inflict significant damage to stranded vehicles."

The tactical lesson here is that a small number of ATGMs and aircraft can inflict significant damage and disrupt an attack, but without artillery it can only do that.  It can not wipe out an attacking force in its entirety, which is why the Vuhledar comparison he made earlier was flawed.  I'll pick up on that point and end it

 

Vuhledar was different from Orikhiv in several ways, the most important (and relevant here) is with the handling of artillery.  The similarity for these two battles is that fighting through a contested minefield is extremely dangerous and prone to catastrophic failure.  However, the use of artillery determines the amount of catastrophe that the attacker suffers.  In the Vuhledar battle Ukraine used (from what we can tell) copious amounts of artillery and wiped out a higher percentage of a MUCH larger attacking force compared to Orikhiv.  Instead, the bulk of Ukraine's assaulting force was able to withdraw with relatively light Human casualties.

The conclusion that the author should have come to is the obvious one we (here) predicted well before the battle started... Russia's forces are too thinly spread over too much area with no equalizing force (i.e. copious amounts of artillery) to compensate for the overall deficiencies.  As a result Ukraine got a bloody nose instead of having its head torn clean off.

Steve

[Bearstronaut]

45 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Guys, please... let's stop the tangential discussion of small arms.  It's the sort of great conversation to have when there's not a lot else going on.  I call the beginning phase of probably the largest scale combat operation in Europe since the end of WW2 "something else going on" at the very least

Steve

Wouldn't this be the second largest combat operation in Europe since WW2? The first being the Russian invasion of February 2022.

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Simply put, the Russian command is concerned that as a result of this, its own reserves would be sent "too soon" and "in the wrong place." So, for the time being, we witness just limited forces and weaponry in the enemy's counterattacking efforts.

(above is quote from Mashovets)

This is EXACTLY what we predicted would happen prior to the counter offensive kicking off.  Ukraine would make progress before it had to commit it's full strength, obligating Russia to respond with its reserves OR risk losing ground to preliminary attacks.

They're screwed either way.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, Bearstronaut said:

Wouldn't this be the second largest combat operation in Europe since WW2? The first being the Russian invasion of February 2022.

HAH!  You fell into my semantics trap!  The Russian invasion of February 2022 was not a planned combat operation, which is why it failed when it became engaged in combat.

Seriously though, I did think of this very point when I wrote what I wrote.  Russia's initial invasion plan was made explicitly with the assumption that combat would be light, if any.  Ukraine's counter offensive going on now was made with the opposite assumption.  Russia's offensives last year were smaller by comparison IMHO.

Steve

[Bearstronaut]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

HAH!  You fell into my semantics trap!  The Russian invasion of February 2022 was not a planned combat operation, which is why it failed when it became engaged in combat.

Seriously though, I did think of this very point when I wrote what I wrote.  Russia's initial invasion plan was made explicitly with the assumption that combat would be light, if any.  Ukraine's counter offensive going on now was made with the opposite assumption.  Russia's offensives last year were smaller by comparison IMHO.

Steve

Fair enough. Makes sense to me.

[Grigb]

comments of well-known UKR volunter Donik regarding that fight

Quote

Western armor technology has several constructive and ideological characteristics. It was created with the goal of protecting people as much as possible while being as reusable as feasible. There were no dead individuals during the tragedy that had been "condemned" by everyone. Concussions and injuries occurred. However, no one was killed. And we still have the equipment, it will be repaired. Maybe not everything, but maybe everything. I'm not an expert in this field.

and 47 brigade claim of RU losses as of 18:00 13-Jun

• APC 1 destroyed
• Cars 3 damaged, 2 destroyed 
• Trucks 5 destroyed
• Tanks 6 destroyed
• BMP-3 2 destroyed
• ATGM 2 destroyed
• TOS  1 destroyed
• SPG 2 destroyed
• MLRS BM21 1 damaged
• Aircraft SU-25 1 destroyed
• Helicopter KA-52 1 destroyed

[Kinophile]

3 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Maybe Kadyrov is trolling, but I frankly think he was simply stoned by some strange herbs from his mountains when writing this.

 

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraines-counteroffensive-begins-shall-leopards-break-free

Cmon,  cut him a break. He's exhausted,  poor diddums. Those goats ain't gonna hump themselves, are they?