How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

Well, the specific scandal about the Ukraine funding accounting might wind up playing some role in a bigger move to improve accountability.  I was unaware that the Pentagon is already skating on thin ice:

Quote

The legislation comes after the Pentagon failed its fifth budget audit last year and after a CBS News report found defense contractors overcharged the Defense Department by nearly 40 percent to 50 percent. According to the Office of the Inspector General for the Defense Department, sometimes overcharging reached more than 4,000 percent.

https://thehill.com/homenews/4061378-bipartisan-senate-group-introduces-bill-to-force-clean-audit-of-pentagon-funding-amid-price-gouging-concerns/

Whether this latest attempt to reign in fraud and wasteful spending will do anything or not is yet to be seen.  History indicates it won't do more than nibble at the edges.

Steve

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Out of all the statistics in this war that we haven't seen released by Ukraine, the number of Russian POWs taken is the one I'd peek at if allowed to peek at one and only one number.  Yes, I'm more curious about that than KIA and WIA for either side.

Steve

Remember too that it's quite difficult anonymously surrender in this war. Russia has far more understanding of who is where and what their disposition is than any historical Russian army before it (in the Russian context, mind you). It is very clear that the regime won't hesitate to take measures against what it terms defeatism and it has to be on the mind of every mobik that surrender (perhaps on video on CNN and the BBC) might be quite a bad thing for the family back home. The fight and the men in it are (relatively speaking) in a fish bowl making surrender a much more difficult proposition. 

[JonS]

10 hours ago, dan/california said:

The anti land mine people

You mis-spelled "anti pointless-and-avoidable-killing-of-innocents people".

Armour is not an "area target". Armour is a point target. The best way to attack point targets is with accurate weapons.

Edited June 22, 2023 by JonS

[cesmonkey]

58 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, the specific scandal about the Ukraine funding accounting might wind up playing some role in a bigger move to improve accountability.  I was unaware that the Pentagon is already skating on thin ice:

Whether this latest attempt to reign in fraud and wasteful spending will do anything or not is yet to be seen.  History indicates it won't do more than nibble at the edges.

Steve

My bet is that it passes. I think it's cleverly-written to inflict a 1% budget pain on those "entities" that fail. That's not too much pain, but it is a small incentive.
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-sanders-make-bipartisan-push-to-audit-the-pentagon-and-curb-wasteful-spending
 

Quote

(1) the amount available to such department,
11 agency, or element for the fiscal year in which such
12 determination is made shall be equal to the amount
13 otherwise authorized to be appropriated minus 1.0
14 percent;
15 (2) the amount unavailable to such department,
16 agency, or element for that fiscal year pursuant to
17 paragraph (1) shall be applied on a pro rata basis
18 against each program, project, and activity of such
19 department, agency, or element in that fiscal year;

 

[cesmonkey]

Has this been mentioned already? A pickup-mounted (on a pallet) laser for shooting down drones:
 

https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/lasers

Also, the KA-52 Alligators may end up destroying themselves due to a vibration issue:

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by cesmonkey

[dan/california]

25 minutes ago, JonS said:

You mis-spelled "anti pointless and avoidable killing of innocents people".

Armour is not an "area target". Armour is a point target. The best way to attack point targets is with accurate weapons.

So pointless that both sides in this war are laying them as fast as they physically can. Mines have literally been one of the defining weapons of this conflict. The Ukrainians seem to find them less awful than the Russians. The Russians seem to find them cheap and useful and surely don't give a bleep about anything. Putting artillery delivered mines in lanes the other side thought were clear may the most effective tactic demonstrated in this war. The West has built up a lot of doctrine, and SOP, and so on that assumed we would never really be challenged again. I hope we are right, Ukraine I am sure would be delighted for NATO's air force to show up at any time, until then...

[billbindc]

Good to see that the intense diplomatic efforts that led to the coalition supporting Ukraine have not eased up. It looks like the White House sees a chance to weaken Indian, Chinese and Brazilian neutrality towards the conflict. https://www.ft.com/content/c30f3bcb-19d7-4f93-87e5-129f28a18172

[JonS]

There is a meme for St Javelin

There are many many for the Moscow

There are innumerable memes for drones, tanks, marbled polecats, artillery, beavers, himars, F16s, and ill-advised river crossings.

There aren't any mine memes that I'm aware of.

Memes aren't a great way to measure 'defining weapon' but at least it has *some* basis in objective reality. I literally don't think even you literally believe what you literally just wrote. Not literally.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by JonS

[kluge]

27 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Has this been mentioned already? A pickup-mounted (on a pallet) laser for shooting down drones:

IIRC it was discussed a few months ago. There was some debate over how useful lasers would be for frontline usage given that they emit a huge signal- but seeing as how the article you linked talks about Air Force usage, I imagine they'd be quite effective for defending rear areas from drones.

[dan/california]

 

T

 

1 hour ago, JonS said:

There is a meme for St Javelin

There are many many for the Moscow

There are innumerable memes for drones, tanks, marbled polecats, artillery, beavers, and ill-advised river crossings.

I literally don't think even you believe what you literally just wrote. Not literally.

 

I  am not the least bit happy about it, but that doesn't make it wrong. In every single war fought since 1914 at least one side has resorted to mine warfare on a large scale. In the case of several insurgencies I won't name it was clearly a war winning weapon, it just makes it to expensive for the other side. In the hopefully unlikely event of a U.S. war with Iran the Iranians would lay them like there was no tomorrow, because the war would be existential for the regime, and after can be dealt with after.

 

People at real risk of losing a war on their own territory, and being marched straight into gulags if they do, figure out the math rather quickly. Below is one of Finland's ideas to get around the land mine treaty. Because it is a very long border, with a lot of orcs on the other side of it. And as the Russians demonstrate each and every day in Ukraine, losing is not an option. Even losing territory you can probably take back in a few months is not an option. This seems to be more of a fancy claymore than a set it and forget it mine but....

Edit: More or less all of that applies to DPICM as well.

 

Quote

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-develops-horrific-jumping-land-mine-to-deter-russia-invasions-2018-3

• "This is a remotely tripped explosive, which bounds in the air and fires steel or tungsten bullets downwards," the minister told reporters.
•  

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by dan/california

[Harmon Rabb]

On 6/20/2023 at 12:35 PM, dan/california said:

I am honestly not sure if this is real combat footage, or an add for Ford trucks. Although I guess both is always an option...

Built Ford tough.

 

[cesmonkey]

Interesting interview:

 

[cesmonkey]

https://sanctions.nazk.gov.ua/en/boycott/

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

https://sanctions.nazk.gov.ua/en/boycott/

A VERY long time ago I stopped eating this these products because, well, I want to live longer.  Ironically my wife just bought some Oreos for the first time in probably 20 years (I was sick, she was being nice).  There's two left in the package at the moment and I intend on doing something rather... uhm, creative with it the next time I have to go to the... OK, I'll just leave it at that.

Steve

[kevinkin]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I want to live longer.

Well, without knowing the company's business at all (inventory already in Russian early 2022 anyway). Let's just think positive and consider this a devious way to deliver WMDs. Can't we imagine Russian troops using Oreo cookies as poker chips forgetting about their sentry duty? Or the witch's tactic in Hansel and Gretel - an Oreo trail back and out of Ukraine. Harness the power of junk food. 

[FancyCat]

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

I have seen various "cold showers" on Ukraine's destruction of rail infrastructure.  Even most bridges can be repaired relatively quickly, so they say.  But that's really not the case.  There are only so many of those resources available to fix complex infrastructure at one time.  This matters A LOT.

The best analogy that people can relate to is the loss of power.  Losing one telephone pole at a time is very different than 100 at one time.  It is also different than losing poles, substations, and major transmission towers.  When we have major snow/ice damage to our grid I see trucks coming from 100s and sometimes 1000+ miles away and they stay for weeks.  I've seen convoys of 20 trucks at a time coming from Canada and the Southern US.

What Ukraine needs to do is drop a whole bunch of rail and road bridges concurrently so that the crews/materials availability to Russia are overwhelmed.  The bridge that theoretically could be back in service in 1 week, if there was nothing else going on, might now take a 1 month simply because it has to wait in line.

I know that Ukraine's strategists are aware of this, but man... a lot of commentators out there are not.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Reading through ISW's June 21st report, the main point of interest is about the reduced pace of Ukrainian offensive operations.  Zelensky (wisely) said the following:

Quote

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the progress of Ukrainian counteroffensives has been slower than expected, likely due to effective Russian defenses. Zelensky stated that Ukrainian counteroffensive progress has been “slower than desired” and will take time.[6] Zelensky noted that Ukrainian advances are not easy because Russian forces have mined 200,000 square kilometers of frontline territory.[7] 

Whether the pace of operations is slower than expected by military planners is very different than "slower than desired".  We don't know on a scale of 1 to 10 where the current pace of the counter offensive is, but we do know it's not at the fastest possible end of the spectrum.

ISW goes on to talk about perception vs. reality:

Quote

The overall slower than expected pace of Ukrainian counteroffensive operations is not emblematic of Ukraine’s wider offensive potential, and Ukrainian forces are likely successfully setting conditions for a future main effort despite initial setbacks. Ukrainian officials have long signaled that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would be a series of gradual and sequential offensive actions and have more recently offered the observation that currently ongoing operations do not represent the main thrust of Ukraine’s counteroffensive planning.[13] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar emphasized on June 20 that it is not useful to gauge the success of military actions based "solely by kilometers or the number of liberated settlements.”[14] Malyar’s statement echoes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s observation that war is not a ”Hollywood movie” that will deliver immediate and tangible results.[15]

The observation that current Ukrainian operations may have objectives that are not simply territorial is an important one. Ukrainian forces may be conducting several offensive operations across the entire theater in order to gradually attrit Russian forces and set conditions for a future main effort. Losses are inevitable on both sides, but careful operational planning on the Ukrainian side likely seeks to mitigate and balance this reality with the equally important observation that the degradation of Russian manpower is a valuable objective. Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin voiced his concern that Russian forces are suffering major manpower and equipment losses as a result of ongoing Ukrainian attacks, especially in southern Ukraine.[16] The success of Ukrainian counteroffensives should not be judged solely on day-to-day changes in control of terrain, as the wider operational intentions of Ukrainian attacks along the entire frontline may be premised on gradually degrading, exhausting, and expending Russian capabilities in preparation for additional offensive pushes.

This is what we've been talking about for the last week.  As the Estonian colonel quotes a few pages ago said in his interview, that it seems Ukrainian claims of knocking out artillery has increased by maybe 5-10 fold over a typical day prior to the counter offensive's start.  This level of loss is not sustainable and if Ukraine keeps it up then there's going to be a lot of minefields that are not adequately covered by artillery.

The deep strikes on logistics infrastructure, ammo dumps, command, and "barracks" are well on track from the looks of it.  Two deep strikes we know of on concentrated military personnel eliminated the equivalent of 2 typical battalions' worth of manpower.  Even if Russia avoids such losses in the future it will likely be at the expense of something they need (speed, efficiency of transport, etc.).

Lastly, we have the repeated reports from the front that Russians are dying in large numbers, especially when they come out of their positions to conduct their inevitable counter attacks.  Russia can't afford to lose manpower before the main show starts, so every soldier and piece of equipment lost now is going to enhance whatever Ukraine does next.

In short... I'm surprised this phase is going slowly.  It did for Kherson as well (reminder it took THREE MONTHS to collapse it) and yet was still successful in the end.  I see no reason to be pessimistic a this point.

Steve

[Grossman]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Reading through ISW's June 21st report, the main point of interest is about the reduced pace of Ukrainian offensive operations.  Zelensky (wisely) said the following:

Whether the pace of operations is slower than expected by military planners is very different than "slower than desired".  We don't know on a scale of 1 to 10 where the current pace of the counter offensive is, but we do know it's not at the fastest possible end of the spectrum.

ISW goes on to talk about perception vs. reality:

This is what we've been talking about for the last week.  As the Estonian colonel quotes a few pages ago said in his interview, that it seems Ukrainian claims of knocking out artillery has increased by maybe 5-10 fold over a typical day prior to the counter offensive's start.  This level of loss is not sustainable and if Ukraine keeps it up then there's going to be a lot of minefields that are not adequately covered by artillery.

The deep strikes on logistics infrastructure, ammo dumps, command, and "barracks" are well on track from the looks of it.  Two deep strikes we know of on concentrated military personnel eliminated the equivalent of 2 typical battalions' worth of manpower.  Even if Russia avoids such losses in the future it will likely be at the expense of something they need (speed, efficiency of transport, etc.).

Lastly, we have the repeated reports from the front that Russians are dying in large numbers, especially when they come out of their positions to conduct their inevitable counter attacks.  Russia can't afford to lose manpower before the main show starts, so every soldier and piece of equipment lost now is going to enhance whatever Ukraine does next.

In short... I'm surprised this phase is going slowly.  It did for Kherson as well (reminder it took THREE MONTHS to collapse it) and yet was still successful in the end.  I see no reason to be pessimistic a this point.

Steve

The ISW analysis adds that “the observation that current Ukrainian operations may have objectives that are not simply territorial is an important one”.

"Ukrainian forces may be conducting several offensive operations across the entire theater in order to gradually attrit Russian forces and set conditions for a future main effort.

Losses are inevitable on both sides, but careful operational planning on the Ukrainian side likely seeks to mitigate and balance this reality with the equally important observation that the degradation of Russian manpower is a valuable objective.

Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin voiced his concern that Russian forces are suffering major manpower and equipment losses as a result of ongoing Ukrainian attacks, especially in southern Ukraine.

The success of Ukrainian counteroffensives should not be judged solely on day-to-day changes in control of terrain, as the wider operational intentions of Ukrainian attacks along the entire frontline may be premised on gradually degrading, exhausting, and expending Russian capabilities in preparation for additional offensive pushes."

[sburke]

3 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Interesting interview:

very. lots of respect to this guy and a very clear balanced view

[Joe982]

As Jake Bro said the other day: 

Ukraine is about 20% larger than France

The mighty allies, attacked a tiny bit of France on D-day and it took 6 weeks to break out.

Ukraine is attacking in many places.

It will take ages before any breakthrough.

 

[dan/california]

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I have seen various "cold showers" on Ukraine's destruction of rail infrastructure.  Even most bridges can be repaired relatively quickly, so they say.  But that's really not the case.  There are only so many of those resources available to fix complex infrastructure at one time.  This matters A LOT.

The best analogy that people can relate to is the loss of power.  Losing one telephone pole at a time is very different than 100 at one time.  It is also different than losing poles, substations, and major transmission towers.  When we have major snow/ice damage to our grid I see trucks coming from 100s and sometimes 1000+ miles away and they stay for weeks.  I've seen convoys of 20 trucks at a time coming from Canada and the Southern US.

What Ukraine needs to do is drop a whole bunch of rail and road bridges concurrently so that the crews/materials availability to Russia are overwhelmed.  The bridge that theoretically could be back in service in 1 week, if there was nothing else going on, might now take a 1 month simply because it has to wait in line.

I know that Ukraine's strategists are aware of this, but man... a lot of commentators out there are not.

Steve

It is almost like Tendar heard your request or something.

Edit: There is not a crew there yet, either.

Edited June 22, 2023 by dan/california

[Offshoot]

If it is storm shadow it looks pretty disappointing or maybe a bad shot (photos from https://www.reddit.com/gallery/14ftzf9 )

[DesertFox]

46 minutes ago, Offshoot said:

If it is storm shadow it looks pretty disappointing or maybe a bad shot

Let them do a little wondering and speculation, it keeps them busy  Maybe something new, maybe something old and reactivated? Who knows...

 

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by DesertFox

[Huba]

Another video of the struck bridge, damage looks to be more extensive than at the first glance indeed. But TBH, while it makes sense to put the permanent, convenient bridge out of service, the strait should be quite easy to cross with pontoon bridge, and then we'll be back to the whack-a-mole situation from Kherson.
What makes the most sense though is attacking the railway bridge north of Dzhankoy, so no train will be able to reach Melitopol area. Even more sense of course to hit the Kerch bridge itself, or some of the rail overpasses just west of it.