How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

Oh what the heck... total RUMINT that will most likely prove to be false, but it would be fun if it turns out to be true:

The Twitter account that posted this doesn't seem to be crazy, but it will take more than a blurry photo and "no proof of life" within 7 hours to convince me he's out of the picture.

If it does turn out to be true (very low probability!), then I think we can guess why this particular trench was targeted

Steve

[DesertFox]

Hmm, I guess someone is pulling a leg, a pegleg...

 

 

[dan/california]

thought better of it

Edited June 19, 2023 by dan/california

[kevinkin]

Channeling Russia, China uses its people as Frisbees:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12205705/Chinese-military-expert-filed-patent-Covid-vaccine-died-mysterious-circumstances.html

US vaccine developers told investigators that it would have been impossible to have generated the data cited in the patent so swiftly – it would have taken about three months' work, meaning that scientists at the Wuhan Institute for Virology were secretly working on a Covid vaccine in November, two months before Beijing told the world about the pandemic.

This is only important here in the context that Russia and China are in bed together. And China might try a lot of mischief bailing out their proxy. 

[Battlefront.com]

Looks like Girkin is still willing to skate between staying on message and saying what he really believes.  I don't know when this video was uploaded, but it makes reference to the St Petersburg Economic Forum so it has to be very recent.

He is not saying that the frontline is in danger of collapsing, just that if it does everything else will go with it.  He also is doing his usual criticism of the population not being more involved in the war, but interestingly is NOT criticizing the regime for failure to fully mobilize as he usually does.

Interested in what Grigb's take on this is.

Steve

 

[akd]

31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh what the heck... total RUMINT that will most likely prove to be false, but it would be fun if it turns out to be true:

The Twitter account that posted this doesn't seem to be crazy, but it will take more than a blurry photo and "no proof of life" within 7 hours to convince me he's out of the picture.

If it does turn out to be true (very low probability!), then I think we can guess why this particular trench was targeted

Steve

The account is pretty clearly posting this tongue in cheek just because of the red beard.

[paxromana]

9 hours ago, Audgisil said:

It's my understanding that surrendering is one of the most dangerous things to attempt during a firefight, likely even more so at those ranges. Those Ukrainian soldiers had less than a fraction of a second to determine if the enemy moving toward or past them are armed, carrying a grenade, attempting to engage in hand-to-hand, etc. The fact that the Ukrainian soldiers called out at one point in the video for the Russians to surrender speaks very well of them. However, this is a clear case of "when in doubt, open fire."

Many years ago when I was in Sydney University Regiment (CMF aka Army Reserve) during my University days the training Warrant Officer said straight out that attempting surrender during an opposed assault is all but suicide (especially if you are alone) ... his advice was to defend in place until the attackers either ran out of steam or moved on (in the latter case, a carefully negotiated surrender was possible).

He also implried very strongly that taking single prisoners during an opposed assault when you were the ones doing the assaulting was ... a bad idea, Laws of Land Warfare notwithstanding ... as there was, theoretically, too much chance of it being a ruse (and, of course, would bog down the assault ... the latter unstated)

[kevinkin]

Almost makes you want to puke:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/world/europe/ukraine-weapons-howitzers-contracts.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

If the west is selling that Ukraine is the pillar of hope for all freedom loving people, the status quo way of doing business has to stop. There is a lot SNAFU in war and waste of time and money and lives. 

As much of 30 percent of Kyiv’s arsenal is under repair at any given time — a high rate, defense experts said, for a military that needs every weapon it can get for its developing counteroffensive.
“If I was the head of an army that has gifted kit to Ukraine, I’d be professionally very embarrassed if I turned stuff around in bad order,” said Ben Barry, a land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Ok, in the scheme of things these episodes may not matter. But they are sad nevertheless. High profile systems will do fine. F-16s won't fall out of the skies. HIMARs will work. Storm Shadows will be accurate. However, the guts of the day to day systems have to be numerous and high quality too. The west has to stop patting itself on the back and start breaking its back, and Russia's neck. 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Almost makes you want to puke:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/world/europe/ukraine-weapons-howitzers-contracts.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

If the west is selling that Ukraine is the pillar of hope for all freedom loving people, the status quo way of doing business has to stop. There is a lot SNAFU in war and waste of time and money and lives. 

As much of 30 percent of Kyiv’s arsenal is under repair at any given time — a high rate, defense experts said, for a military that needs every weapon it can get for its developing counteroffensive.
“If I was the head of an army that has gifted kit to Ukraine, I’d be professionally very embarrassed if I turned stuff around in bad order,” said Ben Barry, a land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Ok, in the scheme of things these episodes may not matter. But they are sad nevertheless. High profile systems will do fine. F-16s won't fall out of the skies. HIMARs will work. Storm Shadows will be accurate. However, the guts of the day to day systems have to be numerous and high quality too. The west has to stop patting itself on the back and start breaking its back, and Russia's neck. 

it doesn't help that they have a mishmash of virtually every piece of equipment produced in the last fifty years by both NATO AND the Warsaw pact. 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

Almost makes you want to puke:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/world/europe/ukraine-weapons-howitzers-contracts.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

If the west is selling that Ukraine is the pillar of hope for all freedom loving people, the status quo way of doing business has to stop. There is a lot SNAFU in war and waste of time and money and lives. 

As much of 30 percent of Kyiv’s arsenal is under repair at any given time — a high rate, defense experts said, for a military that needs every weapon it can get for its developing counteroffensive.
“If I was the head of an army that has gifted kit to Ukraine, I’d be professionally very embarrassed if I turned stuff around in bad order,” said Ben Barry, a land warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Ok, in the scheme of things these episodes may not matter. But they are sad nevertheless. High profile systems will do fine. F-16s won't fall out of the skies. HIMARs will work. Storm Shadows will be accurate. However, the guts of the day to day systems have to be numerous and high quality too. The west has to stop patting itself on the back and start breaking its back, and Russia's neck. 

There seems to be three separate issues identified in this article:

1. items being delivered in poor shape because they were not well maintained and issues weren't addressed ahead of arrival in Ukraine
2. items taking longer to arrive because they were in poor shape prior to getting to Ukraine and extra time was needed to get them fixed up.  This, unfortunately, is a massive problem for all militaries, even the US with more money and better accountability.  Let's remember the Bundeswehr's scandals, especially about its Navy.
3. items taking too long to get to Ukraine due to various bumps in the procurement system.  Including problems within Ukraine, not just with foreign organizations/governments

For the most part only the first one contributes to the 30% in repair at any given time, and even then it's probably not a large percentage.  The other two are about the frustrating delays between agreements and deliveries.  We all know this process isn't going as well as it needs to be, yet it isn't horrible either.  We've seen things like Storm Shadow and Patriot that showed up quickly and effectively.

As for the bulk of the maintenance backlog, I am absolutely not surprised.  It was one of the reasons I was against sending Ukraine anything like Brads and Leos back in 2022.  The maintenance issues that come with them, even perfect out of the factory, are massive. Even in a best case scenario small problems are going to take something out of service easier and for longer because Ukraine lacks the experienced mechanics and parts to get the stuff out of the shop. 

So I for one am not surprised by what this report has to say about things being offline waiting for repair.  Says a guy who just paid $3000 in troubleshooting labor to fix an electrical problem in a truck type that the shop works on every day because they have the dealer/repair franchise for my part of the state.  And if Ukraine is anything like the US, they are probably short on mechanics.

Steve

[cesmonkey]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-artillerymen-praise-us-howitzers-outside-russian-held-town-2023-06-19/

Quote

NEAR KREMINNA, Ukraine, June 19 (Reuters) - The artillerymen of Ukraine's 67th infantry brigade are delighted with the U.S.-supplied M119 howitzer amid an increase in military exchanges south of the Russian-held town of Kreminna.

 

[kevinkin]

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So I for one am not surprised

No, it's not surprising. That's the point. Status quo. What would be surprising is if the west untangles the mess and saves Ukrainian lives in the process. If the west is reluctant to provide war winning firepower now, at least get the nuts and bolts straight. Put western maintenance crews on the ground. Yet another asymmetry to attack Russian with. (dismounting my high horse). 

[Battlefront.com]

WarGonzo is apparently still trying to give off the appearance of "truthful" reporting while, at the same time, appearing to comply with the general information trend that we've been discussing.

https://t.me/wargonzo/13342

The reporting is more or less "an attack happened here by us/them", but no details at all.  No indication of what those attacks might have achieved or failed to achieve.  Which is better than the BS we were parsing earlier that the only reason why Russia's glorious mobiks aren't crossing the English Channel today is the heaps of dead Ukrainians and destroyed equipment was too big to drive over or around.

That said, there were two small (vague) hints that the frontline changed at all.  The more important one is Ukraine has entered the town of Krasnopolivka, NE of Soledar.  The other is that some ground was gained by Ukraine in the direction of Vesele, which is north of Avdiivka.  No details, just a bland couple of words.

To be fair, ISW's reporting doesn't indicate a lot of motion on the frontlines, though it is greater than what WarGonzo reports.  For example, WarGonzo says Ukraine "continues its assault on Pyatykhatky", yet it's all over the net that Ukraine took it.  He didn't even put forward the unsubstantiated claim that Russia retook it.  Just says Ukraine attacked it.

I'm speculating that this is an attempt at non-compliant compliance with Kremlin messaging requirements.

Grigb... any thoughts on this?

Steve

[cesmonkey]

Russian optimisim:

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by cesmonkey

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

No, it's not surprising. That's the point. Status quo. What would be surprising is if the west untangles the mess and saves Ukrainian lives in the process. If the west is reluctant to provide war winning firepower now, at least get the nuts and bolts straight. Put western maintenance crews on the ground. Yet another asymmetry to attack Russian with. (dismounting my high horse). 

Well, I think one of the big lessons we've seen in this war so far is that the West is completely unprepared for this sort of war and the sorts of problems encountered are not easily waived away.  In fact, it could be that there's been more success at working around these problems than we're giving the West credit for.  It's still way, way, way more of a mess than it should be, however that doesn't mean it's shown no improvement.  It's very difficult to measure because there are so many moving parts in so many governments that it's really difficult to sort out.  And that, by itself, is a big problem.

Looking at how "efficiently" governments work through other problems, totally unrelated to this war, it's not hard to see that institutions are all slower to act than they need to be when things are really bad.  The US has a couple of hurricanes responses in the past 20 years that serve to illustrate my point.

Not offering excuses, merely offering perspective to shape realistic expectations.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Russian optimisim:

 

Well, he started off strong.  He spoke of an undivided, nationally unified Ukraine is forging the best Army in the world, "The Army of victors!".  He then went on to point out that the way Russian soldiers and officers are fighting will be studied in every military academy in the world.  Then he went a bit off the rails and his guests went further off the rails.

At least this is my interpretation of his remarks

Steve

[Ithikial_AU]

35 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So I for one am not surprised by what this report has to say about things being offline waiting for repair.  Says a guy who just paid $3000 in troubleshooting labor to fix an electrical problem in a truck type that the shop works on every day because they have the dealer/repair franchise for my part of the state.  And if Ukraine is anything like the US, they are probably short on mechanics.

Steve

Quick and dodgy chart from OECD data. Graduate numbers for the field of education of Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction by source. Problem for most advanced economies that focuses on the importance of the University degree. Seems post GFC the US tends towards more College engineers to design stuff than the tradies to actually fix it when it goes wrong. Australia, we've had that problem stretching back to my generation at least. Likely partially due to Govt funded cheap loans for University level education. But also parent / student bias plays a big part in career decision making here.

With the graph, I think the numbers are denominations of tens. So spread roughly 200,000 or 2,000,000 graduates per year across all 50 states across those three industries... probably why getting a mechanic is a touch tough at the moment.  

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EDU_GRAD_FIELD

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, akd said:

The account is pretty clearly posting this tongue in cheek just because of the red beard.

Yeah, probably so.  But I looked at the other postings and didn't see this sort of thing anytime recently so figured someone might think it to be true.  The other link someone posted above was clearly more for laughs.

Steve

[Chibot Mk IX]

On 6/18/2023 at 1:13 PM, kevinkin said:

That goes without saying. The devil is in the details. Fixed wing altitude vs finding the chopper in the clutter long enough to get a lock. Plus all the other things you mentioned like EW and setting up a SAM safe corridor for the choppers to work in. Using the fixed wings to strike bases would be more efficient. There is not a lot (any) new information on this. Maybe the USAF gave up on the idea. But the UA could come up with their own tactics when they receive F16s 

As a Wargamer, one of the greatest joy we have is using various tools (even if they are amateur and used for entertainment purposes) to check if our crazy ideas are feasible. Here, we have a set of tools called CMO. I have created a few scenarios in the editor. Overall, I agree with your perspective that using an F-16 fighter jet to attack a low-flying Ka-52 helicopter within Russian-controlled territory is not an efficient approach.

 

In the scenario, I assumed that Ukraine is using the F-16A MLU donated by the Netherlands, while the Russian military has a Ka-52 helicopter hovering at a low altitude 10 kilometers behind their first defensive line. The F-16's radar can generally detect the Ka-52 at a range of 16nm. If the F-16 is at high altitude, there is only one opportunity for an attack because the Ka-52 will quickly enter the radar's blind zone. If the F-16 decides to dive into low altitude or initiates the attack from low altitude, it must consider the threat from short-range air defenses. However, considering the threat posed by the Russian S-300 system, a low-level penetration might be a more viable option.

 

Subsequently, I added more elements to the scenario, including A-50 and a full suite of short-range and long-range SAM systems for the Russian. The Ukrainian F-16 takes off near Vinnytsia, flies at high altitude over Zaporizhzhia, transitions to low altitude, and turns southeast towards Orikhiv. This brings an additional issue: after flying over 200 nm, the low-flying F-16 only has around 20 minutes of fuel remaining before Bingo Fuel, meaning it can only perform one attack before disengaging.

 

Similar to before, the F-16's radar detects the Ka-52 at 16 nm, but both aircraft are in low altitude, significantly reducing the effective range of the AIM-120B missile due to air resistance (and yes, max range =/= effective range). The F-16 must close in to approximately 7 nm for the Ka-52 to be within the missile's Dynamic Launch Zone (DLZ). However, before reaching this distance, the F-16 pilot receives multiple SAM radar warning alerts.

 

In summary, after conducting a single AMRAAM attack, the F-16 must turn and disengage. The success rate is not high, with a small probability of the F-16 being shot down by SAMs, and the chance of the AIM-120B hitting the Ka-52 at the extreme edge of its effective range is also low. According to the PoH calculation formula in CMO, this probability is only 29%.

 

Please note that this simulation only considers the Russian ground-based SAM systems, and if a group of Su-35s are added to provide CAP, the F-16's chances of a successful attack would be extremely low.

 

The conclusion drawn from this simulation is that the Ukrainian F-16 should focus on its main tasks, such as gaining air superiority and conducting SEAD, plus attacking Russian airfields and ground support. The mission of hunting down the airborne Ka-52 within Russian-controlled territory should be assigned to other weapons and equipment.

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, Ithikial_AU said:

Quick and dodgy chart from OECD data. Graduate numbers for the field of education of Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction by source. Problem for most advanced economies that focuses on the importance of the University degree. Seems post GFC the US tends towards more College engineers to design stuff than the tradies to actually fix it when it goes wrong. Australia, we've had that problem stretching back to my generation at least. Likely partially due to Govt funded cheap loans for University level education. But also parent / student bias plays a big part in career decision making here.

With the graph, I think the numbers are denominations of tens. So spread roughly 200,000 or 2,000,000 graduates per year across all 50 states across those three industries... probably why getting a mechanic is a touch tough at the moment.  

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EDU_GRAD_FIELD

I don't want to get off topic, but I will say this is an increasingly evident problem in the US to anybody who is looking around.  It was first flagged 20 years ago with the looming retirement bubble of airline pilots, long haul truckers, primary care doctors, nurses, and other "hands on" technical people with no signs of people interested in replacing them.  The truck repair facility I spoke about used to have 8 mechanics on a Saturday shift.  A few months they closed down on Saturdays because they could only regularly get 2 to show up.  These jobs pay BIG money for the area. 

I've told many people over the last few years that if I had to do my career all over again I would have gone into HVAC, welding, electrical, or some other critical trade that AI won't ever get rid of. Good paying job for life wherever you choose to call home.  Something to be said about that.

Steve

P.S.  I am in contact with friends in enough countries to know this is a serious problem pretty much everywhere.

[Grigb]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Another example of Russian troll messaging.  The Twitter account makes no apologies about having a pro-Russian agenda and, in fact, states that is the purpose of the account:

And another one:

And one more.  Supposedly the South Ossetian battalion that RU sources said was wiped out is alive and well and proving they weren't wiped out at Pyatikhatki by posting a video of a platoon in some random patch of woods.  Would be interesting to know what they said (roughly speaking):

Steve

They say bla-bla-bla UKR are lying we are not destroyed, just lost few of our comrades bla-bla-bla. 

I like a quote from one RU soldier:"I have seen video of UKR soldier standing over Osetin body, I have not seen video of Osetin soldier standing over Ukrainian body"  

[Battlefront.com]

If this drone could talk it would likely say "I Regret I Have One Life to Give to My Country" .  Bless you drone, and all the lives you just saved with your selfless act of bravery!

Steve

[Grigb]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh what the heck... total RUMINT that will most likely prove to be false, but it would be fun if it turns out to be true:

The Twitter account that posted this doesn't seem to be crazy, but it will take more than a blurry photo and "no proof of life" within 7 hours to convince me he's out of the picture.

If it does turn out to be true (very low probability!), then I think we can guess why this particular trench was targeted

Steve

Yesterday these photos were circulating among UKR channels as joke. Today it is news

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, Grigb said:

They say bla-bla-bla UKR are lying we are not destroyed, just lost few of our comrades bla-bla-bla. 

I like a quote from one RU soldier:"I have seen video of UKR soldier standing over Osetin body, I have not seen video of Osetin soldier standing over Ukrainian body"  

Heh... I didn't bother to translate the Russian responses.  That one is funny

Here's one from Rybar that is pretty creative.  Boils down to we have video of all the Ukrainian stuff we've destroyed, but the West's control of information is so damned good that all attempts to show this evidence has been thwarted!  So just trust us we have it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

More footage of fighting south of Bakhmut.  It looks like the Russians have abandoned their positions but the Ukrainian unit is moving cautiously.  About half way through the video they spot something, fire a bit, and you can hear they hit someone.  Later they approach one of the many well camouflaged holes and two soldiers unload on what was probably an already dead Russian soldier.  So not fully abandoned after all.

Steve