How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

Sure, but Prig's pitches are also along the lines, of one, not affecting the war effort, great care to emphasize war against Ukraine would continue, and were aimed at stopping the incompetencies of the MoD to wage war. Feels more like the whole rhetoric was hunting for support based than anything along the lines of pro-peace.

[Yet]

Am i right in my assumption that minefields are only a major problem because there is no air superiority?

dropping Airborne behind the minefields might help alot.

A focus on how to clear the minefields might then become a focus on how to get air superiority.

Also it doesnt help that attacking Rostov or Moskov is out of the question. and that RU has nukes.-

Could it be that the power of the mines is so strong because of a setting very specific for this war.

so q: will mines be this strong in any (landbased) war?

Edited June 27, 2023 by Yet

[FancyCat]

 

 

[DesertFox]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Now THAT is impressive.  Someone finally decided they needed to cope with hits to the front and back of the hull.  Bravo.  Unlikely to work, but still quite a good effort.

Steve

There is an even better one. Mobile detention center or aviary to transport genetically engineered anti-anglo-saxon birds?

 

 

[womble]

10 minutes ago, Yet said:

Am i right in my assumption that minefields are only a major problem because there is no air superiority?

dropping Airborne behind the minefields might help alot.

 

No, not really. You still have to sustain the airborne drophead, which means reaching it with land forces, which means breaching the minefield anyway. Sure, you could maybe keep the paras fed and supplied by airdrop, but if you have that much control of the airspace, you can probably win the way NATO always hoped to: by destroying the enemy from the air. The minefield can be dealt with later, once the covering units have been eradicated. Either way up, airborne troops don't really enter into that sort of equation, I'd say.

 

13 minutes ago, Yet said:

Could it be that the power of the mines is so strong because of a setting very specific for this war.

so q: will mines be this strong in any (landbased) war?

Mines are a problem anywhere. Especially when you've got the resources of an army the size of the Russian one to lay continuous, dense, deep belts across the defensive front. So "specific" in that "it's the Russians", but the various flavours of Islamic terrorist that "The West" have been fighting for the last 3 decades seem to make quite good use of "buried bombs" for area denial and casualty-causing.

 

16 minutes ago, Yet said:

A focus on how to clear the minefields might then become a focus on how to get air superiority.

I wouldn't think it's a big factor, beyond the whole "need to stop the other guy's TacAir hitting our MCLIC units". Air-launched FAB overpressure isn't a "standard" minefield clearance approach, from what people are saying, and just putting some airborne across the obstacle isn't going to make the obstacle go away.

[fry30]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

Pushing a real assault here at least implies a threat to cut the land bridge BEHIND Donestk city. Which I think would a war winner if Ukraine could pull it off.

 

The kind of footage that makes you want to spam Z to get a better look at the action.

[cesmonkey]

42 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So I have wondered about a crossing in the Kherson sector for most of the winter.  The issue is not really the amount of mass they need to push.  That sector is very lightly defended and we have seen light mobile infantry do a lot of damage when supported.  The issue will be sustaining them.  Any crossing must be sustained and that will be visible even for a modest sized force.  Tac aviation in any volume is out so it will be land based.

So the risk for Ukraine is getting a bunch of troops cut off and then captured, which would be a narrative disaster - hell they can’t lose a half dozen vehicles without half the internet declaring “the UA has stalled!!” (Good gawd it is hard to believe our grandfathers fought and won two bloody world wars given how jumpy we are these days).

A raid is definitely in the cards but that would likely draw more RA to that sector, which could be a plan but they do not want to do that if they are serious about using this as an major thrust.  I am pretty sure the RA figured all this out and hence why they blew the dam.

We read that water levels may drop in mid summer so maybe a major op could become viable by then?  

Here's a rumor, I guess, from the Russian blogger, Two Majors:

https://t.me/dva_majors/19630

Quote

Kherson region. The enemy is preparing for a large-scale landing operation across the Dnieper after June 30.

The 93rd separate mechanized brigade "Cold Yar" (now deployed in the Dnepropetrovsk region) has completed the process of resupplying and is urgently pulling all of its wounded from hospitals.

Task 93 odshbr - urgently, before June 30, 2023, arrive at the far outskirts of the Kherson region, where to the south of the settlement. Davydov Brod area for the deployment of enemy personnel, even to the south - prepared places for the deployment of the strategic reserve of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the villages around the settlement. Chkalovo . Previously, the enemy checked the readiness of radio networks, imported repeaters.

A strategic reserve in the form of consolidated formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is expected from the Odessa and Nikolaev regions.

A few months ago, it was reported about the deployment of the DShV command in the Kherson region to reduce the decision-making shoulder and manage the operation on the spot. The area is saturated with pontoon crossings, the enemy skillfully directs them across the river. Ingulets, does not stop training

Task 93 odshbr:
Cross the Dnieper in the Staraya Zburyevka Tsyuryupinsk (Alyoshki) lane to divert the Russian Armed Forces to an unusable object and tie down forces in the area by fighting. A small area under the Antonovsky Bridge is being held by the Armed Forces of Ukraine for several days with small forces, which for some reason is refuted by persons who have nothing to do with hostilities.

️The main task of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be to strike at the part of the former Kakhovka reservoir near the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station and form a foothold in the area of the settlement. New Kakhovka. A section of the river is also considered as a possible option for forcing. Dnieper near the settlement Lvov.

We should also expect enemy DRG actions on the Kinburn Spit, MTR landings from the waters of Karkinitsky Bay are not excluded.

 

[Beleg85]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Now THAT is impressive.  Someone finally decided they needed to cope with hits to the front and back of the hull.  Bravo.  Unlikely to work, but still quite a good effort.

Steve

One of our observers of Russian infospshere reminded one interview of Sladkov about this peculiar type of cope cage- they now grow larger and are more "linear", since they focus on protecting solely against drone-dropped granades, not ATGMS (which was unrealistic from the start). Thus why we see now more solid builds with some matress or blanket rather than simple "grill-like" structures. Ukrainian drone pilots particulary love hitting engines, so they try to find some ad hoc defence. And yup- looks silly.

2 hours ago, fireship4 said:

Mark Galleoti read out the relevant law in an episode of 'In Moscow's Shadow's', and IIRC, he made the point that it says such structures are illegal if they act against the state.

They are banned by constitution, but there are many loopholes. One is if they belong to state-sponsored enterprise with enough capital, that's why Gazporm and others formed their own. If nothing changed in last years, I think Wagner trademark as such is still unregistred, and they push money through myriads of other, legal businessess (there was somewhere article about Prig's firms, two of them were particulary important for money laundering- if I find it, I'llpost it here). Of course this is Russia, so legal ramifications are valid as logn as ruling mafia wants them to be.

2 hours ago, fireship4 said:

Either you are mixing your metaphors or I will avoid Polish cheese.  Perhaps it could ferment some ideas, or curdle some suspicions

Yup, we unfortunatally lack the hard ones like parmiggiano or pecorino...so beware.

Edited June 27, 2023 by Beleg85

[poesel]

Could be something, could be nothing...

 

[The_Capt]

58 minutes ago, Yet said:

Am i right in my assumption that minefields are only a major problem because there is no air superiority?

dropping Airborne behind the minefields might help alot.

A focus on how to clear the minefields might then become a focus on how to get air superiority.

Also it doesnt help that attacking Rostov or Moskov is out of the question. and that RU has nukes.-

Could it be that the power of the mines is so strong because of a setting very specific for this war.

so q: will mines be this strong in any (landbased) war?

Well yes and no. I am not sure  Air superiority means what it once did.  It traditionally pushed back an opponent and gave security to the breaching operations.  But I am not sure if that applies to long range PGM and UAS environments where a breaching op can be seen from space and targeted from the next time zone.  And AirPower will not solve for small portable weapon systems that are very hard to detect and defeat like ATGMs - remember we have never fought in an ATGM environ like this one, we had a lot of theories of how it would go but this is the first real test of those ideas.  

In the trouble we have seen in the UA cases it was actually only (as far as we know) a single tac heli and what was likely a couple ATGM teams with very light artillery support and the entire breaching op collapsed.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Well you may be correct on the first count but I do not fully buy into the second.  And we are back to Uncertainty.  A slow bleeding lose allows for reorientation and adaptation which we may be able to shape somewhat.  The uncertainty is more manageable.  Of course the counter to this argument is the human ability to ignore and delude ourselves into thinking something is not happening, if it happens slowly…right up until the point it happens fast anyway, but let’s tackle on mess at a time.  Fast is a bow wave of uncertainty that becomes auto-catalytic and in humans creates panic.  When we panic we lose the capacity to effectively process information and begin to act on programming, even if it is totally misaligned with reality - this is how people in a fire manage to clog up doorways and everyone dies.

Rapid escalation of uncertainty in the Russian system will very likely see the total collapse of macro-social structures, plenty examples of this throughout human history.  Once that happens micro-social takes charge and a couple hundred people who go tribal and feral start to act in their own interests pretty quickly.  That would normally be hilarious except for the part where those couple hundred people could get their hands on some very powerful weapons.  The macro-social structures that control those weapons no longer exists so we basically have the power of gods in the hands of scared primates…what could possibly go wrong.  Micro-social exist in a state of relative rationality, which means what may look totally insane from the outside, makes perfect sense inside.  This means a level of macro-anarchy, which is just really micro-rationality.

In a slower descent theoretically the macro-social structures have time to adapt and retain a level of control - we saw this at the end of the Cold War.  People can try and downplay the problem (it won’t really happen that way, but don’t they need expertise to use those weapons?) or skew/mitigate it (well surely the Russian or Western governments will swoop in and focus on securing these systems).  But the reality is that once the macro-social structure fails pretty much everything is up for grabs and we have never had a P5 nuclear power completely fail before.  If we are going to, I would prefer for that failure to be in slow motion than fast.  It absolutely sucks and is unfair to Ukraine to have to live with this, but here we are.

The argument for a slow defeat to allow for rational decision making was far stronger last Thursday than is this morning. The larger problem is that we have been expecting Russia to behave like a rational adult super power for fifteen months. What they have actually been doing is shoving every last gram of state capacity they can physically mobilize into Ukraine and setting it in fire with a torch. people, money, and the vast legacy Soviet armory. It has been incinerated while Putin prays for a miracle. Instead the Russian state is starting to fail, and Putin's idea of a peace offer involves crucifying Zelensky, and Russian troops owning the entirety of the Black Sea coast. On this trajectory Russia is not going to give up until it has no state capacity left to hold itself together. I think that point is coming rather soon as this weekends rather large cracking sound demonstrated loudly.

We need to tell the Russians they have weeks, not months, weeks, to make a rational offer. Or we will make very sure things get ten times worse for them on the Ukrainian battlefield, and in every financial market on earth. It is literally for their own good, not to mention several billion poor people who were just getting used to eating regularly. Blowing the Khahovka dam was crime against them at least as much as it was Ukraine proper.

[Letter from Prague]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

 

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok so what is the plan then?  Crush Russia and hope they whatever happens all those WMDs somehow stay under a centralized control?  Think about what happens if those Chechen goons got their hands on even just chemical weapons.  You realize the Ukraine urban centres are going to be likely first-targets because Russians are generally a spiteful bunch.

The “Goldilocks Solution” is the one where we do not take massive risks with a nuclear power in complete free fall - why do those baying for Russian blood keep skipping over this little inconvenient issue?  If we do not have a theory for Russian defeat last weekend is going to look like a reminder of a simpler and gentler time.

What a beautiful juxtaposition.

[keas66]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Well you may be correct on the first count but I do not fully buy into the second.  And we are back to Uncertainty.  A slow bleeding lose allows for reorientation and adaptation which we may be able to shape somewhat.  The uncertainty is more manageable.  Of course the counter to this argument is the human ability to ignore and delude ourselves into thinking something is not happening, if it happens slowly…right up until the point it happens fast anyway, but let’s tackle on mess at a time.  Fast is a bow wave of uncertainty that becomes auto-catalytic and in humans creates panic.  When we panic we lose the capacity to effectively process information and begin to act on programming, even if it is totally misaligned with reality - this is how people in a fire manage to clog up doorways and everyone dies.

Rapid escalation of uncertainty in the Russian system will very likely see the total collapse of macro-social structures, plenty examples of this throughout human history.  Once that happens micro-social takes charge and a couple hundred people who go tribal and feral start to act in their own interests pretty quickly.  That would normally be hilarious except for the part where those couple hundred people could get their hands on some very powerful weapons.  The macro-social structures that control those weapons no longer exists so we basically have the power of gods in the hands of scared primates…what could possibly go wrong.  Micro-social exist in a state of relative rationality, which means what may look totally insane from the outside, makes perfect sense inside.  This means a level of macro-anarchy, which is just really micro-rationality.

In a slower descent theoretically the macro-social structures have time to adapt and retain a level of control - we saw this at the end of the Cold War.  People can try and downplay the problem (it won’t really happen that way, but don’t they need expertise to use those weapons?) or skew/mitigate it (well surely the Russian or Western governments will swoop in and focus on securing these systems).  But the reality is that once the macro-social structure fails pretty much everything is up for grabs and we have never had a P5 nuclear power completely fail before.  If we are going to, I would prefer for that failure to be in slow motion than fast.  It absolutely sucks and is unfair to Ukraine to have to live with this, but here we are.

So you want Ukraine to tip toe to Victory making such small incremental steps thats the Russians naturally adapt themselves to the new micro state - until they are safely behind their borders ....and then ?

Edited June 27, 2023 by keas66

[sburke]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

If we are going to, I would prefer for that failure to be in slow motion than fast.  It absolutely sucks and is unfair to Ukraine to have to live with this, but here we are.

Probably the better option for Ukraine as well. Likely the first target of a Russian nuke would be Kiev frankly. 

[Beleg85]

Effects of muscovite barbarians hitting civilian restaurant in Kramatorsk...reportedly 4 dead, several dozens wounded including children :

https://twitter.com/KrukuOne/status/1673796667143749634

 

[sburke]

33 minutes ago, keas66 said:

So you want Ukraine to tip toe to Victory making such small incremental steps thats the Russians naturally adapt themselves to the new micro state - until they are safely behind their borders ....and then ?

Well getting them back across the border is the goal right?  After that it becomes an international issue where sanctions would hopefully determine what the Russian state in whatever form it exists then concedes to its new global position ie the dog that just doodied all over the floor and needs to sit outside for a while. (After getting its face shoved in the doody)

Edited June 27, 2023 by sburke

[womble]

13 minutes ago, keas66 said:

So you want Ukraine to tip toe to Victory making such small incremental steps thats the Russians naturally adapt themselves to the new micro state - until they are safely behind their borders ....and then ?

It's not just The_Capt that wants it. It's Ukraine, too. Who do you think would be the preferred target of fractious warlords (other than each other) with nukes? Who's right next to said warlords if they start lobbing nukes at each other?

That is, if you assume there's an actual threat of thermonuclear explosion. Once central authority has collapsed, who's going to be able to actually maintain these things in working order, and bypass the failsafes that certainly exist to stop random custodians of Armageddon from getting frisky already? Assuming that Putin doesn't press the Big Red Button (or perhaps that him attempting to press it is what gets him a Makarov Ear Wax Removal (9mm or .380).

Perhaps the bigger worry for Ukraine is a spiteful Putin (or whomever) giving the launch order as a desperate attempt to "win" the "SMO". Whether it's a Tac Nuke or something bigger, that's a city, probably Kyiv. Maybe several; depends on how spiteful the launch-order-giver is feeling, how many fail to launch, how many get intercepted and how many fizzle. Whether the risk/result numbers make it "better" to have a rapid win with the risk of nukes or a slow frog-boil where nukes aren't a consideration is something that's very hard to know, and we certainly should be grateful we don't have to personally enumerate that dreadful calculus.

Obviously, to a rational view, nuking anywhere isn't going to get Putin a win, but we keep having to remind ourselves that our definition of rational doesn't necessarily apply to the criminal insane asylum that is the Kremlin.

[sburke]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

A raid is definitely in the cards but that would likely draw more RA to that sector, which could be a plan but they do not want to do that if they are serious about using this as an major thrust.  I am pretty sure the RA figured all this out and hence why they blew the dam.

We read that water levels may drop in mid summer so maybe a major op could become viable by then?  

Not able to access much at the moment (cause I am busy drinking and eating my way through Barcelona!j but how much could this position be used to leverage the RA out of any of its defensive positions? And no I don’t think the RA figured this all out as I don’t credit the RA with much of a strategic vision these days. 

[Tux]

20 minutes ago, keas66 said:

So you want Ukraine to tip toe to Victory making such small incremental steps thats the Russians naturally adapt themselves to the new micro state - until they are safely behind their borders ....and then ?

If that’s what makes a nuclear-armed cluster**** in post-war Russia unlikely to happen then, I mean… yeah?  Surely you wholeheartedly agree that said cluster-situation is worth avoiding?  So all that might be disagreed upon is how best to do that.

What’s your solution?  You don’t get to just say ‘Win the war ASAP!!’ and then put your fingers in you ears and pretend time stops at that point.  What does the real-life post-war Russia look like in your scenario and, critically, does it have sober control of its nukes?  If the answer is anything other than a solid ‘yes’, then we need to try harder, don’t we?

Russia invaded Ukraine. They are to blame for Ukraine’s suffering.  There is nothing we can do that will eliminate that suffering, now. All we can do is honestly and determinedly try to navigate the best path we can find from this point on. 

[The_Capt]

53 minutes ago, keas66 said:

So you want Ukraine to tip toe to Victory making such small incremental steps thats the Russians naturally adapt themselves to the new micro state - until they are safely behind their borders ....and then ?

That is exactly the plan from what we have seen so far.  A death by inches so that Russia can come to terms with it.  All war is negotiation and that also means the players must negotiate with themselves.  The fact that Ukrainians have to die to make this happen is something we had better not forget when it comes to guaranteeing their security and rebuilding their nation once this war is over.  We are killing Russia softly while Ukraine pays the bill and we owe them a lot for it.

Edited June 27, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, sburke said:

Not able to access much at the moment (cause I am busy drinking and eating my way through Barcelona!j but how much could this position be used to leverage the RA out of any of its defensive positions? And no I don’t think the RA figured this all out as I don’t credit the RA with much of a strategic vision these days. 

It depends entirely on the the ability of the Ukrainians to get supplies across the river. If they can put up a high capacity multilane bridge and keep the the Russians from vaporizing it, well the land bridge is just done, and probably a large portion of the Russian army with it. The Russians have a very small number of less than brilliant quality troops  guarding things along the river. Unfortunately, as The_Capt mentioned  it is a high Risk thing, because if the bridge gets cut before Russian lines disintegrate Ukraine could get a lot of troops hung out to dry. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Letter from Prague said:

 

What a beautiful juxtaposition.

And there we have the perversity of war.  See my previous post - there is nothing good in this and as much as we would love to push the easy button and end this whole thing by next weekend…we are in the suck.  It is all bad and innocent people get to pay the price.  All war is personal…we very often forget that one.

[keas66]

Just now, The_Capt said:

That is exactly the plan from what we have seen so far.  A death by inches so that Russia can come to terms with it.  All war is negotiation and that also means the players must negotiate with themselves.  The fact that Ukrainians have to die to make this happen is something we had better to forget when it comes to guaranteeing their security and rebuilding their nation once this war is over.  We are killing Russia softly while Ukraine pays the bill and we owe them a lot for it.

 I would be happier if the powers that be actually seemed like they had a plan themselves for when Ukraine have completed the liberation of their own country . Admittance to  NATO/ the EU still only seems to be something being talked about rather than actually acted on  .  If the Russians actually withdraw back to borders pre-Feb 2022  - what about Donetsk and Luhansk - Do they remain  at their 2014 borders ? . Who's to say UA pushes the Russians out and they just don't start again in a another year ? What does Victory actually look like - apart from not actually starting the 3rd world war off as a result ?

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, kluge said:

Endurance. A drone swarm can't fly indefinitely. A mobile minefield requires an energy source to move. Whereas a classic minefield can remain effective for years after it is laid.

It's more than that.  A dumb mine can be made in the hundreds of thousands, millions even.  Not the same with drones.  Meaning, you can cover way more territory with mines than you can with drones.  And a gap not defended is one gap to many.

There is also weather to take into consideration.  Swarms need to be made out of fairly small and light drones for cost reasons, which means they can't fly in certain conditions (heavy rains, powerful winds, too cold, too hot, etc.).  The enemy would know this and therefore time attacks to happen when the risk from swarms is lowest.

Lighting is also an issue.  Drones that use optics to hit targets need sensors to match.  The wider the range of lighting conditions in which the drone can operate means increased costs for better sensors.  Lasers might work in all lighting conditions, but they can have problems with adverse weather and are costly anyway.

The best way to think about drone swarms is that they are a "force multiplier" not a be-all-end-all system for all things.

Steve

[dan/california]