How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

5 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

I seriously doubt that cluster munitions are well suited to clearing minefields.

you'd have to hit the mine directly with a submunition to get an effect, at which point you're probably seeding the minefiled with more UXO that the number of mines cleared.

[FancyCat]

How do we feel about GUR saying the drones that attacked Pskov were inside Russia? BS? if the reports of 20 drones are somewhat correct, thats a lot of stuff to be carrying around no? 

I wonder about the implications worldwide. 

From article linked: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/moment-of-drone-attack-that-destroyed-il-76s-at-russian-base-seen-in-infrared-image

Quote

The top of the aircraft is where the cargo jets’ fuel tanks and a critical section of the wing spar are located. Those sections of the aircraft were specifically targeted by the drones, which were launched from inside Russia, Ukrainian Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), told The War Zone exclusively Thursday.

“We are working from the territory of Russia,” Budanov told us, though he would not specify whether the attack was carried out by GUR personnel or Russian partisans. He also declined to say what kind of drones were used or how many.

The images also back up what Budanov told us about the extent of the damage caused during the attack.

In his battle damage assessment of the aircraft, Budanov told us that “two were destroyed and two were seriously damaged.”

We also obtained a screen capture from an infrared camera video feed from one of the drones used in the attack. The image, provided by a GUR source, shows the immediate result of one of the strikes, hitting in the same spot where two of the Candids show damage. Fuel onboard may have been a factor with the other two burning out completely, but we can assumed the same critical area was targeted.

The infrared image would mean these were likely bomblets dropped from a drone or drones under local man-in-the-loop control unless the source of the image was acting as an observation drone to record the strike, which seems unlikely. This would fit Budanov's comments that this was a strike launched inside Russia, likely very near the base, and not one using long-range autonomous drones. The video from which the still we obtained was captured looks like the drone had dropped one of the bomblets.

This successful attack raises additional questions about Russian force protection defenses and its ability to counter drone operations over its domestic airbase facilities. After an attack last month on the Stoltsy-2 Air Base inside Russia, GUR spokesman Andrii Yusov told us it was carried out on the GUR's behest by people inside Russia. Later, Russian officials ordered increased patrols around that base, searching for collaborators and any equipment that they could use.

 

[Battlefront.com]

40 minutes ago, JonS said:

you'd have to hit the mine directly with a submunition to get an effect, at which point you're probably seeding the minefiled with more UXO that the number of mines cleared.

Exactly.  Even if a cluster munition detonated some, it would likely be fewer than the dud rate.  If it is a Russian cluster munition, it DEFINITELY would be less than the dud rate.  Whatever the case you'd wind up with more mines to hit rather than fewer.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

How do we feel about GUR saying the drones that attacked Pskov were inside Russia? BS? if the reports of 20 drones are somewhat correct, thats a lot of stuff to be carrying around no? 

I wonder about the implications worldwide. 

From article linked: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/moment-of-drone-attack-that-destroyed-il-76s-at-russian-base-seen-in-infrared-image

 

I've been pondering this.  Ukraine has made claims of operations being conducted directly on Russian soil before.  I'm sure some of them are true.  As we've seen the Russian border is not very secure.

Ukraine managed to make a massive truck bomb and get it successfully onto a heavily guarded bridge all from foreign soil (not all in Russia, probably).  So 20 cardboard drones?  Seems very easy by comparison.

Besides the straight forward smuggling methods (like the truck bomb), agents could have landed from the Baltic Sea or crossed over any border area carefully chosen for being poorly defended.  They likely would have tried to do this all at once as any one interception would put the others at risk.

I also expect that the GUR is using some new targeting software designed for a primitive swarm system.  They could launch all of them from one spot and have each launch follow a predesignated flight path complete with holding patterns that are not overlapping.  When they are in place, one or two operators "pluck" a drone from the holding pattern and guide it directly to a target.  The targets are being called out by other ISR, such as a single dedicated night vision capable drone that was smuggled in or, more likely, satellite (the 1 hour delay time mentioned last page is more than adequate).

The one at a time approach allows the operators to ensure they hit a target as well as not wasting drones on targets that are already hit.

I very much doubt Russia is jamming GPS that far away from the battlefield, making GPS viable.

It really isn't that big of an operation when you think about it.  Which should scare the piss out of everybody whose country is on Jihadist's enemy list.

Steve

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-state-radio/id1245002955?i=1000625929457

Mick Ryan about the war. Ukraine needs more, Ukraine needs it faster, and letting the Russian's get anything out of this will cost us more in the end. He appears to either be a regular reader of the board, or his sources agree with ours in regards to the tactical/operational details. He does make a point that Western decision making has never adapted to the new reality. Even when we do that right thing we are too  bleeping slow. That is costing Ukraine dearly now, and it will cost the rest of us even more if China actually goes for Taiwan, or similar.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-1-2023

• Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) Head Kyrylo Budanov reported that the Russian military deployed elements of a newly created “reserve army” (the 25th CAA) to enable units currently on the frontline in Luhansk Oblast to laterally redeploy to defend against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine.
• The 25th Combined Arms Army is unlikely to be combat effective at scale given its rushed deployment, ahead of a previously reported intended deployment date of December 2023.

 

 

Russia is having to laterally redeploy another major unit from Luhansk to the south. Their replacements in Luhansk are apparently raw meat for the grinder. Read the whole thing today.

 

•  

[cesmonkey]

https://t.me/rabotyno/130
 

Quote

As of the evening of 01.09 at the turn of Rabotino-Verbovoyefighting continues. The leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in this area decided to withdraw troops from the southern outskirts of the settlement of Rabotino against the backdrop of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the destroyed village. It is much harder to hold out there, so the RF Armed Forces retreated towards the heights south of Rabotino. From there, active artillery and aviation work is carried out on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There is nothing surprising in this: holding on to the ruins of the village is fraught with great losses and is inappropriate in the current situation. Therefore, the RF Armed Forces withdrew to equipped positions a little to the south (actually, the defensive line). It is very difficult to keep Rabotino without control over the southern heights, so part of the village at least remains in the gray zone, whether there will be counterattacks, time will tell. Well, in the direction of Verbovoye, the battles again went on all day: the Armed Forces of Ukraine are breaking through the fields, so far unsuccessfully, incurring losses.
Team @rabotyno

 

 

[Offshoot]

It looks like Ukraine are using or experimenting with air detonated cardboard drones to strike Russian airfields. They won't necessarily result in impressive explosions but can still do significant damage, though this might not be obvious from satellite images.

 

[danfrodo]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

 

Russia is having to laterally redeploy another major unit from Luhansk to the south. Their replacements in Luhansk are apparently raw meat for the grinder. Read the whole thing today.

 

•  

Interesting definition of reserves: depleted unit in one sector moved hundreds of kms to another, undersupplied sector and put right back into the line of the most active combat area on the whole front.  Yes, that is what is usually meant by 'reserve'.  

Does seem to indicate the RU is running low on what one usually calls 'reserves'.  The evidence builds that RU might be in trouble in the south.  But w enough of these transfers they can probably stop UKR in this once area.  But that leaves some other areas very weak, we hope.

[cesmonkey]

Russian telegrammer Rybar claims Germany has already delivered Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine:

https://t.me/rybar/51423

Quote

“Neptunes” are indeed being used more and more often : over the past two weeks, an attack on the S-300 air defense system at Cape Tarkhankut has been recorded (there is also a version that it was a second-generation Brimstone) , and another missile was shot down on approach. As for the German "Tauruses" , they are already in Ukraine. According to some reports, the cruise missiles were delivered at the end of August, and another batch is expected at the beginning of this month. It is not yet clear which aircraft will be used for this purpose, given that the existing Su-24Ms have been repurposed for Franco-British missiles. But they are taking the Taurus closer to the Kanatovo airfields

 

and Ozerny , where there are Su-25s, MiG-29s, and Su-27s.

Apparently, now the Ukrainian authorities are waiting for the moment when the leadership of Germany will officially announce the delivery.

And perhaps this was due to the lack of at least a symmetrical (not to mention a decidedly asymmetric) response to the increasingly brazen and frequent sabotage and provocations of Ukraine on Russian territory.
#Germany #Ukraine
@rybar

 

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

https://t.me/rabotyno/130
 

 

I think 'team rabotyno' is going to need a new name.

[Battlefront.com]

Potentially big news out of the GUR about what's going on with Russian force deployments.  ISW dedicated most of their top section to this and I highly recommend it, especially for anybody who thinks Russian manpower in the south is holding:

Quote

Additional Russian lateral redeployments and the immediate commitment of intended operational reserves suggest that short term reinforcement needs are impeding intended long-term reconstitution efforts. The redeployment of elements of the 41st CAA to southern Ukraine is the third major Russian lateral redeployment since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in June and the second in recent weeks.[12] Russian formations at the division level (and in some areas lower) defending in southern Ukraine have done so without rotation since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and these forces have committed substantial material, manpower, and effort to hold back Ukrainian advances.[13] The second lateral deployment in the span of a few weeks suggests an increasing Russian concern about the stability of Russian defenses in light of Ukrainian advances around Robotyne. The creation of the 25th CAA is likely a part of Shoigu’s long-term objective previously announced in January 2023 to form several new major ground forces formations, and the deployment of elements of the 25th CAA to avoid creating gaps in the Russian defense suggests that the immediate threat of a Ukrainian breakthrough is serious enough to supersede that effort.[14]

According to the GUR the currently forming 25th CAA is being rotated into Luhansk to replace the 41st CAA, a formation that is likely nearly spent from months of attacks in the winter and then again since Ukraine's counter offensive kicked off.  The 41st is to be moved down into the southern front.

There are three major takeaways from the ISW report, which boil down to:

1. Russian units in the south have been fighting without rotation or significant reinforcements for months.  They have been taking substantial losses in the process.
2. reinforcing the south has happened 3 times so far and all of the units have come from other active combat zones. This latest is coming from Svatove-Kreminna area and have also been heavily engaged for months without rotation and (likely) adequate replacements for their losses.  ISW characterizes them as "likely degraded".
3. the 25th CAA has not completed its formation or its training, yet it is being committed to frontline positions.

There's several things we might conclude from this, all of which are good for Ukraine.

Russia has a manpower shortage.  The fighting in the south has produced unsustainable loss of combat power to the extent that it had to transfer other units to shore up defenses.  Those units, however, were themselves degraded from combat and therefore not a great choice for reinforcements.  As poor condition as they might be, they don't appear to have been adequately replaced by similar or better quality forces.

The latest move of the 41st CAA is particularly interesting because they are aren't "elite" and are being replaced by something likely unfit to enter a combat zone.  The replacements must be very bad indeed as the logical place to put fresh, uncommitted troops is in the sector that is under the most amount of pressure.  But no, they are going to one of the least active sectors of the front.  Compare this with Ukraine taking its freshly raised units and making them the spearheads of the most complex and challenging offensive in decades.

We've already seen the results of Russia's first move (7th VDV Div), which is the counter offensive continues to advance and now Ukraine is able to increase its footholds on the left bank.  The second move (76th VDV Div) basically turned the Kreminna-Svatove front into a fairly static one after Russia gained a wee bvit of terrain.  Now it seems they might already be losing terrain near Kreminna.  This third move futher weakens the southern Luhansk front, increasing the chances of Russia losing even more terrain in that area.

These recent moves (all in August) have the smell of desperation.  Russia is running out of capable units at the front and is unwilling/unable to form new ones fast enough to compensate.  That's what this all indicates.

Steve

[kevinkin]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:11 AM, Battlefront.com said:

When you return I suggest you not post late at night as that's when you seem to be more inclined to fight instead of contribute.

The fight over the meaning of raw data in this war is a contribution Steve, least we forget critical thinking skills are part of the debate over policy.

Sorry if I offended you or anyone. But when I read my posts from 2 weeks ago, they were really really harmless. Let's all take a deep breath and exhale. 

Steve, send me a PM to discuss. I look forward to it to understand where you are coming from. 

[kevinkin]

I have been wondering why ISW has the daily: RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT.

Not that the information they provide is not valued. More about the wording of the headline. We know Russia is offensive. But isn't the UA on the offensive compared a year ago? I don't loose slept over it. But an oddity of language.

Anyway, there seems to be a movement within the armchair generals in DC that the west has to start preparing Plan B. That is, a long war. I believe this was always the intent of the proxy war once the UA held. And Plan B is in progress. Systems destined will be deployed years from now. This is a nightmare. More on strategy rather than tactics later.   

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by kevinkin

[Joe982]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

A fuel truck like this is probably about $500k to build new these days (obviously US prices!).  10 trucks destroyed means is $5m in lost capital.  Obviously prices are all relative, but it is probable that the relative cost of Russian replacements is similar to the overall budget it has to work with.

The money to build the truck has already been spent. And the truck was always going to wear out. It is not really a loss of capital today. It was an expense when it was paid for, probably years ago.

It is not compulsory to build another one. Instead a sensible general would have other replacement trucks in the rear areas. Those trucks have already been paid for. Probably before the war started.

 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://history.army.mil/html/books/007/7-5-1/CMH_Pub_7-5-1_fixed.pdf

the enemy.25 Perhaps the most significant improvement in team operations was the increasing co-ordination that was developing between the ground forces and the tactical airplanes. In addition to performing the primary mission of trying to isolate the battlefield by attacking enemy lines of communication, the IX Tactical Air Command had employed a large portion of its effort in direct and close ground support. The pilots had attacked such targets as strongpoints retarding the ground advance, troop concentrations, gun positions, and command posts. They had also flown extensive air reconnaissance for the ground troopS.26 On a typical day of action the fighter bombers of the IX T AC exerted 40 percent of their air effort in close support of the First Army, 30 percent in direct support of the Second British Army, 10 percent against rail lines and communications 50 to 70 miles behind the enemy front, and 20 percent in offensive fighter activity and ground assault area cover.

 

Rereading this outstanding history of Normandy again. The thing that stands out is the enormous effect of absolute air supremacy. The Germans were bombed, bombed again, and then bombed with real intent. For all of the amazing effects of PGMs and drones it is not clear to me that they bring the same weight to bear, at least i the quantities available to the Ukrainians. The Luftwaffe of course was essentially a non factor in France. The anonymous sources whinging about Ukrainian tactics are asking them to do something we didn't attempt even in 1944.

Yes on occasion we bombed our on side, but we bombed the Germans a GREAT deal more.

Fair warning: The entire document amounts to a long full length book.

[dan/california]

 

[Mattias]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Which should scare the piss out of everybody whose country is on Jihadist's enemy list.

Yay from Sweden! With Iran backed book burners and a most excellent government it is adult diaper time.

[Eddy]

A sober and realistic analysis of where the Ukrainian offensive is at the moment. Recommend giving it a watch even though it's over an hour long.

[Teufel]

Not wishing to promote JR or his work but not seen this elsewhere. Russians being Russians, guess the expression “when in Rome…” was lost in translation.

 

[Teufel]

Maybe already been posted but if not, some additional news.

 

[Teufel]

FPV-work and fireworks.

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Teufel

[Beleg85]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The replacements must be very bad indeed as the logical place to put fresh, uncommitted troops is in the sector that is under the most amount of pressure.  But no, they are going to one of the least active sectors of the front.  Compare this with Ukraine taking its freshly raised units and making them the spearheads of the most complex and challenging offensive in decades.

Are we sure it isn't more or less pre-planned placement of them to accustom soldiers to combat zone? They surely lack ready-to-go  experienced large units, but practice of overrelying on already worn out units is rather norm in the Russian army, and not necessary a sign of crisis in mapower by itself. With so many infights, distrust and envy between branches, competing power structures and darwinistic attitude to war in general, I would expect them to send their veterans into the fray till they break. We saw this with VDV several times.

Also at least on tactical level, I know that on some parts of Kreminna front they were indeed rotating, and quite extensively in last months. One volunteer in that area complained about how tired they were compared to muscovites, always throwing fresh troops at them. So it could be local.

[Teufel]

 

[sross112]

1 hour ago, Teufel said:

Maybe already been posted but if not, some additional news.

 

So, a question for those in the know. There doesn't appear to be a lot of tank on tank violence occurring so to me the DU ammo is great for when that happens, but how are the stocks of HE for the NATO tanks? Is this going to be another ammunition bottleneck where the UA is going to want a heck of a lot more than what is available, or are there massive stocks of it? I'm sure there is plenty of HEAT ammo out there, but it would seem that more blast and fragmentation would be desirable since the tanks are used for pummeling positions. Thoughts?