How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chris talpas]

Latest Perun drop

 

[kevinkin]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tattered-and-bandaged-russian-pows-describe-ukraines-offensive-3ee8c7e3

Was able to view the article:

But the Russian infantry tasked with holding up the initial attacks in trenches and tree lines are taking heavier losses, according to men fighting on both sides. 

Many are facing Ukrainian brigades armed with more potent Western weaponry than at any time since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine early last year.

Several prisoners who spoke to The Wall Street Journal described morale on the Russian side as poor. The POWs quoted in this article described their voluntary surrender, which is a crime in Russia. 

Lots of LARGE images. 

[kevinkin]

Fixed winged vs Choppers:

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/attack-helicopter-crews-explain-why-an-attack-helicopter-if-properly-flown-would-defeat-most-fighter-airplanes-in-1v1-air-combat/

I remember this article from a few years ago:

In 1978/79 US Army and US Air Force conducted a joint experiment called Joint Countering Attack Helicopter (J-CATCH). J-CATCH focused on dissimilar air combat between jet fighters and attack helicopters. To the surprise of many involved in the program, the helicopters proved extremely dangerous to the fighters when they were properly employed, racking up a 5-to-1 kill ratio over the fighters when fighting at close ranges with guns.

Typical helicopter turn rates are 30 to 40 degrees per second, three times that of the fighter, even at high g, so the fighter will find the helicopters weapons always engaging it during any serious contest. If the helicopter gun and missiles were selected for anti-aircraft (like the 30mm guns on the Mi-24 and KA-50/51), the results are that the attack helicopter becomes like a rapidly mobile SAM site, a very dangerous target.’

[womble]

3 hours ago, pintere said:

As Ukrainian forces penetrate deeper into the defences, they will come into range of more Russian artillery firing posts. Moreover, their own artillery will be able to deliver fewer counterbattery missions [snip] As Ukrainian troops push forwards, they will also be covered by fewer air defences, and will likely come under greater attack by the Russian Aerospace Forces and aviation.

I'm a bit puzzled as to why these four things will be true. Surely the liberated areas won't be so huge relative to the already-defended lands that moving the AD and CB umbrellas forward (judiciously, once the superior CB of the UKR has whittled the Russian artillery down to local ineffectiveness) to cover the crunchies' advanced positions, will they?

Maintaining artillery superiority is another reason for a broad advance. If you generate a salient, you have to put your CB assets into the salient to be able to reach the enemy's batteries that are "in front" of the projection in your lines, which brings your long-ranged CB assets into range of shorter-ranged enemy fires to the sides of the pocket. Which is obviously suboptimal. So you need a broad, uniform front of advance, so that the enemy is always "in front" of you, not to the sides. Patton would have a fit.

[womble]

10 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Fixed winged vs Choppers:

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/attack-helicopter-crews-explain-why-an-attack-helicopter-if-properly-flown-would-defeat-most-fighter-airplanes-in-1v1-air-combat/

I remember this article from a few years ago:

In 1978/79 US Army and US Air Force conducted a joint experiment called Joint Countering Attack Helicopter (J-CATCH). J-CATCH focused on dissimilar air combat between jet fighters and attack helicopters. To the surprise of many involved in the program, the helicopters proved extremely dangerous to the fighters when they were properly employed, racking up a 5-to-1 kill ratio over the fighters when fighting at close ranges with guns.

Typical helicopter turn rates are 30 to 40 degrees per second, three times that of the fighter, even at high g, so the fighter will find the helicopters weapons always engaging it during any serious contest. If the helicopter gun and missiles were selected for anti-aircraft (like the 30mm guns on the Mi-24 and KA-50/51), the results are that the attack helicopter becomes like a rapidly mobile SAM site, a very dangerous target.’

That sounds like an incredibly specific exercise of placing the fixed wing in the most disadvantageous situation possible vis a vis the rotary. Nobody here, for sure, has suggested that F-16s go hunting Russian attack helos with cannon. AMRAAMs by look-down radar from 50km is more the speed we're talking. Beyond Visual Range. Do Ka-52 (or any AH) have the avionics to compete in that field?

[pintere]

7 minutes ago, womble said:

Maintaining artillery superiority is another reason for a broad advance. If you generate a salient, you have to put your CB assets into the salient to be able to reach the enemy's batteries that are "in front" of the projection in your lines, which brings your long-ranged CB assets into range of shorter-ranged enemy fires to the sides of the pocket. Which is obviously suboptimal. So you need a broad, uniform front of advance, so that the enemy is always "in front" of you, not to the sides. Patton would have a fit.

I think that ties into one of the assumptions by the authors. Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower or material superiority to push the Russians back on a broad front. Therefore they’ll need to pick a spot they’re confident they can breach, smash the lines there and surge towards the south. But from the time they create a salient until the actual breakthrough, they will be more vulnerable.

[DesertFox]

6 minutes ago, womble said:

AMRAAMs by look-down radar from 50km is more the speed we're talking. Beyond Visual Range. 

Exactly. Enforcing a No-Fly zone up to 50 klicks beyond the bomb-line by look-down/shoot-down capability would be perfect. But we are not there yet.

Edited June 18, 2023 by DesertFox

[chrisl]

8 hours ago, dan/california said:

The harder question is can NATO ship Ukraine enough water purification systems and medical supplies to keep the problem Russian only. Also a vast potential for civilian suffering, especially in the Russian held areas. All that said, Karma has entered the chat, bleeping itself to death is almost as bad as what the Russian army deserves. Double points for the Russians themselves causing the problem. 

Sawyer filters are very cheap ($20 retail) and very effective at removing microbes.  You can filter a couple liters in a few minutes - in Oregon I just keep one in my camelback so I can get water anywhere.  Put the factory on extra shifts and ship them to Ukraine.

[kevinkin]

14 minutes ago, womble said:

AMRAAMs by look-down radar from 50km is more the speed we're talking. Beyond Visual Range. Do Ka-52 (or any AH) have the avionics to compete in that field?

Can that radar find a chopper among the ground clutter while saying safe from enemy SAMs? I don't know but it will be interesting to find out. Wouldn't available fighters be put to better use anyway. I think their use against the Ka-52 would be born out of extreme necessity. 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That is ridiculous.  They are the point they need to bubble wrap a tank and build a barn roof on top of it.

Sword to plowshares :: tanks to barns

[Letter from Prague]

37 minutes ago, pintere said:

I think that ties into one of the assumptions by the authors. Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower or material superiority to push the Russians back on a broad front. Therefore they’ll need to pick a spot they’re confident they can breach, smash the lines there and surge towards the south. But from the time they create a salient until the actual breakthrough, they will be more vulnerable.

The Russians also don't have the manpower or equipment to man a broad front - as people have computed here many times. There is just too many kilometers.

This whole thing seems more like a playing hide and seek with "the front" being more of an abstraction, center of mass kinda.

[Haiduk]

Hmmm....

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Ukrainan aviation hit large ammo dump, deployed on grain elevator in Rykove settlement (also in some reports it named Partyzany - old decommunized name, existing before 2016) in 18 km north from Henichesk. Intensive detonations are lasting more than four hours so far. Probably the settlement will be badly damaged.

Reportedly there were strikes on ammo dumps and troops deployments in Lazurne and Skadovsk, but no visual confirmations yet

 

That's an interesting strike.  The size and location of this indicates an important strategic stash of ammo.  It is located on the rail line going between Crimea and Melitopol and is out of range of Ukrainian artillery, including HIMARS.  Destroying this dump will have an impact on the fight for the main line of defenses as it probably took Russia weeks to stockpile this location.

Nice hit.

Steve

[danfrodo]

6 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Hmmm....

was is los???  I will wait for confirmation over today & tomorrow, but hopefully this is true.  RU went heavy in trying to hold every meter of land.  Hopefully RU getting what it deserves for that clever strategy. 

There's lots of hopeful signs.  RU with bad water, poor food, ammo being expended & unreplenished due to dumps being hit, heavy loss of arty.  Using T55/62s as arty wouldn't happen if one has plenty of real arty available before this offensive even started. 

Some pages ago there was link to person saying it was unrealistic that RU front would collapse.  Indeed, we all know this. but UKR doesn't need the front to collapse.  It just needs some sectors to collapse, unhinging neighboring sectors.  A platoon that runs away or surrenders could mean UKR advance onto a critical road or junction, leaving neighbors cut off from supply, the problem cascades until RU move up some reserves and stops the advance after some kms.  The key is that RU can only afford this so many times in so many places before there's a serious breakthrough.

The map above looks rather optimistic and I very much want to believe it.  But it seems to good to be true at this point.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

The Russians also don't have the manpower or equipment to man a broad front - as people have computed here many times. There is just too many kilometers.

This whole thing seems more like a playing hide and seek with "the front" being more of an abstraction, center of mass kinda.

The offset to low troop density on the defence is ISR superiority, long range fires integration and C2 enabled rapid counter-moves...you can see why I am really not worried about the RA "Putin Line" so much.  The one advantage the RA had, they pissed away on this winter offensive...dumb mass.

Edited June 18, 2023 by The_Capt

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, chrisl said:

Sawyer filters are very cheap ($20 retail) and very effective at removing microbes.  You can filter a couple liters in a few minutes - in Oregon I just keep one in my camelback so I can get water anywhere.  Put the factory on extra shifts and ship them to Ukraine.

I prefer my katadyne pocket 

[TheVulture]

30 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Hmmm....

IF that's accurate, then that's an order of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen so far in the offensive, and some thrusts have already reached halfway to Tokmak. That would be pretty big news. Any thoughts on how reliable it is Haiduk, or might there be an element of optimistic interpretation of reports mixed in here?

[Haiduk]

4 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

IF that's accurate, then that's an order of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen so far in the offensive, and some thrusts have already reached halfway to Tokmak. That would be pretty big news. Any thoughts on how reliable it is Haiduk, or might there be an element of optimistic interpretation of reports mixed in here?

I don't know the source of this map. Twiter account posted it without any links

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Grigb said:

Viktor Murakhovsky (Soviet and Russian military and public figure, colonel of the reserve, member of the Expert Council of the Board of the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation)

 

A few days ago we had a discussion where we were looking for documentation of Russians saying the Cope Cages were intended to defend against Javelins.  Looks like we have it!

I personally think the Cope Cages (this type, not the sort of flimsy ones at the start of the war) have a decent chance of minimizing the damage from a Javelin if it hits the cage.  The problem for Russia is that the chances of that happening are not all that good. 

The relationship of the shooter to the tank, both in terms of range and angle, has a major influence as to where the Javelin strikes.  The cage, at best, protects the tank from a very limited subset of possibilities.  In one scenario (a perpendicular overshoot) the cage could actually "catch" what would otherwise have been a miss.

Javelins aim for center mass in part because they have a +/- error of something like a meter.  Which means, various factors can contribute to the missile not hitting center mass, which is the only thing the Cope Cage can even hope to intercept.  If the tank is moving towards the shooter it's more likely to hit the back of the tank than the turret, for example.

Also, although Javelins do come down at a steep angle they don't come straight down.  I expect most strikes would still wind up impacting the turret, especially if the shooter is perpendicular to the tank.

Steve

[DesertFox]

5 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I don't know the source of this map. Twiter account posted it without any links

Here:

Hes no noname. Ex Seal Team Six Squad Leader. But remaining skeptical until confirmed by other sources is always advisable.

 

 

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Here:

Hes no noname. Ex Seal Team Six Squad Leader. But remaining skeptical until confirmed by other sources is always advisable.

 

 

ex seal team squad six leader?  Yeah, whatever.  I just met a guy who's telling people he's ex navy seal.  But it seems he's also army?  And the army "won't let him go" meaning they call him out of the blue to leave his day job and go on 'missions'.  Oh, and he says he killed one of the 'playing card' villians in Iraq w his sharpshooting prowess.  Dude is ~40 yrs old, beer belly the size of a witch's cauldron, couldn't run a 100m w a bear on his tail. The only 'mission' he can perform is carrying 12 pack out of the store to his truck.

Yet everyone seems to believe him.  I do not.  Not one bit. 

[cesmonkey]

6 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Here:

Hes no noname. Ex Seal Team Six Squad Leader. But remaining skeptical until confirmed by other sources is always advisable.

 

 

That guy tends to over-exaggerate Ukrainian successes on his appearances on the @MyryiaReport podcast.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Hes no noname. Ex Seal Team Six Squad Leader

FFS how many of these guys have come out of the woodwork in the last 18 months?  1) his claimed experience is impossible to verify because - classified. 2) what in the hell does a Seal Team Six NCO know about high intensity peer-conventional conflict(?), and 3) if he was what he says he was, and is still hooked into western intel...he should know better than posting updates based on that, on freakin Twitter.

Claiming SF gets a lot of views but it that experience has little to do with the actual war unless they have served forward in Ukraine...and they cannot talk about it if they have.  I have watched a lot of guys with SF patches pretending thy know what they are talking about...and they do not.  Even the trail of former Generals are often off the mark because this war is so far outside the experience of any western military since Korea.  At this point all we can do is make best guesses by applying basic military assessments.  I have seen so much weird in this war that I feel completely lost at times.

Edited June 18, 2023 by The_Capt

[DesertFox]

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

FFS how many of these guys have come out of the woodwork in the last 18 months?  1) his claimed experience is impossible to verify because - classified. 2) what in the hell does a Seal Team Six NCO know about high intensity peer-conventional conflict(?), and 3) if he was what he says he was, and is still hooked into western intel...he should know better than posting updated based on that on freakin Twitter.

Claiming SF gets a lot of views but it that experience has little to do with the actual war unless they have served forward in Ukraine...and they cannot talk about it if they have.  I have watched a lot of guys with SF patches pretending thy know what they are talking about...and they do not.  Even the trail of former Generals are often off the mark because this war is so far outside the experience of any western military since Korea.  At this point all we can do is make best guesses by applying basic military assessments.  I have seen so much weird in this war that I feel completely lost at times.

Thats why I advise to judge his output on the merit of its quality. Every online figure on twitter or youtube has to. They all are after earning money with their accounts. Hence all of them have an agenda, this way or the other.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, womble said:

That sounds like an incredibly specific exercise of placing the fixed wing in the most disadvantageous situation possible vis a vis the rotary. Nobody here, for sure, has suggested that F-16s go hunting Russian attack helos with cannon. AMRAAMs by look-down radar from 50km is more the speed we're talking. Beyond Visual Range. Do Ka-52 (or any AH) have the avionics to compete in that field?

Yeah, could be an exercise where a particular outcome was "encouraged".  Either way, the tech used in the period of that test doesn't have much in common with what's available now.  Therefore, I wouldn't base any conclusions on it.

Steve